by Megan Hart
“You know it’s more than a possibility. It’s a likelihood.”
Martin stared at her in silence for what seemed a very long time before he looked away. “C’mon. I’ll take you.”
“Martin,” she said softly and waited until he’d looked at her again. “Thank you.”
Martin was a good driver. Conscientious, never failing to put on his signal or stop completely at every stop sign, even though the traffic on the road was next to zero. His hands firmly grasped the wheel at the correct positions. He looked carefully both ways at every intersection, not just once, but twice.
Even so, urgency and anxiety made Tovah want to squirm. She resisted by clasping her hands tightly in her lap. She stared straight ahead, tensing at every flare of red taillights in front of them. Her seat belt was a comforting tightness against her chest, but she fought the urge to grab at the handhold each time the car sped up.
“Are you okay?”
From the corner of her eye, she caught the motion of Martin’s head as he glanced at her. “Just a little edgy. I’m sorry.”
He didn’t ask again. He reached to turn on the radio so music filled the space between them instead of silence. Outside, it had begun to rain.
The road emptied, leaving them the only car making the journey through mostly darkness. They hadn’t yet turned off the main road onto the smaller local streets that led to the Sisters of Mercy, but the streetlamps had disappeared. The road unwound before them like a long dark ribbon.
She knew this song. It was a Celtic piece, full of the mournful wail of uilleann pipes. It was something like a lullaby, though perhaps one meant to sing to a child whose sleep was never going to end. Her hands crept up to press her belly, briefly and without conscious effort, though she at once put them back in her lap.
The sound of the rain was like a lullaby, too. The soft shush-shush of a mother soothing a fretful babe. The tires purred along the road, going round and round just like the wheels on the bus…the wheels on the bus…
Her tension eased one muscle at a time. She still heard the rain, the music, the tires rolling. She still saw the road ahead and the occasional flash of another vehicle’s lights. They simply no longer had the power to tighten her nerves.
They drove a long, long time.
The car slowed. It stopped.
Tovah turned her head to face the driver. The light from the parking lot lamp cut across Martin’s face in bars of silver edged with shadow. One eye flared a blue almost painful in its brightness. The other stayed a faded gray, shielded by darkness.
“You shouldn’t have to be afraid,” he whispered. “See? I wish you’d let me help you not be so afraid.”
Words snuck around her mouth before tripping from her lips. “You can’t help me not be afraid.”
His hand reached, fingertips brushing her cheek. “I can, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart.
Tovah startled awake. Martin had pulled into the parking lot. Lights blazed from all the windows of the immense brick building in front of them, and cars circled the lot even at this hour gone so late it had become early.
Where had the peace gone, the light and shadow?
“Tovah?”
“Sorry, I must have dozed off.” She scrubbed her face, hoping she hadn’t drooled and glad for the chance to feel for a blush.
She had no right to dream of Martin as her savior. Not after the game of back and forth she’d played with him. Hell, not even if she hadn’t pushed him away. Nobody deserved that much responsibility.
Look what it had done to Spider.
Martin grabbed her crutches from the back seat and waited patiently as she hoisted herself out of his car. Neither of them had bothered with an umbrella but the rain of earlier had turned to a fine, light mist that coated her hair and coat within moments with damp. Tovah balanced using the open car door, then settled her crutches under her arms and started toward the hospital.
The last time she’d been there after visiting hours, she’d been a patient. The staff had changed, but the feeling the hospital got in the wee hours hadn’t. Buildings in which people who were supposed to be sleeping stayed awake always had a certain vibe.
Security shouldn’t have let her through, really, even though she was with Martin, who had a staff ID badge. Tovah tensed for a confrontation. She wasn’t above threats. She could toss around legal and medical jargon, whip out proof she was Henry Tuckens’s guardian. Cause trouble.
“Dr. Goodfellow.” The guard nodded, his eyes flickering past Tovah without stopping. “And a guest?”
“Thanks, Terry.” Martin tucked his ID back into his shirt pocket.
The guard turned back to his newspaper and bag of popcorn. Tovah waited until they were on the elevator, doors closed behind them, before she said, “How’d you do that?”
Martin pushed the button for Five. “Do what?”
“With the guard. He should’ve given us a harder time than that. What did you do?”
Martin shrugged. “Some people don’t take their jobs seriously, I guess.”
“Jedi mind trick?” Tovah asked, watching him refuse to look at her.
Martin looked at her then, his pupils wide and dark in the elevator’s fussy, flickering light. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You have a way, don’t you?” she murmured. “With people.”
The doors opened. Martin pushed a hand against them to keep them from closing before she could get off, and this, yet another example of his constant consideration, proved to her again he was a good man. He waited until she was through before stepping through himself and waited again to make sure she was moving smoothly before walking after her.
Despite the hour, or perhaps because of it, Five was alive with activity. Staff moved purposefully from room to room, always in pairs and armed with trays of small plastic cups and gleaming silver needles.
“What’s going on in here?” Martin snagged a passing orderly Tovah didn’t recognize.
“Full moon? Hell if I know,” said the orderly with a shake of his head. “It’s been a madhouse since that dude on the end decided to join the land of the living.”
“It’s always a madhouse,” Martin said without a trace of irony.
“Yeah, well, it’s even worse tonight.” The orderly shook off Martin’s hand and headed into a room from which a flurry of shouting had started.
Martin didn’t wait for her this time. He stalked down the hall, his long legs taking him twice as fast as she could hobble. He pushed through the door to Henry’s room. The door hissed shut behind him on its pneumatic hinge, clicking entirely closed just as Tovah reached it.
She grabbed the handle but paused to listen for shouting or cries from inside before opening it. She heard plenty of commotion, but it all came from outside, not Henry’s room. Tovah pushed open the door.
“Henry?”
He and Martin stood by the window, their backs to her. Both turned as she said his name. Tovah would have run into his arms, had she been able, but Henry didn’t wait for her to try.
“Tovahleh.” He pushed past Martin without a second glance and came to her. “Look at you, doll. You’re a sight.”
Hugging around crutches and with only one leg was awkward, but they managed. Tovah didn’t mean to cry, but seeing him aware and awake was such a relief she couldn’t help it. Henry smelled of the soap she’d bought him, and of comfort. His chin rested neatly on the top of her head as he rubbed her back.
From outside his room, the sound of pounding feet filled the hall. Then a wail and a crash. Tovah looked, but Martin had already gone to peer out the door. He looked over his shoulder at them.
“I’d better go help.”
“What’s going on, Spider?” Tovah said when Martin had gone. “Why is everyone acting so—”
“Crazy?” Henry didn’t laugh. “It’s because they can’t wake up, Tovah.”
She shook her head, not understanding. “I have to sit, my leg’s aching.”
He helped her to the chair by the bed. “When was the last time you were in the Ephemeros?”
“A few hours ago.”
Henry looked grim. “Did you see Ben?”
“No, Spider. But I didn’t see you, either. Look, what’s going on?” Tovah pulled his hand until he sat on the bed facing her. “Where have you been?”
“Was it bad, there? Like before?”
She looked at him. “It was bad. But not like before. But, Spider…”
“Henry. I’m Henry, here.”
“Henry,” she said. “I think I know what’s causing the trouble there.”
“The boy. The dog. The woman. I know.” Henry squeezed her hands.
Tovah told him about Edward, the man who’d been her lover and all the forms he’d taken. Of what had happened on the beach with Ben. She left out the part about the kiss, mentioned only that she’d intended to break it off with Edward completely and that he hadn’t taken it well.
“Oh, God,” she said, stunned as the memory of Kevin on his knees came back.
She fumbled in the pocket of her jacket for her cell phone. She dropped it onto the hard tile floor and it slid beneath the bed like it meant to escape. Henry grabbed it for her, handing it over while his face creased with concern.
“Tovahleh, what is it?”
She couldn’t speak through the emotion burning her throat. She dialed by memory, praying her trembling hands didn’t hit the wrong keys. She swallowed, again and again as the phone rang and rang.
“Kevin,” she managed at last, looking into Henry’s eyes. “I think he did something to Kevin.”
A shriek from outside Henry’s door made her drop the still-ringing phone. The screen flickered this time and went dark, and Tovah let out a string of curses when she saw the case had cracked open. The call had disconnected.
“There’s nothing you can do about it now.” Henry put his hand over hers. She looked up at him, his face blurred by her tears. Henry took a tissue from the nightstand and wiped her cheeks. He leaned forward to take her face in his hands. “We have other things we need to do now.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
There was beauty in chaos, and chaos in beauty, and all of it rotated in and around and among them, and the witchwoman laughed her terrible, beautiful laugh.
The dogman growled, snapping and chasing.
The boy stood on the mountain with black sand beneath his feet and black sky above his head and the wind screaming all around him. For the first time that he could ever remember, he let the wind whip at his hair and clothes without trying to run from it. Not even the witchwoman’s laughter or the dogman, now pacing on all fours, were enough to make him flee.
“I told you, sweetheart, didn’t I? How lovely it all was?” The witchwoman laughed, twirling in a circle with her arms spread wide. Her dark hair blew straight out, each strand painted with silver lightning as it flashed.
The boy ignored her. He wasn’t doing this for her, not because of her, not even in spite of her. He was doing this, for the first time, for himself.
The world shimmered and shuddered around them, and he heard screams. The boy knew how it felt to scream so hard your throat burst; he’d done it once or twice. He knew the taste of blood and how it made you want to vomit. He knew about cowering before shadows, too, and some small part of him wished he could soothe all of the screamers. He wanted to tell them that all they had to do was reach inside themselves and pull out all that fear and fury, that they could do what he did, that they had no reason to quake and break.
Perhaps later he could make them understand. Show them the truth, that they dreamed this because they needed to, for reasons he could never know.
The darkness parted and the man who never looked the same came through it. He had a long and easy stride, long arms moving naturally at his sides as he walked. The wind plucked at his clothes like a nervous mother, but he ignored it the same way he paid no attention to the woman, who reached her hands to him, or the dogman that snapped its jaws.
The man knelt in front of the boy and took small hands inside his large ones. “They’re coming for you.”
“What can we do?” Tovah didn’t bother reaching for her wounded phone. Her gaze searched Henry’s. She trusted him.
In the corridor, more feet pounded. More things crashed. Henry looked up, overhead, as the lights flickered. A far-off boom of thunder turned his gaze back to hers.
“They’re all having nightmares. They look like they’re awake, but they’re not, really.”
“And other people?”
“Not everyone who’s crazy is in the hospital.” Henry’s wry grin tipped his mouth. “Tonight, I think the world is crazy.”
“But…what can we do?” she asked again. “Henry, eventually, the people who are sleeping will wake up.”
“And the ones who are awake are going to sleep.” Henry sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t know, really, okay? I don’t know what’s going to happen. I just know we have to stop them.”
“But…” She shook her head, her mind weary and body aching. “None of this makes sense.”
“What, everything should make sense?” Henry squeezed her hands. “You know I’m right. You can feel it, can’t you?”
It took her only a second to nod. “Yes.”
“We have to guide them, Tovahleh. The three. Guide them back together.”
She sighed, squeezing back. “Can we do it?”
Henry nodded. “I hope so.”
The man had many faces and had been called many names, but Edward was the name he said to the boy.
“They want to hurt you. Stop you. Hurt you,” chanted the witchwoman.
Edward looked at her. The boy’s hands felt impossibly small within Edward’s much larger ones. A world of responsibility rested in those hands, both pairs.
“They want to stop you,” Edward said. “But not hurt you. I want you to listen to me—”
“Don’t listen!” The witchwoman flew forward, her face twisted. “Don’t you listen to him, sweetheart!”
Edward struck her hard enough to crunch the bones of her face under his fist. She crumpled to her knees, her face in her hands. She made no sound. He turned back to the boy, whose nose was bleeding.
“People are screaming,” the boy said. “All around the world. Babies are crying…” It was too much. He clapped his hands over his ears.
Edward took them gently away. “Listen to me.”
“No! No! They’re screaming!” The boy shook his head, back and forth. “And I like it! I like it! I like it! Let them be afraid instead of me!”
Edward did what nobody had done in a long, long time. He hugged the boy, held him close and tight. Held him safe.
The boy’s body tensed and twisted in Edward’s grasp as he fought the embrace. The witchwoman moaned from her place on the ground, and the dogman stalked closer, getting bold.
“You don’t have to be afraid. Let me help you not be afraid any more. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“Too late.” The boy wept against his chest. “It’s too late! They already hurt me, both of them.”
The witchwoman rolled onto her back. The dogman lapped the blood on her face. She laughed.
“I won’t let them hurt you again,” said Edward. “Not ever. I promise.”
“How will we do it?”
Lightning flashed outside Henry’s window, and rain spattered the glass. He looked at the window for a moment. To Tovah, who loved him, Henry was beautiful, but she could see the lines of strain that would make him look haggard to anyone else. He’d aged since the last time she’d been able to talk to him in the waking world.
“I don’t know,” Henry admitted. “I’m a coward, remember?”
Tovah hugged him, hard, though it bent her body in another awkward position. “Being afraid of something dangerous doesn’t make you a coward. It makes you smart.”
His arms tightened around her, and she felt the press of his face against her hair. “Then I�
��m the smartest bastard I know, because I’m scared shitless.”
“What happened to you?” Tovah whispered, holding him tight.
“They kept me from getting back,” Henry said. “For the first time in a long time I wanted to come back, and they made me forget how.”
Tovah didn’t push for more. She looked into his face, echoing the position he’d held before, with his cheeks in her hands. “You’re here, now.”
Henry nodded and took her hands to link their fingers. “I’m sorry, Tovahleh. I know you wanted me to come back, before.”
Good friends don’t lie to each other. She looked him over, how frail he’d become. “I did. But you had to do what was best for you, Henry. I was just worried about you. I don’t want to live without you, that’s all. Not here, or there.”
“I told you before, doll, you’ll never get rid of me.” Henry squeezed her fingers and smiled.
She believed him, somehow, even though she knew that wasn’t really true. Tovah kissed Henry’s bristly cheek. “So. Let’s do it.”
Even as she said the words, her heart pounded harder. It was easy to sound brave sitting here with Henry’s hands in hers. Awake. In a world with rules. It was easy to play the braggart’s role and pretend she was ready to go in with guns blazing, when the truth was there was nothing she felt less capable of doing.
“You’re a good guide. Even if you don’t know it.” Henry smiled.
Tovah shook her head. “But this is big. Bigger.”
“It’s still someone who needs to get someplace—”
“For a reason we don’t know. I know. But Henry, it would help so much if we did know. If we could just…stop this boy from what he’s doing. And what if it’s not that easy or simple? What if he doesn’t want to stop?” Words tumbled from her mouth, pushed by anxiety. “What if he’s doing this on purpose, just because he can?”
“What if he is?” Henry asked gently. “Does that mean we should just let him, when we can stop him?”