Page 95 of Born for Starlight

"Angelica's down," I said, under my breath, to nine men, and I was already moving.

Julian was still talking. Julian was always still talking. "Angelica? Hey. Hey, you okay? Is she⁠—"

"Heat." I got between them and got my arm around her waist. She folded into it, all weight, no help. "Heat and emotion. It's a big day. She's fine." Then, to the wall behind me, "Vargas. Pinto. Room. Now."

Costa came down the corridor at a run, and I watched him think through every angle in four steps. A fainting movie star. Cameras. Press outside. Ferraz's men. Whatever he had cooking behind his chained doors. "Senhor Grainger, is she, we have a nurse, we can⁠—"

"A room." I swooped her up and carried her down that corridor past the choir kids and the woman with the keyboard, my face set to calm and my pulse steady. It had to be, I didn’t give it a choice. This was an emergency, and this was what I was trained for. It was even more important for the woman I loved.

Costa just stared at me.

“Now,” I said, not polite exactly, but not in a way to cause fear. "Somewhere quiet. Somewhere private. She gets these spells when she overdoes it."

She'd never gotten one of these in her life, because I’d crawled through her past.

Julian jogged beside us the whole way with his phone up. "She'll be fine, right? This is just, she's just overwhelmed, this place, God, you can see it in her, she's so⁠—"

"Mister Harmon."

"Call me Julian, remember?"

"Give her some room."

He didn't. Costa found a door and threw it open. An office, some administrator's, a desk with a dead computer, a crucifix, a window onto the courtyard, and against the wall a shabby little sofa with the stuffing coming out of one arm. I put her on it. Deke came through behind me and shut the door in Julian's face. The last thing I heard from the hall was Costa telling Julian, in English, that everything was fine, and Julian telling Costa, louder, that he'd known her for years.

Then it was quiet.

Vargas and Pinto held the hall. Deke stood inside the door with his back to it. I got down on my knees on that cheap tile in front of the woman I loved. She looked straight through me.

"Angelica."

Nothing.

"Angelica. Baby. It's me. Look at me."

Her eyes were open. They were pointed at the crucifix over the desk and they were the eyes of somebody in another world. Her hands lay in her lap, palms up. She was breathing. I watched her chest do it. That was all she was doing.

"Angelica." I took her face in both hands and turned it toward mine. It turned, because I turned it. It stayed, because I held it. "Hey. Hey. You're okay. You're safe. Come on. Come back."

Nothing.

I've talked men down off ledges. I've talked a source through a bad night in a hotel in Ciudad del Este with a gun on the nightstand between us. Talking was the thing I did. I talked to her for what Deke told me later was two full minutes and could have been two hours. She gave me her face and none of herself. Something in my chest started to come apart.

"Matthew." Deke, quiet, from the door. "Boss."

"I know."

"Her eyes are open."

"I know."

"Grainger." Jase, in my ear, and his voice was wrong. Not angry. Not the volcano. Something older and flatter. "Tell me what she looks like."

"Eyes open. Not there. Not responding. Breathing's fine. Pulse is fine. She just isn't⁠—"

"That's the face."

I stopped.