I rested my eyes for a second, and then suddenly Quinn was pulling me up, helping me stumble toward the Jeep. He gently dug my keys out of my pocket and tossed them to Lily. Then he wrapped a tarp around me like it was a blanket and planted me on the passenger seat.
I dozed against the window for a bit, barely registering when the vehicle stopped and then started again. We stopped a second time, and I almost toppled out when Quinn opened my door. I would have landed on my face if he hadn’t caught me.
“Come on,” he said gently. He started to pick me up, but I shook my head. I did not want to be carried like a princess. “I am not a princess,” I said out loud. I doubted he followed my train of thought, but he just nodded, put one of my arms over his shoulder, and gripped me around the waist. At some point he had put on a T-shirt and athletic pants. He had a plastic bag in his other hand, and I could hear it swishing as we stumbled into the building.
He dropped me on a stool at the kitchen counter, where I lay my head down in my arms between Simon’s instruments, burrowing from the light. The blood on my clothes was getting tacky, but as filthy as I was, I just wanted to sleep.
Then Lily was there, taking one of my arms and prodding at it. “Hey,” I mumbled, too out of it to be indignant. “Where’s Maven?”
“Hidden in the back room,” Quinn said over my shoulder.
Lily turned my arm over, examining the underside. “She’s got too much blood splashed on her. We need to clean her up so there’s no infection.”
So Quinn and I took a shower together—but only because I needed him to help me stay upright. I kept both hands on the shower stall while he scrubbed at the bloodstains on my skin and washed my hair. It probably would have been tender and romantic if I didn’t kind of feel like throwing up. Every few minutes I started to list to one side and he had to right me.
At least the hot water was waking me up a little. “This isn’t how I pictured our first shower together,” Quinn remarked.
“I never planned to have a shower together at all.”
“No?”
“No. Sex in the shower is like buying a convertible or getting a perm. It seems all fun and sexy in theory, but what actually happens is discomfort and weird hair.”
He threw back his head and laughed, a sound that I felt in my stomach. I’m not a funny person, but man, I loved Quinn’s laugh.
He dressed in the same outfit he’d been wearing and helped me dry off. I hadn’t thought to keep a spare outfit in the Jeep, so I had to put on some of Simon’s clothes: a clean pair of boxers and a CU T-shirt, which just generally made me look like it was the morning after at a frat house. But at least I wasn’t covered in vampire blood.
When we were decent, Quinn sat me down at the metal table in the kitchen and Lily, who had cleaned up in the other bathroom and dressed in more of Simon’s clothes, pounced on me with a new IV kit.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my words coming out thick.
Lily shot me a surprised look. “You don’t remember? Damn, you are out of it.” She held up a clear plastic tube filled with liquids, as though she were displaying a prize fish. “Your boyfriend got you IV fluids!”
I smiled. “And it’s not even my birthday.”
A few minutes later, Lily and Quinn had rigged up a makeshift IV stand out of a coat tree, and I was shivering in my chair. I always forget how cold IV fluids feel going into you. The damp hair hanging on my shoulders didn’t help much. Lily pulled her chair right up next to me and lined up the side of her body with mine, adding a little warmth. Quinn stood by the table with his hands in his pockets, restless because he couldn’t do anything. His body temp was barely warm enough to pass for human.
Simon came out of the bedroom rubbing his wet hair with a towel, dragging a flannel comforter. “This should help,” he said, tucking it around me. The comforter smelled like Simon—a whiff of farm, a bit of lab chemicals, and Old Spice. I smiled my thank-you.
Quinn and Simon sat down, and Quinn began to explain the situation to both Pellars. He went through the whole story, from the moment Maven had called us in until the moment I’d called them for help.
The mood sobered quickly as the enormity of what was happening began to sink in. Even assuming that Maven recovered, we had no idea how long it would take. According to Simon, it could be weeks or months. And although Quinn was Maven’s right hand, we all knew he didn’t have the raw power to hold the state if anyone came after it. We needed another plan.
“Basically,” Quinn concluded, “We have two choices. We can try to cover up Maven’s current condition, or we can ask someone else to step in and take control in her absence. Like an interim cardinal.”
“Is that a thing?” Lily asked.
He shrugged. “It’s happened before, often during belladonna attacks.” Lily and Simon didn’t notice the note of negativity in his voice, but I picked up on it.
“What?” I asked.
Quinn grimaced. “I’m worried about perception. Things were just beginning to settle down after the Unktehila mess, which itself was right after Maven killed Itachi to get Colorado, at least from a lot of peoples’ perspective. Maven’s enclave is running low on faith and high on uncertainty. To come forward and say that Maven let herself get attacked—”
“But there’s no way she could have seen this coming,” I protested, but he held up a hand.
“I know that, and you know that. But most vampires won’t see things that way. If you succumb to an attack, it’s always your fault. You left an opening.”