Blood Ties Bundle: Blood Ties Book One: The Turning / Blood Ties Book Two: Possession / Blood Ties Book Three: Ashes to Ashes / Blood Ties Book Four: All Souls' Night

“You didn’t. Dahlia did.”

He flopped back onto the goldenrod shag carpeting and closed his eyes. “We’re in the van?”

“Yeah, we had to get you out of the building. It was kind of…” I trailed off as I tried to tell him his livelihood was gone.

“On fucking fire!” Ziggy supplied from the front seat. “Oh, man, am I glad you’re awake.”

An angry car horn pulled his attention back to the road as the van swerved violently. I sunk my fingers into the dirty carpet. It was the only thing to hold on to.

“Ziggy! Eyes on the road!” Nathan commanded, though his voice was still a little weak. He turned back to me. “The building is gone?”

I shifted uneasily. “Maybe not. The fire trucks were showing up just as we left.”

“Great. Just great.” He covered his face with his hands, and I saw the hard muscles of his stomach shake beneath his T-shirt. I really hoped he wasn’t crying. But in the next instant, delirious laughter poured out of him.

“What’s so funny?” He was taking this far too well.

“Nothing, nothing.” He rubbed his hands down his cheeks, stretching the stubble-dusted skin. “You know, up until about a month ago, things were completely normal in my life. All it takes is one fax from the Movement, and I’m knee-deep in chaos again.” Nathan sighed. “So, Dahlia attacked me. She’s never done that before.”

“She was trying to do Cyrus a favor,” I told him.

“Okay, folks,” Ziggy called as the van squealed to a halt. “The sun is just below the tree line. I suggest you run like hell.”

Within seconds, the back doors burst open. The dim morning light stung my eyes. Nathan recoiled.

“Take the keys!” Ziggy shouted.

I grabbed them and jumped out.

To my monumental relief, the building still stood. The flames had been extinguished, and soot covered the firemen that milled around their truck. Two police cars with whirling lights blocked off the sidewalk. It looked as if the bookstore took the extent of the damage.

A young, cocky-looking police officer swaggered over when he caught sight of us. “Getting in a little late, are we?”

Before I could respond, Ziggy stepped from the rear of the van, Nathan leaning heavily on his shoulder. “Whoo, we need to get him upstairs before he ralphs again. Oh, my God…what happened to the bookstore? We live right upstairs.”

As I watched, Nathan lolled his head to the side like a passed-out drunk. The cop scowled at him. “There was a fire but we were able to put it out. Is your friend there gonna be okay?”

He’d aimed the question at me. Too tired to think of a lie, I opened and closed my mouth and made a few vague noises. Ziggy’s urging stare burned into the back of my skull. It must have transmitted some connection in my brain so I could speak again, because words began to pour from me. “He’ll be fine. I should know. I’m a doctor.”

“O…kay.” The officer reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a notepad. Apparently I wasn’t going anywhere for a while. “I need to ask some questions.”

The skin on the back of my neck began to blister from the sunlight. I heard Nathan do a bad impression of someone about to throw up. I turned, and Ziggy gave Nathan a shove, propelling him toward me.

“It’s your turn to deal with the puke this time. I’ll stay and talk to the officer. If he needs to ask you anything else, I’ll bring him upstairs.” Ziggy flashed a big grin at the policeman. “If that’s okay with you?”

Nathan wretched again, this time more convincingly, and the cop moved back. “Yeah, get him out of here before I have to cite him for drunk-and-disorderly conduct. It’s safe to go up. The fire marshall has cleared the building of any structural damage, and the apartment has been cleared, too.”

With Nathan hanging awkwardly on my shoulder, we hurried for the door. As soon as it was closed, Nathan rushed up the stairs and headed straight for the bathroom.

Apparently he was a method actor.

“Holy hell,” I said with a whistle as he clutched the toilet bowl and vomited. I pulled a hand towel off the rack and wetted it under the faucet. “That’s a lot of puke.”

I knelt beside him and held the compress to his forehead, putting one arm around his quivering back. “Don’t fight it.”

“You should have been a nurse instead of a doctor,” he wheezed. His body trembled with the chills that inevitably follow vomiting. “Or a mom.”

I laughed out loud. “Yeah. I’m not sure that was in the cards for me.”

“Didn’t you want to have kids?”

This didn’t sound as accusatory as it might have coming from someone else, like someone who was pushing a stroller at the time for instance. I’d always been the woman explaining why she had no desire to have children. I was about to tell him this, when he spoke again.

“It’s a moot point, anyway, since you can’t now.”

An icy pain knifed through my chest, stealing my breath. I stood and leaned against the sink. “What?”

His face went even greener, if that were possible, but I knew it had nothing to do with the potion. “I’m so sorry. I assumed you knew.”

“No, I didn’t. It’s just…it’s okay.” I waved a hand in the air, hoping to look blasé. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I never planned on being a mom. I probably wouldn’t have been very good at it.”

But now that the choice was taken away from me, I grieved for the loss of the possibility. You’re being ridiculous, Carrie.

“I think you would have been a great mother.” His words sounded pained, but it could have just been from the violent nausea.

“Yeah, well. Tell that to my last boyfriend.”

Nathan sat back against the wall for support. Sweat beaded on his skin, but he didn’t look as gray as he had moments before. His eyes searched my face. “Why do you say that?”

Turning to rewet the cloth, I shrugged. I shouldn’t have mentioned Eric. Even though we’d broken up nine months before, the wound was suddenly incredibly raw.

To my surprise, I started blabbing the whole stupid story. “Because he dumped me for not being a good-enough mom for his hypothetical children.” Despite the painful truth of it, I could still manage a chuckle. “Basically, he seemed to be under the impression that when we graduated from med school, I was going to stay home and bake cookies or something while he had the career. He decided he was going to buy a house near Boston, I told him I was coming here for my internship, and he gave me an ultimatum. When I told him my decision, that I was going to go through with my internship, he said it was for the better. He wanted children, and he couldn’t imagine me being a good mother. So that was it.”

I’d been looking at my hands, the shower curtain, the towel rack, anything to avoid the sight of Nathan’s face. But he stayed silent too long, and my eyes were drawn to his.

He didn’t look away. “He’s an idiot.” Nathan said the words as though he actually believed them. And his eyes showed the truth of it.

I’d forgotten what it was like to feel valued by another person. It was nice, even if I didn’t quite understand what had prompted such an emotional reaction from Nathan. Still, it was a feeling I wasn’t used to. I cleared my throat. “Did you ever want kids?”

He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his response was carefully measured, as if he’d calculated how much to tell without giving anything away. “Yes, I did. Having children of my own wasn’t in the cards for me, either.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. Behind his mask of forced cheerfulness, his eyes were hollow and tired, and the agony I saw in them caused my heart to ache.

As quickly as I’d glimpsed his inner sadness, it disappeared behind Nathan’s granite wall of self-control. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I have Ziggy. I always did want a son.”

It was the first time he’d acknowledged his true feelings for the kid. The look on Nathan’s face told me he wasn’t used to revealing so much. The angry panic that flashed across his features in the next instant told me exactly why. I recognized the expression because I’d seen it staring back at me from my own reflection too often to count.

Nathan truly believed that if he cared about something, it would eventually be taken from him.