But eventually she was ensconced in the room she had claimed a few weeks ago, pillows behind her back, under her foot, and under her elbow. Bascom was volunteering to sleep on the floor outside her door in case she became wakeful during the night, and Marcus said he would be happy to stay home from school all week to amuse her.

“I don’t think either of those sacrifices will be necessary, thank you very much, but you might check in with her every once in a while to see if she needs anything,” their mother told them. Her voice was stern, but she was smiling, and she reached out a hand to play with Marcus’s long, tangled hair. “She should be up and on her feet very soon.”

“I’ll have to send a note to Del and tell her I won’t be in for a while,” Kit said, sinking back into the pillows. Ah, this was heaven after the flat mattresses and severe pillows of the hospital.

“Who’s Del?” Sereva asked.

“The woman who runs the charity bank.”

“All right. Anyone else I should contact for you?”

Jex. If he had not set the bombs, he surely would have heard about them, and he knew when she had left the Complex. He would be frantic, wondering if she was hurt or dead, cursing himself for not keeping her there an hour longer, half an hour—fifteen minutes would have saved her from the blast—

“No,” she said, closing her eyes against every imaginable kind of pain. “No one else needs to know.”

*   *   *

The next two days passed quietly, almost pleasantly, with Sereva and her family going to elaborate lengths to make sure Kit was comfortable, well-fed, and entertained. Granmama came to visit, looking, as Sereva had said, so fragile and old that Kit wanted to jump from the bed and ease her into a chair. Her skin looked dull and faded, exposed overlong to sun or some other impossibly stressful element; her coiled white hair seemed thinner, more brittle. But her intense blue eyes were bright as ever, and her spirit seemed completely undaunted.

“Haven’t you caused me enough worry already?” the old lady asked as soon as Marcus and Bascom had helped her settle in. “Now you have to go soaring through explosions? What’s the matter with you? Don’t you have any sense at all?”

Marcus and Bascom stood riveted with shock, but Kit burst out laughing. “You’re right, Granmama, I had a concussion just to upset you. I hope it worked.”

The old lady shook a finger at her. “Trying to send me off before my time. Think you’re going to inherit all my property. One more trick like this and you’ll be out of the will forever.”

“I thought I was out of the will, anyway. I hoped I was! Leave it all to Sereva. She’s a much better steward than I am.”