by Alex Gordon
Lauren took the glass, sipped what proved to be whiskey, then winced and pressed her hand to her mouth.
“Nothing broken.” Kaster stood, then walked into the adjoining bathroom. “But you did bite down rather hard on the inside of your cheek. You may need to eat soft food for the next few days.”
“My whole face hurts.”
“As well it might.” Kaster emerged holding a hand mirror. “Don’t be too alarmed. As I said, nothing’s broken. Just bruised.”
Lauren took hold of the mirror, then tilted it and moved it slowly sideways, so she could examine a little of her face at a time. Puffy cheek. Check. Split lip. Check. Then came the black eye, the swollen nose. Another black eye. The gash across her chin. “As Virginia would say, ‘oh my Lady.’”
“The concern, of course, is that the injuries may not stop at your face. No signs of any internal bleeding so far, but you will be staying here through the day, at least.” Kaster sat back in his chair, elbows on armrests, and tented his fingers. “Nyssa told me what you did with the wood block. People have died attempting that sort of spell, you know. Anytime one serves as a conduit, one takes a great risk of, well, shorting out.” He regarded her over his manicured fingertips. “Nyssa said you suffered a seizure, and as you did, various creatures, and I am quoting now, ‘blew up’?”
“That would include Fernanda, I guess.” Lauren finished the whiskey, set the glass on the end table. “I don’t know if she exploded. I had—passed out by then.”
“I assume this is the item in question?” Kaster again reached into the pocket of his robe. “It was in your pocket when we brought you in.” He set the wooden block on the edge of the bed.
Lauren stared at it for a time before picking it up. “I found it in one of the examination rooms. It had been placed in somebody’s mouth to keep them from screaming. Possibly to keep them from swallowing their tongue if they seized. It was in his mouth when he died.”
“He?”
“I sensed a man.” Lauren set the block on the end table, then looked back at Kaster to find him studying her, chin resting on his fist. “What was that place?”
Kaster drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. A slow, steady beat. “I am betting that you already know a good deal.”
“I think I know the what and who. You’ll have to help me with the how and why.” Lauren waited, but Kaster simply watched her. So it’s Twenty Questions. Fine. “Was the government involved?”
Kaster’s hand stilled. “Steven tried to obtain their support. Given some of the research they had financed in the past, what he proposed wasn’t that much of a stretch.” He smiled. “Or perhaps it was. For whatever reason, they drew a line.”
“The CIA?”
“And a few more acronyms that no one has ever heard of.”
“So he financed it privately via the Foundation.” Lauren rubbed the back of her neck, felt the small, raised bumps of the fly bites. They felt warm. Itched a bit. She wondered what they looked like, if any of them had turned black. “Did Heath know?”
“I don’t believe so, if only because if he had, his next step would’ve been blackmail, and I would’ve heard about it.”
“What about Stef and Peter?”
“You should ask them.” Kaster massaged his forehead as though a headache had come to call. “Steven . . . his vision was so different from Andrew’s. He wanted to expand knowledge, however ruthless his methods. Andrew? He needs to win. I think you would have an easier time convincing the father of the error of his ways than the son.”
“You think?”
“Based on what my father told me about Steven.” Kaster kept his eyes fixed on some point above Lauren’s head.
Lauren debated waving to snag his attention, but her shoulders ached too much. “I know why. It always boils down to money and power, doesn’t it? Control of others by any means possible. Fear. Greed. As for how? Families in Gideon made deals with demons. Most didn’t live long enough to see the payout. For the few that did, the price turned out to be greater than they ever expected to pay.” She fell silent until Kaster finally looked at her, the space between them heavy with things unsaid. “How did you get us out of there? What did you do?”
Kaster pointed up toward the ceiling. “We’re just below the bar. There are five very shaken people up there.”
“Will you please not change the fucking subject?”
“Language.”
“It was you.” Lauren lay back against the pillows. “I tried to get us out of the room, and I had gotten my fingers into the wall but then something stopped me.” She fell silent, breathed slowly to quiet her pounding heart.
“You need to settle down.” Kaster leaned forward and took hold of her hand.
“I thought that was it. I knew Nyssa would be as okay as possible given the circumstances, but they had no use for me. Except as a research subject.” Lauren started to pull her hand away, then decided that she really didn’t want to. “How did you do it?”
“Why are you so sure it was me?”
Lauren roughened her voice. “‘You’re safe now, Mistress.’”
Kaster’s face reddened. He let her go. “I prefer to think that we worked as a team. I couldn’t have sensed just anyone over that distance, especially through all that warding and interference. You partially burrowed out, and I partially burrowed in, and we met in the middle. Then I dragged you out the other side.”
“Where did we end up?”
“My bedroom.” Kaster glanced back at the door, then lowered his voice. “Everyone else believes that you accomplished this feat on your own. I would greatly appreciate it if you played along. I emerged from my dressing room to the sight of the pair of you tumbling out of thin air onto my carpet. Imagine my surprise. That’s been my story. Please stick to it.”
“Why? What you did was amazing. Take credit for it.” Lauren felt her own face heat. She reached around and fluffed her pillows to hide the fact, and gasped as a pulled muscle went zing.
“A compliment from you. Praise indeed.” Kaster bowed his head. “That will have to suffice. I can’t admit my part in this.”
“Why not?”
“For someone who woke up mere minutes ago thinking she had died and gone to hell, you ask a lot of questions.”
“The last witch, the only witch I ever met who I think could’ve pulled off what you did was over two hundred years old.”
“I read your Mistress Waycross’s report. Technically, he was much younger. He’d been dormant for a while.”
“You’ve changed the subject again.”
“If it helps at all, think of me as a satisfied investor. A silent partner. A helping hand.”
“It doesn’t.”
Kaster stood again, this time walking to a table by the door. “Could you please accept that I have my reasons, and move on?” He lifted the cover off a dish. “Nyssa prepared you a tray. I hope you like tuna salad.”
“I’m starved. Why am I starved?” Lauren sat up slowly as Kaster set the tray on a wheeled bed table and rolled it over. “Nyssa was amazing, by the way.”
“She said the same about you.” Kaster plucked a grape from a dish of fruit and popped it in his mouth. “She seems different, since you’ve been here. The knife edges have blunted. I hesitate to use the word ‘happy’ for fear of jinxing, but we’ve all noticed the change.” He lifted another cover and his face lit. “There’s strawberry ice cream.”
“No thanks.”
“Homemade. Mount Hood strawberries.”
Lauren shook her head. “I need protein.” She tried taking a bite of the sandwich, but it proved too thick for her sore jaw to deal with, so she used a fork to pry out the filling, which she carefully inserted between her teeth.
“Ice cream has protein.” Kaster held out the bowl to her. When she shook her head again, he sighed, then picked the dessert spoon off the table, sat down, and dug in.
Lauren polished off the sandwich filling, then started on the bread, which sh
e broke into small pieces. “Did he kill her?”
Kaster paused, his spoon halfway to his mouth. “Is that what Fernanda told you?”
“She accused him of everything but.”
“Then you should ask him yourself.”
“The subject has come up. He says he didn’t.”
“But you don’t believe him?”
“He has it in him.”
“Don’t we all? Don’t you?”
“This isn’t a philosophical rumination. What happened between them is still feeding whatever lives in Jericho.” Lauren dispatched the bread and chose a banana from the fruit bowl. “And whatever it is, it’s getting stronger. Something has to be done.”
Kaster finished his ice cream and set the dish on the tray. “You need to rest.” He stood, then dragged the chair back to its place against the wall. “I will inform the others that you’re as ever you were.” He smiled, but the expression wavered when he met her eye. “You look better now than when you first arrived. Good as new in no time.” Another quick bow of the head. Then he walked to the door, put his hand on the light switch. “On or off?”
“On.” Lauren raised the knife she was using to slice the banana. “I’m still—” But before she could finish, he had already gone.
CHAPTER 23
Lauren tossed and turned. The windowless clinic room felt cold and closed in, and she debated returning to her suite to see if she could fall asleep there. She had made up her mind to try to get up when she heard muffled footsteps in the hallway. They paused in front of her door, and she waited for the night nurse to stick his head in and check whether she slept or if she needed anything, which he had already done three times thus far. As the only patient in the five-bed clinic, she had been the focus of everyone’s attention since her arrival.
But after a few moments’ delay, the footsteps resumed in the direction of the nurses station. Stop—start—stop. Then a quickening, as though whoever it was broke into a run.
The sound brought Lauren to her feet before she realized it. Rib muscles seized, then relaxed just enough to allow her to breathe without pain. She crept to the door, cracked it open, stuck out her head, and looked in both directions. Saw no one.
Then she heard soft beeps, followed by the slip of a door being very carefully opened. She scuttled down the hall and rounded the corner in time to see one of the doors just on the verge of closing. She ran, caught it just before it clicked shut, told herself that she was about to surprise the hell out of the night nurse, and threw it wide anyway.
Nyssa stood before the drug cabinet, one hand on the door handle. She stared wild-eyed at Lauren, then blinked and backed away. “You’re supposed to be asleep.” She wore a man’s white T-shirt, red boxer shorts. Her sleep-mussed hair hung in her eyes.
“Yes, this is me, asleep.” Lauren stepped inside the room and closed the door behind her. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Nyssa shrugged. “I’ve been coughing—that air did something to me. I was looking for something for it.”
“Go see the nurse. He’ll find you something.”
“I don’t want to bother him.”
“Trust me, he wants to be bothered. He’s bored to—” Lauren almost said death, decided not to tempt fate. “He’s very bored.”
“Fine. I’ll go see him now.” Nyssa started for the door, one hand where Lauren could see it, the other hidden by the folds of her shirt.
“What are you hiding behind your back?” Lauren sidestepped into Nyssa’s path.
“Nothing.”
Lauren held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“I don’t have anything.”
“Now.”
Nyssa’s eyes dulled. She started to speak, then shook her head, and held out her hand.
Lauren took the bottle of tablets. Her eyes stung when she read the label. “Digitalis. You were going to take these? Do you know what this would do to you?”
“Yes.” Nyssa wedged into the corner. “It would kill me.”
“You were brilliant today. You kept your head. You helped save us—”
“You saved us.”
“You got us out of the basement when I could barely walk.” Lauren shook the tablets, which rattled like dice in a cup. “Why?”
Nyssa wiped away a tear. Then she slapped the side of her head. “They’re back. The noises. The voices muttering. I mean, they’ve been there for most of my life, like this drip-drip sound, but they’ve been getting worse for, like, a year now. Dad sent me for hearing tests and I had brain scans and psych evaluations and there were times when I wanted it to be cancer or something because then at least there’d be a reason and maybe they could make it stop.”
Lauren leaned against the door frame. Her own voices had quieted soon after her arrival, and she had taken it as a sign, but she also appreciated the peace. Gideon nerves—she had them bad, and she knew that the day she left this place, they would return. “It’s something you can learn to live with.”
“You don’t know what they say to me. The things they tell me to do.” Nyssa pointed to the wall, the woods beyond. “Except today it was quiet. I was terrified, and we were in that room and all those things were crawling all over the place and I thought we were going to die. But I could hear everything so clearly. The things breathing and the sound of their claws on the glass. I mean, I never want to see it ever again and I think I’ll have nightmares every time I close my eyes but in my head, it was quiet.” She rubbed her arms, ran a finger along one of the slashes. “Dead is quiet, too. If it’s a choice between this or nothing, I’d rather have nothing.”
Lauren pressed a hand to her aching ribs and sat on the edge of a stack of plastic carriers. “We can work together to help you deal with this.”
“I have worked with Stef, and Pete, and every other member of the Council. Dad even flew in a hypnotist from France.” Nyssa walked to Lauren and touched her cheek. “I know you’re trying. Everyone tries so hard, and I keep letting them down.”
“That’s not—”
“But this is me and I have to deal with it my way.” Nyssa sniffled, then walked to another cabinet and dug through the shelves until she found a box of tissues. “I’m older than I look. In here.” She tapped the side of her head, this time more lightly. “They saw it in the MRI. I have the brain of a thirty-year-old. Better judgment, that’s supposed to mean. Not as inclined to take risks.”
“So what—”
“So that means that the decisions I’m making now aren’t just me being dramatic or overreacting. I’ve thought this through. I know what’s best for me. I know how I want to live, and how I don’t want to live.” She wiped her nose, her eyes. “I know you’ll tell my dad, and he’ll have me monitored more closely, for a while. And as soon as they let their guard down, as soon as they get bored. I’ll be able to do what I have to.” She opened the door, stuck out her head and checked in either direction, and left.
Lauren remained seated, the bottle of tablets in hand, long after the motion sensor turned off the lights and left her in the dark. Then the sound of voices roused her. She opened the door of the drug room just as Carmody walked past with the night nurse. Before they could say anything, she handed the bottle of tablets to Carmody.
The nurse paled. “We change the entry codes for that room and the cabinet daily and we do not write them down.”
Lauren held up her hand. “She has ways of finding things out that you don’t know about.” With that, she took hold of Carmody’s sleeve and led him down the hall until she felt sure the nurse couldn’t overhear.
“How did you find her?” Carmody looked down at her wide-eyed, rocked from one foot to the other.
“I just happened to be up. Couldn’t sleep.” Lauren paced. “She didn’t hear the voices in Jericho. That’s why she tried. She wanted the quiet back.”
Carmody examined the bottle of tablets, sucked his teeth when he saw what they were. “But she’s been so good these past few days.”
“I’ve heard that from other people. If I’m responsible, fine, but I’m a bandage, not a cure.” Lauren started back to her room, then turned again to Carmody. “Jericho. Close it down. I don’t know what the hell you’re waiting for. Burn it to the ground and sow salt.” Before she could say more, a noise froze the words in her throat. Faint insect hum, like a swarm of persistent mosquitoes.
Or flies.
“Do you hear that?” Carmody spun on his heel, scanned from one end of the hall to the other. “I don’t see anything.”
Then metallic pings mixed in with the humming, which grew louder and louder.
Lauren looked up toward the ceiling. “The air ducts.”
“Oh, shit.” Carmody shouted to the nurse. “Get out. Now.” Then he hurried to a nearby wall panel and mashed buttons. A siren sounded first, followed by a canned message ordering everyone to evacuate immediately.
Lauren grabbed a lab coat off a hook by the nurses’ station and pulled it on over her pajamas. Then she took off after Carmody. Except for her ribs, she felt okay. She could run if she had to. Fight, if she had to.
She used the stairs to get to the first floor and found the others standing outside on the patio. Stef and Peter huddled with Carmody in urgent conversation while Nyssa stood to one side with her hands over her ears and Jenny paced.
“They’re up on the roof checking stuff now.” Jenny stopped and gave Lauren a quick hug, then resumed fidgeting. “It’s the middle of the night, so no one can see anything.”
“We heard them, though.” Lauren backed up to see if she could spot the staffers. “Are they wearing protective gear?”
“The guy from the grounds crew is wearing a beekeeper’s getup. And Stef sprayed the other guys with some stuff that she called repellent.” Jenny pressed her hands to her face, stretching her skin so tight it looked like a mask. “I was so wiped that I slept through the house alarm. Pete had to go back inside and bang on my door.” She finally stopped pacing, and jogged Lauren with her elbow. “How you doin’?”