Read Online Bound by Ink (A Living Ink Novel) by Marcella Burnard - Free Book Online Page B

her body. It landed on the internal scar of his leaving as if Murmur walking away ripped him out of her psyche all over again.
    The door opened.
    Light from the hallway stabbed into the room. A figure, too small to be Murmur, poked her head in.
    Nurse.
    Funny thing about healing with magic—something she’d learned a month or so ago. With enough applied power, and for some reason, in combination with Murmur she’d had plenty, she’d healed like nothing ever happened. Yet anyone who’d seen the original injuries had to come to terms with the fact that they’d vanished.
    Isa braced to face hours of surprise and incredulity from the medical staff and from her friends as if they didn’t inflict invisible wounds with every disbelieving exclamation.
    ***
    Steve showed up in time to hear the doctor discharge her. He drove her home, shaking his head.
    “I’ll walk you up,” he said, pulling up to the curb in front of her apartment building.
    “No need,” Isa said.
    “Humor me. You shattered a leg,” he said. “I’m still processing . . .”
    “What? The fact that you think I shouldn’t be walking within sixteen hours of having shattered the bone?” she demanded as she climbed the stairs to the second floor without so much as a twinge of discomfort. Bless Murmur’s self-interested heart.
    “This is tough stuff,” he said. “You’re defying what most of us believe is possible.”
    She flinched and paused in unlocking her front door. So she could do a few things that defied expectation. When would she know enough to stop murdering creatures because she didn’t know what else was possible?
    Dog tags jingled on the other side of the door.
    Shaking her head, she opened the apartment.
    Bouncing, puffing air in short huffs out through his open mouth, her dog plowed into her newly solid legs.
    “Oof! Morning, Gus,” Isa said. “Nathalie? Are you still here?”
    “She came over and took care of them,” Steve said. “But I think she went home to pack so she could move in until you were released from the hospital.”
    The spot warmed where Murmur’s fingers had rested against her cheek as he’d helped her heal. Her shoulders eased lower. She smiled at her whining, three-legged dog.
    Her brown tabby and white cat sauntered out of the bedroom, her tail curved high in the air. She sneered as she passed the enthusiastic, wagging dog.
    “Good morning, Ikylla.” Isa offered up her hands for feline inspection.
    Whiskers tickled Isa’s blue palms as she sniffed and then glanced up to meet her gaze. Her golden eyes half closed. She presented her back.
    Isa obliged and stroked the cat as she walked out from under Isa’s hand.
    Casting another half-lidded look over her shoulder, Ikylla padded toward the kitchen.
    “You’re only good for one thing,” Steve noted, humor in his tone.
    “Opening her cat food can,” Isa agreed. “At least Gus loves me for my access to his leash and w-a-l-k-s. Come on, silly dog. Breakfast. Come on in, Steve. Can I offer you coffee?”
    “I wish,” Steve said. “I thought I’d be stopping by the hospital long enough to catch you between morphine doses. I didn’t expect . . . I’m glad I could bring you home.”
    “I am, too, but you have to go?” she finished for him.
    “The investigation is going to take days,” he said. “They’re still recovering victims. When you’re up to it, I need a statement. The AMBI may be involved.”
    Bracing her hands on the kitchen counter, Isa blew out a slow breath. “Any estimated death toll?”
    “Forty-eight confirmed dead. A hundred and three still missing.”
    “Damn.”
    “Not all of them were the Ink.”
    “I know. You and I both know there were too many people in the lake.”
    “We have divers in the water,” he said. “But yeah. I know what you’re getting at. Not many of us are thinking in terms of rescue, either.”
    Corpse recovery.
    “I wish . . .” She broke off. What? That she’d known what the hell she was