The control over my body came back slowly. It was like pushing against the current of a very powerful fire hydrant or walking underwater, while heavy blocks fell onto my head from above. Sometimes they slid into place effortlessly and sometimes they landed so hard, it felt like they ripped through my brain. Past events exploded in my head as if my memories had somehow gotten stuck in a replay loop.

Julie crying in a restaurant over crab legs and shrimp.

Andrea dragging me out to lunch.

The flood kept coming, relentless. The flare. Fomorians running across the field.

Mishmar.

Greg’s savaged body.

My aunt. Live long . . . child. Live long enough to see everyone you love die. Suffer . . . like me.

Curran. Stay with me, baby.

I will. I promise I will.

Aunt B dying.

Curran.

Swan Palace.

My father.

. . .

Death. So much death. So many people I’d killed. So many people I cared about who had died. So many corpses in my wake.

You truly are my daughter.

We are great and powerful monsters. Love demands sacrifices. When you love something the way you love your people, Blossom, you must pay for it. Old powers are awakening. Those who have slept, those who were dead, or perhaps not quite dead.

I bent forward under the pressure. Something hot slipped out of my eyes and I realized I was crying.

This is my city. These are my people.

I will hunt you. I will succeed. Maybe not now, but I will never give up.

“Done,” Doolittle said, his voice hoarse from the strain.

Curran put his arms around me. It was such a simple gesture, but his touch pulled me out of the tangled chaos of my memories back to now, anchoring me here.

The two of them were looking at me.

“Hey,” Curran said quietly.

I swallowed. My head throbbed.

“Did it work?” Curran asked Doolittle.

“I don’t know.” Doolittle sounded tired.

Curran rose and held up his hand. “Kick my hand.”

I pushed off the bed. They said walking was just controlled rhythmic falling. My falling turned out to be uncontrolled. I landed on my ass.

Curran didn’t move.

I got up to my feet. My body felt like a numb limb coming back to life.

I snapped a crescent kick. I’d whipped it with my hip and it was so fast, it blurred. My foot slapped his hand. He took a step back. His eyes narrowed.

“Tap,” I told him.

“It worked,” Doolittle said.

Chapter 13

“WHAT’S THE LAST thing you remember?” Doolittle asked me.

“My power word backfired for some reason. I think the backlash of magic caused my stroke. I tried to freeze the giant and failed. The recoil from it hit me and it felt like my head exploded.” I felt oddly flat. As if there were no emotion at all in me.

“It did,” Doolittle said.

Curran was watching me carefully.

“It was the worst headache of my life. I thought I was dying.” I tried to scrounge up more memories. “I was killing the giant. Lago jumped on it, but I had already cut the vein in the giant’s neck. We fell. Nothing after that.” My voice sounded flat too, as if it were someone else talking.

“You killed the giant. Law enforcement showed up. His corpse started spitting lizards,” Curran said.

“How big? What color?”

It took him about ten minutes to bring me up to speed. It was Friday, March 4, three o’clock in the afternoon. I had lost Thursday and a good chunk of Friday, although I could’ve sworn I’d been in the hospital bed a lot longer. The twenty-four-hour delay might have cost Eduardo his life.

“No news on Eduardo?”

“No,” Curran said.

“Where were you? I thought you and Julie were trapped in the Guild.”

“I went to kill some ghouls,” Curran said.

“You should’ve left a note.”

“I should’ve left a note,” he said. His jawline was tight.

I pushed off the bed and walked to the bathroom. My legs obeyed me. The last remnants of the headache lingered, but they too began to melt. I brushed my teeth and splashed cold water on my face, feeling numb and somehow disconnected, as if I wasn’t truly in my body but was standing nearby, watching some strange woman washing her face.

“You need to be alert,” Doolittle’s voice floated to me. “There is no way to determine how much function she has recovered. She may become disoriented. There might be sharp personality fluctuations. Normally I would expect her to panic, but we both know . . .”