“Something's been at her too,” Piotr said, leaning into Mrs. Barry's personal space and examining her face closely. She shivered and released Wendy's wrist, reached for her jacket and shrugged it on. “My word,” she fussed. “They do keep it cold in here, don't they?”
“Can't you see it?” Piotr asked, pointing at her mouth and the corners of her eyes. “That residue?”
Now that Piotr had pointed it out, if Wendy squinted just right, she could barely make out what he was referring to. There was a pale, thin film overlaying Mrs. Barry's face, a clinging mesh so fine she imagined she'd need a ghostly microscope to be able to truly examine it in detail.
“I don't know what it is,” Wendy said aloud and took Eddie's hand in her own to cover the outburst when Mrs. Barry looked at her curiously. “The hospital just has to keep it frigid, I guess. Think he needs a blanket?”
“I asked already,” Mrs. Barry exclaimed as Piotr dug his hand in the side of her face. “It's a spirit web, I think,” he said. “Whatever it is, it's put down roots.”
“But that awful head nurse,” Mrs. Barry continued as Piotr worked his hands in and out of the flesh of her cheeks, rocking his fingers under the strands to gently lift them away. “She says their linen supplier is running late with the delivery! Then she said if I were willing to wait she'd see if any of the other beds of the floor had a blanket free. Can you believe that?”
“Be careful,” Wendy said and then cleared her throat. “You have no clue where those extra blankets have been, I mean. Anyone could have been sitting on them. Germs.”
Nodding frantically, Mrs. Barry grabbed her free hand. “You are so right, dear! And that's just what I told that nurse. I said, ‘Now you listen here, young lady, I'm not going to have my only son covered in the filth of other people, no ma'am!'”
All of Piotr's fingers were now wedged beneath the web; pulling the threads away was taking real effort at this point. Whatever it was, it had sunk itself deep into her head and cords of muscle stood out against Piotr's neck as he braced his feet against Mrs. Barry's chair and pulled. The film began to rip.
“Mrs. Barry!” Wendy cried. When Eddie's mother looked at her quizzically she licked her lips. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You look sort of white.”
“You know,” Mrs. Barry whispered, hand reaching through the web Piotr was yanking free of her skull with all his might. “I do feel somewhat lightheaded. Perhaps I should…sit…down—”
With one final mighty tug, Piotr pulled the web free. Loose all the way to the roots, the thin strands were rounded like the roots of a tree and dripping with dark silver life. Seeking any energy at all, the web waved towards Wendy the moment it separated from Mrs. Barry.
The instant it was out of her face, Mrs. Barry slumped to the floor and Wendy, crying out in disgust, dodged past the nasty thing in Piotr's arms to push the call button. The nurse was there within moments.
“What happened?”
“She fainted,” Wendy panted. “She was just talking and she fainted.”
In the background Piotr had drawn his dagger and was stabbing the web; each thrust of the knife caused the thing to wail and keen in pain, tendrils thrashing madly. Wendy found it immensely hard to concentrate on explaining Mrs. Barry's collapse to the nurse while the web shrieked itself to death in the background. The nurse pushed Wendy out of the room and cried for a doctor over the intercom. Wendy, glad to be free, fled down the hall.
“That was disgusting,” Wendy whispered, walking briskly towards the elevators. Her mother's room was two floors up from Eddie's. Once ensconced in the safety of the elevator, Wendy leaned against the back wall, pressed her hands to her face, and trembled from head to toe. “Why?” she asked. “What the hell was that thing?”
“It was definitely a spirit web,” Piotr said. “It's like a rabbit snare; you throw many in the air and go back later, see what you caught.”
“It was feeding off her?”
“It's just collecting life from her a minute or two at a time. From the look of that thing, it's been there for longer than Eddie's been…gone.” Piotr rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. “When it gets full or the person it takes root in dies, the web detaches and finds its way outside. Spirit webs like to stay warm. It will crawl as high as it can—plant itself on the roof of a building if possible, to be close to the sun—and wait for someone to come along and harvest the life.”
“That is horrible.” Wendy pressed her hand to her mouth. “But if those things are so effective then why aren't they all over the place?”
He shrugged. “I haven't seen a spirit web in a long time, Wendy. They're extremely difficult to produce; you have to find a plant in the Never's wild and then have a ghost insane enough to be willing to gestate one in their own guts. It gives the seedlings a taste for life essence.” He paused. “Wait. High places…” Had that been what the White Lady was doing at the airport that day? Collecting spirit webs? The air towers certainly were tall enough, and with all the living moving through the area there was bound to be at least a web or two to be harvested in the wild.
“Just when I thought death couldn't get any more gross,” Wendy complained. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. She led the way down the hall and Jon and Chel, sitting on either side of their mom, looked up when Wendy entered.
“Mom's really witty today,” Jon said, scrubbing his knuckles across his face. He gestured to the television mounted in the upper corner of the room. On the screen a pregnant-to-bursting teen was pulling the hair of a skinny blonde girl with one hand and punching her in the small of the back with the other. “I keep telling her that daytime TV is the new opiate of the masses but Mom's of the opinion that reality shows are where the real money is.”
“I still think Nana's ‘stories’ top that list,” Chel added, leaning back in the molded plastic chair and crossing her legs. “You can't beat good old-fashioned soaps.”
“Porn,” Wendy said. “It's a growth industry.”
Grinning at their groans, Wendy settled into Jon's seat while he went to find another chair. They could have sat on the opposite bed, but none of them wanted to be far from their mother. Wendy held her mom's thin, cool hand while Piotr examined the body.
“Any change?” Wendy asked her sister while Piotr probed her mother's midsection, slipping his hands deep inside her guts.
“None.” Chel shook her head, looking their mother over sadly. “I feel like a jerk for saying this, Wendy, but maybe they're right. Maybe it's time to pull the plug. Mom wouldn't want to be strapped down and cooped up, some vegetable in a bed. She'd rather end it.”
“I don't know,” Wendy mused as Piotr's hands slipped out of her mother's abdomen and rested, relaxed, on his hips. He glanced meaningfully at her mother then at the doorway, drifting out the door a few seconds later. “Mom was a fighter, Chel. She might still be in there, you know, fighting.”
“Maybe.” Chel squeezed their mom's hand and rose, crossing her arms over her chest. “I've been having these crazy dreams about her. You know how bad flu dreams get—you start running a little fever and suddenly you've got Wonderland camped out between your ears.”
Chuckling, Wendy nodded. “We've all had a couple doozies. Why, what happened?”
“I can't remember,” Chel said, shrugging. “But I was at the park, you know, the one up the street? I was sitting on the old rusty swingset, not the new plastic one but the old one that would burn your butt in July? Anyway, it was one of those dreams you get where you can watch everything happening but you're not really there? Like you're watching a movie? You were there, talking to Mom, right? You were yelling at each other. She was saying that you had to try again but you didn't want to. And I wanted to try since you didn't want to, but I didn't know what you were trying. Then she slapped you and told you to grow up. Weird, huh?”
A chill shivered down Wendy's spine. What was it the White Lady had said about dreams before? She was so tired and stressed out about her mother and
Eddie that she couldn't remember.
“So,” she asked, forcing lightness, “did you ever get a chance to try?”
“Nah. My alarm went off and I woke up.”
“Shame,” Wendy said. She brushed a loose strawberry curl back against her mother's face. “I think I'd do anything she wanted, no matter how hard it was, to get her back.”
“Me too,” Chel said, skirting the edge of the bed and hugging Wendy with one arm. “We all would.”
Embarrassed but secretly pleased at the embrace, Wendy cleared her throat. “Does she need her nails cut or anything? I see you brushed her hair.”
“They do a good job here,” Chel said, patting their mother's hand. “She looks okay overall. No bedsores or anything.” She lifted their mom's hand higher and twisted her wrist gently. “You know, I've seen these tattoos before but I didn't realize until today that these are the same ones you've got all over you. When'd you get yours again?”
“About a year ago. Dad had that fit, remember?”
“Right, cause Mom signed off on you getting them without checking it by him first. He was so pissed!”
“He just doesn't want us to grow up,” Wendy said. “Mom understood that it had to happen sometime.” That wasn't the real reason she sported the same lines and knots her mother had embedded deep into her flesh, but Chel wasn't a Lightbringer and wouldn't understand the need for the supernatural protection the ink provided. It wasn't much, it only created an aversion at best, but every bit counted, no matter what the White Lady claimed.
“She let you get matching ink permanently poked into your skin and a dozen earrings, but freaked when I wanted to bleach my hair.” Chel shook her head. “I love her but sometimes she can be such a hypocrite.” Her voice dropped. “I didn't want to say this before, but I used to hate you for that. It just wasn't fair.” She sighed. “I guess I got over it, huh?”
Saddened and embarrassed for her sister, Wendy shrugged, uncomfortable with the direction this conversation had turned. “I'm just different than you, Chel. Different rules apply to me, I guess.”
She snorted. “Why? Because you're older?”
“Nah,” Wendy said. “Because I'm Batman.”
“Right, right,” Chel said, laughing.
“I hear the Joker's hiring,” Wendy continued. “And you do have a wicked laugh.”
“Yeah, but those clothes! Not in a million years.” Coughing, Chel pressed a hand to her forehead. “Ugh, I feel like crap, Wendy. I wish this fever would break already.”
“I know, honey,” Wendy said. “Visiting hours aren't over yet, but we don't have to stay if you don't feel up to it. You know how Nana likes to cook a ton of food for lunch—”
“Yeah right,” Chel snorted. “The idea of eating makes me want to puke.”
“And that's different from normal, how?”
“Haha, very funny. I'll find Jon and we'll see Eddie before we leave.” Chel squeezed their mother's fingers once more and laid her hand back on the bed before brushing a soft kiss across her forehead. “Love you, Momma. I'll be back soon, okay?” Then she brightened. “Oh, I almost forgot. This got left for you. Here.” She dug in her purse and pulled out an envelope, roughly folded and addressed to Wendy in neat, blocky letters. “I guess some intern on the floor worked pretty closely with Mom? Dr. Hensley? Henley? Whatever.”
“Emma? She left something for me?” Wendy reached out. “What's it say?”
Chel frowned. “How should I know? I don't read people's mail. Anyway, she got transferred or something and left this. You really attract the psychos, don't you?” Wendy took the envelope and tucked it into her pocket. She'd worry about reading another goodbye later. Right now learning as much as possible about Eddie and her mother was more important, even if Emma Henley had been a truly nice person.
When Chel left, Piotr drifted through the wall and sat on the edge of the bed, expression grave. “You are right, your mother's soul is gone.”
“Of course I'm right,” Wendy murmured. “Souls are sort of my thing now, I'm not a total newb.”
“But she's different than Eddie in one major way,” Piotr added. “Look at her navel.”
Confused, Wendy glanced down. It was her mother's stomach, flat and moving almost imperceptibly as she breathed slowly in and out. “So? What about it?”
“Unlike Eddie, Wendy, your mother has no cord.” He waved his hand over several inches above her body, moving from ribs to pelvis in one smooth sweep. “It's gone.”
“What? That can't be…” Wendy's protest died in her throat. He was right. Eddie's cord had looked gnawed through, but the remains of it had still been firmly attached to his body, thick and healthy and vibrant. Her mother's midriff, however, was smooth and bare. “I can't believe I didn't see that before.”
“I'm not surprised. You probably don't look much at yourself when you're the Lightbringer, do you? Have you ever stopped and taken a glance at what you look like?”
“Of course not, when I'm like that I've got more important things to do than preen in front of a mirror,” Wendy snapped.
“Wendy, when you're the Lightbringer, you don't have a cord either.”
“That's because I'm alive, though, right?”
He shrugged. “I don't know. There's so much mystery surrounding what you do and how you do it, not to mention exactly how long your family has been this way. Maybe the White Lady is right. Maybe you really were too young to be a Lightbringer yet.”
“I hate that I don't know diddly squat about how all this works,” Wendy said bleakly.
“I have a theory,” Piotr said. “Remember what happened in the park with Specs? He attacked you and pulled your soul out?”
“He was scared—”
“I'm not blaming him, but he did give me an idea. Wendy, I think the reason your family can do the things you do is that maybe your souls are different than other souls. There was no cord when he pulled your soul out; you were just this fragile ball of light. No, not light…Light. And even though your soul was yanked out, you were still conscious. You could sense what was going on around you, you even understood that I put your soul back inside your body.”
“Right? So…”
“Both Specs and I knew that we could break you, Wendy. It was…instinctual. Perhaps this is what happened to your mother? I think the Lost didn't pull her out whole. I think the reason you couldn't find your mother no matter how hard you looked is because her soul was a ball, a glowing ball of Light just like yours.”
Piotr hesitated, not wanting to finish the last part of his theory but knowing that he had to, even if it hurt her. “And Wendy? I think it's entirely possible that when the Lost saw your mother they panicked, pulled your mother's soul out…and that they might have broken it.”
Dropping off the twins was easier than Wendy had anticipated; she'd expected Jon or Chel to protest Wendy's announcement that she didn't feel like spending the night, but neither of them said a word. They merely collected their duffle bags, hugged her goodbye, and trooped up the steps to Nana's front door. When the door shut behind them Piotr slid into the passenger side seat.
“You're quiet,” he said.
“Yep,” Wendy replied, pulling out of her grandmother's driveway and onto the street. Experience with the route made the return drive automatic; Wendy reached the highway in a fugue-like state. “I'm thinking thoughts.”
“Would you care to share?”
“Maybe. I don't know. Not really. A little.”
“That's clear.”
“Look, Piotr, give me a break. You think my mom's soul got broken apart. The White Lady claims she's got it, and she showed me a flap of essence to prove it. I don't know what to think or who to believe. All I know is that I'm sick and tired of people fucking with me, okay?” Wendy pounded on the horn. “GET OUT OF THE WAY! FUCK! Learn to drive, asshole!”
“So what's next?” Piotr asked, keeping his voice carefully neutral. “The ball, as they say, appears to be in our court.”
&
nbsp; “We do as she said,” Wendy said after long seconds of silence. “You and I go visit her at the Palace Hotel. She has this all planned out, so I don't have much of a choice, do I?”
Startled, Piotr struggled to find a reply. “You're not serious?”
“I am.” Wendy floored the gas and the little sedan leapt onto the highway with a short grumble of the engine. Glancing into her mirrors, Wendy slid into the middle lane; carpooling was out now, even if Piotr was sitting next to her. A cop certainly wouldn't believe her if she claimed that a ghost was riding shotgun.
“Your big plan is to hand me over to her?” Betrayal colored the words with bitterness.
“No, my big plan was to use you as bait,” Wendy replied shortly. “It's almost three. Think we should take the bridge? I'm worried about traffic.”
“Take the bridge, it's not bad this time of day,” Piotr agreed absently. “Bait? You really think the White Lady is going to fall for that?”
“Not really,” Wendy snapped, scooting between a semi and a Honda with a severely cracked windshield. The driver was hunched over, peering between the spiderweb of cracks and the pouring rain. “But that's why I changed my plan. She thinks I'm just going to show up at midnight with you in tow, then she's got another thing coming.” Wendy, exasperated, tapped the horn. “Get off the road!” she yelled. “Geeze, that's a car wreck waiting to happen.”
“Wendy,” Piotr said patiently. “I want you to talk to me.”
“I am talking to you,” she replied, picking and choosing her words with care. “I'm also driving in some nasty weather, which, if you recall, was how I met you in the first place. So if you don't mind cutting me just a little slack, I'd appreciate it, thanks.” Sitting up straighter in her seat, Wendy began to haltingly outline her plan for the White Lady. They just had to make one stop first.
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