“Like what?”
“Like, if you don’t want to burn out, you can’t live here.”
I frowned. “In Vegas?”
“No, not in Vegas! Although that probably doesn’t help,” he added wryly. “No, here. In this bathroom, huddled against this tub. Here with your hair falling in your face and your body shaking in memory—”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“—and from hunger, ’cause you’re punishing yourself for not saving everything—”
“That’s not what I’m doing!”
“—when you saved something. You saved a whole lot of something that wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t practically wrecked yourself!”
I got up. I suddenly wasn’t feeling so comforted anymore. “So you’re saying what? Be happy I survived and just forget everything else?”
“Not forget. Lessons won that hard you hold on to. But there’s a difference between remembering shit when you need to and living in it. You do the job when you got the job; then it’s done. Ever wonder why soldiers just back from the field are laughing and talking and playing cards instead of sitting in a corner reliving it all?”
“Because they’re crazy?”
“No, because that’s how you avoid the crazy. You do the job when you got the job; the rest of the time, you live.”
I sat on the edge of the tub. Yeah, like I’d ever done that. Like I knew how to do that.
I grew up at a vampire’s court, one of the ones where you didn’t live; you survived. And even after I fled Tony’s little house of horrors, it hadn’t been much better. I’d thought I was getting out of a cage, only to learn that I’d just exchanged it for a different one, one of my own making, one where I hunkered down every night and hoped I didn’t wake up to his boys busting down the door.
And then one day they did, but thanks to a warning, I wasn’t there. And after that came the senate, “protecting” me as long as I did what it wanted. And the Circle, which was pretty much offering the same deal. And here I was, caught in the middle, still just trying to survive and to help everyone else survive, because that’s what I knew; that’s what I did.
That was what I called living.
“Cassie?”
“I’m . . .” I looked up, and met somber dark eyes. And for some reason, found myself telling the truth. “I’m not sure I know how to do that.”
“Then maybe you need to be reminded. Get some clothes on and come upstairs.”
“Upstairs?” I looked at the ceiling in confusion. “Marco . . . we don’t have an upstairs.”
He stuck his cigar back between his teeth. “We do now.”
Chapter Fourteen
Marco left and I eased into shorts and a T-shirt, checking out the real estate in the process. Which wasn’t looking so good. Which was kind of looking like I’d taken up roller derby, and sucked at it. But the parts were all there and they worked, more or less.
The less was an inch-long gash in my side, which was missing the concrete scalpel that had caused it, but had gained some stitches. It was not happy. And neither was I, when I inadvertently pressed too hard when rebandaging it and saw the room swim before my eyes.
I grabbed the dresser and hung on for a minute, dizzy and more than a little nauseated. It wasn’t just the pain. It was the constant stress, the I-just-got-up-and-want-to-crawl-back-into-bed exhaustion, the utter insanity of the last few weeks but especially this morning. It was everything, and it hit all at once.
Great.
Perfect, even.
“Armored warrior . . . canopy of stars . . . must unify . . .”
The words would have been too faint to hear, except that my head had come to rest on the dresser, right in front of the source. I pushed around some clothes and found what I’d expected: a ratty pack of tarot cards. The girls must have been playing with them, before Tami found out and put them in here, because I never left them open.
For exactly this reason, I thought, as one shot out of the pack and hit me in the face.