Free An Hour of Need by Bella Forrest

mean, look at me.” His arms flanked his sides. “I even look like I’m in the process of turning, don’t I?”
    I bit down on my lower lip. Yes, he did. Though I didn’t have the first clue what the hunters were hoping to achieve by messing with Bloodless in their drug development. They were supposed to be developing a drug that enhanced a person’s strength and abilities, not turned them into sick, pale creatures like Orlando. Though, after witnessing Lawrence’s transformation on TV, they had obviously finally gotten something right…
    Before any of us could talk Orlando out of it, he reached out and tore off a chunk of leaf. He eyed it briefly before raising it to his lips and taking a bite. A bite. My insides squirmed as he chewed with an uncertain look on his face, then swallowed.
    I stood with bated breath, waiting for what, exactly, none of us knew. But as Orlando broke out into a violent coughing fit—so consuming that he lost his footing on the branch and slipped—this had clearly been a terrible idea. “Orlando!” I gasped as my arms instinctively shot out to grab hold of him, but missed. Horatio zoomed toward him and caught him before he could fall too far down the tree. The jinni lifted a choking Orlando back to our level and stretched him out on the bark. He and Ibrahim hurriedly knelt over him. Orlando had started to wheeze like he was suffocating.
    Ibrahim cursed, even as he flipped Orlando over so that he lay on his stomach. Then, without warning, Ibrahim levitated Orlando in the air and flipped him upside down. The warlock shook the young man vigorously, so vigorously I feared Orlando might even suffer a concussion. A retching sound blurted from Orlando’s throat, followed by a stream of puke (which a part of me couldn’t help but hope would land on a hunter’s head).
    Ibrahim continued to shake Orlando until it looked like he would start vomiting out his organs if he upchucked anymore. Then Ibrahim laid him back down on the branch before summoning a flask of water from his backpack. Ibrahim pried Orlando’s jaws open and filled his mouth to the brim with water. Orlando choked and spluttered, but as he slowly sat up, he was breathing.
    Orlando wheezed out a long breath.
    “Thankfully,” Ibrahim said, “I managed to catch most of it before it could travel too far into you.” The warlock grimaced and threw me a look. “So, Grace, I think we can safely conclude that these trees are poisonous.”
    My heart sank to my stomach. I returned my focus to Orlando. Poor guy. He was looking ill as death.
    “So you really got it all out of his system?” I asked Ibrahim worriedly.
    “There will still be traces of it, but it shouldn’t be a lethal amount. Orlando, you’re probably not going to be feeling too good for a while… It’s just a good thing you had a snack earlier, or it wouldn’t have been as easy to induce the vomiting.”
    Orlando’s face was uncharacteristically flushed, I guessed where the blood had flooded to his head.
    We all fell quiet, giving Orlando some moments of peace while he recovered. I found myself scrutinizing his face the whole time, watching the redness fade. After a couple of minutes, the blotchiness had gone, but bizarrely, he didn’t look as pale to me as before. Maybe I was just clinging to a desperate hope, and it was clouding my vision. I could’ve sworn, though, that his complexion had brightened a touch.
    “Hey, does anybody else notice this?” I called, narrowing my eyes on Orlando, still believing they were deceiving me.
    “What?” Orlando and several of my family asked at once.
    “He looks kind of… healthier?” I dared say.
    Orlando was immediately surrounded by everyone ogling him like he was a rare specimen.
    “Hm… Maybe just a little bit,” my mother replied. “But that could still be the effect of the blood going to his head from all the shaking Ibrahim gave him.”
    We waited another five to ten minutes, during which time we continued