by C. E. Murphy
“If I knew precisely where they would be, yes, but with a war going on, it’s possible none of them remain within the citadel.” Dafydd looked apologetic. “It’s less risky to bring him there, and ride for a healer, than to bring him onto the battlefield.”
Lara whispered a curse, but nodded. “And the spell itself? Can you work it inside a human building?”
“I prepared it while you rented our costumes. It only needs to be triggered within the building, and that’s easy enough. I did it at your apartment,” he reminded her. “We only need be bold a little while longer, and then all will be well.”
She scowled at him. “I don’t believe there’s any definition of ‘well’ that encompasses ‘two men are in desperate need of healing, a traitor needs to be found in the midst of an army before he destroys two kings and claims their crowns, and ancient rivals have to be found, brought together, and made to remember a history neither of them wants to recall so that a truthseeker can find a way to mend the past.’ ”
“Mine does,” he said irrepressibly, and to Lara’s astonishment, stepped forward to pull her against himself and steal a lingering kiss. Astonishment, then a shy, foolish delight filled her, and in disregard of what they faced, Lara tangled her fingers in Dafydd’s hair and held on.
“Ioan,” Aerin said pointedly, “is not that light.”
Dafydd broke free with a laugh, though he touched his forehead against Lara’s and murmured “You’re so terribly pragmatic I couldn’t help myself,” before turning a smile on Aerin. “I think this will be easiest if you remain hidden behind a glamour cloak while the rest of us strip away our costumes and come to the hospital as ourselves. All three of us know Detective Washington, and friends are expected to visit.”
“That would be a better plan if I had real clothes with me.” Kelly stood arms akimbo, making everyone else look at her. “Well, the rest of you are wearing real clothes under lab coats, but I went whole hog—all the way,” she corrected herself with a half-serious glower in Lara’s direction.
“I wouldn’t have said a word,” Lara promised.
Kelly snorted. “You always say something when I use vernacular.”
“You can be the nurse bringing us up to Washington’s room,” Dafydd suggested, and Kelly, satisfied with that, relaxed out of her aggressive stance.
Aerin sighed. “Cast your change of glamour, then, Dafydd. I’m not sure I can hold a veil of unseeing within those walls.”
Color and music became more bearable as the glamour fell away from Lara herself. In seconds, she and Dafydd were as they usually were in her world, and Kelly remained unchanged save the “hospital badge” swimming in Lara’s vision when she glanced at it. Only Aerin was headache-inducing, a blur of not-quite-there that sat wrongly in the world. “All right. Let’s get inside and up to Detective Washington’s room quickly, then. The less time I have to see Aerin fading in and out like that, the better.”
“I don’t see her at all.” Kelly sounded childishly delighted as she herded them into a tight group. Together they hurried through the parking lot to enter the hospital’s front doors for the second time in less than an hour. Kelly went straight for the elevators, saying “He’s on the third floor” over her shoulder.
The doors dinged open as they reached them, and Dickon Collins, Dafydd’s cameraman and Kelly’s ex-fiancé, stepped out. Shock jolted over Lara, stopping her where she stood, and similar surprise flashed over Dickon’s face.
Then suspicion replaced it, and he lifted his voice to snap, “Security! The hospital needs security here right now!”
Dafydd leapt forward, clapping a hand over Dickon’s mouth and by sheer velocity knocking him back a step or two into the elevator. No more than that: Dickon was inches taller than the Seelie man, and broader in chest and shoulder than almost anyone Lara knew. He dug his weight in, stopping the backward stagger, and Lara rushed forward to clutch at Dafydd and Dickon’s arms alike. “Dickon, we’re not here to cause trouble. Dafydd, let him go. For heaven’s sake, let him go or it’ll look like security has a reason to be here!”
“Security does,” Dickon barked as Dafydd released him. “You people are crazy. Dangerous. And if you’re not here to cause trouble why is Kelly in hospital scrubs? Don’t tell me,” he said over Lara’s head, voice sharp with mockery. “You’ve had enough of working at the bra shop and in the last four days you got a nursing degree?”
Kelly, usually quick with a comeback, only looked away, shoulders curved. Dickon made a sound of triumph and Lara balled a fist, taken with a rare urge to lash out physically. “Don’t be cruel, Dickon, we’re here to try to help Detective Washington. Do you really want to stop us?”
Dickon spat, “Help him? After what you did? After how you abandon—Yes, right here! Security! This woman is impersonating a nurse!”
Two breathless security guards staggered up as Dickon shouted. One of them, red-faced, put a hand under his ribs and leaned on the open elevator doors while the other, fitter man gulped for air around a “What’s going on here?”
“This is my ex-fiancé,” Kelly said with immense bitter truth. “We’re here to see a friend upstairs in intensive care, and he’s decided we’re dangerous criminals because I’m wearing scrubs.”
“That’s not tru—” Dickon broke off, scowling between Kelly and Lara. “I mean, it is true she’s my ex—”
“I was at a costume party with somebody else last night,” Kelly said, acidic tone changing not at all, though the untruth screeched over Lara’s skin, “and he’s crazy jealous is all, so he’s trying to make my life hell. It’s working,” she snapped at Dickon. “Are you happy? Because I’m not.”
She turned to the fitter of the security guards, folding her arms under her breasts as she did so. The guard’s gaze dropped, his jaw clenched, and he made a visible effort to wrench his attention back to her face. Lara wanted to applaud his professionalism, but Kelly was in full theatrical mode, a tremble coming into her voice. Not enough to be overtly manipulative with a guard who wasn’t allowing himself to be distracted by her assets, but if Lara hadn’t known better, she’d have believed Kelly’s emotional distress to be real. “A friend of mine just graduated medical school, so we all dressed up in scrubs and lab coats and threw a party to celebrate. If I was impersonating a nurse wouldn’t I have tried to make a real-looking fake ID?” Kelly yanked her driver’s license off the clip that held it to her shirt and handed it to the guard.
Its subtle glamour faded as he took it, and he cast a dubious glance at Dickon before asking, “Who’re you here to see?”
“Detective Reginald Washington,” Kelly said. “You want to know the truth, he’s the reason Dickon and I broke up. I haven’t even gotten to see Reg since he got hurt because Dickon’s been vulturing around like it was just him and Reg who were friends, not me and Reg, too.”
Dickon’s jaw worked, splutters of sound emerging. Dafydd was carefully not looking at him, or at Kelly, for that matter, but Lara, close to his side, could feel laughter vibrating off him. Her own amusement was tempered with a combination of awe at Kelly’s tale-spinning and the uncomfortable shivers the outright lies in her stories produced.
The second guard straightened up from the wall, still wheezing as he nodded a couple of times. “It’s true this guy’s been around all week. I thought maybe the guy up in ICU was his boyfriend.”
“Oh my God.” Kelly whirled on Dickon, her decibel level increasing with each word. “I knew the breakup had to do with Reg, but I had no idea you were playing both sides of the street! My God, how can you even be jealous if I went out with somebody else in that case? At least I’m a serial monogamist, not, not—” Words dissolved into a flood of tears and she buried her face in Lara’s shoulder, howling, “I thought he loved me!”
“Jesus Christ, Kelly, I did love you! I do love you! I’m not dating Reg, for Christ’s sake! We’re just frie—” Dickon arrested the last phrase, recognizing it too late as one of the oldest, least believable thin
gs people said when they’d been caught in an affair. Kelly’s tears redoubled and Lara patted her shoulder even as she felt overwhelming sympathy for Dickon. People were gathering at a safe distance to watch the drama unfold, and he’d done little, if anything, to deserve the scene Kelly was creating. He noticed onlookers, and, already frustrated, became grimmer yet. “To hell with you. To hell with all of you.”
He shoved out of the elevator, the gathering crowd parting to let him pass. Kelly’s sobs slid from dramatic hysterics to real tears. She dragged Lara down inside the elevator doors, shaking with misery. “I love him, Lara. I really, really do. What’m I gonna do? What am I going to do?”
Lara looked up at the guards, both of them looking increasingly dismayed. “There’s a waiting room outside ICU, right? We’ll bring her up there and I’ll take her to a bathroom to get her calmed down before we try to visit Detective Washington. I’m really sorry for all of this.”
“If there’s another peep out of her, another outburst like this …” The fitter guard looked apologetic but resolute, and Lara nodded.
“There won’t be. You’ll be okay,” she added into Kelly’s hair. “You’ll be okay, Kel. Come on. Let’s go see Reginald.”
Kelly snuffled and nodded, and Dafydd stepped all the way into the elevator, finally letting the doors close. As soon as they did, he grunted, and the glamour hiding Aerin faded to leave her staring incredulously among the three of them. “Humans are insane. What was that?”
“That was a distraction,” Kelly said miserably. “I had to do something to keep Dickon from confessing we’d all been at the garage when Reg got hurt. It just worked better than I thought it would.” The elevator dinged, warning they’d passed the second floor, and she whispered, “Better hide again. We’re almost there.”
Aerin disappeared, leaving nothing more than a shimmer in the mirrors. Lara stood and drew Kelly to her feet, all three of them briefly reflected before the doors opened. Kelly looked terrible, red nose and swollen eyes clashing with her green scrubs. Lara thought she herself looked a little shocked, but Dafydd was still clearly trying not to laugh. He went so far as to catch Kelly’s hand and bow low over it when they stepped out of the elevator.
“I know I should offer my profound condolences and my sorrow for putting you through that, no matter how unintentionally, but I must instead admit to my deep admiration for your acting skills. I realize some of that was genuine emotion, but I have rarely, in a century of living among mortals, seen such quick-witted melodramatics. You are wasted fitting brassieres, Miss Richards. You should be on the stage.”
The worst of Kelly’s tears had stopped by the time he finished his extravagant compliments. She even managed a sloppy, tiny smile, though she shot a skeptical look at Lara. “Is he blarneying me?”
“He was sincere in every word,” Lara assured her. Kelly laughed shakily and Lara pulled her into a hug, promising “You’ll be all right” again before setting her back and grinning despite herself. “You really are an appallingly good liar, Kel.”
“I’ve gotten much better at it since I met you.” Kelly sniffled, then laughed more fully at Lara’s expression. “I started really thinking about how to use most of the truth while telling lies, after I figured out nobody could lie to you. I mean, that doesn’t work on you, you still know anyway, but it made me a much better liar. Okay. If I go wash my face will I be presentable enough to get into the ICU?”
“You had best be,” Aerin said from nowhere, voice low and threatening. “Emyr’s firstborn grows no less heavy as you stand and perform.”
Kelly squeaked and ran for the bathroom as Lara studied Aerin, curiosity piqued. “Emyr’s firstborn” was a far kinder way to refer to Ioan than the “traitor” Aerin had used earlier. She wondered if the Seelie warrior woman’s thaw would last beyond returning to the Barrow-lands, or if her willingness to accept and help Ioan was merely an artifact of them being strangers together in a strange land.
A nurse came down the hall, wheeling a half-sleeping old woman toward the elevator. Lara scurried out of the way, but the woman reached out as they passed her, grabbing Lara’s wrist and turning a vivid dark gaze on her. “Truth will seek the hardest path, measures that must mend the past.”
Lara’s heart caught in her chest, then hammered again too hard, making her dizzy. “Wo—”
The old woman’s face brightened and she changed her grip, holding Lara’s hand instead. “Breaker who restores the land, keeps the world gates well in hand.”
“Mrs. Moloney, please don’t do that,” the nurse said wearily. She gently unwrapped the old woman’s fingers from Lara’s, offering an apologetic sigh as she did so. “She was a poet in her youth. I’m afraid she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s now and imagines her little rhymes to have some sort of deep meaning. She doesn’t mean any harm.”
“No,” Lara whispered. “No, of course she doesn’t. But you might want to listen to her, nurse. There might be something in what she says, even if it sounds like nonsense.”
The nurse gave her a tired smile. “You’re a good soul, miss. Most people find Mrs. Moloney disturbing. Maybe you should think about a career in nursing.” She wheeled the old woman into the elevator, leaving Lara to massage her palm and stare after them.
“Poets and prophets.” Dafydd took her hand, squeezing it gently as he, too, looked after the old woman. “What do you suppose she meant?”
“I don’t think it’d be called prophecy if it wasn’t cryptic,” Lara said with a faint smile. “But that’s three variants on it now. Oisín did tell me to ask any other prophets I met for a reading. Do you believe in fate, Dafydd?”
“More and more every day,” he said in an odd tone. Lara glanced over to find him watching her intently. A self-deprecating smile played at his lips, but his gaze was serious. Breath rushed out of her and she turned toward him, an arm wrapped around his back and her face hidden in his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she mumbled after a moment. “Thank you for that. My life has been turned upside down. You’ve turned it upside down. But somehow it just takes a look or a smile or a word from you and I find myself believing it’s going to be all right. That all these choices and decisions are the right ones, somehow. And I don’t know what Mrs. Moloney meant, but I think we needed to come here to hear what she had to say. Merrick might have done us more of a favor than he knew.”
“I believe I love you, too,” Dafydd murmured into her hair, and gave her a bright boyish smile as she pulled back, astonished, to gaze up at him. “I’m sorry,” he said without a hint of sincerity. “I could have sworn that was what I just heard you say. Am I wrong?”
“No,” Lara admitted. “No, I think you heard right. I just didn’t know that was what I was saying.”
“A truthseeker uncertain of her words. I have indeed shaken the foundations of the universe.” Dafydd’s smile lit up further as Lara blushed, but he stopped his teasing by kissing her. “Worlds come changed at end of day,” he whispered. “And how they have, Lara. How they have. I had not anticipated this.”
Kelly, brightly, said, “Well, I did. Boy, I leave you alone for two minutes and your whole relationship changes. You can get on with being kissy-faces later. Do I look okay now?”
Lara broke free of Dafydd with a laugh and gave Kelly a once-over before nodding in satisfaction. “You’ll do for someone I haven’t dressed.”
“Lara, if you’d made my scrubs, we’d still be back at my apartment with you working on them. I’m sure they’d be beautiful, but all they needed to be was functional. All right.” Kelly glanced from Lara to Dafydd, then around like she sought the invisible Aerin before dusting her hands together. “Let’s go save Reg.”
By comparison to Reginald Washington, Ioan looked hale and hearty. The detective’s dark skin was ashy blue, healthy color leeched away. An oxygen mask covered half his face, but his eyes were sunken with ill health, and though at least one of the IVs snaked into his veins was saline, he looked dehydrated.
Dehydrated and bloated both, Lara thought; his hands were swollen, and his torso was patchy under the hospital gown, suggesting there was still material packed against puncture wounds. Small tubes drained the wounds, and the private room was filled with machinery beeping and the oxygen machine’s rasp.
Kelly stopped inside the door, hands cupped over her mouth. “Oh my God. Can we even move him?”
Aerin set Ioan down in a chair, glamour disrupting as she did so. She rubbed her shoulders as she came to stand over the dying detective, a frown etched between her eyebrows. “He smells of infection. Will he live if we move him?”
“He’ll die if we don’t,” Lara said to both of them, grateful she would be understood. Truth made her response sharp, and she wished it away, knowing it would do no good. “Aerin, I know you’re not a healer, but is there any way you can use your magic to stabilize him a little? Stone is very stable …”
The Seelie woman pursed her lips, intrigued. “I would never have thought of such a use. But the earth here is very far away, Truthseeker, and iron spikes the space between us. I’m not sure if I can work a holding magic within these walls.”
“Maybe set a spell to trigger when we enter the Barrow-lands, then. Something to link his strength to the land, the way you linked mine to it through the horse.”
“The horses.” Aerin focused on Lara abruptly. “Will we abandon them, then? We cannot bring this de-tek-tiv to the green place, nor bring them here.”
Lara dropped her chin to her chest and swore. “We’ll have to come back for them later.”
“Will the time wrench us astray? Will the horses be lost to us, if we travel without them?” Aerin asked Dafydd.
He said “No” absently as he traced a door-sized rectangle in the air. “So long as I open the worldwalking spell on both sides myself, it should be fine. It’s not meant to throw travelers out of time when properly worked.”