Page 20 of Soothsayer

There was stuff I needed to be doing, plans I needed to be enacting, but at that moment I just?couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself move other than to sink down beside the bed and stare into Sören’s blank face, his glassy eyes, and heave a huge, shuddering sigh of relief. I took his closer hand in my own and gazed at it. I’d never seen anything so beautiful before: those were his long slender fingers; there was the scar on his knuckle that he told me he got when he was eleven. This hand had touched me, held me,worshippedme. He might not be able to respond, but he was familiar. All of it was familiar.

I checked his eyes again just to make sure, and—nope, nothing. Not a hint of his fate, not even a quiver within me. Sören was completely checked out. On the plus side, I couldn’t see any indication that he was under the kind of spell that would dissipate if he was moved. That was good, since I had no intention of leaving him here. I knew people, specialists, who could help me figure him out. I was going to save him the way he’d saved me so long ago. I was going to do better by him, and I was going to figure out why my vision of his fate had gone so strange. I could work it out.

First things first, though, I had to gethimout. If I were built like Sören or one of his brothers, I could have just hoisted him into a fireman’s carry and called it a day. But even though he was definitely the baby of the bunch, he still had two inches and probably thirty pounds on me. Carrying him would have been a tough sell if I was completely whole and in control. With a bullet wound in my arm, there was no way that was going to happen.

Good thing I’d come up here with a baggage cart.

Forcing myself to let go of his hand was ridiculously difficult. I wanted him to wake up. I wanted to speak some magic words or prick his finger on a spindle or cover him with fairy dust or whatever the fuck you did in stories to make someone wake up. My soul felt like it was teetering on the edge of a precipice ofguilt, a depthless chasm I’d plastered over for the past two years that was back with a vengeance. I would either be pulled back onto the ledge if I could wake Sören up, or fall headfirst into something I wasn’t ready to consider yet if I couldn’t.

I squeezed Sören’s hand and then set it back down on the comforter. I needed the baggage cart. No one had entered the room yet, but the clock was ticking. I walked back into the suite’s foyer and opened the door, surreptitiously checking to make sure the baggage cart holding my stuff was still there—yes. So far, so good. I took a breath, let it out slow, and then walked over to the elevators. I grabbed the cart by one shiny brass rung and pulled it behind me toward the suite.

“Excuse me, sir? Do you want me to clean your room now?”

I stopped, my shoulders tensing painfully before I forced them to relax. I turned around and addressed the woman at the end of the hall. “No, it’s fine, thank you.”

She frowned. “Four days and no cleaning…are you sure?”

“Quite sure, thank you.”

“As you wish, sir.” She went back to her business, and I went back to pretending my heart hadn’t been about to jump through my throat. I maneuvered the cart into the suite, shut the door behind me, and headed down the hall. I also pulled my phone out and called Andre; I was going to need him for what came next.

He picked up on the third ring. “Cillian, what’s up?”

“How soon can you be at the Omni?”

“The hospital I’m at is only five minutes away, but man, this labor has barely started. We’re going to be here for hours.”

“Then you can take some time off to give me a hand and be back before the happy event culminates.” I considered the layout of the bedroom, trying to figure out how close I could wedge the baggage cart to the bed.

“Giving birth isn’t arace, man?it’s not just the ending that counts.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “And does your sister-in-law want you there for her screaming, panting, pushing, swearing phase, or would she rather see you when she’s in the ‘Thank god that’s fucking over with, come admire my baby’ phase?”

Andre was silent for a long moment. “Fine, I’ll see what I can do.”

“Don’t see, just do it. Be in the Omni garage as soon as possible. I need a hand carrying a package out of here.”

“What kind of package?”

“The important kind,” I said softly before I hung up. Andre didn’t need details right now?they’d just encourage him to be more curious. Curiosity could wait until we got Sören out of here.

I had to get him on the cart. I pushed it as close as I could to the bed and then looked at him and sighed. “I’m so sorry, baby,” I muttered as I reached for his legs. His long, long legs… Damn, they went on for miles, and I needed to stopthinkingabout them and startmovingthem. I pulled them down onto the cart, folding them a little as they went before tackling his midsection. His head?I had to protect his head. I hoisted his shoulders up with my good arm and eased him off of the mattress.

Bang. I fumbled the landing, and his right shoulder slammed into the vertical rod of the cart, almost tipping it over onto its side. I swore and sat down on the far side and then wrapped my arms around Sören’s chest and hauled him into a more central position.

Wow…awkward. He looked like a broken mannequin, and I was briefly very grateful he wasn’t alive, awake?whatever it was?to recognize his own indignity. I rearranged his legs and shifted his chest around so all of his upper body was almost, kind of, fitted on the cart. If I tossed a blanket over him, he’d?well, tomy eyes, he’d still look like a body covered by a fucking blanket, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I threw the comforter over the top of him, wincing a little as I did so. Wha—shit. My arm was bleeding again. I’d probably torn a few stitches.

I didn’t have time to worry about it. I pulled my waistcoat and jacket back on, stuffed my tie in my pocket, and figured that at least if I bled through the jacket, it wouldn’t be visible since the fabric was dark.

Okay: I was put together, Sören was on the cart, and Andre was on the way. Now I just had to make it down to the parking garage. Piece of cake.

The cart was a lot harder to maneuver with two hundred pounds of Icelandic muscle and bone on it, but I managed to get it out the door and into the hall without banging into too many walls. I headed for the elevator and pushed the button. We’d get in, get down, and get gone. In, down, gone. In, down, gone. It was my mantra, my muse. I had to believe everything was going to work out?what choice did I have? I was flying blind here, no hint of the future to help me figure out the present. It would be fine; it would all be fine. In, down, gone.

The door opened, and all my confidence instantly dried up. I dropped my head and pulled my hat down low so the two men emerging from the elevator wouldn’t see my face. Two tall, broad, blond men. Neither was Papa Egilsson, which was a small blessing, but one of them was Rolf, who was being spoken to in a scolding tone by the other man as they exited. They barely spared me a glance, instead heading straight for their suite. Rolf had noticed his missing key card, then. I pushed Sören into the elevator and hit the button for the first floor, hearing them open the door and head inside. Close call. One minute later and they’d have found me and Sören in the back room together, and then—

I heard a muffled expletive, something that sounded almost like “Fuck” but not quite, and then the door to their suite wasopening again, and I was frantically pushing the button that closed the doors?honest to fucking god, how long did it take for this elevator to get going? The shining metal closed on my reflection a moment before I heard the smack of a meaty body hit the other side, followed by a quickpop popand a scream. Shit, they were shooting at things. They were shooting at me!

The elevator moved smoothly down, and I calculated times in my head as we descended. Using the stairs, they’d be at least half a minute behind me. That should be enough as long as Andre was here already. He’dbetterfucking be here already. Otherwise I’d have to waste time breaking into a car, and that would only be messy.

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