A World of New (A Shade of Vampire, #26)

His response piqued my curiosity further about his past. It showed that he was instinctively independent, which appeared to confirm my suspicion that he had not always been paralyzed.

I made a mental note to record that observation in my notebook when I next got the chance.

I reached an arm around his waist, assisting him in sliding into the chair. Then I bent down, guiding his feet to the footrests. I grabbed some blankets and wrapped them around him.

“You all right?” I asked.

He only grunted in response. I was about to ask him where he wanted to go when he began wheeling himself away from me, toward the exit of the room. Oh.

He reached out for the door’s handle and pulled it down, letting himself out. I followed swiftly after him.

“Um, Josh, where would you like to go, exactly?” I asked, not wanting to overstep my mark, but also kind of concerned.

He just continued wheeling himself down the long corridor, beginning to build up pace, even as I caught him wincing. He kept going until he reached the other end. When he turned around and began to wheel back, it dawned on me that he was doing this for the exercise. He felt the urge to work his muscles—whatever muscles he could work.

As he reached within about fifteen feet of his room, his hands slipped off the wheels and he rolled to a stop. I hurried to him, circling the chair and standing in front of him to see what was wrong. He was wincing more than ever, even as he rolled his shoulders gently. He appeared to have exhausted himself already. Worried about him straining himself further, I gripped the handles of the wheelchair and returned to his room.

I did not wheel him back to the bed, however. I moved to the long, wide window that afforded a gorgeous view over the sunflower meadow and the forest of redwood trees beyond it. It was a shame that it was dark outside. The flower fields were pretty even at night—it was the witches’ magic that allowed them to bloom—but they would look so much more stunning beneath the sunlight. I glanced down at Josh as he gazed through the glass. I could not miss the longing in his eyes.

Hmm…

I have an idea.





Grace





We remained looking out of the window a while longer before he looked away, back toward the bed. I took that as my cue to return him there. He got worn down easily—first the vomiting and now wheeling up and down, although I had to admit that the corridor was pretty long. It would’ve made a human moderately tired, not to speak of a sick patient, at the speed he had been rolling.

I fluffed up his pillow and then assisted him in easing himself back on the mattress before laying blankets over him again.

His eyes were already closed by the time I looked up to his face again.

“Warm enough?” I asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Mm,” he murmured.

“ Okay,” I breathed. “Good.”

I sat by his bed until his breathing became deeper and heavier. Once I was sure that he was sleeping, I slipped out of the room and headed down to the apothecary. I found Shayla still there, bending over a bunch of tubes on one of the counters.

“Hi, Shayla,” I said, moving over to her.

“Hi, Grace, how’s it going?” she replied, not looking up.

“It’s going okay. I think. Look, I wanted to ask for your permission to do something.”

“What’s that?”

“I wanted to take Josh outside for a stroll.”

“Josh?”

I smirked. “Yeah, I suggested that he choose a name.”

“Good idea.”

“What is a good idea?”

“Both. Calling him Josh, and taking him outside. Some fresh air will do him good… In fact, it’s a funny coincidence that you come here now.” Finally she tore herself away from the counter and faced me. “I’m not having any luck with this blood sample,” she said, sighing and clasping her forehead. “I’ve consulted with other witches on the island, but none of us can figure it out. We’ve definitely found traces of vampirism, which would confirm what we already worked out, that he is a half-blood. But other than heavy sedatives, we can’t for the life of us work out the rest of Josh’s mystery. There are certainly other traces of drugs, but we can’t guess what they are, let alone figure out an antidote. They are quite unlike anything we have encountered before. So we are still in the dark about what they gave him, or did to him, to cause his memory loss, and his paralysis—assuming that his paralysis was indeed caused by the hunters and he hadn’t already lost use of his legs.”