by Alex Gordon
“Don’t.” Lauren jerked away as the pressure of the girl’s touch sent knives coursing up her arm.
“Honey, we’ll take good care of her.” Carmody met Lauren’s eye as he bent to pull Nyssa to her feet, and gave her a small nod. “But you have to come with me now. The doctor’s waiting.”
“She needs one more than I do.”
“We’ll take care of her. I promise.” Carmody lifted Nyssa to her feet, then paused so Kaster could wrap a towel around the girl’s bloody forearms. He then tried to steer her toward the bedroom door, but when she balked he picked her up and carried her.
“But did you see what she did?” Nyssa twisted until she could watch Lauren around Carmody’s shoulder.
“Yes, honey, I know. We all did. But you have to be quiet now because—” Carmody’s voice trailed as he carried his daughter into the hallway and the waiting arms of his medical staff. Peter and Stef followed, muttered discussion alternating with backward glances at Lauren.
“You okay?” Jenny stood just inside the bedroom door, arms folded, her face gray.
She looks ready to pass out. Lauren nodded slowly. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll save you a seat at the bar.” Jenny sidestepped out the door.
Lauren listened to the receding bustle of voices, the squeak and beep of medical equipment. Then she looked up to find Kaster regarding her. “Who saw?”
Kaster crouched beside her. “Only those of us who could cope with the sight of a woman passing through a solid wall.” Events of the last few hours had left him looking rumpled, his hair mussed and his shirt stained with dirt and sweat. One pant leg torn. “Not the paramedics or the guards. If they ask—which they won’t, because they know better—we’ll tell them you punched the wall to distract Nyssa.” He looked down at her hand and winced. “Or something.”
Lauren steeled herself, then assessed the damage. Her hand looked as though it had been mauled by a particularly pissed-off cat, the back crosshatched with deep scratches that seeped blood and a multitude of icepick-like wounds. Two fingers appeared swollen, and her wrist ached. But she could move everything, although her range of motion was definitely limited. “I don’t think anything’s broken.”
“You should see the doctor after she’s finished treating Nyssa.” Kaster slid his hand beneath hers and examined the wounds. “You look a little shaky.”
“Only a little?” Lauren shivered as Kaster brushed his fingers over hers, then traced one fingertip over the back of her hand, the self-inflicted gash on her forearm. “What are you doing?”
“Evaluating your wounds.”
“So we can count medical expert among your many talents?”
“One makes oneself useful however one can.” Kaster continued his tactile assessment. “According to circumstances.”
Lauren felt warmth suffuse her hand and move up her arm. Her wounds tingled as though touched with antiseptic. “Actually, it doesn’t feel that bad.” She eased out of his grasp and worked to her feet, then turned to the wall and saw the streaks of dried blood marring the paint.
Kaster stood and moved closer until he hovered at her shoulder. “Thank you.”
“It just kicks the can down the road until we figure out what’s going on, doesn’t it?” Lauren slipped past him toward the bathroom door. “Add to that the fact that I don’t know what I’m doing. I could have scared Nyssa into hurting herself. Into killing herself.”
“But you didn’t. You caught her interest, which might keep her from trying this again. Seat of the pants your ploy might have been, but it worked.”
“This time.” Lauren stepped into the bathroom. The sun through the skylight felt just as warm as it had a few minutes before, and she held her injured hand in the beam as though it could soothe and heal. Inhaled clean, bright soapy scents, then stilled as she picked up the faint hint of metal.
She walked to the mirror. Nyssa’s blood had long since dried, the coating so thick that Lauren could see no hint of her own reflection. She looked closer, spotted a ring of white surrounding the red, scraped it with her thumbnail and sniffed it. Soap. It looked as though Nyssa had tried other means to cover the mirror before resorting to cutting herself. “Has she ever done this before?”
“Self-harm? Yes. Many times.” Kaster touched the edge of the mirror. “But not this.” He sighed through his teeth, then looked down at his soiled shirt and frowned. “I’m going to go change, then go downstairs to the clinic.”
Lauren nodded.
“It’s at ground level. The blue door at the rear of the garage.”
“Right.” Lauren kept her back turned, felt Kaster’s stare burn two neat holes between her shoulder blades, and waited until she heard him make a muttering exit. Then she pressed her uninjured hand against the mirror. Felt nothing at first but the chill of the glass, the slight roughness of the dried blood like a badly applied layer of paint.
She waited. Minutes passed, and she was about to give up when she felt prickling through the tips of her fingers.
Damp warmth followed, as though the blood had yet to dry. Then an instant later came the searing heat, the pain, as though she had pressed her hand to an electric burner. Screaming filled her head, the wail of a desperate, terrified soul. Leave me alone.
Lauren jerked away from the mirror and stood bent over the sink as the nausea once again washed over her. After she steadied, she examined her palm, half-expecting to see blisters and reddened flesh. But the skin proved pale, and cool to the touch.
What’s going on, Nyssa? She wondered if she would be able to talk to the girl about what happened without making matters worse. She had no experience speaking to someone in such a precarious state of mind, no idea whether some seemingly innocent comment or question would be enough to set the girl off again.
Lauren left the bathroom, the bedroom. Walked down the hallway, the rooms she passed all empty and quiet, as though the tumult that had occurred such a short while before had never happened. She wandered lost for a time, backtracked, then finally stumbled upon the outlet to the stairs that led to the fourth-floor guest wing. She reached the first landing before she realized that she gripped the railing with her injured hand.
She wriggled her fingers, then rotated her wrist, found the pain had eased to a dull ache and the gashes had stopped bleeding. Even the swelling had gone down.
Lauren relived the light pressure of Kaster’s hand, the way he traced along bone and around each wound. A caring touch, at odds with his attitude, the man he seemed to be.
Full of surprises. She took hold of the railing again and headed up the stairs to her suite.
LAUREN SHOWERED, AS much to wash away memories of the last several hours as the dirt and sweat. She recalled dinner the previous evening, when Sam had announced her aversion to the open-air shower. Stood still as the water rained down, and tried not to think about how quickly it could all go to hell.
She decided that the odds of any group dinner were slight given the circumstances, so she dressed in shorts and a faded UW T-shirt and wandered downstairs to the bar to look for Jenny. Walked in to find Peter and Stef huddled at one of the small tables, and was about to turn tail when Peter beckoned to her. Damn. She stopped by the bar, debated straight vodka, but settled for wine.
“We just left Nyssa.” Peter scooted aside so Lauren could pull up a chair. “Andrew’s going to stay with her until she goes to sleep.”
“Did she say what happened?” Lauren caught a look pass between the pair, one of those glances that spoke volumes in a language an observer couldn’t begin to understand.
“This isn’t the first time she’s injured herself, unfortunately.” Peter stared into his drink. “But what happened today touched her deeply. Or perhaps ‘rattled’ describes it better. She talked of nothing but you all during her examination. Andrew had to shush her repeatedly.”
Lauren finished her wine, then beckoned to the bartender for a refill. “You’d think anyone who worked here would be used to seeing un
usual things.”
“Well, there’s unusual and then there’s . . . what you did.” Stef toyed with a tea ball steeping in a small china pot. “Virginia never told us of your ability to transmigrate.”
“She wouldn’t have put it in the Gideon report.” Lauren looked through the window at the world outside, where dusk had fallen and all was quiet and one could nurse a drink and try to come to terms with a hellish day instead of arguing about proper magic reporting procedures. “It’s developed over the last few months.”
“There is this amazing invention called the telephone.” Stef poured her tea, then added sugar. She stirred for some time, then set the spoon aside and clasped her hands as though to say grace. “I know you feel that this is nothing but bureaucratic rigmarole, but we must be kept informed about the level of talent of all the Children. It’s a suspicious, reactionary world in which we live. Rumors spread like wildfire and no matter how mad they sound, they’ll be believed. The next thing you know, someone’s being interviewed by one of those two-bit paranormal shows. Those silly tabloids. Then people start asking questions. Digging for information. We don’t need those kinds of surprises.”
Lauren held back all the comments that sprang to mind, snide or otherwise, and instead tried to figure out why Stef chose this time to be civil. Maybe because we’ve all been through enough today. Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that. “I have been through something like what you describe. I managed to keep my mouth shut, as did everyone else in Gideon who survived.”
“For now.” Stef turned to look out the window. “But the times, they are a-changin’.”
They sat in silence. Then Peter cleared his throat. “I told Stef about your method of mending the breach in the warding. And who you saw. I’m trying to convince her that we’re going to need to go back there soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow. We need to inspect the wards that are there, strengthen them if necessary.”
Stef shook her head. “The fact that all Lauren saw remained within the bounds of Jericho tells me that the wards are still working.”
“What about what I saw at the bottom of the garden?” Lauren watched Stef’s hands. The woman was a cuticle-picker, the skin around her thumbnails showing red and raw. “What about the fact that we’ve all seen Fernanda everywhere?”
“Everywhere but here, in this house.” Stef noticed where Lauren looked and folded her hands in her lap to hide the damage. “As long as the house is protected, then Nyssa has safe haven. A place where she can find peace.”
“How can you say that when she just tried to kill herself?” Lauren turned to Peter, who, if not an ally, at least seemed willing to listen. “Carmody was upset about the ward’s destruction. He wanted to replace it immediately. I asked him what had happened there. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Something is going on there, Stef, and it’s starting to bleed over.” Peter leaned close to Stef while pointing to Lauren. “How do you explain her seeing Fernanda?”
“She did live in this house for five years. It is more than likely that she visited Jericho at some point.” Stef slipped off her owlish glasses and rubbed her eyes. Without the rounds of black plastic, her face looked very small. “A place can retain memories of all that has occurred within its boundaries. Those occurrences do not necessarily have to have been bad. They don’t always have to portend awful things.”
“That makes no sense. If there’s no danger, why was the place warded to begin with?” Lauren felt the warmth of the wine, saw that she had already drained her second glass. Take it easy. “I spent part of today in the library with Jenny Porter. She dug up a boatload of information about the Carmody companies, and about Jericho, up until the late sixties. After that, nothing about Jericho. It’s as though it ceased to exist.” She glanced at Peter, who polished off his drink and now rolled the empty glass back and forth between his hands. Another nervous habit, like Stef’s nail picking. So much nervousness. “I didn’t just see Fernanda today. I saw the construction of a newer facility, and the people who worked there. Their clothing looked like late sixties or early seventies, the time where any mention of Jericho stops.”
Stef shook her head. “What you saw made no sense. Heavy equipment. Cranes and trucks. You don’t need those to build simple wooden structures like those that are there now.”
“My old job involved the management of lab construction projects.” Lauren thought back to those days, a seeming lifetime ago. “They may have built things underground.”
Peter perked up. His hands stilled. “Why do that?”
“One reason? Stability. Some lab equipment, like electron microscopes, function best in a vibration-free environment. That’s often more readily achieved by setting them up belowground.” Lauren replayed the scene in her head. All those people going into those tiny cabins, but no one coming out. “Simpler explanation? If it’s underground, you can’t see it.” She stood. “If you’ll excuse me—I need to get some air.” And she needed to be alone, so she could think.
The evening still held on to the heat and humidity of the day. Lauren felt the moisture settle on her skin as she crossed the patio and leaned on the railing. Forest sounds reached her. A flicker overhead as a bat or bird took wing. The odd grunt, and the sense of being watched by things she couldn’t see.
Then came the sound of the French doors opening and closing. Light footsteps.
“I know what you’re thinking. I’m every over-officious manager you’ve ever known rolled into one. Consumed by minutiae. Blind to the big picture.” Stef moved in beside Lauren. She had donned a light wrap in spite of the warmth and pulled it more tightly around her. “I don’t know what Andrew and Gene told you about why you were asked here. I thought I knew, but after what happened today, I’m not so sure.” She looked out at the woods. “I’ve always thought of Andrew as the son I never had. But he’s also his father’s son, and Steven was . . . calculating. I suppose men like them need to be. It’s one of the qualities that make them what they are.” She smiled, a small, sad curve of lip. “Given how I’ve treated you, I doubt you’ll be favorably inclined toward anything I say now. But I’m going to tell you anyway. Whatever Andrew has offered you, whatever he has promised you, he will expect something in return and it will not be cheap.”
Lauren held back a laugh. And you think I work for them and you’re trying to drive a wedge. The Carmody men weren’t the only ones with a knack for deviousness. “He wants me to talk to Nyssa.”
“Is that what he told you?” Stef placed her hands on the railing. In the settling dark, her sore fingertips looked as though they had been dipped in blood. “Whatever else you are, what you did today was exceptional. We all realize that. More importantly, Andrew realizes that.” She touched Lauren’s arm. “You must take care.”
Brava. “Believe it or not, I have gathered that.” Lauren edged away as discreetly as possible. A strange sensation, Stef’s touch. Like paper crumpling to ash.
“Good. See that you remember it.” Stef massaged her forehead. “And I shall now bid an early good night, and pray to the Lady that tomorrow is better.” She trudged toward the house, as bent as a woman decades older. “It can’t get worse.” Before she reached the door, however, Peter opened it, his look grim and a fresh drink in hand.
“You better get in here.” He ushered Stef inside, then waited for Lauren.
They entered to find Carmody, Kaster, and Jenny waiting for them. Both men looked somber, while Jenny appeared shaken.
“I’m afraid the news isn’t good.” Carmody walked to the center of the room, and stood with arms folded. He had yet to change clothes, and his hair hung lank and straggly. “Sam’s dead.”
CHAPTER 17
Carmody waited until everyone settled before continuing. “She succumbed about an hour ago. They seem inclined to call her death accidental, but due to the circumstances, there will be an autopsy. Depending on the findings, there may be an inquest. If there is, there’s a good possibility we’ll be questioned.�
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“Will Heath be coming back?” Stef’s voice came quiet.
“Not tonight.” Carmody lowered to the edge of the couch and worked his hands through his hair. “He collapsed after he received the news. They’re going to keep him at the hospital overnight. The earliest he could possibly return is tomorrow, assuming he’ll want to. I will contact him in the morning if possible and find out what his plans are.”
Stef stood and walked to the windowed wall, pressed her hand to the glass. “I don’t know why they would need the inquest. It was an accident. Avoidable, yes, but still.”
Jenny went behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of beer from the refrigerator. “Heath said that she used to eat things in her shop to see what they’d do. It drove him crazy, but apparently she felt she was protected in some way, that nothing she ate would hurt her.” She took a sip, and winced. “Why did I open this—I hate beer.” She dumped the rest into the sink, then filled a glass with water from the tap and took a seat at the counter.
Lauren sensed motion at the entry. Nyssa, slipping inside, then moving along the far wall like a shadow and taking a seat in the darkened corner.
“Did anything else happen during your hike?” Peter stood and walked to the window to stand next to Stef. “Anything, however trivial it seemed at the time?”
Lauren shook her head. “Like I told you. We walked. She wanted to see Jericho. The ward made of bird bones upset her. As we examined it, some flies that had been hiding in the ward attacked us. That’s how she got bitten. When we tried to get rid of them, that’s how the ward got scattered.”
“It was just a tragic accident.” Stef still stood with her hand on the glass, as though she wanted to push her way out.
“Sam was poisoned?”
Carmody shot to his feet. “Honey, you shouldn’t be here.”
“I’m fine.” Nyssa emerged from the dark. She wore blue and white striped pajama bottoms that ballooned around her thin frame. A black Sleater-Kinney T-shirt. Sneakers without laces served as slippers.