Chapter 20: I Liked Him Until He Spoke

Miss Vale told the gate staff to hold every collection vehicle while Iris gave security the cart number. Dante shifted his blanket, exposed one foot and discovered that Anika could stop him moving without magic.

"You’re staying where I left you," she said, pressing his ankle gently back onto the mattress. "I refuse to explain to my brother that his rescue came with a second missing idiot."

Rhea left to join the medical team, and Anika followed after sending Posey her number. Miss Vale went with them while Bell took the chair beside Dante’s door, making an argument with the remaining supervision look unwinnable.

Dante watched the empty doorway, remembering the exact moment he had told Anika he knew what to do. He had wanted her to look at him like somebody important, and now her brother might be leaving in a laundry van.

Posey moved his water closer, but Dante asked for the phone to be where both of them could hear it. He couldn’t move the van from a hospital bed; he could remember what Jett had shown him before someone chose the wrong door.

Bell’s shadow bird settled against his collar, becoming a patch of black with a beak until it moved. Dante asked whether it could track people, and Bell said it had recently failed to locate a biscuit beneath its own foot.

The nurse checked Dante’s pulse while Posey answered Anika’s call on speaker. Security had stopped the van outside the loading gate, and its driver was cooperating while responders checked the locked rooms along the laundry corridor. Posey kept the call connected while the responders worked.

Anika and Rhea had to wait behind a marked line, although Anika sounded like somebody had charged her for the privilege. Dante told her both his feet remained in bed, hoping that removing one problem might count as helping.

"I didn’t ask, which makes me suspicious," she replied, and Posey cheerfully confirmed his location. Bell offered to count the feet again if necessary, giving Dante the sort of medical report usually reserved for escaped farm animals.

A crash came through the phone, followed by a man’s order to stand back. Anika swore, Rhea told her to stay behind the line, and Dante caught himself gripping the blanket hard enough to hurt his fingers.

Somebody had shoved a laundry cage against the door. When a responder asked about another entrance, Dante remembered the fan above Jett’s bed and asked Anika to have them listen before forcing their way through.

"It ground between rattles, and the bed was under it," he said. Bell passed that on through Anika, asking responders to confirm the layout before moving the cage. Dante repeated the position instead of promising he knew everything.

A responder heard the rattle and called the warning to the team at the door. They changed where they applied pressure, leaving the space beneath the fan clear, and Dante finally stopped feeling that staying put meant doing nothing.

The door thudded again, and Dante pictured Anika’s wind shoving the cage away. He opened his good hand instead, telling Bell what he had almost attempted before wanting to help became another excuse to hurt someone.

Bell stayed beside him while the responders worked, explaining nothing magical could safely replace knowing where the patient lay. Dante hated the answer because it sounded like something a competent person would have thought of before reaching the dramatic bit.

Posey’s knee touched his through the blanket, and he let that small pressure keep him in the room. He had imagined restraint as a powerful man choosing mercy, whereas this version involved an attractive woman ensuring he didn’t leave his bed.

Iris’s voice came through the phone, reading the cart number while somebody inside called it back. Rhea asked Anika to let the medic pass, and the next few questions went to a person whose answers Dante couldn’t hear.

"He’s here, and he’s breathing," Anika said losing the steady voice she had held since leaving. Dante closed his eyes while Posey brought the phone closer, neither of them willing to miss anything that followed.

Jett lay on a narrow transfer bed behind the cage, still wearing the support pad. Security separated the staff member holding his transport folder from the driver outside, while the medic checked him before anyone moved it.

Anika set her phone nearby, leaving Dante to listen to everything from his bed while Jett complaining that his accommodation smelled like somebody else’s football socks. Rhea said insulting the room was promising, although she refused his request to record that as a full recovery.

Bell asked to speak directly to the medic and passed over the laboratory findings, including Dante’s unseen spell attempt. He confirmed there would be no casting in this room, listened to the answer and returned Posey’s phone to her.

Dante watched the cooling soup bowl instead of inventing pictures of the procedure. Its little legs had folded away, and he found himself grateful for something that could be switched off without involving another person’s ribs.

Posey asked whether he wanted her to stay, and he said yes before he could turn the answer into a joke. Her fingers slipped into his good hand, making honesty feel considerably less grim than he had expected.

The medic eventually said the pad was free and Jett remained stable. The removed equipment would travel separately for Artemis to compare with the dish, while Jett went straight to medical with a verified escort.

Anika picked up the phone to say she was coming with him, then ended the call when Jett asked whether Rhea always sounded that attractive while threatening patients. Dante decided he liked the man, although his sister clearly deserved financial compensation.

The nurse prepared another bed across the corridor and ruled out a reunion party before anyone suggested one. Posey carried the dishes to the ward kitchen with an assistant, returned and reclaimed her chair while Dante listened for wheels.

When the stretcher finally passed his open door, Jett’s shaggy dark-red hair clung above pointed ears, and his broad shoulders barely fitted between the rails. Anika walked beside him with one hand on the frame, no longer pretending she wasn’t frightened.

Jett recognized Dante from the calls and tried to wave until the nurse stopped his injured arm. His smile disappeared when he noticed Bell, and he asked whether anybody had found the recording they kept playing downstairs.

"They used your voice to tell us it was safe," he told Dante, while Anika stopped beside the stretcher. "Every time somebody asked to leave, you thanked them for volunteering."