Maggie woke slowly, slower than usual, and the first thing she noticed were voices. "The car took most of the damage, thank heaven. She should be fine, once everything heals again."
"When will she wake up?" That was Tabitha's voice; she didn't recognize the first one.
"I don't know. When she's ready. That's how it usually works."
While they talked, Maggie became more aware of herself, and of her surroundings. She ached... no, she hurt. There were sharp pains coming from one leg, but she wasn't sure which one. Both arms seemed to hurt equally. In between, she felt like a pile of jumbled bones. "Tabitha?" she asked, and was surprised to find she could barely whisper, and even that word sent sharp pains through her.
"Maggie! You're awake."
"Awake is one thing," she managed to get out, but the rest of the sentence remained in her head. Alive is quite another.
"You were lucky, Miss," a stern voice said. "You almost didn't make it." A gentle hand encircled her wrist, feeling for a pulse. "But you did, and I bet you're in pain." Maggie forced her eyes to follow the arm attached to the hand on her wrist, but everything blurred before she even found the elbow. "Here, this will help." She felt a sharp sting in her hip, then the pain began to go away. The blurriness didn't, however.
"Tabitha?" she repeated softly, trying to think, trying to remember.
"I'm here," Tabitha's voice said from her other side.
"What happened?" she turned to find her friend, then remembered the blurriness. Hopefully that would go away soon.
"You were hit in an accident. Some guy came out of nowhere, apparently, and decided not to stop at the red light just as you were going through the intersection."
"Is he okay?" she asked, and closed her eyes. It felt weird, having a conversation with her eyes closed, but it cut down on her headache. Headache? She hadn't even realized she had a headache until then.
"He's banged up a little," Tabitha said.
"What was he driving?" She had to know, or it would drive her nuts.
"A moving van," Tabitha said. "Now, you go to sleep. I'll call Adam and get him to stop worrying; I made Rocky take him home when he about collapsed from exhaustion."
A moving van, really, what a surprise, Maggie thought. "How long have I been asleep?"
"Long enough. But it's okay. You go back to sleep. Don't worry about anything but getting better."
Maggie thought about that, then nodded. It wasn't as if she could really do anything else, she thought. "Okay. Promise to make him stop worrying?"
Tabitha chuckled. "I can't do that. But I'll help him feel better."
"Okay," she mumbled as she drifted off to sleep.
When she woke, it was suddenly and with a lot of pain. The blurriness in her eyes seemed to have retreated; she could see to the end of the bed, but beyond that was a cloud of white. Except for the cast on her leg elevated at some angle, she would have guessed she were in someone's view of heaven. She turned her head to find out what else she could see, and found herself looking into Rocky's very worried face. "Hey," she whispered. If this were heaven, he was definitely an angel.
"So, she wasn't lying," he said with a sigh that seemed to go all the way through him. "How are you?"
"Mostly, I hurt," she said softly. "I'm glad you're here." She tried to reach out and take his hand, only to find that her hand - and arm - were also in a cast. "Hey.... how much of me got broken?" she asked.
"One leg and one arm. A couple of the ribs on your left side were cracked, and your right arm got really twisted, probably when your car turned over." He chuckled. "But only you could get hit on the left side and break your right leg."
She smiled. "How is my car?"
"Totaled," he said. "Sorry. But if it had been a smaller car, you would have been just as totaled," he told her. The vision of Adam's smashed black Mustang flashed before her eyes.
"I'm not?" she asked, struggling to keep her voice steady, as a tall, slender, dark haired woman stepped out of the clouds at the foot of her bed and sat next to Rocky. He reached out and took her hand, clinging almost desperately. "You must be Reva," she said. Enter the second angel, she thought.
"You are definitely not totaled," Rocky said. "Yes, this is my wife, Reva. This is Margery Jourdemain, or Maggie, as she prefers to be called."
"Hello. It's nice to finally meet you," Reva said. Maggie smiled.
"Yes, I'm glad I got to meet you, too. I wish I'd known about your marriage, I would have sent something." A sharp twinge in her side let her know that she'd done too much already.
"Hey, you did something for me," Rocky said. "I met her at the tournament. Her brother was competing against us. I almost didn't get to go."
"Oh, really?" The Lady must have really helped out on that spell. Well, Rocky had been a good friend to her. "How long have you been married?"
"About four years," Reva answered.
"What took so long?" The only reason she kept talking was because it kept her mind off the pain.
"Various things," Rocky grinned. "Mostly, she was away at school, and I was working. We kept up correspondence, though, and when she graduated she moved back here. We started dating seriously, and got married about a year later."
"Slowpoke," she grinned at Rocky.
He barked a laugh. "Me? Slowpoke? Now, I realize you had things to do, but ten years is a long time, Maggie."
She sighed, and gasped in pain. "I know. I had horrid visions of Adam getting serious with Tanya or some other girl, then getting one of my letters and breaking it off with her because of that. I kept my letters friendly and far between, for that reason."
"You are not the reason he's still single, at least, I don't think so. Tanya ...." He paused. "Tanya's a cool woman, but she...." He sighed. "I don't know how to put it. She didn't mean to string him along like that, I don't think...."
"I do," Reva said bluntly. "It was cruel. How many times did he show up at our house that first year we were married, saying he didn't want to be alone, looking like he'd gotten dressed up for a date?" She took a deep breath. "I know she's one of your friends, Rocky, but I can't make myself like her. And I did try."
He sighed. "I know you did."
"She's one of my friends, too," Maggie said. "There were times I didn't like her very much either." She thought a minute, refusing to give in to the pain. "That was about four years ago, and lasted about a year?" she asked.
"Yes," Reva said. "How do you know?"
"I was about to leave Chicago, and if I hadn't been sure I was needed in Kentucky right then, I would have come back here and told her what I thought about her." She stopped to breath, feeling her ribs pressing painfully on something. Her side felt on fire. "She would have beaten me soundly. I only had basics of about four different styles of martial arts, for all that Adam tried to get me to learn one and get good. But at least she'd know how I felt."
"Okay, that's enough," Reva said softly. "I'm sorry I even brought it up."
Rocky brushed her hair away from her face. "Hey, was your hair always so red?" he asked.
"Um, yeah, I think so. I mean, I think Tabitha's is a little redder than mine, but not by much. You're seeing it in contrast to white for the first time, Rocky. I don't wear white, it bleaches me out."
"I can't tell if it's the white from the pillow or because of the pain," Reva said softly, and smiled. "I really am sorry to have upset you like that."
"Oh, that's okay. Talking to someone has kept the pain at bay."
"You mean, you're supposed to have had something already?" Rocky asked.
"I don't know. I've been asleep." She smiled. "It's not that I don't like you, Rocko, but..."
"Where's Adam?"he asked with a knowing smile. "You two have the worst luck. Tabitha took him home an hour ago."
"Is he okay?" she asked, a little too vehemently, and she had to stop to breath again.
"He's fine. Just...."
Reva laughed, interrupting him. "I have never seen him so bad. What ever you have done to him, it's a good thing, but he's worried sick. He said he hadn't seen you since... a nightmare he had?"
Maggie nodded. "Yeah. I don't know..." She looked at Rocky.
"I haven't told her, and she'll take it fine."
"Told me what?"
"That I'm Wiccan. I had a Foretelling, and to avoid it there were a lot of complications, the least one being that he distracted me. I had to be distraction free..." She smiled at their laughter. "Oh, don't laugh too hard, Rocky. He said I was just as distracting for him, and you were pulling your hair out." She chuckled, winced, and resolved not to do that again. "And Tabitha treated us both to a picture of you bald."
Reva burst into laughter as Rocky went red. "Oh. Quite a picture. Tell Tabitha thanks for that one."
"I guess you've met her, then?"
"We've run into each other a few times," Rocky said, then the nurse came in to give Maggie her pain killers. Not long after that, she fell asleep again.
When she woke up, there was a purring engine on her chest and draped across her right ribs, and the pressure on her injured ones nearly made her want to cry. "Tabby?" she whispered, and tried to open her eyes. "Tabby, you've got to move, that hurts." The cat slipped off her chest and curled against her unbroken ribs.
"Does that mean you're awake?" a soft, most welcome voice asked, and she made her eyes open. Adam sat by her bed, leaning over her, one hand petting the cat at her side, the other entwined in her hair.
"Yes," she said, "and even before the painkillers wear off." Then the paradox slammed into her and she looked at him, eyes wide. "Did you smuggle the cat in here?" she asked.
"Well, sort of," he said, and gave her the half smile that used to drive her crazy in high school. Okay, never mind used to. It still did, if her heart rate were any indication. Maggie was glad they had taken the heart monitor away before she'd seen him again. "She walked in with me."
"She told you."
He nodded. "She said if you trusted me, then she could. And she felt that having something living curled up to you would help. I offered," he grinned, his face flushing slightly, "but she pointed out that the nurses would not go for that, even less than they'd go for a cat."
"Darn," Maggie whispered, and he blushed bright red. She wondered if she had, too, then chuckled, wincing at the stabbing pain.
"We've had two near calls already, and we haven't been here that long," he continued, trying to regain his composure. "Kat and Tommy were here for a while." He looked at her, head tilted to the side, color nearly restored. "Tabitha reminds me a lot of Kat, you know?"
"Yeah, I've noticed that, too," she said softly. "I'm glad to see you."
He chuckled. "So Rocky said when he called me earlier." He leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Don't do that again," he said.
"It was out of my hands, Adam," she said.
He looked away from her, his hand moving in her hair, stroking gently. "What was your nightmare?"
"That morning you showed up at our apartment?"
"Yes."
She sighed. "I dreamed that... there was an accident, and..." She paused, looking up at him, meeting his eyes. They were deep brown, full of concern for her. She tried not to get lost in them, and found that she failed miserably, or was too late to take that kind of caution. It had already happened. "And you died. And it was my fault."
"Your fault?" He touched her face, running his fingers down the side of it ever so lightly, but she still felt twinges from the bruises. She didn't say a thing, but he stopped and went back to petting the cat. "Were you driving?"
"No. I wasn't even there."
"Then how was it your fault?"
"Remember the threefold law?" He nodded. "I had to... had to..." She paused, trying to find the right words. "Destroy a werewolf, and a few other things. And while it was for a good cause, still, there were repercussions. I had diverted those away from me, and... forgot that I had to pay the price, sometime. She reminded me... and if I hadn't acted, if I had let it stay away from me..." She was surprised to find that he blurred, then tears trickled from her eyes. "I would have killed you. Maybe I wasn't driving the car that would have hit you, but it would have been my doing. The dream was a warning."
"So, what happened?" he asked, gently wiping the tears from her eyes.
"I think... I think I took your place. Or, you were taking mine, if I hadn't undone the spell. My car is just sturdier than yours. I don't know. But as I pointed out to Her, I can't serve Her if I'm dead." But I can if you are....
"Oh." He nodded. "Dangerous line of work."
She grinned. "No more dangerous than your former one. At lot less dangerous, in some ways."
"Scared me to death." He was whispering, his mouth by her ear. "Please try not to do that again."
"Please forgive me," she whispered back. At least he hadn't made her promise it wouldn't happen again. She had a horrid feeling it would, and more often than she'd really like, if her memories of her mother were any indication. And possibly more often than he'd like, if they ended up together. She pushed the thought away, almost afraid to think like that, to get her hopes up.
"Always." His breath was warm on her neck. "I'm beginning to think I'd go crazy without you."
"And if you don't kiss me, I am going to go crazy," she responded, and he did, almost before she finished her sentence.
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