“They’ll smell my blood,” I said after Jace closed the car door. “They probably heard me scream. They’ll be looking for us. I messed this up, Marc.”

“No.” He stroked my hair back from my face and let it trail over his leg. “They didn’t hear you. We’d have heard them coming for us if they had. We were at least two miles from the main house. And they won’t smell your blood unless they get close to the deer stand.”

Or anywhere I’d dripped on the way back to the car. But neither of us said that. Just knowing it was scary enough.

Marc stroked my hair and I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the pain in my arm, which refused to settle into a quiet throb.

Jace came back minutes later with an old-fashioned metal doorknob key. He drove us to the back of the motel and parked in front of our first-floor room. I could have walked, but Marc insisted on carrying me, and I let him, because it made us both feel better. Jace hovered as Marc carefully unwrapped my arm while I sat on the edge of the first bed, then bundled his bloody, detached shirt sleeve in the plastic liner from the trash can in the bathroom.

I stared at the wall. I didn’t want to see my arm in daylight. Or even in the murky glow from the bedside lamp.

Jace whistled, and still I didn’t look.

“Well, at least it’s mostly stopped bleeding,” Marc said. And then I had to look.

I regretted it immediately. My forearm was one big scab. The gash was easily five inches long, and ragged, and now crusted with dried blood. It hurt to look at. It was unbearable to move.

“She can’t travel like this,” Jace said.

“She can if we wrap it well. But she needs antibiotics. And stitches—lots of stitches.” Marc stood, and Jace shot to his feet, already pulling the car keys from his pocket.

“I’ll go. Faythe, you want something to eat while I’m out? And you’ll need some new clothes.”

Marc growled and stepped between Jace and the door. “I’ll go. I know her size.”

I was beyond caring who went. I wanted nothing but an end to the pain. An end to this whole mess, so we could hand over the feathers and take Kaci home.

Marc grabbed the room key from the nightstand and knelt by the bed, looking up at me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we’ll get you fixed up. Faythe?”

I made my eyes focus, and he squeezed the fingers sticking out of my cast. Then he stood and took the car keys Jace held out. “Call Greg and give him an update. And don’t let her move her arm.”

“I’m on it.”

Surprised into awareness by Jace’s easy compliance, I glanced up to see him watching Marc with an obedient, I’m-on-the-job expression. Marc hesitated, frowning, then reached for the doorknob.