Start with him waking up. That would be nice.
"Yes," she managed to say, nodding. "That's Eric."
"I'm sorry." He reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, and Kayla moved before he could touch her, going up along the side of the bed to stand at Eric's side. "Could I . . . just stay with him for a few minutes?"
"Of course. Can we get in touch with your parents?"
Kayla stared at him blankly for a moment before realizing that he meant Eric's parents. "No. They're dead."
Wilson hesitated, on the verge of saying something he obviously didn't want to say to her. "I'll be outside."
Kayla waited impatiently until she heard the door close again.
"Hey there, Sleeping Beauty," she said. "Time to wake up."
She pulled off her gloves and stuffed them into her pocket, then reached out and touched Eric on the forehead. Come out, come out, wherever you are. . . .
* * *
"—make an appointment for you to talk to Dr. Rodriguez tomorrow afternoon. He'll be able to give you the specifics of Mr. Banyon's condition. And if you can stop by the Admitting Office on your way out, we can get most of the paperwork taken care of," Mr. Wilson was saying to Beth and Kory when Kayla came out.
* * *
Beth took one quick glance at Kayla's face and took a step sideways to put herself between Wilson and the young Empath. Whatever had just happened in that room wasn't good, and Kayla looked just about to lose it.
Kory—Lady bless him!—picked up on her cue and shepherded Kayla ahead of him toward the elevator. Beth set her mouth on "babble" and pasted her best insincere smile on her face, the one that had served her well, in a previous life, whenever she'd had to deal with network TV executives.
"Thank you for everything you've done, Mr. Wilson. I'm afraid I don't have Eric's insurance card with me but—do you have a fax number here? I know he's got a fax, I could go home and fax you the information as soon as we get back to his apartment. Kory and I are staying with him. Eric introduced me to Kory, actually; we've all known each other for years. I live out on the West Coast now, in fact I was just in town for a few days on a visit; this is such a horrible thing to happen; I told Eric that moving to New York was a horrible idea, but honestly—"
"They'll take care of all that down at the Admitting Office," Mr. Wilson said. "And of course the police will want to get in touch with you."
"Police?" Beth said, her voice skittering up an octave despite herself. "Oh, because he was mugged! Well, I don't know what I can tell them. But sure; gosh, I went through that last year out in SF when someone stole my purse. Not that this is anything like that, of course." She laughed, a little jaggedly. Oh, Blessed Lady, not the police! I don't think I can handle that. . . .
But she managed to keep right on babbling.
* * *
"What's wrong?" Beth demanded, as soon as all three of them were in the open air again.
"Beth," Kayla said, "it's him. But he isn't in there."
Chapter Twelve:
Rocky Road To Dublin
They picked up a tail about two miles away from the PDI, and Ria doubted it was anyone nice, with every LEO in D.C. converging on the explosion.
She'd gotten Marley into her trench coat and managed to get him buckled into the passenger seat beside her. At least, if they were stopped, he wouldn't look as immediately suspicious as he would if he were naked.
He was conscious—his eyes were open at least, and he was holding onto a bottle of water—but Ria didn't know how well he was tracking. Still, she had to try. When she showed up at Nathaniel Babcock's doorstep out in Silver Springs, Marley had to have his story straight. She would have liked to have taken him straight to Walter Reed, but that had been going to be Michael's play. Now she was going to have to fall back on her second choice. Maybe Nathaniel could parlay a promotion out of this.
"Marley, can you hear me?" she asked gently.
"Are we going to lose them?" Logan said to Melody.
"We can but try," Melody said cheerily.
Ria shut her mind to the conversation in the front seat. Either they'd lose their tail or they wouldn't. There was little she could do about it without more rest. She felt bruised in places that didn't even have names, and she had a pounding headache. If she tried a spell now, and lost control of it, she could do as much damage to her own side as to the enemy.
"Marley?" she said again.
Slowly, he turned toward her. "I don't know anything," he whispered. He stared at her with an expression of hopeless despair.
"That's right," Ria said. "Parker Wheatley kidnapped you and tortured you, and you didn't know anything. I'm going to take you to friends. They'll protect you from him."
"No," Marley said in that same strangely docile tone, shaking his head very slightly. "That won't help. He worked for the government, you know."
"He was a sick, crazy man," Ria said gently. "And if you tell my friends what he did, they'll see that."
"Elves," Marley said with a sigh. "He wanted to know about elves."
"But elves don't exist," Ria said firmly. "And anybody who believes in elves is crazy. So Parker Wheatley is crazy. When you talk to my friends, they'll understand. They'll help you."
The Navigator doused its lights and made a sharp left, bumped up over a curb and down a flight of steps—across one of the pedestrian malls that were a feature of downtown—and zoomed on. There was a grinding crunch as it squeezed between a park bench and a piece of sculpture, then a long grating sound as it made its way down an alley just barely wide enough to accommodate it.
"That's done it," Melody said with satisfaction, zipping out into the street and hitting the lights again. "I don't think we're radar-opaque any more, though."
"They won't believe me," Marley said, still in that same flat, dead voice. "They'll believe him."
Ria made herself believe what she said, because Marley was hearing tone more than words right now. "You don't have to worry about Parker Wheatley, Marley. Mr. Wheatley is about to become a footnote to history. Just tell my friends what he did to you."
She patted the briefcase on her lap absently, wondering what was in it that Michael had been so sure was worth dying for.
She'd find out.
* * *
It was almost four by the time they reached Babcock's house. Ria got out of the car—the doors stuck a little, but Melody finally got them open—and took a moment to divest herself of all suspicious equipment and weapons. She took the briefcase, and helped Marley out of the car.
"Now disappear," she told the other two. "I'll take care of the rest."
Logan nodded. The Lincoln's doors shut.
She stood there for a moment, holding Marley up, as the Navigator disappeared—more sedately now—into the distance.
It was cold. Her breath fogged the air. She could feel Marley shivering.
"Come on," she said. "Let's go."
He stumbled with her up to the front steps of the house. All the windows were dark. Ria rang the doorbell. There was a pause, then a sudden wild barking from inside, and the sound of scrabbling at the inside of the door.
Several minutes passed. The dog stopped barking abruptly. Then the outside lights went on, and Nathaniel Babcock's face appeared at the window. He stared at Ria for a long moment before dropping the curtain again.
The door opened on the security chain.
"Ms. Llewellyn?" he said guardedly.
"Yes, Mr. Babcock. It's all right. I'm sorry to bother you at home. I've brought a friend who needs official help. His name is Marley Bell, and up until several hours ago he was being held prisoner by Parker Wheatley and the PDI."
Babcock closed the door and took the chain off, then opened it all the way. He was wearing a plaid wool bathrobe over striped pajamas and looked very rumpled. One pocket of the robe sagged, as if something heavy rested there. In the living room behind him stood his wife, her arms full of a squirming black-and-white cocker spaniel, one hand firmly clamped ov
er its muzzle.
"Bab?" she said.
"Go back to bed, honey. And take Bingo with you, would you? This is business."
The woman sighed and turned away, hefting the dog higher in her arms and letting go of its muzzle. It began to bark again as she carried it off down the hall. The sound continued until it was muffled by the sound of a closing door.
Ria stepped inside, carrying Marley with her. Babcock stared at his bare legs as Ria lowered him gently into the nearest chair. It was pretty obvious that Marley was wearing nothing but her coat.
"What's this all about?" Nathaniel said.
"The short version goes something like this," Ria said, rubbing her forehead wearily. "Mr. Bell owns an occult bookstore in Baltimore. About two weeks ago—I found out yesterday—Parker Wheatley went off the rails and kidnapped him, apparently on the theory that Mr. Bell was an agent of these parahumans he's after. He's had Mr. Bell tortured. A doctor would be nice."
"And where do you come into this?"
"I was left holding the baby," Ria said. She chose her next words with care. If she said anything that indicated she'd committed a crime, Nathaniel would have little choice but to take notice. "A friend of mine entered the PDI tonight with what he told me was a Justice Department warrant. He's dead now. Nathaniel, how much of this do you really want to know?"
"I didn't want to know this much. Are you sure he was tortured?"
In answer, Ria reached down and pulled open the trench coat, exposing one of the burn marks on Marley's chest. Nathaniel's face went very still.
"I'm going to go get dressed and make some calls. Don't go anywhere."
* * *
After that, things happened fairly fast. Mrs. Babcock, Nathaniel's two boys, and the spaniel Bingo—still protesting, intermittently, these intruders in her domain—were quickly dressed and removed from the house. The expression on Nathaniel's wife's face as she drove off indicated that this wasn't the last Nathaniel was going to hear about this, either. Three unmarked but highly obvious official cars arrived in the Babcock driveway. A doctor made a quick examination of Marley Bell and asked him a few questions before having him taken off to a hospital under full security.
Ria managed a quick look through the briefcase. Michael hadn't had much time inside, but what he'd managed to get should be enough to hang Parker Wheatley from a high gallows indeed. Memos, work documents, position papers—several with Wheatley's own signature—all detailed the PDI's quest to end the "paraterrestrial menace" in plain language that made Wheatley and his band of little green men sound like raving lunatics.
She told a short and highly expurgated version of her story to the senior case agents who arrived at Nathaniel's house along with the doctor, and then, more or less as she'd expected, was driven back into Washington to be interviewed at the J. Edgar Hoover Building several more times by a number of people much higher on the FBI food chain than Nathaniel Babcock. She'd kept her story simple, knowing that they really wouldn't be able to disprove it.
And knowing what she did about Washington politics, they wouldn't want to. If Marley told a different story about his rescue, they'd put it down to the disorientation of his captivity. And they might not ask him about that part at all.
Ria's story was simple and contained a lot of the truth, as the best lies always did. She'd gone to Michael with the information about Marley, and Michael had done the rest. She willingly gave them everything she had about her past dealings with Michael, knowing that at this point there was no one left in Michael's organization to compromise. Michael had taken her with him to the PDI so that she could identify Marley when he brought Marley out. If they thought that was odd, the only person they could complain to about it was dead.
Michael had brought Marley and the briefcase to the car. She gave up the briefcase, admitting freely that she'd looked through it: who wouldn't? Michael had gone back inside. Ria had heard gunfire. There'd been an explosion. Michael hadn't come back. Ria had panicked and driven off.
A nice, neat story. And very nearly true. And if anyone wondered where her car was now, she made sure with a few well-placed spells that they didn't ask. By the time the little spells of Misdirection she'd managed to cast wore off and they did ask, she could tell them she'd sent one of her drivers out to pick it up. Just what they could expect from an annoying civilian, when all was said and done.
They'd wanted to hold her for further questioning, of course, but Ria had other plans, and—by now—the magical muscle to back it up. A glamourie would wear off eventually, but by the time it did, she would have had a chance to muddle her tracks even more thoroughly and put up a hedge of lawyers around herself. She had every intention of cooperating to bring Wheatley down. But on her terms.
One simple spell bought her five uninterrupted minutes' use of her cell phone to call for a LlewellCo car to be waiting for her downstairs. Another—more complicated—series of spells convinced the people she was talking to that she really wasn't very central to their actual investigation after all, and that she might as well be allowed to go back to her hotel until they needed her again. Since that was so counter to their own inclinations, the spell wouldn't hold for long. But then, it didn't have to. Just for long enough.
An agent escorted her out of the building. Her car was waiting. Ria didn't breathe quite freely until its door had closed behind her.
"Back to the Watergate, Ms. Llewellyn?" the driver asked.
She considered it for a brief instant, but no. She doubted Wheatley was the sort to give up easily, and the wheels of justice—or even payback—ground exceeding slow. She'd stung him, she was quite sure he knew by now who his enemy was, and she had ample proof of how little interest he had in playing by the rules.
If he gave her enough trouble, she could certainly make him vanish. But making him vanish wouldn't serve her aims nearly as well as thoroughly discrediting the PDI would.
"No. Just drive around for a while. I'm going to make some calls."
* * *
"What do you mean 'he's not there'?" Beth demanded, pacing back and forth.
They'd been about to have this conversation right there on the steps of the hospital, but Kory had made Beth wait until they'd gotten back to Eric's apartment. It didn't make things any easier.
Kayla was huddled in a ball of misery at one corner of the couch, knees drawn up to her chin and arms wrapped around them tightly.
"They really did a number on him," she said, her voice low. "But that shouldn't matter. Hell, Jimmie was dyin', an' she was still there. But I touched him, an' . . . it was like he was empty." She shuddered, remembering. It had been like touching a piece of meat at the supermarket. Warm, and breathing—thanks to the hospital's machines—but . . . empty.
"No," Beth whispered, her face twisting with pain. Kayla winced at the agony she could feel sheeting off Beth. The better you knew someone, the harder it was to shield against them.
"Could he be . . . hiding?" Kory suggested. He stroked Beth's hair, and Kayla felt Beth's pain ease a little.
"Maybe," Kayla said dubiously, trying to forget it was Eric in that bed and think. "Elizabet said that happens sometimes. With physical trauma or a bad psychic shock. It's sort of what happened with Ria. It took us almost a year to really put her back together, and it took two of us. I wasn't with Eric long enough to take a good look. And if I am going to take a really deep look, I'm going to need an anchor and some protection. I could use Hosea. Or Ria."
She noticed that Beth didn't make her usual face when Ria's name was mentioned, for a change. That was nice.
"Has anything bad happened to Eric recently?" Beth asked. "Something that could make something like this happen?"
Other than seeing his parents again, and finding out about Magnus, and like that? Kayla thought. "I didn't think so," she said, honestly enough. "He's been seeing that shrink, and everything—I better call her and tell her we found him, and then call Elizabet and ask her what to do. And dig out Eric's insurance card to keep t
he hospital happy." And get farther away from you, lady, before I gnaw open a vein just from being around you.
Kayla swung off the couch and went into the bedroom. Eric would have left his wallet there. There was a second phone there as well.
The first thing she saw, sitting on top of the dresser in plain sight, was Magnus' bus pass. She grabbed it.
Kory reached over her shoulder and plucked it out of her hand. He'd followed her into the bedroom so silently she hadn't heard a thing.
"Gimme that!" Kayla hissed, grabbing for it. She glanced around him, but Beth had stayed in the living room, for a mercy.
Kory, far taller than she was, held it easily out of her reach.
"A brother," he said quietly, not even needing to look at the card to be able to know—magically—what it signified. "Lost. And Eric was looking for him when he disappeared. Or . . . had found him?"
"He knows where he is," Kayla said, giving up. "He'd run away and come here—to New York. That's why Eric was dressed like that, in the Park. He wanted to gain his confidence a little, so Magnus would trust him when Eric told him he was his long-lost brother and wasn't just going to hand him back over to his folks. Don't tell Beth," she pleaded.
"Because Beth would worry?" Kory said, smiling faintly. "Is he safe?"
Kayla thought hard. Was he? Were the three of them? "For now," she said reluctantly. "He's with two other kids, and Eric said both the other two have Talent." And he said there was a problem. Was the problem why what happened to him happened? "If . . ." If I can't make him wake up, if he stays like that—NO! "I'll tell Ria where they are and what's going on. Hosea says there's a halfway house they can go to, to get them off the street, if nothing better. I'll make sure nothing happens to any of them. I swear."
Kory regarded her steadily. He looked about Beth and Eric's age, but Eric had told her once that Kory was about two centuries old. Even if the Sidhe lived for about a zillion years, that had to count for something, didn't it?
"A great responsibility for one so young. Yet Eric would not have entrusted it to you were you not capable of it. I only wish . . . had he come to us, the children could all be safe in Misthold even now. But those days are gone, and we each have our own road to tread. We will keep his confidences between us, then."
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