Chapters (50)
- Cover
- Roc Books by Jacqueline Carey
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
So anyway, yeah, I freaked. First at the pain, which seemed to be simultaneously radiating from a molar on the right side of my jaw and pounding like a spike into my sinus cavity; second at the blurred vision.
That was the one that really got me. I pried myself gingerly out of bed, trying to hold my head as still as possible. In the bathroom, I splashed cold water on my face and into my eyes, blinking furiously and willing my vision to clear.
No luck.
Oh, crap.
The small corner of my brain that wasn’t panicking went into damage-control mode. I didn’t know if I was having a stroke or an aneurysm or what, but I knew I needed help. And clothing. Hell if I was going to the emergency room in nothing but a tank top. I fumbled my way to the laundry hamper and pulled out yesterday’s clothes.
Okay, that would work. Sidling along the edge of my bed, I felt atop my nightstand until I found my phone, the shape of it familiar and comforting in my hand.
The problem was that I couldn’t make out the icons on the screen. And when I finally got to the keypad, through dint of trial and error, I couldn’t make out the numbers to call 911. Every time I tried to focus, they shifted and blurred. I kept pushing numbers I didn’t mean to, squinting in an agonized effort, unable to get to that magic combination. It was like a bad dream.
At some point I realized two things. One was that whatever the hell was happening to me, it wasn’t getting any worse. Oh, it was bad. My jaw was throbbing, my head was pounding, and I couldn’t see for shit, but I probably wasn’t dying.
The other was the first inkling of suspicion that whatever the hell was happening to me might not be medical in nature.
If you’re thinking I should have suspected that from the get-go, I’m not arguing. But it’s really, really hard to think straight when your skull feels like it’s being split open with a railroad spike and you can’t see.
And . . . I wasn’t sure what to do with that suspicion.
So instead I hoped like hell it was a medical issue and went through the whole trial-and-error bit to pull up my contacts on my phone. Elusive letters and numbers skittered across my vision, but if I concentrated like crazy, I could make out the contacts with photos assigned to them. Since I was kind of lax about that, there were only two, my mom and Jen. And while, on the one hand, I really wanted my mommy right about now, I also didn’t want to freak her out, so I jabbed at the screen until Jen’s contact came up.