“I can help you with some charms and wards,” Sarah offered. “That is one of my areas of expertise.”
“Do they work?” Reg asked.
“She sells them on Amazon,” Letticia advised, her tone dripping with contempt, “so they must work.”
“I do not!” Sarah snapped back. She glanced in the rear view mirror at Reg. “I sell them on Etsy.”
Reg choked on her own laugh of disbelief. She’d heard Etsy was a good place to sell crafts. She’d just never imagined anyone selling witchcraft there.
“If he’s bothering you, I can help you out.” Sarah repeated the offer. “But you have to resist him with your will too. Wards won’t be much help if you are going to date the man.”
Reg shook her head. “I’ll think about it. Thanks for the offer.”
The next hospital wasn’t very far away. Apparently, there were a lot of hospitals in Florida. Probably something to do with the number of retirees and the resultant aging population. Reg wondered how many they were going to have to go to before they found Warren. If they really could find Warren. She wasn’t quite sure how she was expected to know from sitting or standing outside the hospital whether Warren was inside. That went far beyond her intuition abilities. Figuring out what a client needed to hear by listening to them and watching their body language was a far cry from standing outside a hospital trying to feel some ghostly vibrations.
“Do you have any maps?” Reg asked, looking out her window toward the ocean.
“Of course. In the door pocket,” Sarah told Letticia.
Letticia dug a handful of jumbled maps out of the pocket of the door and handed them back to Reg. She sorted through them, trying to put them into some kind of order. She unfolded a large one that showed the ocean and beaches and other natural areas around Black Sands. She looked at the wide expanse of ocean. Where had Warren been headed? Where had he gone down? Ling had not said why he had been flying in the first place. He obviously hadn’t had any passengers, but was it a pleasure trip or was he transporting a cargo? If he was acting as a courier, then to whom? And was it legal or illegal?
“You’re awfully quiet back there,” Sarah observed. She looked into the mirror as she drove up over the curb into the parking lot of another hospital, making Reg bite her tongue.
“Just looking at these maps, trying to figure out where—”
“We’re here.”
“Where?”
“At the General. Do you need to get out? Can you feel him here?”
Reg barely even glanced out the window. She couldn’t feel anything and randomly driving from one hospital to another without even talking to the admissions desk seemed the height of stupidity.
“No, not here,” she snapped.
Letticia looked around her seat at Reg and shook her head. “She doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing.”
Reg didn’t, but she pushed back immediately. “I do too! I don’t see you coming up with any answers. Why don’t you tell me where he is?”
“Talking to spirits is not one of my gifts,” Letticia said simply. She raised her eyebrows. “I’m not sure it’s one of yours, either!”
“I’ve been talking to them since I was a little girl,” Reg insisted, remembering what Corvin had said about her imaginary friends. “I’m not a fraud.”
“Then why don’t you tell us where he is? If your connection with him is so strong…”
Reg stared at the map, feeling her face flush red. “There,” she said, stabbing a finger at a random beach. “That’s where he came ashore. And the nearest hospital is…”
“He wouldn’t necessarily be taken to the nearest one,” Sarah said, “it depends on their specialities.”
“This one.” Reg pointed to a large building with a blue letter H superimposed over it.
“McNara?” Letticia asked. She shook her head. “That’s more of a long-term care facility. Not somewhere they would take the victim of a plane crash.”
“We’ve already looked where they would take the victim of a plane crash,” Reg snapped back. “And the police have presumably looked all of the places where they would take the victim of a plane crash. So let’s look there.”
Letticia shook her head. She faced front again and shrugged at Sarah. “Go, if you want. I don’t see how it makes any difference.”
Sarah made a quick course correction that threw Letticia and Reg against the inside of the vehicle with a crash. Reg righted herself and looked back over her shoulder to see if Corvin had managed to make the turn in time. He apparently had not. There was something to be said for erratic driving when they didn’t particularly want to be followed.
Reg was more careful to hold on for the remainder of the drive, and at some length, they pulled into the parking lot of the long, low building. It didn’t look like a hospital, at least not the ones that Reg was accustomed to. But it had an H on it on the map, and Reg was sticking to her guns. If Sarah and Letticia could make uninformed decisions and hop from hospital to hospital on a whim, then Reg could pick the one that attracted her.
“Oh, this is nice,” Sarah remarked.
Reg closed her eyes, feeling a wave of warmth wash over her, followed by a chill that she was becoming increasingly familiar with. “No,” she objected, “not again!”
Sarah’s head turned in slow motion, and she opened her mouth to ask something. Letticia’s head turned a few seconds later, also in slow motion. She reached around the seat she was sitting in and caught Reg’s arm with her long, bony fingers. Reg fought against the waves of memory that were not hers.
A pain in her forearm grew, forcing its way into her consciousness. The jeep again resolved around Reg. She jerked her arm, trying to get out of Letticia’s grip.
“Let go, let go! You’re hurting!”
Letticia released her. Reg looked down at where Letticia’s fingers had been digging into the meat of her arm. There were clear impressions from all of her fingers, with crescent-shaped cuts at the ends of the fingers where her nails had drawn blood.
“Ouch! What did you do that for?”
“I’m sorry,” Letticia said, not sounding one bit sorry, “it was the quickest way to bring you back. You said you didn’t want to channel him, and Sarah already said how far he’s been dragging you under.”
Sarah looked apologetic, even though she wasn’t the one who had hurt Reg. “Sometimes when a medium goes too far… well, bad things can happen. We want to be sure we’re going to get you back again.”
Reg took a couple of deep breaths. “Well. I guess he’s here.”
“Apparently so,” Letticia said dryly. “Shall we go find him?”
Reg nodded. All three of them got out of the car. Reg looked around. Would the three of them look suspicious if they all walked in together, looking for a man who was supposed to be dead? Or was there safety in numbers?
Not that there was anything to be afraid of. They were in a hospital. Warren, if he were there, had just been in an airplane accident. Not something that was contagious and was going to infect them.
Sarah barged past Reg to the reception desk inside the cool, atrium-like lobby. She gave the woman there one of her patented grandmotherly smiles, raining beneficence upon her.
“Here I am to see my grandson,” she announced.
The woman at the desk smiled in response.
“And who would that be?”
“Warren Blake.”
The woman paused for a moment, frowning. She shook her head before tapping the name into the computer. “No… I don’t see a Warren Blake on our records.”
“But he’s here,” Sarah insisted. “A young man. Just last week. He was in a plane crash and just about drowned.”
The receptionist shook her head slowly.
“I’m sorry, that doesn’t sound like anyone we have here. Are you sure you have the right place?”
“Why don’t you look at his picture,” Sarah suggested, pulling out her wallet.
The receptionist showed gre
at restraint in not rolling her eyes. She looked at Sarah with apparent interest, leaning toward her to see the snapshots the confused grandma had.
“Hold these,” Sarah ordered, putting a few dimes into the receptionist’s hand as she went through her wallet and her purse. She placed what appeared to be a blank white card on the counter. “You see, there’s Warren. You remember him coming in. It might have been a bit confusing for you, but this should clear it up.” She held out a roll of candies. “Life Saver?”
The receptionist’s expression was clouded. She took one of the candies and put it in her mouth. Holding the coins in her hand, she looked down at the blank card.
“Yes… of course. I remember him. David Forrester, right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Sarah agreed. “David Forrester. That poor young man.”
“He’s very handsome,” the woman said, looking at the card.
Sarah picked it up and tucked it back away in her wallet. As she busied herself with putting her possessions back away, the receptionist handed back the loose change.
“What room did you say he was in?” Sarah asked.
“One-eighty.”
“Thank you very much! You have a nice day, now, dear.”
The receptionist nodded her head. Looking at the various signs, Letticia pointed to the right. “This wing over here.”
Reg managed to keep her mouth shut until they got out of sight and earshot of the receptionist. “How did you do that?” she asked. “What exactly was it you just did?”
“Oh, just a couple of little charms to help clear up the confusion,” Sarah said with a satisfied smile.
“Why would Warren have been admitted as David Forrester?”
“I can’t tell you that right now. But I can tell you… there is magic at work here.”
“No…”
“Come on, let’s go have a look at your young man and see if we can’t sort it out.”
⋆ Chapter Fifteen ⋆
The three of them walked purposefully through the hallways as if they knew exactly where they were going, hoping to avoid anyone asking any questions. The signage was clear, and in a few minutes, they found themselves in the little unit cluster that held Warren’s room.
There was a nurse on duty at the desk in the center of the unit, and she attempted to stop them from going any farther without explaining what business they had there. It was Letticia who jumped into action this time, approaching the woman with a series of odd questions that distracted and confused her.
Sarah pulled on Reg’s arm, and they found Warren’s room.
Reg recognized the man as the one in the photo Ling had shown her. He had lost weight, his face looking quite gaunt. He didn’t look sick or injured, but instead looked like he was peacefully asleep and would wake up the moment they talked to him or touched him. He was hooked up to a number of machines that beeped and whooshed. There was an IV draining into his arm and a bag filling with yellow fluid hung below the level of the blanket on the bed.
“It’s him,” Reg confirmed, in case Sarah had any doubt. She put her hand tentatively on Warren’s arm. “Warren? Are you okay? Warren?”
There was no answering muscle movement. His arm remained slack and still under her touch.
Reg raised her voice. “Warren. Can you talk to me, Warren?”
Sarah made a warning noise, and Reg realized too late what she had done. The combination of her proximity to Warren, actually touching him, and the instruction to talk to her reopened the channel they had previously used, the one that Warren had been trying to get back through ever since then. Sarah reached out to stop Reg too late.
“You came!” Warren’s voice came from inside Reg. “You found me. But where is Ling?”
“Ling isn’t here,” Sarah said. “We had to find you first, make sure you were here. We didn’t want to put Ling through that disappointment if we didn’t find you.”
“You need to bring her. She could be in danger. They could come after her.”
“Who could come after her? Who did this to you, Warren?”
“Did what to me?”
“Can you see your body? Look at yourself right here.”
Reg found herself staring at Warren’s form in the bed, her eyes wide with astonishment. She looked all around the room, taking everything in.
“What happened? Why am I here? Am I sick?”
“They told us you were in a plane accident. Do you remember being in a plane accident?”
Reg watched the disjointed images flash through her brain. Warren’s plane, his pride and joy. The thing that he would use to build his business and become independent. He’d be able to give Ling everything she wanted and deserved. All he needed was that plane and a good plan and hard work, and he’d be able to make a good living for them.
The images wavered in front of her, the plane getting smaller and melting out of sight. Had they wrecked his beautiful plane? They wouldn’t have dared, would they? It was his baby.
“My plane,” Warren’s voice groaned. “How could they do that? Not my plane!”
“It wasn’t just your plane,” Letticia said, coming into the room. “Look at what they’ve done to you! You were supposed to die in that wreck.”
“I’m not dead. You said I was dead, but I’m not. I’m still alive!”
Letticia moved to the bedside. She looked Warren over. She stood by him and held her hands out, just over him, moving them around as if feeling for some force that surrounded his body. Back and forth, up and down, like some human form of MRI looking for anything unusual in his energy field. Sarah was quiet and so was Warren, watching it all through Reg’s eyes.
“What’s wrong with me?” Warren finally asked. “Did I hit my head?”
“Do you remember anything about how it happened?”
Reg remembered people, but their faces were blurred and indistinct. What had they done to him? Had they drugged him? Hit him over the head? Had they put him in the plane and crashed it, or had they dumped him somewhere else, intending that his body would never be found? Who had brought him to the hospital?
“I don’t know. There was a man in a dark coat. Who wears a long, dark coat in Florida? And a man with dreadlocks. There were… I don’t know how many of them there were. I told them I wouldn’t do anything illegal, and they laughed. I don’t know why they were laughing.”
A man in a dark coat. Reg had seen one man in a long, dark coat recently.
“They put a spell on you,” Letticia informed Warren. “A binding spell. It is holding you here, keeping you from waking up.”
“A spell?” Warren’s voice was incredulous. “You mean like a magic spell?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no such thing as magic!”
“Then wake up.”
Warren was silent, considering this. Maybe he was trying to move, feeling out his body, trying to wake himself up. But whatever he tried, it wasn’t working.
“Something is wrong. Maybe they drugged me or hit me over the head. You have to help me.”
“We’re trying to help you,” Letticia said calmly. “But we need more information about who it was that did this to you. We need to know the person who cast the spell if we’re going to break it.”
“I don’t know who it was!” Warren’s voice held an edge of panic. “The names they gave me were false. I checked them out and they weren’t who they said they were.”
“A man with a black coat,” Letticia said slowly. “There are a number of warlocks around here who wear black coats or cloaks at least part of the time. Dreadlocks are not uncommon either. What was it they wanted you to do? You said that you wouldn’t do anything illegal, and that you checked them out, so you must have known that what they wanted was against the law.”
“It wasn’t what they said it was. I knew it wasn’t. They were offering too much money, and there was too much…” Warren’s voice hesitated, trying to find the right words. “Too much whispering and the way they looked at me when I c
ame into the room. You can tell, if someone only talks when you’re out of the room, and when you get back, the whole room goes quiet…”
“What did they say it was?” Sarah asked.
Reg tried to see it in her mind. She could feel Warren’s energy flagging and knew he wasn’t going to be able to keep using her for much longer. She tried to get him to fill her mind with the pictures, so she would understand what he had seen and heard, even without the names of the men who had crashed his plane. She closed her eyes, trying to take it all in. He filled her up with a flood of pictures and then he was gone.
Reg nearly toppled over, but Letticia caught her on one side and supported her until Sarah could take Reg’s other arm and they held her up between them.
“Are you okay?” Sarah demanded. “Reg? Can you hear me?”
Reg nodded her woozy head. She tried to get control of the spinning and to cobble together an answer.
“He’s gone. Is he… is he still okay? He’s not dead, is he?”
Sarah watched the machines as they continued to cycle through their usual sounds. Letticia stared into the space above Warren’s body.
“He’s still there,” Letticia said. “He’s just weak. Manifesting like this takes lots of energy. A strong mind and lots of willpower. It will leave him in a weakened state, and he’s already vulnerable. He’s already been damaged.”
“By the crash?” Reg whispered.
The two witches walked Reg backward until they reached a visitor chair, and then they lowered her into it. Reg tried not to let her eyes close, knowing that if she let herself go to sleep, it might be hours before she was able to wake up again. The way she was feeling, it might be days before she woke up again. They’d have to hook her up to tubes like Warren to keep her alive.
“No, he wasn’t damaged by the crash,” Letticia said. “He probably wasn’t even in the crash. Or if he was, he was rescued right away. It’s not physical damage that worries me, it’s the psychic damage.”
What the Cat Knew Page 11