I stumbled back when she finally stopped seething and writhing. I dropped to my knees and hung my head, trying to catch my breath, trying to will my heart to start beating its usual rhythmic pace again.
The cheerful ding of the elevator arriving caught my attention and I turned to look, the huge metal doors opening on the drawn, concerned faces of Alex, Vlad, and Will. All three men were in fighting stance, weapons drawn.
“Sophie!”
“What happened here?”
The men all gathered around me, Alex kneeling low and gingerly rubbing my back, Vlad staring at the ruins of the Underworld waiting room, and Will eyeing Ophelia, wings splayed, head lowered as she lay pinned to the wall.
“How did you know where to find me?” I managed to say through parched, blood-caked lips.
“You mean after you snuck out the window?”
Will puffed out his chest. “I am the guardian. I knew you left.”
Alex’s nostrils flared. “He knew you left when the water started coming in under the bathroom door. You forgot to take out the stopper and the tub overflowed.”
“Oh.” I tried to straighten, but pain raged through me. “Nina. Save Nina.”
Vlad crouched down in front of me, dark eyes huge. “Where?”
“Storeroom.”
Vlad turned and took off down the hall; Will and Alex hovered over me, glaring at each other. I pushed at Will’s leg “Please help Vlad. I don’t think Nina can walk.”
Reluctantly, Will turned, casting one last glance over his shoulder before running after Vlad.
“Are you okay?” Alex asked, his voice soft as his fingers picked bits of flowerpots and Bic pens out of my hair.
I had never considered the idiocy in that question before now. Every inch of me ached.
“Okay?” I repeated absently.
Dried blood mixed with dirt stung my eyes. I tried to move my lips, to form another word, but my throat was dry and my tongue felt heavy, immovable. I worked to raise up from my hunched position, but every motion—breathing included—set off a series of wailing pains, every one a reminder of my fight with Ophelia.
“I think I’m okay,” I was finally able to whisper.
Which was more than I could say for Ophelia.
Though struck through with a trident, oddly, she wasn’t bleeding. Her body seemed small and crumpled with one leg bent, her arms hanging limp at her sides, head bowed. Her lovely blond hair was streaked through with dirt and blood—apparently, mine. There was a gunpowder-black penumbra cast on the wall around her.
“Is she dead?” I asked softly.
Alex went to her and used a single index finger under Ophelia’s bowed chin to lift her head. I couldn’t bear to look into her eyes and I imagined Alex reverently thumbing them closed.
“Not dead, exactly,” Alex said.
I involuntarily stiffened, wincing as my rib cage protested. Alex hurried to me, carefully sliding his strong arms underneath me, raising me gently to my feet.
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
Alex steadied me and I took a few sharp, shallow breaths—each one making my head spin—and then I looked at him and repeated my question.
“You can’t kill someone”—he glanced over his shoulder, back at Ophelia, as if making certain she was still there—“or something that is already dead.”
I stepped back. “Then she can come back?”
“No, she’s not coming back. The black shadow there? That means she’s been called back.”
“Called back?” I asked. “Where?”
Alex just raised his eyebrows.
“Oh,” I said softly, feeling strangely sad. “She was my sister.”
Alex led me to the employee break room, where he doused a dishtowel in warm water and gently touched it to my face. I winced.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It just stings a little bit.”
“I don’t mean about that,” Alex said, dipping the towel back into the sink.
“I’m sorry I failed you.”
I felt my brow furrow.
“Failed me?”
Alex touched the cool towel to my head again, worked at the dried blood. “I should have been there for you. I should have protected you. I should never have let Ophelia into your life.”
I wrapped my fingers around Alex’s wrist. “This isn’t your fault,” I said sternly.
“If I hadn’t been around, Ophelia would never have known what you are.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Alex and I sat in silence as he worked the dried blood and dirt from my face. We both stiffened when we heard the clunk of the storeroom door opening, the slap of feet racing down the hall. I was relieved when I saw Nina zip by the break-room door, Vlad and Will right behind her.
“Oh my God!” Nina howled.
Alex helped me to my feet, and when we emerged in the UDA waiting room, Nina—her lips a fresh, healthy blood red, the cuts and bruises already growing faint—was sitting on her knees among the rubble, desperately crying, clutching an Alhambra water jug to her chest and rocking it gently.
“Sophie, Sophie, Sophie,” she was murmuring. “We failed you, dear Sophie. Poor, sweet Sophie.”