Chapter 7: Blackout

I got to her first.

I dropped to my knees on the wet carpet and pressed both hands over the stain on her apron.

It was warm and sticky and it kept coming.

"Odile," I said. "Odile, look at me."

"It's my shoulder, love." Her voice was thin but cross. "Don't fuss. It was meant for you."

"I know."

"Then don't let it be for nothing."

Someone struck a match, and a hundred little flames came up around the room as the guests found lighters.

The long table had emptied.

The heavy man was gone, and the old woman, and the brothers, and the bandaged man.

Only Augustin sat at the head in his chair, as calm as a statue, with Lucan beside him holding a pistol pointed at the floor.

Enoch came across the room.

He knelt, took Odile's weight in his arms and lifted her without a word.

"Infirmary," he said to me. "Third door off the laundry. Hold the cloth on it."

I ran beside him with the cloth against her shoulder.

The infirmary was a narrow white room behind the linen press.

I had washed the sheets in that bed a hundred times and never known it was there.

Enoch laid her down and cut her apron open with a knife.

The bullet had gone through the soft top of her shoulder and out the back.

"Clean," Enoch said, and his voice cracked on it. "It's clean."

"I told you not to fuss." Odile patted his hand. "Go. Deal with it."

"Not yet."

"Enoch Hatherley, I raised you better than to stand there. Go."

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