J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [208]
He got up out of bed, walked across the room, and put his glowing hand to her face with hesitation. On a sigh she leaned into the imprint of his palm and the warmth of his flesh.
“Is this you?” he said hoarsely.
She nodded and reached out to his cheeks, which were a little red. “You’ve been crying.”
He captured her hand. “I feel you.”
“Me, too.”
He touched her neck, her shoulder, her sternum. Brought her arm forward and looked at it…well, through it.
“Um…so I can sit on things,” she said for no particular reason. “I mean…while I was waiting out there, I sat on the couch. I also moved a picture on the wall, put a penny back in your change dish, picked up a magazine. It’s a little weird, but all I have to do is concentrate.” Shit. She had no idea what she was saying. “The, ah…the Scribe Virgin said I could eat but I didn’t have to. She said…I could drink, too. I’m not sure how it all works, but she seems to know. Yeah. So. Anyway, I think it’s going to take some time to figure out the drill, but…”
He put his hand into her hair and it felt the same as it had before. Her nonexistent body registered the sensations exactly as it had before.
He frowned, then looked downright angry. “She said it required a sacrifice. To bring someone back. What did you give her? What did you bargain with?”
“How do you mean?”
“She doesn’t give things away without demanding something in return. What did she take from you?”
“Nothing. She never asked me for anything.”
He shook his head and seemed like he was going to speak. But then he wrapped his heavy arms around her and held her against his trembling, glowing body. Unlike the other times when she had to concentrate to find solidity, with V it just happened. Against him, she was corporeal with no effort on her part.
She could tell he was crying by the way he breathed and the fact that he leaned on her, but she knew that if she made any mention of it, or tried to soothe him with words, he would stop on a dime. So she just held him and let him go.
Then again, she was kind of busy holding herself together.
“I thought I would never get to do this again,” he said in a voice that cracked.
Jane closed her eyes and squeezed him, thinking about that moment in the fog when she’d let him go. If she hadn’t done that, they wouldn’t be here, would they?
Fuck free will, she thought. She’d rely on destiny, no matter how much it hurt in the short run. Because love in its many forms always endured. It was the infinite. The eternal. That which sustained. She had no idea who or what the Scribe Virgin was. Had no idea where she herself had been or how she had come back. But she was sure of one thing.
“You were right,” she said against V’s chest.
“About what?”
“I do believe in God.”
Chapter Fifty-three
The following evening John didn’t have class, so he sat down for First Meal with the Brothers and the females. The mood in the house was considerably lighter than it had been for weeks. But sure as shit, he didn’t share in the levity.
“So anyway,” Phury was saying, “I went to the Scribe Virgin and told her about the bullet.”
“Jesus Christ. The Directrix.” Vishous leaned forward, taking Jane’s hand with him. “I’d assumed it was a lesser.”
V hadn’t let go of his doctor since they’d sat down together, as if he were afraid she’d disappear. Which was kind of understandable. John tried not to stare at her, but it was hard not to. She was wearing one of V’s shirts and a pair of blue jeans and filling them out as normal. But what was in them was…well, a ghost, he supposed.
“Of course you did,” Phury said as he turned to Bella and offered her the butter plate. “We all did. But that female had one hell of a motive. She wanted to stay