by E. E. Holmes
“So, what is it?” I asked. “What do you want?”
“I was under the impression,” Catriona said, “that you agreed to help me take a lead on this Charlie Wright case.”
“And I have,” I said. “It’s not like I’m hiding from you. I’ve turned in all my paperwork, all my statements, and spoken with at least three other Trackers so far to confirm the details. If there’s something else you need me to do, all you need to do is ask.”
“Hence why I’ve been looking for you,” Catriona said wryly. “I’ve got some questioning that needs to be done, and I want you to handle it.”
At her words, my heart was suddenly throwing itself against the inside of my rib cage in panic. “Questioning? Me? You… you don’t mean Charlie, do you? Because I don’t think I’m equipped to handle…”
“Calm down, calm down. I would never be so daft as to ask you to question Charlie Wright,” Catriona said with a roll of her eyes. “No offense, but you have neither the skills nor the stamina. And I can see from your face that you would fall right to pieces anyway.”
I longed to throw a barbed retort back at her, but there was no arguing with her. She was right. I couldn’t handle it, and it was no good pretending that I could just to spite her. If I ever saw Charlie Wright again, it would be too damn soon. I wasn’t sure if I would break down in post-traumatic tears or just beat the ever-loving shit out of him with whatever blunt object I could get my hands on, but either way, I couldn’t sit and calmly ask him questions while he sat smugly across from me.
“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice steady while trying to get my heart rate to do the same. “So, if it’s not Charlie, then who do you need me to question?”
“Phoebe Horton. And that Traveler friend of yours who’s in the hospital wing with her—Flavia, I believe her name is,” Catriona said. She pulled the file folder out from underneath her arm and handed it to me. “We’ve got a long list of details that need filling in, and they’re likely to have at least a few of the answers.”
I took the folder and flipped it open. There were several pages of typed questions, along with a case report. From glancing through it, I was able to see that they were trying to cobble together a timeline of Charlie Wright’s whereabouts from the time that the attacks began. There were… a lot of blanks.
“You’re right,” I said, closing the folder again, and looking back at Catriona. “I’m sure Flavia and Phoebe do have some of these answers. But how do you expect them to give them to you—or to me, for that matter—when they’re both lying unconscious in the hospital ward?”
“I think I have got a vague idea how consciousness and unconsciousness work, thank you very much,” Catriona said, pursing her lips together. “I rather thought that you could be responsible for checking in on them periodically, and scheduling the interview for when each of them wakes. Unless of course that’s too complicated for you.”
“Man, that degree from charm school is just working overtime isn’t it?” I muttered under my breath.
“Sorry?” Catriona said sharply.
“Nothing, forget it,” I said with a sigh. “I can handle it. I was just on my way over to the hospital ward to check on Flavia’s progress, anyway. Mrs. Mistlemoore says that there are hopeful signs that she may be awake soon, and Savvy says that Phoebe is starting to show some progress as well.”
“Yes, I’ve heard the same thing,” Catriona said. “But as I’m a bit too swamped with work right now to simply wait around for that happy moment to arrive, I’m handing that task over to you. Any questions?”
“Um.…”
I could think of about a hundred questions. I’d never formally interviewed anyone before, and while I was glad Flavia and Phoebe weren’t hostile Necromancer prisoners, I was still kind of nervous about the idea of questioning them. What was the protocol? Was there a right or wrong way to interview someone? Did I need to write it all down word for word, or could I just take some notes? And what if there were things they couldn’t remember clearly, or details that were just too painful to recall? Did I just ignore those questions? Or did I have to push Flavia and Phoebe to relive terrible things? The more I thought about it, the more nervous I became. Maybe I wasn’t the person to handle this, after all.
Naturally, I said exactly none of this to Catriona. I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction.
“Nope,” I said instead, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “I’m sure I can figure it out.”
“Let’s hope so,” Catriona said. “Come and find me when you’ve got it all sorted.”
“No problem,” I said, tucking the file folder under my own arm. “So… how has the investigation been going on your end? Have you been questioning people, too?”
Catriona’s eyes seemed to blaze. “Not very successfully,” she said, a grudging sort of growl in her voice. “Our loquacious kidnapper is turning out to be quite a bit less charming and certainly less talkative than he was in that basement. I don’t think we’ll be making much headway with him, unless we can find some leverage to use against him.”
“Do we have any other leads?” I asked.
“A few,” Catriona said, sounding entirely unenthused. “But each of them is a bit of a longshot.”
“So, then what’s next?” I asked. “I mean, if Charlie won’t talk?”
“I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve yet,” Catriona said through clenched teeth. “But we have a few acquaintances to interview, and a few witnesses to question. There may still be some details to uncover, even if Charlie Wright decides he’s not going to be a good little lad and divulge them himself.”
I could tell her, I thought, as I looked into Catriona’s determined face. I could tell her about the drawing. I could tell her about being a Seer, right now, in this hallway. I could do that. Those details she was talking about, I might be the one who had them. It was very possible that my drawing could blow this case wide open. Was I just damning us all by keeping the secret to myself?
But even as I considered it, hot molten panic flooded up in my throat, choking me, extinguishing the words that might have risen to my lips. No. I had to wait a little bit longer. I had to at least find out what Fiona had been able to discover before I threw myself to the wolves. I wasn’t sure if I was being selfish, or cautious. Perhaps it was a bit of both. But I couldn’t tell her, not yet.
“Good luck,” I said instead. “If anyone can break him, I’m sure it’s you. I mean, I’d break, if I had to sit in a room alone with you for any significant length of time.”
Something in Catriona’s stern expression vanished. She threw her head back and laughed—a real, ringing laugh. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.
I gave a yelp as my phone buzzed to life in my pocket, startling me.
“Bit jumpy there, aren’t you?” Catriona asked as she watched me struggle to extract the phone from my pocket.
“Yeah, can’t think of what’s happened to me lately that might put me on edge,” I said sarcastically. I glanced down at the screen and swore under my breath.
“What’s wrong? What is it?” Catriona asked.
“It’s not ‘what,’ it’s ‘who,’” I told her, grimacing. “Karen, probably wondering why she hasn’t heard from me.”
“Ah,” Catriona said and gave a knowing nod of the head. “I see. Haven’t told her about the attack yet, have you?”
“Nope, and I’m not going to right now, either,” I said, sending the call to my voicemail. “Still haven’t figured out how to have that conversation yet.”
“Well, if I know Karen, you’d better figure out how to have it, and sharpish,” Catriona advised. “She’s nothing if not persistent.”
I snorted. “There’s a euphemism if ever I’ve heard one. She’s going to kill me for… well, for almost getting myself killed.”
Catriona laughed again. Twice in one conversation. I was pretty sure that was a record. “Good luck with that,” she chuckled. “You’re going to need it.” Sh
e turned on her heel and began to stalk away. She’d only gone a few steps when she stopped abruptly, as though she’d only just remembered something. She turned back around, and gave me a hard, piercing look, all humor gone as suddenly as it had appeared.
“You’re all right, are you?” she asked bluntly.
“I… what?” I replied, momentarily thrown off by the question.
“You know what I mean. After the attack, after the ordeal in that basement,” Catriona said. She was picking at her fingernail, not quite able to meet my eyes. “I mean to say… you’re holding up all right, are you?”
It took me a moment to realize that she was fighting valiantly against a show of real concern. It was almost funny to watch the struggle on her face.
Almost.
“Yeah,” I said, giving her a small nod of thanks. “Yeah, I’m holding up all right. And you?”
Catriona’s face gave a funny sort of twitch. “Who, me? I’m always all right.”
And she strutted away, her body language making it perfectly clear that she would utterly destroy anyone who ever dared to suggest that she wasn’t, in fact, always all right.
4
Wide Awake
THE HOSPITAL WARD WAS QUIET and peaceful, with morning sunlight streaming in through the high windows, which had been opened to tempt in the earthy smell of the English countryside. I had only walked a few steps across the room, glancing around for Mrs. Mistlemoore, when I heard a voice call out.
“Jess! Jess, over here!”
The Tracker folder slipped out from under my arm in my surprise, and I bent to catch it before it hit the ground. My heart leapt, because I knew that voice. I straightened up and looked to the far corner of the room to see Flavia propped up in her bed with a breakfast tray set on her lap.
“Oh my God! You’re awake!” I cried, closing the rest of the distance between us at a jog.
She laughed weakly. “That’s what they tell me, yeah. I still feel half-asleep, but I think the food is helping.”
I sat gingerly down on the edge of her bed, careful not to upset her tray, and placed the file folder carefully onto the bedside table. Flavia was still incredibly pale, her pallor all the more accentuated by the bright fuchsia tone of her hair, which was matted and tangled, and grown out at the roots to reveal an inch of jet-black natural color. Her dark-framed glasses looked too large for her face, as though she were a kid playing dress-up with her mom’s glasses, and her cheeks looked sunken and hollow beneath sharply protruding cheekbones. Someone had removed her piercings—probably Mrs. Mistlemoore—and she wore a white muslin nightgown that made her look like a workhouse child from the pages of a Dickensian novel, except for the dark tattoos that peeked out around the collar. When she smiled, though, there was a wry twinkle in her eyes, which had returned at last to their rich, warm brown color.
“How are you feeling?” I asked her. I wanted to hug her, but she looked like one decent hug might snap her like a twig, so I settled instead for reaching out and squeezing her hand. She returned the squeeze gratefully.
“I’m… okay, I think?” she replied, though it sounded more like a question than anything else, like she didn’t actually trust her own perceptions. “I came to around midnight last night. It was scary at first. I had no idea where I was and I started to panic. But luckily, Mrs. Mistlemoore was making her rounds, and spotted me almost at once. She was able to convince me I was safe and calm me down.”
“How much… what did she tell you?” I asked hesitantly.
“I don’t remember telling her it was time for visitors,” came a stern voice from behind us. Both Flavia and I looked up, startled, as Mrs. Mistlemoore bustled toward us. I braced for a telling off, but as she reached the bedside table, I noticed she was smirking.
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I intended to ask you, I promise. But then Flavia called my name and I saw she was awake, and…” I shrugged.
Mrs. Mistlemoore’s smirk bloomed into a wide smile. “Ah well, I can’t say I blame you. We’re all as relieved as we can be to see her awake at last. How’s that tea and toast going down?” she added, turning to Flavia.
“Okay,” Flavia said. “I’m taking it slowly.” I looked down at her plate. She’d only managed to take a few tiny nibbles. It looked like a mouse had gotten at her toast.
“You want some eggs with that?” Mrs. Mistlemoore offered briskly.
Flavia went a shade whiter at the suggestion. “I… don’t think I’m quite ready for eggs.”
Mrs. Mistlemoore eyed her critically. She bent to lay her hand across Flavia’s forehead, then pressed her fingers to Flavia’s wrist and timed her pulse against the gold watch she wore dangling from a chain around her waist. Then she dropped a few pinches of powders from a set of little glass bottles on the bedside table into a glass of water and handed it to Flavia. “You still look peaky, and your pulse is still a bit more elevated than I’d like, seeing as you’re simply lying there. I want you to drink that straight away before you try any more of the toast.”
Flavia gave a solemn salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And you, Miss Ballard. I’m fine with a few minutes of calm conversation, but no upsetting my patient, please,” Mrs. Mistlemoore said, turning her eagle eye on me.
“Who me? When have I ever caused trouble of any kind?” I asked her, trying to look offended.
Her lips twitched, and as she walked away, I could have sworn I heard her mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, “That girl will be the death of me.”
“I see your reputation precedes you,” Flavia said, smiling at me.
I shrugged. “What can I say? I’m kind of a big deal around here. Okay, so… calm conversation…” I said, casting around in my brain for something to say, and then remembering the folder full of questions I was supposed to bombard her with.
“What’s in the folder, then?” Flavia asked. I looked up to see that she had followed my gaze.
“Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s Tracker stuff,” I said, and when she raised her eyebrows, I sighed. “I was instructed to ask you all of the questions in there when you woke up, but screw that. There will be plenty of time for all of that later.”
“Will it help the investigation?” Flavia asked, and she seemed to be steeling herself.
“It will only hurt the investigation if you overtire yourself and set your recovery back because you had to sit through an interrogation before you even had a cup of tea,” I said, sounding quite a bit like Mrs. Mistlemoore myself.
“I’d rather talk to you than a Tracker I don’t know,” Flavia said quietly, and I looked up to see her examining her own hands. “You can ask me about it. I know he hurt you, too.”
I squeezed her hand again. “I’m so sorry, Flavia. Truly, I am, for everything you’ve been through. You can talk about it if you think it will make you feel better to get it off your chest, just friend to friend, but we can save the formal questions for another time, all right?”
Flavia nodded, still looking down at her hands. She sighed, shaking her head. “I still can’t believe any of this. I can’t believe he turned out to be such a…”
“Creep? Maniac? Sadistic wolf in sheep’s clothing?” I supplied readily.
Flavia half-laughed. “Yes. All of that. I met him in the research library. I was working there, and the medical students are in and out all the time, of course, buried up to their eyeballs in assignments. He asked me for help on a few different occasions. He was nice, and I got to know him by name.” She pulled in a shuddering breath. “God, I feel like such an idiot.”
“Don’t,” I said sharply. “Don’t do that. You can’t blame yourself. He fooled everyone, myself included.”
I watched as she tried to swallow back the self-judgement; it did not go down easily. Then she took a deep breath and continued. “He was outside the library that night. I was just locking up, and he came running up the steps, completely out of breath, saying he’d left his laptop charger plugged into one of t
he outlets in the quiet study room. He looked quite desperate, said he had a paper due, so what could I say? I opened back up and let him in so that he could go get it. It was dark. There was no one else there, no one around. That was his plan, I suppose. I waited by the front door for about ten minutes, and then went down to see what was taking him so long.”
She paused, her face twisted with pain, and then tried to cover her moment of emotion by taking a long, deliberate draught of the herbal drink Mrs. Mistlemoore had handed her. She drained it, then scrunched her face into a grimace. “Ugh, that was disgusting,” she announced, placing the empty glass down on her tray. Then she went on, her voice steadier than before. “He grabbed me from behind. I think he must have been hiding behind one of the computer bays. He… I tried to fight him off, but he was much stronger than he looked for such a lanky guy. I threw my head back as hard as I could. I don’t think I quite broke his nose, but it was bleeding pretty freely all over both of us. He managed to get a piece of duct tape over my mouth, but he must have realized I wasn’t going to quit struggling. That’s when he hit me—hard—across the face. He knocked me cold. I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in his flat.”
Flavia looked up at me. I tried to smile. “At least you bloodied him up,” I said.
She almost laughed. “It didn’t do me much good, in the end.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t even get to fight him off at first. I think he learned his lesson from you, actually. He drugged me—hit me in the neck with some kind of paralytic or sedative. I got a piece of him in the end, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“I bit half his ear off.”
Flavia’s mouth dropped open. “You did what?!”
“Why am I hearing raised voices?” came Mrs. Mistlemoore’s stern voice, and I turned to see her frowning face poking out of her office. “Do I need to break up this visit?”
“No,” Flavia and I both called back. Flavia snatched her toast up off her plate and took a bite for good measure.