Body Surfing

the poison dart shot into Ileana’s leg. There was a half second before the toxin took effect. A half second in which she could have squeezed the trigger and taken Q. out with her.
    She didn’t.
     
    “You need to give her CPR.”
    “What the hell just happened?”
    “Jasper—Michaela—whoever you are.” Q. was fumbling with his watch. “You need to give Ileana CPR. Now .”
    “It’s me, Q.” Michaela/Jasper ran up, fell to her/his knees, placed her/his hands over Ileana’s heart and started pumping. “Thank God Larry was a paramedic.”
    Q.’s twitching fingers continued working the watch. He’d never actually rotated it before, and it seemed to be stuck.
    “Jasper?”
    Michaela’s head nodded as she counted. “One-two-three-four.One-two-three-four.” She leaned over, blew air into Ileana’s mouth, then pumped on her heart again.
    “The last dart’s supposed to have an antidote.”
    “Dart?” Michaela—Jasper—breathed into Ileana’s lungs again.
    “The watch. It’s some 007 shit. Fuck!” Q. still couldn’t get it to turn.
    “Calm down, Q. You can’t help her if you freak out. But you’ve got to hurry. She’s completely gone.”
    “Finally!” Q. had pressed the chronometer on the side of the dial, and the mechanism began rotating with audible clicks. “One, two, three, four—shit!”
    “What?”
    “I can’t remember how many darts I fired. There’s only one dose of antidote.”
    Jasper pumped Michaela’s shoulders up and down. “Isn’t there an indicator?”
    “It’s not that high-tech. Fuck. Okay, one in the kitchen, and one just now. That’s two, right? One and one makes two?”
    “Q.!”
    “Okay!” He moved the watch toward Ileana’s wrist, then pulled back. “But what if she fired one before? These doses are designed to take a Mogran out. We’re not gonna get her back if I shoot her up twice.”
    “We can’t wake her up to ask—” Jasper broke off to breathe into the huntress’s mouth, “—so you’re just gonna have to risk it. Q.!” he said sharply, when his friend just sat there. “She’s dying. You have to act now .”
    As Q. pressed the watch to Ileana’s skin, he noticed how fair it was. Her face was fish white and slightly blue at the lips, but otherwise unblemished. Ageless. She could have been a teenager, just like him. He knew Leo had done this to her. Knew she thought the same thing every time she looked in a mirror. He wondered who she hated more in those moments. Leo? Or herself?
    “I’m sorry,” he said a second time, and fired the dart.
    For a long time there was just the wheeze of Michaela’s breath asJasper continued to perform CPR. Four times he stopped to breathe for her. Eight times. A dozen.
    “Oh fuck,” Q. said. “I killed her. Fuck, fuck, fuck .”
    “Sshh!” Jasper hissed.
    “What?”
    “I hear something.”
    “Is she—?”
    But it wasn’t Ileana Jasper heard. It was sirens.
    “Fire trucks. Three of them. And one—no, two police cars.”
    “We have to get out of here.”
    “Not till she wakes up.” Jasper pumped a little harder on Ileana’s chest.
    “There are bodies in the barn, Jasper. Not to mention Ileana.”
    “Jarhead was bad enough, Q. I’m not killing anyone else.”
    “I killed Jarhead.”
    Q. and Jasper looked down. The huntress’s eyes were open, barely, and her voice seemed to float out of her mouth.
    “You…saved me?” She was looking at Jasper, not Q.
    “We did,” Jasper said. “All three of us.”
    Ileana never took her eyes from Jasper’s. The sirens grew suddenly louder as the first fire truck crested the hill south of the house. At length she nodded.
    “Run,” she said. “When I’m better, I’ll find you.”

17
    A mile north of his father’s house, Jasper walked Michaela’s body to the river’s edge.
    “I’m going to take your shoes off,” he told her. “I want to feel the water. One more time.”
    Michaela didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Jasper could feel her emotions. Her wish that there was another way. Her acceptance that there wasn’t.
    “You and Q. are going to have to be the new hunters.”
    He felt her nod. Loosened his hold a little, so she could do it herself.
    “Thomas—Foras—is still out there. And the rest of the Alpha Wave, and who knows what else.”
    I’m scared, Jasper. What if I can’t handle it?
    “If Q.’s Solomon jar works, you won’t have to kill anyone.”
    Not that. Those memories Leo left in me. What if I