RENEE STARED OUT of her bedroom window in a daze. She didn’t know
what to do, but she had to do something. Aeron had been so hurt and so angry,
with good reason. Renee had felt every blast of it. Felt it like it was her own
pain.
Something was going on with Kevin but what did it have to do with
Miroslav? Why did Aeron’s demeanor change the minute she found out?
She’d been watching Kevin as a POI but Aeron had been the one who
saved him today. Now Kevin was in observation and she couldn’t get in there
herself.
Miranda was secluding herself more and more and that strange mist
was spreading. Renee bit her lip. Aeron had Frei to back her up and she’d been
there to help.
Renee needed to concentrate on keeping Miranda safe and that would
mean getting through to her. She didn’t talk to anyone. She’d fired attitude
when Renee had asked if she was okay.
Renee pulled open the top drawer of her dresser. She needed
answers from someone. Someone who had been in the academy for a while.
She fished out the vial from the back and slid it into her pocket.
She knew who she could lure into giving her answers.
Chapter 30
IT TAKES A lot to get me misty-eyed. I hadn’t had the easiest of
nights with a sore set of ribs and stinging hands. When I crawled out of bed
the next day, I was glad to realize that it was a rest day.
When I got downstairs, which took a while as I dressed so slow,
Frei had cooked up waffles and greeted me with a warm smile.
“Maybe we could try healing?” she asked after rechecking my ribs.
I’d battered them a few times in the last couple of years but this time was by
far the most painful.
“Not sure I want to try it.”
She dropped my t-shirt and glanced up at me. “Why?”
I sighed. “Want the short version or long and boring?”
She flashed a grin. “Hit me with it, Lorelei.” She tapped the
stool and made me sit for breakfast. “Renee said that you experience syncope.”
“Syncope?”
“You pass out.” She placed the waffles in front of me with an
orange juice. “You nearly drowned in basic training.”
I could get used to the service. Renee used to make me food. I
ignored the pang of hurt. Better not to think about it. “And you messed up your
hair.”
She folded her arms. “I was irritated. I was unaware of the
problem.”
“
And
you messed up your hair.”
She waved it off. “I don’t know much about healing.”
Neither did I. Washing other folks’ pain away was one thing. I
relived the event that hurt them, passed out, nearly drowned, froze, and then
got on with my day.
I hadn’t attempted to solely heal myself ever. Twice I guess it
could have happened. Once, in Serenity, I’d been bleeding in a shower but
survived. Renee had been convinced it had been some kind of healing.
Frei’s mention of the CIG boot camp was the other. I’d been
crawling through a submerged concrete tunnel. Frei had been there but by the
time she dragged me out, I’d needed to be resuscitated. I hadn’t told Renee
that I’d spent a week in the medical block after it.
Neither time had I thought about healing, it just happened. I took
showers every day and nothing happened so I didn’t think that worked. I washed
like everybody else, hands, face, and nothing.
Nan had said that I could heal myself back in Oppidum but did that
count now? Although my burdens had been dimmed, it seemed they were still there
apart from healing. Getting hot hands signified I could heal somebody and that
hadn’t happened. I guessed that it meant I couldn’t heal either.
“I ain’t ever tried to fix myself before.”
“Why don’t we try it?” She leaned on the
counter to focus on me.
“You saw what happened.”
“So we’ll need water.” She was too keen on this idea for my
liking. “Any water?”
“Normally running when I’m washing away other people’s pain.” I
stared down at my waffles, it hurt too much to breathe let alone eat. “In
Serenity, it was a shower but it had stopped. I sat in a puddle of blood and
water.”
“The tunnels are in a man-made ditch. We’ll aim for still water.”
She was trying to catch my eyes but I was focusing real hard on my delicious
waffles. “What about temperature?”
“Hot in Serenity, well warm, and it was freezing in boot camp.
Don’t think it matters.” I shrugged and dug my fork into my waffle but Frei
whipped it away.
“Strip.”
Didn’t that earn her a blank look and a “huh?”
“I have an idea but those clothes are too
heavy. Less will be easier to get you out should we encounter a problem.” Her
accent filled with traces of a German lilt that I’d never heard so strong
before.
She strode to the hole in the middle of our living room and
started fiddling with a panel under a tile. Water burst out of the sides and
gushed into the tiled hole.
“It’s just a big bath?”
Frei waggled her hand in a “sort of” gesture. “You could call it
that.”
I frowned. “If you ain’t telling me, I ain’t getting in.”
She raised her eyebrows at me. I guess from the petulant tone, I
was a pouty lip away from being five but I didn’t like healing. Well, I did,
just not the process.
“It’s a luxurious bath or a small pool. A large Jacuzzi if you
will.”
“A what?”
She strode to the stairs. “A whirlpool. Think bubbles.” She
hovered at the bottom of the stairs. “Staff like to entertain each other . . .
slaves, music, food . . . that kind of thing.”
The tone of her voice was enough. “I am not getting in that.”
She chuckled and her shoulders jostled up and down. “The villa is
brand new. Old one burned down.”
I wasn’t buying it. “Who burned it down?”
“Who knows, but the fact there was a vacancy for Head of Physical
Education meant whoever it was, they’d been inside.” She shrugged. “Brand new.”
“I still ain’t buying it.”
Frei sighed. “They clean it. It’s no worse than river water,
Lorelei. Strip and I’ll try and find you something lighter to put on.”
“Can’t I just wait until—?”
“Strip.”
I sighed as she marched up the stairs. She was right. It would
take me ages to get my top off anyhow. “You’re still the Frankenfrei I know
inside,” I yelled up at her.
Her chuckle reached my ears as I sat eying the filling bath. Me
and healing had a prickly relationship at best. I didn’t want to try. It looked
clean. It did look new too.
I couldn’t afford to be injured. What if I had to dangle from
another roof?
The water swirled around and I shut my eyes in prayer that I could
be able to heal without hurting myself or Frei.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, I sat in a jersey and shorts with my feet
in the water. It was nice and warm but the villa was air-conditioned to the
point I was shivering. Frei wanted to make sure I didn’t overheat. I was
starting to wonder if she liked seeing my lips turn blue.
“Are you planning on turning me into a popsicle?” I muttered
through chattering teeth.
“Tempting . . .” She was in an electric blue one-piece and looked
like she could grace the cover of a magazine.
I looked like I’d raided a kid’s locker then
figured I wanted to play basketball, surf, and run track at the same time. My
shorts were skin tight as in I didn’t know how I put them on but I was sure I
may need to cut myself out of them. The jersey was a big basketball one but it
wasn’t cut out for my chest so it rose half way up my stomach and I had a rope
on my arm like I’d lost my surfboard.
I looked like I felt.
Crazy.
I would have thought Frei was doing it to humiliate me but the sad
fact was, there weren’t swim suits for someone as big as me.
“You stand in it and you will be up to your waist,” she said,
slipping into the water. “The sides are a few steps away so if you faint you
won’t hit yourself.”
“You ain’t allowed in too.” I didn’t want her getting hurt, no
matter how much better it would make me feel to have a spotter. “You can’t
touch me ’til I’m dry.”
Frei held out her hand. “I was with you in training. I’ll be
fine.” She pointed to a wooden cross on a lace necklace and pulled it out to
show me. “Armor, remember?”
“You know about that?”
“Yes.” She smiled at me like I was five. “Lilia always wore it.
Now stop delaying.”
That gave me the prompt to sink into the water and wade out to the
center. I stared at my legs in the water and chuckled at how funny they looked.
Frei was watching me and no doubt was wondering what was so amusing.
“Not many baths fit me.” I smiled at her. “If I don’t think of the
entertaining going on in here . . .” I sighed. “It’s kinda like a bath made for
me.”
“You’re six five not seven five, Lorelei.” Her tone was the usual
unaffected bored tone but I snorted with laughter. I guess water made me
giggly.
“What is up with that accent? And why the monotone?”
She took my hand as I wobbled. I felt drunk all of a sudden.
“English is far from my first language.”
“You pull it off pretty good.”
Frei took my other hand as my legs started shaking. Her eyes
stayed gentle, calm, unworried. I focused on her, as much as I could.
“Years of practice.” Her voice sounded further away than it should
have. I wanted to make a break for the side. She held my hands tight. “When I
first learned, I speak much like this.” The accent was thick, German but
smooth. A flash of a scared, skinny blonde girl with hair down to her waist.
She clung onto a howling toddler, water swirled around them.
I snapped my eyes to hers. “I saw it.” The shock of seeing her
thoughts made me wobble.
“Sorry, water terrifies me.”
And there she was, at her core, vulnerable. The little girl who
had cared for her sister. The heart of a woman whose life had been ripped from
her by a storm. Being in water terrified her. Water replayed that point in her
life when she’d lost it all, her freedom, her parents, her dignity. And yet she
had dived into a flooded concrete pipe to drag my butt out. She was standing
beside me in a pool.
If I wasn’t so woozy, I would have swept her up into a cwtch as we
called it in Oppidum. A bear hug to other folk.
“You don’t have to do this.” My legs felt like stone. I couldn’t
move now if I tried.
“But I will because I
want
to.” She looked down at my feet
and frowned.
“So the hair, what is with the hair?” I stared up at the ceiling
to avoid seeing the concern in her eyes.
“Girls had to have long hair. Many of them
didn’t pass no matter what they did.” She moved in and put her shoulder under
mine. “With some artful dressing, most of the time I passed for a boy.”
“Pretty beautiful boy.” My torso seized up, locking me in place.
The warmth of the water spread upward through me.
“That was sometimes a challenge in itself.”
“So the cool haircut is just for show?” I managed, gasping as the
warmth crashed over me. I felt like I was diving under water, the air sucked
from my lungs. Frei moved around the back of me as the water dragged me
downward. I had no choice but to trust she’d be able to get me out and rested
my head on her.
“No, it was defiance. Girls weren’t allowed to cut their hair and
so I did.”
I smiled in spite of the fact that the warmth was now prizing my
ribs apart and plunging through my insides. “You look good. Wouldn’t change a
thing about you,” I grunted as the pain grew steadily worse. “Specially now.”
Fuzzy flashes popped in my vision. My ribs on fire. I yelped.
“So, why did you never learn to cook, Lorelei?” Frei was trying to
keep me as calm as she could. I could feel her arms strain to hold my head
above the water.
“Nan . . . never . . . spoke . . . she had . . .” I grunted, gasping
for breath. “. . . routines . . . I was young, wired . . . kept me on practical
stuff . . .”
“And better for her back.” Frei’s voice held a trace of strain. I
was glad she was so strong. The water was building in power, sapping every hurt
away.
“Not . . . so . . . good . . . for yours.” Breathing hurt,
thinking hurt.
“I can take it.” Her grip got tighter. I knew she was strong
physically but there was something coming from inside in her words. Belief,
determination, sheer force of will, and spirit. “How are you doing?”
“Think . . . I did . . . a lot . . . damage.” A loud crack made me
wince, yelp, and whimper all at once.
“Thought so. How are your hands?”
My hands? They were on fire. I felt like I’d shoved them in a tub
of acid. “Better.”
“Let’s wait until it resets your shoulder and fixes the fracture
in your hip and we’ll get you out.”
The harder the water pulled the more Frei stood firm and oddly, I
felt safe.
I yelped as a rib under my left arm popped. My shoulder crunched
in my ear and a shooting pain shot straight through my leg. It was like the
water listened to her. I could feel my left hand which was nice. “Think we got
it.”
“On three . . .”
“Three,” I yelped.
Frei dragged me back to the edge and I was up on the side before I
realized she’d lifted me. She had some muscles. I lay, unable to move, on one
towel with a pillow under my head and another towel next to me.
Frei pulled herself out and dropped down next to me, her head on
my stomach. “Saves me moving to check you’re breathing,” she mumbled, sounding
as exhausted as I felt.
“You’re a great healing buddy.” I couldn’t move. I felt like ice
had encased me.
“Cold?” She fumbled with something and another towel covered my
legs. I heard something beep and the whir of the air-con stopped.
“That’s the smoothest it’s ever gone.” It was a relief but I
didn’t understand how.