Lukia looked puzzled. “What?”
“Our sister’s a vampire,” Camille started to say but Menolly interrupted her.
“If you don’t want me to enter your house, I understand,” she said.
Lukia hesitated, then said, “Come in, please, this one time.” She was smart. It wasn’t wise to give any vampire free rein to enter your home unless you absolutely trusted them.
Menolly stepped across the threshold and, together, we entered the living room.
Lukia noticed my ripped clothing. “What happened? I heard…” Her voice trailed off. “You’re bleeding.”
“Do you mind if we take her into the kitchen?” Menolly asked.
“Of course.” Lukia pointed to the kitchen. “Go on in. I’ll get my first-aid kit.”
As she vanished toward the back of the house, Camille grabbed a roll of paper towels and spread several on the floor and over the chair. “Off with the jeans.”
“Can’t we wait until we get home?” I didn’t want to get half-naked in a relative stranger’s house, even if she was a woman.
“Now!” Camille’s voice reverberated through the room. She was the only one of us that had been born with the command voice, and she seldom used it, though when we were young she had used it on me a lot. It was separate from the glamour we all possessed, and different from Menolly’s vampiric glamour.
I quickly stripped off my jeans, grateful that I wore underpants. Menolly went commando, I knew, but I couldn’t bring myself to. My panties had little bunnies on them, and Menolly grinned at me, shaking her head.
“I like bunnies,” I muttered.
“And I hope you never change,” she said.
“Let me see those wounds,” Camille said, shoving me into the chair. She knelt beside my legs, examining the cuts. They were still oozing, though the bleeding had slowed, but my legs were covered in blood and though they weren’t deep, the slashes were long—a good three inches long across the tops of my knees.
“Damn, he really did get me,” I said, noticing the pain as it began to seep into my consciousness. I’d ignored it when we were fighting because you had to fight through the pain in certain situations. “I think I need to start going to the gym. We haven’t been in the field for a year, it seems. And I feel way too punchy and soft.”
“And I need to work on my magic. I know it still goes haywire part of the time, but I haven’t done a lot of spellwork lately,” Camille said. “I don’t think these are infected, but we can’t be sure. And we don’t know if the redcaps use poison. How do you feel?”
“I feel fine, other than these sting like hell. I’m not woozy or dizzy,” I said, searching for how I felt. “Do they need stitching?”
Camille frowned. “I think it might be good to put in a few. Menolly, can you call Iris and ask her to come over? In fact, go get her. We don’t want her running around alone in the dark, given there might be more of the redcaps around.”
Menolly nodded, heading out as Lukia returned with a rudimentary first-aid kit in hand. “It’s not much, but maybe it will help?”
“Menolly’s gone to get Iris,” Camille said. “So, that statue—do you have it handy?”
Lukia brought it over and put it on the floor.
“Give me a frying pan—or something heavy,” Camille said.
Lukia handed her a cast-iron skillet. Camille shook her head. “I can’t touch that. It will burn me. Have anything steel?”
“Here,” Lukia said, fetching a hammer from one of the junk drawers. “So, you can handle steel but not cast iron?”
“It’s the dilution of our blood that makes the difference. Though I gather a number of the Fae can handle steel. I’m not up on my chemical analysis or whatever it is that causes iron ore to harm the Fae.” She took the hammer and slammed it down on the statue, which cracked it. Another blow, and a third, and the statue was in pieces on the floor. “Where’s your broom and dustpan?” Camille asked.
I called Menolly. “Hey, bring me back a clean pair of pants—loose if possible—would you? I don’t want to put on the ones that are all bloody.”
“Will do. Iris is gathering her healing kit.”
Iris wasn’t a healer by trade, but she had put in a fair amount of time throughout her life dealing with scrapes and injuries. Or so she said. We didn’t know much about her background, and she was fairly reserved about it. I hung up and turned to Camille. “Do you ever wonder about Iris’s background? I believe she served in a temple at one point?—”
“I know she did,” Camille said. “But she’s very skittish about talking about it, so I leave it be. I get the feeling that she’s had a painful past and I don’t want to trigger her.”