by Nina Berry
Morfael slowly shook his head.
“And you’re not from Othersphere either?” I asked.
He smiled a little and shook his head again. A small, stunned silence hung in the air. Then Morfael said, “You need to rest now. We will talk later. Raynard”—he turned to his boyfriend, as thickset and down to earth as Morfael was thin and otherworldly—“is your room ready for Desdemona’s parents?”
Raynard nodded, moving toward me. “I’ll help Desdemona down to bed.”
Incredibly, they were acting as if it was time to go to sleep. But my head was about to explode from what I’d just seen and learned. “But why now?” I said. “Morfael, you can’t just drop a bomb like that and send me to bed! What does she, that creature, want? Will she be able to come back?”
Morfael paused at the top of the stairs, looking older than he ever had before and leaning a little more heavily on his stick. He turned, his face gray, though his eyes still held their wild opalescent sparkle. “She was able to manifest through a humdrum because your mother is closely connected to you and because she is here, where the veil is thin,” he said. “Clearly this person is very powerful, so she may return, although not through your mother. I believe we have warned her away from trying that avenue again, but your mother should go back to her home tomorrow and stay away from areas where the veil is thin.”
“She said . . .” My mouth was very dry. “She said she would find a way to bring me back. To Othersphere. Can she do that?”
“She thrust you through the veil once before,” said Morfael, and walked down the stairs.
CHAPTER 16
“Dez?”
I was rocking in a tiny rowboat on a dark sea. Above, a full moon hovered too close, craters black and unfamiliar, its reflection in the ocean somehow larger than the moon itself. I tried to steady the craft, but the waves kept washing me from side to side. All around the air was glowing, pressing in on me. Any second I’d lose my balance, fall in, and drown.
“Dez, wake up!”
I opened my eyes to see Arnaldo standing over me, thick eyebrows drawn together in concern. I sat up too fast, and my head spun.
“What is it?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Your mom,” he said. “They’re taking her to the hospital.”
“What? What happened?” I threw back the blankets, shoved my feet into the stupid terry-cloth slippers left over from the Naiad Hotel, and grabbed for a shirt and jeans.
Arnaldo stepped back to let me get dressed, not even blinking at me in my underwear. Shifter kids took that kind of thing in stride.
“Is she worse?” I was walking toward the door even as I zipped up my jeans.
“I don’t think so. But she’s not better either.” He followed me as I broke into a run. “They’re getting her into the SUV now. She won’t wake up.”
I took the stairs two at a time, and ran without a glance past the other kids clustered in the kitchen and out the front door toward the garage. There I saw Caleb helping Richard gingerly lay my mother down in the backseat of the SUV. Raynard was already climbing into the driver’s side as Morfael watched, leaning on his staff.
“What’s going on?” I ran up as Caleb stepped back. “Why didn’t you get me?”
Richard was leaning half in the car, adjusting a pillow under Mom’s head. Her eyes were closed, dark rings like bruises shadowed under them. Her skin was so pale and thin I could see the tiny veins and capillaries threading over her forehead and nose. She was wrapped in a large gray blanket, like a mummy, but she looked more like a child, so tiny and vulnerable.
“We sent Arnaldo to get you,” he said. “About five minutes ago I tried to wake her, and when I couldn’t, we decided to take her to a hospital in Vegas.”
“I’ll sit with her,” I said. “I can put her head in my lap.”
“If you’re sure you can get away,” Richard said. His voice was mild, but he wasn’t looking me in the eye.
I looked down at the muddied snow at my feet. An arctic breeze lifted my hair off my neck. “Don’t you want me to come with you?”
“She’s going to be okay,” he said. “At least I think so, from what Morfael says. And I know you have things you need to do around here.”
“Nothing’s more important than Mom.” I tucked my hands into my armpits and turned to Morfael. “What’s wrong? Why won’t she wake up?”
“Your mother’s body is in excellent health,” Morfael said. “And the entity which possessed her is gone. But some part of her consciousness has not yet returned from Othersphere. I believe that if she is taken to an area where the veil is thicker, she will return to herself.”
“Then why take her to the hospital?” I looked back and forth between Morfael and Richard. “If she’s going to get better as soon as she’s out of this area, just take her home.”
“We don’t know how long her return will take,” Morfael said. “Probably not more than an hour or two, but she hasn’t eaten or had anything to drink in awhile, so it’s best she get fluids and other sustenance with an IV until she can eat and drink on her own.”
“And the sooner the better,” Richard said. “I didn’t want to wait for you to get ready and eat breakfast. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, I’m sorry. I don’t need to eat. I don’t need anything else. I’m coming with you.”
“Okay,” Richard said, his face softening. “Good.”
“Dez?” I looked over to see Amaris walking up warily, as if unsure of her welcome. “If you’re going, do you want my coat?”
“Yeah, thanks.” I walked over to her as she shed the heavy coat she had thrown over her clothes. I was jittery, but not just from the cold. I couldn’t quite grasp that we were on our way to the hospital again with my mother.
Amaris handed me the coat, getting her mouth close to my ear, and said quietly, “Lazar is on vid conference downstairs on the computer right now. What do you want me to tell him?”
Oh, God. Of course he’s calling now. I closed my eyes. Focus. “Does he have any news?”
Amaris helped my left arm find the coat sleeve. “He says he does. Big news. I don’t know what it is yet, but he says we need to go in tonight.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Caleb. He wore the same closed expression and stood too far away to hear us. “Tonight? Why?”
Amaris shook her head, moving around to help me with the coat’s zipper. “I haven’t had a chance to ask him yet. I ran up here to grab you before you left. He says he might not be able to find a time he can talk to us again. Do you think you’ll be able to get back here tonight?”
“I don’t know.”
Richard had finished settling Mom in the back cab, and had one leg up on the step into the passenger’s side of the truck. “Are you coming or not?” he said.
“He has an idea of what the particle accelerator is for,” Amaris said. “And it might be online as early as tomorrow.” She looked up at me. “You should go with your mom. We can handle this. Caleb could talk to Lazar.”
I took a deep breath to stay calm. Any second now Lazar could be forced to hang up the call in order not to be found out. If I missed this chance, we might never be able to stop Ximon. “No. You know that would never work.”
Amaris stamped her feet in the cold, eyes darting from me to Richard and back again. “Well, no. But if you need to go . . .”
I turned to Richard. “I’ll be right there.”
“What do I tell Lazar?” Amaris asked in a very low tone. “Maybe he can try to call us back later?”
I glanced over at Caleb, still far enough away not to hear me, dark eyes staring out at the snow-dusted forest. I made sure to keep my voice very low. “Tell Lazar where I’m going, and why. Tell him to meet me there, if he can.”
“Oh!” Amaris’s eyes popped wide and shot over toward Caleb before she tamped down her expression. “Just Lazar?”
“Yes,” I said. “No one else. If he can’t get there, we’ll have to find a way to text him or e-mail
him when I’m available to talk.”
“Dez!” Richard stamped his feet to stay warm. “Get in the car!” Then he opened the passenger door and climbed in.
“I have to go.” I squeezed Amaris’s arm. “Tell him I’m sorry.”
“He’ll understand,” she said.
I tried to smile and moved to the car. Caleb stepped over unexpectedly and opened the back door for me. “Thanks,” I said.
He leaned in, helping to arrange my sleeping mother so that I could get in the car and settle her head on my lap. “Let me come with you,” he said, his velvet voice like a steady, supportive wall.
I jerked my gaze up to his face in surprise. His brow was furrowed, his black eyes warm and worried. “No,” I said. “It’s okay. But thanks.”
“I can huddle in the very back,” he said. “I promise not to get in the way. You know how fond I am of your mother, and if I can be of any help . . .”
“That would mean so much to her,” I said, putting my hand on the black wool covering his arm. I wish you could come with me. I need you now.
But if Lazar managed to find me at the hospital, having Caleb there would probably lead to a fistfight, or worse. I wanted him there more than anyone, but getting the information from Lazar about the collider was more important. “And it means the world to me that you offered. Really. But we’ll be okay.”
He looked thoughtful, but obediently stepped back and shut my car door. I rolled down the window. “I’ll use Richard’s phone to call and let you know once we’re settled down there,” I said. “You make sure everyone here stays safe.”
He nodded. Behind him, Amaris was already running back toward the school to tell Lazar what was happening. Would my going to the hospital with my mother jeopardize all my plans to stop Ximon’s mysterious plot? Maybe. But I couldn’t bear to do anything else.
As Raynard backed the SUV up and turned around, I took one last look back to see Morfael standing there looking as alien and expressive as a Giacometti statue. But then he really is an alien. Caleb had his arms crossed, and his black eyes were skeptical.
It took nearly as long to check Mom into a room at the hospital as it had to get there, even though Richard had called ahead. By early morning, the neurologist was once again recommending antiseizure medication, and couldn’t understand our reluctance to agree. Otherwise, he said her brain function looked normal, and that once she was better hydrated, there was no reason to think she wouldn’t wake up. But time would tell.
Too bad there’s no such thing as anti-shadow medication.
Sitting in a hard chair in our half of the puke-tan hospital room, I glanced over at Richard, not saying those words, but seeing the same thought in his tired eyes. Mom was breathing steadily and quietly, the IV in her left arm dripping in the silence. I kept having to fight the urge to crawl into the bed and hold her close, as if somehow the life in my body could pass into hers. Richard, sitting opposite me holding Mom’s small right hand, probably felt the same.
“Why don’t you go get us both some coffee, and maybe get yourself a sandwich,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling twenty dollars out of his wallet. “Don’t worry, I won’t leave her.”
I really wanted to be there when Mom woke up, but I was starving. And Richard looked like he could use the caffeine. “Okay.” I took the money and headed for the door. “I won’t be long.”
My footsteps bounced off the long walls of the hallway outside. The nurses and aides all wore scrubs in happy colors like pink or cheerful prints of tiny roses or baby toys. But under the fluorescent lights and set against drab beige walls and even drabber beige floors, all the bright colors were incongruous and jarring.
In the clatter of the cafeteria, I ignored the damp tuna sandwiches and wilting salads, and found a decent-looking bowl of hummus and side of pita bread, shoved them in a bag, grabbed two bottles of water and two large coffees, and headed back toward Mom’s room. As I passed our nurse’s station, the reed-thin aide named Mauricio, who’d helped us settle Mom in, looked up from his computer screen as I passed by and said, “Did he find you?”
I halted and turned, and he must have seen puzzlement on my face, because he explained, “A tall young man was looking for you.” His gaze drifted past me, focusing on something down the hall. “Oh, there he is.”
Heart leaping, I whirled to see a long lean form with tousled blond hair and a brown leather jacket thrown over his white pants walking toward me. Our eyes met, and relief washed over me.
“Thanks,” I said to Mauricio.
He winked at me and shot a look back at Lazar. “Cute. And considerate.”
Lazar had reached me, and I saw he was holding a small bouquet of pink and white cosmos down by his side.
“You made it,” I said.
A smile broke over his face like dawn over a winter lake. “Thank God,” he said, and his voice made it sound like an actual prayer. “It wasn’t easy, but I made sure to check my clothes for tracking devices this time.” His wide brown eyes and butter-gold hair were shining, but the bruises on his jaw and cheekbone had darkened into black and purple, standing out like splotches of dark paint on a pale canvas.
“Thanks for coming,” I said over the too-loud patter of my heart. My eyes drifted down to the flowers.
“For your mom,” he said, his voice tentative, his long fingers around the flower stems curling and uncurling. “A guy was selling them outside the hospital parking lot.”
“Smart location for a florist,” I said. “That’s very nice of you.”
His brown eyes studied me. “How is she?”
“The doctors think she’ll be fine. Let me just check on her and give this to Richard.” I held up the coffee, and he followed me as I moved down the hall to our room. When I walked in, he hung back. I gestured to him. “It’s okay. Come in for a second.”
Richard looked up, eyes going gratefully first to the cup of coffee in my hand, and then darting over warily to Lazar in the doorway.
“This is Lazar,” I said, handing Richard the Styrofoam cup. “Lazar, this is my stepfather, Richard.”
Lazar’s eyes moved from my mother’s tiny form huddled under the blankets on the bed to Richard’s solid bulk in the chair beside her. Recognition sparked in his face before he smoothed it away, and I remembered with sudden dismay that Lazar had led the group of objurers who’d tried to kidnap my mother and Richard not that long ago. But Lazar had been wearing a face mask, and Richard had been quickly sedated. So Richard showed only signs of curiosity as he stood up.
Lazar shook Richard’s hand. “Nice to meet you, sir. These are for your wife.” He held out the flowers. “Oh, and here’s something to put them in.” His other hand drew out a small vase from his jacket pocket.
“Thank you,” said Richard. “That’s very thoughtful.”
Lazar walked over to the sink in the room, running water into the vase and adding the flowers, while I handed creamer and a sugar packet to Richard and kissed Mom on the forehead. I could hear how steady and strong her heartbeat was, and smell the warmth of her skin. She was getting better. But the room still held the uneasy quiet that comes with waiting.
“Her color looks good,” I said. My words felt awkward and weighty, when I had meant them to be light.
“Mmm,” Richard said through his coffee cup. “I think the fluids are working.”
“Here.” Lazar’s brown boots clicked over the tile as he walked over and handed me the flowers.
“Thanks.” I set them down on the table next to Mom’s bed.
“They’re cheerful,” Richard said. “Thank you.”
Lazar nodded, keeping very still and looking down uncomfortably.
“Okay, so I just need to have a quick word with Lazar,” I said. It sounded clumsy even to my ears. “I’ll be right outside in the hallway if she wakes up or anything.”
Richard nodded, sipping his coffee, and Lazar and I slipped out into the hallway and then to a small alcove a few feet down, where two
semi-padded chairs sat under a not-terrible painting of the desert beneath a full moon.
“God, hospitals make everything weird.” I plopped down in my chair. “Here, hold this.”
He obediently took my cup of coffee as I used both hands to dig open the container of hummus and tear apart the bread.
“Did Amaris try to heal your mother?” he said, sitting down in the other chair.
“No,” I said through a mouthful of pita, then chewed and swallowed. “She hasn’t been able to heal anyone, not even herself. Would you like some?” I offered a piece of bread.
He held up a hand as if to say “no, thanks.” “I think I was the last one she healed,” he said.
“Oh, right,” I said. “From when I knocked you out that time in my house.”
“Yes.” He looked down at the cup of coffee, hands clenched around it. “When I tried to kidnap your mother and that nice man in there and shot you. I’m glad he didn’t recognize me from that night. I always wondered why you let me and the others live.”
I dipped a triangle of pita into the hummus. “Well, I did kill that one guy, and I’m sorry about that, but he was a threat at the time. After I knocked you unconscious, I wasn’t going to rip your throat out unnecessarily. That’s murder, not self-defense.”
He nodded and finally met my eye. “I’m grateful. I woke up surprised to be alive. Mercy from a shifter was not what I was brought up to expect,” he said. “But then you’re never what I expect.”
“That was only the second time I ever shifted,” I said. “I had no idea what I was doing.”
“I’ll never forget the sight of you, this huge tiger, pure vengeance and fury. It was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen.”
I smiled over my pita bread. “Scared you, hunh?”
“Maybe a little.” He held out the cup. “Coffee?”
“Thanks.” I took it from him. My spirits were picking up. Maybe it was the food, or knowing that a plan to foil Ximon still might come together. “So. Amaris said you found out what the accelerator was built for.”
“Yes, and it’s even worse than I thought,” he said. “I was able to read part of a hard copy file in my father’s office. I didn’t have time for all of it, but you were right. They have big plans for it. They think, somehow, they can use it to cut off all connection to Othersphere.”