“You really think this is some kind of spell?” Reg shook her head. She’d heard of a vegetative state before. She’d heard of locked-in syndrome. A person could appear to be just fine in his body, but an injury in his brain kept him from ever waking up again, keeping him in a twilight prison for years or even decades.
“Don’t discount it just because you don’t understand it,” Letticia said. “There are many kinds of poisons and drugs that can keep you in a state of suspension. And there are incantations and forces of will that can do it just as well, without ever leaving a mark on the body.”
Medical science could explain a lot of things, but it couldn’t explain everything. There were still things that modern science could not explain away. Reg had watched documentaries about psychics and the scientific tests that had been attempted to prove or disprove psychic ability. She’d studied them extensively to be able to play her part. And even though she didn’t believe in her heart of hearts that real psychic ability existed, she couldn’t discount that there was something. Even her own abilities, which she attributed to intuition and imagination, were scarily accurate at times.
“So how do we break it, then?”
“Like I told Warren,” Letticia said, “we have to find out who did this first. It isn’t until we know who did it that we can attempt to reverse it. The maker has a lot of psychic energy tied up in keeping Warren bound, and until he releases that bond, Warren will sleep. Or he’ll get lost in the twilight.”
“But how can we make him release it?”
Letticia and Sarah exchanged looks. Letticia shook her head grimly. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. First, we have to find him.”
⋆ Chapter Sixteen ⋆
Reg was exhausted. Even after resting in Warren’s room for some time, she still needed help from Sarah and Letticia to get back out of the building and to the jeep, which was still parked outside the main doors of the building.
“You’re lucky no one towed it!” Reg said when she saw the black jeep sitting there. “This is a ten-minute loading zone, and we were in there for a couple of hours.”
Sarah laughed. “No one is going to tow my car,” she said without concern.
“Why? Do you have a spell cast on it?”
Sarah and Letticia helped push Reg up into the vehicle and got her settled. She got the front seat this time, and as Letticia pulled the seatbelt across her and clicked it into place, Reg had a suspicion it was so that she wouldn’t be thrown around the interior of the jeep in her weakened state. Letticia then got into the back.
“I have a number of charms and wards in place,” Sarah confirmed. “Anyone who wants to interfere with it in some way is just going to get distracted and decide to do something else instead.”
“What do you mean?” Reg waited until Sarah had gone around the jeep and gotten back into the driver’s seat. “You mean they walk up to give you a parking ticket or tow you away, and then they decide that they need to chase butterflies instead?”
Letticia snorted loudly in a surprised laugh. Sarah eyed Reg and chuckled more sedately. “That would be a good one,” she agreed. “Usually it’s not butterflies. Maybe their radio starts acting up. Or the phone rings. Or their boss has an important project they need to work on right away. Just something that distracts them from what they were going to do.”
“So you can just park wherever you please and drive however you want,” Reg said in disbelief. “Actually—that explains a lot.”
All three of them laughed. Reg closed her eyes as Sarah started the engine.
“Please… just drive slowly home. We found Warren. We don’t need to rush.”
She could feel a look pass between Sarah and Letticia without even seeing it.
“We found him,” Letticia said, “but that doesn’t put him out of danger. In fact, if anyone knows we found him, he may be in even more danger. Whoever put him there may decide that the binding spell on the boy and confusion over the caregivers aren’t enough and turn to something more drastic. Something that doesn’t require him to spend his energy maintaining a hold.”
“You mean they would kill him? They couldn’t!”
“There is evil in this world, Regina.”
“We have to find out who did this to him.”
“Yes. But I agree with Reg on one thing” Letticia directed her words at Sarah. “We could take the trip home a little more slowly while we consider our course of action.”
Sarah grudgingly kept the jeep to the speed of the traffic around them and slowed for intersections and corners. Reg let sleep steal over her. She was so exhausted by her ordeal. Her mind kept flipping between disbelief and understanding. She pondered all that Warren’s spirit had had to say, trying to sort out what had happened to him, and then her logical mind took over, objecting, insisting that there was no scientific proof of the psychic experience she had invented at the hospital.
It was only her wild imagination, just like when she was a child. She was making up stories to fit the circumstances, not uncovering the truth. She could invent and adapt, but it was just a combination of intuition, the research she had done for her part, and her out-of-control imagination. It didn’t help that the two women who should have had the sense to bring her down to earth were instead feeding her more nonsense.
The feeling of swinging back and forth between the two schools of thought drifted into the physical sensation of swinging on a swing. She was in a park, a playground with old, rusted swings and climbers. Reg swung back and forth, back and forth for hours, the swinging satisfying part of her brain that was always anxious and restless. As she swung, sitting by herself, she watched the other children and adults in the playground as they came and went.
And then Mrs. Gordon came. She was a fat woman who didn’t like to leave the house, so Reg knew the moment she saw the woman headed toward her that she was in trouble. She jumped off the swing, but her legs and her body were so accustomed to the swinging movement that her knees buckled and she fell down, dizzy with her contact with the earth.
“What have I told you a million times?” Mrs. Gordon demanded. “You’re supposed to come home when there’s no one else at the park. It’s not safe for a girl your age to be hanging out here all by yourself, and we’ll have the neighbors making calls to Social Services, saying that I’m not taking care of you properly.” She got within reach of Reg, and cuffed her across the head. “You are supposed to be home in bed.”
Reg raised her hand to block any further blows, looking around in confusion. “I was going to come when everybody else went home…”
“Then why didn’t you?” the red-faced woman challenged. Mrs. Gordon grabbed Reg’s arm and pulled her to her feet, holding her there like a dog on a shortened leash.
Reg motioned to the playground. “I’m not the last one. Polly is still here…”
Mrs. Gordon’s eyes followed Reg’s finger to the empty climbers. “Don’t you get started with your imaginary friends again. We are not dealing with this nonsense!”
Reg’s shoulders slumped as she looked at Polly. The younger girl gave her a happy smile, not seeming to understand the trouble she had gotten Reg in. Reg put both hands over her face.
“You were supposed to tell me when it was time to go home,” Reg murmured into her hands.
“What’s that?”
“I was talking to Polly…”
Mrs. Gordon shook her. “You’re way too old to be using imaginary friends as an excuse. You’re a big girl and you know better. You know as well as I do that there’s nobody here.” She shook Reg harder. “Say it! You know that there’s no one here.”
“There’s no one here,” Reg repeated, a stray tear leaking from the corner of her eye and tracing a path down her cheek. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Gordon started to haul her in the direction of home. “You’re going straight to bed. No supper. If you have to go hungry, maybe you’ll learn something from this.”
In opposition to Mrs. Gordon’s pu
ll, Reg could feel Polly’s pull on her insides.
“No, don’t go,” Polly pleaded, “Don’t leave me alone here!”
But Reg couldn’t answer Polly, or her punishment would be that much worse. The tears ran down her cheeks faster. She looked back despite herself. Mrs. Gordon jerked her arm, wrenching her shoulder.
Reg knew from the look on Mrs. Gordon’s face that she wanted to punish Reg by telling her she couldn’t go to the park anymore. She was right on the edge of it, looking for something that would hurt Reg more than the slap across the head or withholding of supper. But forbidding the park would mean that Reg was underfoot right from the time school let out, and that would punish Mrs. Gordon as much as Reg.
“I’m sorry,” Reg told her again. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Ling was clearly uncertain about why Reg had called her back to the cottage. She was looking Reg over every time Reg glanced at her.
“I was thinking about coming back,” Ling confessed. “It was so good to hear Warren’s voice again. But I also thought… it might not be healthy for me to keep coming back, right? I mean, I don’t want to avoid the grieving process. I want to be able to heal and get past this.” Her eyes teared up. “However much I don’t feel like I can get over Warren. Other people do. They go on with their lives.”
“Ling…” Reg didn’t want to draw it out and make Ling suffer any longer than she had to. She put the tea tray down on the coffee table and sat down. “I didn’t ask you here because I wanted to do another reading for Warren. He’s been on my mind plenty, but that’s not why I called you.”
“Oh.” Ling was still. Her eyes wandered around the room as if she might be able to pick up on what it was. “Okay…”
“You remember how Warren kept saying that he wasn’t dead?”
Ling nodded. “Of course.”
“He was right, Ling. Warren isn’t dead!”
Ling’s expression immediately became guarded. She wasn’t about to let Reg hurt her and scam her and lead her along. She thought she knew Reg’s game, but she was wrong. Reg leaned in closer.
“Warren is at McNara. He was checked in under the name of David Forrester. It’s hard to explain, but… he’s in a coma there. My friends and I are trying to figure out what we can do to help him, if there’s anything we can do.”
Ling’s eyes were wide with shock. “But… how could that be? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I know it doesn’t, and I wish I could explain it all to you in a way that made sense, but I can’t. He is alive, and he’s worried about you. He’s worried that the men who crashed his plane might come after you.”
She blinked and shook her head. “The men who crashed his plane? But it was an accident. That’s what the police and the crash investigators said. Something… a malfunction.”
“They were wrong. If they could be wrong about the fact that Warren was dead, they could be wrong about the crash, couldn’t they? It wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a malfunction. They sabotaged it or they steered it into the water.”
“Why?”
“We’re trying to figure that out. I am, and a couple of friends are helping me. We don’t have all of the answers yet, but I wanted to tell you, so you weren’t mourning Warren when he’s still alive.”
Reg was glad that Ling was already sitting down. She looked completely devastated. Reg didn’t quite understand; she had expected Ling to be elated. But human emotions weren’t always logical. It would take Ling time to get from the place where she had been mourning for her dead husband to celebrating his life. If they could keep him alive and find a way to free him from the coma. It was too early to be celebrating yet.
“Ling, I know it’s a lot to take in, but I need your help. How much do you know about Warren’s business? Do you know who he was supposed to be doing a courier job for? Did he tell you any of his suspicions about it?”
“It wasn’t really a business… just a job now and then. He wanted to get his own business set up, not to have to work for someone else… but that was still in the future. He needed time to get established…”
“But he did jobs now and then. Who was he doing a courier job for when he crashed?”
Ling thought about it. She shook her head. “I don’t know. He said they were strange. Like, they were into role play or reenactment. I pictured… drama geeks… not anyone that would be dangerous.”
“Did he tell you that he checked them out and they weren’t who they said they were? And they weren’t transporting what they said they were?”
Ling shook her head again. “No,” her voice quivered. “He didn’t tell me that.”
“Did he have any records? A day planner, computer, flight plans?”
“He had a computer… but it was with him. It went down with the plane.”
“Dang it… did he have a backup? Did he sync to the cloud so he could have it on his phone?”
“To be honest…” Ling rubbed at a spot on her saucer, “he wasn’t very good at writing things down or keeping records. You’d think that being a pilot, he’d be really good at academic stuff, but he wasn’t. He had learning disabilities, and he wasn’t very good at writing things down. He kept it all in his head.”
And now a jumble of what he had kept in his head was residing in Reg’s, but she couldn’t find a way to sort it out and file it properly. She felt a sudden kinship with Warren. Not just because she was carrying his memories around in her head, but because she knew what it was like to grow up with learning disabilities. To try to live in a world where so much depended on reading and writing when reading and writing came so hard.
“I’m sorry. I really want to help you,” Ling said.
“Well… you have my number, so let me know if you think of anything. But Warren was worried they might come after you, so you might want to… find somewhere else to stay for a while. Call in sick at work and fly under the radar until we figure this all out.”
“Do you really think there’s any danger? They don’t know me and Warren didn’t tell me things about work. It isn’t like he left a lot of papers around the house. I don’t see why they would have any concerns about me.”
“I don’t know. Do you trust Warren?”
“Yes, of course I trust him.”
“Then you should listen to his warning, don’t you think? If he’d called you up on the phone and told you to stay away and go into hiding, you’d do it?”
“Yes. But that’s not what happened. I don’t…” Ling hesitated. “I don’t have any proof. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe you, but… you could be making it all up. It doesn’t sound like Warren. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Maybe… maybe you should go see him,” Reg suggested. “Maybe then you’ll feel what it is he’s trying to tell you. And you want to be sure that he’s really alive, and I’m not just playing with you, trying to get money out of you somehow, right? I’m not making you pay me to tell you where he is or to make you buy more sessions to talk to him. I already told you where he is and the name he’s there under. You can check it out for yourself.”
“And if he’s there, will you talk to him for me?”
Reg’s stomach knotted. Her brain was so exhausted from channeling Warren already. Every time she talked for him, it took more out of her and made it harder to come back. From what Sarah said, the same thing was happening to him. The more he tried to communicate with them, the weaker he got, the more tenuous his hold on life.
“I don’t think I can,” she told Ling as gently as she could. “And I don’t know if Warren can.”
Ling put her hands over her face, quelling any tears. “This is crazy, you know that? I just came here one time to try to get some peace. To say goodbye to Warren for the last time. And you’re dumping all of this stuff on me. None of it makes any sense.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’ll go to this place, and I’ll see if he’s there… but if he isn’t, I don’t know. I’m not just going to take being str
ung along.” She made a determined face.
Reg nodded. “Okay. But don’t ask for him at the front desk or at the nursing station. He’s in room 180. If you ask someone where he is, they’ll just tell you he isn’t there. Go look for yourself. Just walk in and act like you’re supposed to be there and know where you’re going.”
“Why are they hiding him there?”
“The staff… they don’t really know, I don’t think.” Giving more details would just be more mumbo-jumbo to Ling. She wasn’t going to understand that it was all some sort of magical plot. So why did Reg believe any of it? “They’re just… confused. They’ve been told a different story, told he is someone different.”
“So I’ll set them straight, if it really is Warren. And he’ll get better. And everything will go back to normal again.”
Starlight jumped up onto Reg’s lap. She pulled him against herself, feeling his warm, compact body. What about her? Was everything ever going to be normal again? If she left Black Sands, would she be able to go back to normal and pretend that nothing had ever happened? Would it just be some wild story about her misspent youth that she’d look back on with fondness when she was old?
Or would the disquiet cling to her like a spiderweb for the rest of her days? And how long would that be?
⋆ Chapter Seventeen ⋆
When Ling was gone, Reg felt like she had done all that she could. She needed to have a bite to eat and then she could lie down and go to sleep and replenish her energy. When Ling came back in a day or two, having decided to accept the story Reg told her, then they could take the next step. Reg would describe what she could remember from Warren’s memories, Ling would identify the men, and the witches would help to break the spell, releasing Warren from his magical coma. They would all live happily ever after.
In an ideal world, which, so far, Black Sands had not turned out to be.
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