Joe gave me a withering look. "You really watch way too much TV. Now get down and stop that. Though I find that look sort of hot, I prefer just you."
I dropped onto my slippers and stared at him. "You…you think I look hot like this?" I glanced down at my ashen skin, black talons, and angry bunny slippers.
"I've said it before, Zoë." He blushed as he took a step back. "But you know…I read comic books as a kid. My favorite vacation every year is Comic-Con, so…" He shrugged. "You look like a hot, sexy, supervillainess. And what's every fourteen-year-old boy's wet dream except to be caught between your—"
He blushed.
OMG! He blushed!
"Damn…that just sort of got away from me, didn't it? Sorry, Zoë, please take that for what it was supposed to be."
It was a compliment. In a weird, backhanded manner.
I stared at him for a bit as I shifted back to plain old me. "So, how exactly are you going to protect me when I can probably protect your entire force single-handedly? And how is this supposed to help us find Dags?"
I caught the shift in his expression, from happy smirky to just…smirky…at the mention of Dags's name. Poor guy. Darren McConnell was the nicest, most well-mannered and sweetest guy I knew…and yet somehow he'd alienated Joe and Daniel. "The Society's still working under the assumption that Maureen's somehow preventing the Seraphim from using the Grimoire. But we don't know how long she can hold out. We're a bit blind getting any rumors or innuendo from the Ethereal plain since they shut Geist out of it. Tried to get hold of Azrael half an hour ago, but he's not answering."
"You tried Geist?"
"Yeah…he's not there, either."
Weird. Maybe he was reporting to TC about what happened with this Tamera Moultrie and the bodies. It's not that I really wanted him to return, especially not looking like Barry, but he was good to have in a fight. "So, Tamera Moultrie…the part that's bugging me is that Geist said she'd be there and she was something I was looking for. Something I wanted."
Joe's eyebrow arched as he started to make a comment. His phone rang, so he smirked again and retrieved the little fucker from his jacket. "Halloran."
I heard yelling again from the other room, and I ran past Joe, out the door, and down the hall. I stopped just outside the living room when I saw Nick holding Jason's shoulders. The Revenant was wild-eyed as he grabbed Nick's wrists.
Umayma stood and came to me immediately, putting her hands on my shoulders. Tel waved to me, but he moved around the room to stand behind a very upset Jason.
"What's going on?" I asked when no one said anything.
"We're not sure…" Frejya/Umayma's black eyes focused on Jason. "Jason suddenly fell on the floor as if he'd been struck, and then—"
Joe ran out of the bedroom and stopped, looked around, then grabbed my hand. "Come on. We have to go. As of right now, I'm your protection detail."
"Wh—What's wrong?"
"It's….it's Nona…" Jason said from where he stood in front of Nick. I noticed again how tall Nick was compared to Jason.
"Mom?" I looked at Joe. Jason and my mom had been at one time romantically linked, and Jason maintained a connection to her. "Joe…"
"Someone beat her up," Joe said as he squeezed my hand. "They've taken her to Emory University Hospital."
Chapter Sixteen
I shifted into Wraith and sieved through the roof and into the night sky. Yeah, I was still mad at her, and I doubted I could ever forgive her for what she did to me…but she's my mom.
I soared over the city. I knew I'd beat Joe there and I could sense Jason was close behind me. Revenants couldn't fly, not like me, but they were pretty good at jumping from roof to roof in an Abysmal version of Parkour. Although I doubted any normal human could reach the heights and speeds a Revenant could.
I landed on the roof of the hospital and reached out to find her spirit. One of the perks of being a Wraith was the attraction to souls. One of the bad things about being a Wraith was the attraction to souls. My Abysmal self loved them…sort of like the way I loved Sara Lee cheesecake.
Nom nom nom… So that meant I had to be extra careful when I was Wraith and in a hospital not to suck someone's soul right out of their body. It was one of those things I didn't bring up much. Sort of like the way no one talks about snoring.
When I found her, I let myself be pulled toward her, and ended up in the middle of an ICU pod. I made sure not to actually touch any of the electronic equipment, since my incorporeal self could play havoc on them. I stood in the middle and watched as nurses walked back and forth and four of them answered phones at the desk and fielded calls.
I sensed Mom to my right and made my way to the room.
Several months ago, I'd had to put my mom's body in a long-term-care facility when TC kidnapped her soul. Before that, her body was hijacked by a pair of rogue astral walkers, former members of my great-uncle's lab experiment—the one that created my dad—and her soul was stuffed into a Soul Cage. They'd used a few Eidolons to rip my mom's soul from her body. Then one of the rogues had overshadowed her and impersonated my mom for a while. She'd done a good job….
Enough to fool me. I think I was still a little irritated about that, since the two rogues had been ass-hats. And then there'd been what they did to me….
Yeeeah. I'm not going to think about that right now.
That's when things got a little weird. Okay, weirder than usual.
As I glided along to her room, everyone else stopped moving. I stopped, too, and looked around. I felt like I'd landed in a movie still from a reel-to-reel. All of the nurses at the station were motionless, some on the phone, some in mid-walk. Even the machines had stopped.
"Zoë…"
I turned at the sound of my name to see Geist right behind me. I made a small yelp and took a step back. Even my bunny slippers were making weird little surprised noises. "What the hell—" I managed. "Is this you doing this whole…" I waved at everyone "…still life thing?"
"Yes. I need to talk to you."
"Yeeeah…so why all the theatrics? That's not really your style."
"It is a necessity. Would you prefer the witch in your mother's room overhear us?"
"Jemmy? But you know Jemmy, so what's the big deal?" I wasn't sure I was liking all this cloak-and-dagger stuff with Geist. And I wasn't in the mood right now. I wanted to see my mom.
I turned to leave, but Geist put a hand on my arm. The touch was an electric shock—not strong enough to hurt, but enough to be an irritant. I pulled away and rubbed my ashy skin as I gave him a really pissed off-look. "What the hell?"
"Sorry. Things are a bit crazy in the Abysmal Plain right now and the Phantasm wants to keep what I'm about to tell you between us. What we don't want is for any of the witches to overhear. Joe is nearly here."
There was something weird about the way he said that little speech, but if TC wanted Geist to tell me something in private…maybe he'd found something important? And since he and I knew Jemmy and Mom were best friends, perhaps he didn't want to put Mom in danger in case Jemmy told her?
That was a huge train of deductive thinking for me. Made me tired enough for a cookie. I wanted everyone to start moving. "Sorry…I just didn't know you had this kind of power. So what is it TC wants you to tell me?"
"TC…" Geist frowned and then smiled. Or Barry did. I still wasn't comfortable with him wearing a dead lover's face. "Ah, yes. Your name for the Phantasm. He told me to tell you your mother was attacked for the stones."
"Stones?"
"Yes. The stones of power. The Seraphim believes Nona has them and wants to use them to control the Grimoire's custodian."
Okay, that was a lot to process. Stones? What stones could the Seraphim use—
Holy Hell…
The Eidolons!
I stepped toward Geist. "They want to use the Eidolons to control Dags…why? If it has Dags and the book and Rhonda, then why not just take them? That's what my father told me they were going to do."
"The Seraphim cannot get to the custodian. There is an Abysmal Presence preventing them. Therefore the Seraphim wishes to use the power of the stones to command the custodian to destroy the influencing problem."
Abysmal Presence preventing them…Maureen? Maureen was preventing the Seraphim with all its power? I couldn't wrap my head around that. A Familiar verses the Seraphim?
Wow…Maureen could kick ass if that was true.
"Zoë," Geist said, bringing me out of my hero worship of Maureen. "The Seraphim wants the stones and they will stop at nothing to find them. No one is safe."
As far as I knew, Mom only had one of the Eidolons, the green one that held the power of Creation. Had they taken it? She usually wore it around her neck. But in the hospital, they would have taken it off with her jewelry. I started to ask Geist if they took that one, but stopped myself. I don't know why I did…maybe it was my own suspicious nature.
That, and still having a hard time believing that Maureen was holding off the Seraphim. The more I thought about what Geist said, the less I wanted to believe him. Especially when I analyzed the sentences. "You used contractions. You usually don't use contractions."
"Things change. Joe is approaching," Geist said. "Do you know where the stones are?"
I looked Geist—Barry—in the eye and shook my head. "No. Not since they were used on me."
I couldn't read Geist's expression before he vanished. I jumped a little as everything moved and made sounds again.
Why did he have to leave? Was it because Joe was coming? I dismissed it for the moment as I entered my mother's room.
I'd seen my mom unmoving before. She'd been that way in Miller Oaks. But back then, the worst thing I'd seen was the catheter bag and an IV.
This…
Oh, dear God….
"Zoë?" Jemmy said from where she sat in a chair by the bed. "I can't see you, but I know you're there."
Jemmy Shultz was my mom's neighbor in Little Five Points, and she was Mom's closest friend. Jemmy knew about me, about Dags, about all of us, because Jemmy was a witch, just like Mom.
I approached the bed and stared down at the woman buried inside the tangle of wires, tubes, and…. "Mommy?"
"Child, if you're going to stay like that, don't touch anything. Nona's not going to be able to live without those machines for a bit."
My breath caught in my throat and I took a step back, suddenly terrified I might inadvertently touch something and mess it up. I knew there were cameras in the room, so I turned, looked into the corners, and found them. I stepped out of their direct line of sight and slowly shifted into…me.
Jemmy put a hand on my shoulder as I stood rooted to the floor. I listened to the whump and hiss of the respirator, watched as my mother's chest rose and fell. But it was so hard to look at her face. Her eyes were swollen shut, her cheeks a mass of bruises. "What happened?" I whispered, not because I didn't want the cameras to hear me, but because my voice had left me. "Who…what…what the hell happened…?"
Jemmy's hand squeezed my shoulder again before she settled back into the chair she'd been sitting in when I arrived. I turned to face her because I couldn't keep looking at my mom. "I don't know who attacked her, Zoë. She called me earlier today and asked me if I'd been in the basement recently at the shop. I told her I hadn't, though I'd seen Rhonda's car in the parking lot a month ago. Not sure if she'd been in the basement, though."
"Why did Mom ask about the basement?" I knew from experience Mom sometimes kept magical items down there, as well as mementos that were precious to her. She kept her mojo supplies there as well. "She didn't ask for anything specifically?"
"She said she was going to come to the house tonight and take a look down there. You know the house's been locked up for the past month?"
"I thought it was open on certain days? She had a new helper?"
"It's usually open on Wednesdays and Fridays, but she closed it down for December. We were supposed to reopen in January." Jemmy waved her hand in the air as if to dismiss that conversation. "But she asked me to go in and check the house wards before she got there."
"Did you?"
"I was gonna. But my grandson called and needed someone to pick him up at the gym because his mama was stuck at work. I jumped in my car and forgot about it. Of course, when I got to the gym, he'd already caught a ride with someone. When I got back, I saw Nona's car in the driveway and went back to my kitchen."
I glanced back at Mom…or at the bed that had swallowed my mom. Why was she worried about the shop? Why now? And what was important about the wards?
"I saw lights on in the shop, so I called her to see if she'd eaten or wanted me to bring over a nice dinner. But she didn't answer her phone. I knew she was there. So I waited about ten minutes and she didn't call back. That's when I was afraid something had happened. But I was thinking maybe she'd slipped on those stairs going down into the basement."
"Was she down in the basement?"
"Yeah, she was. Kicked to the side against the wall behind the stairs. The only way I knew she was back there was because of the blood across the floor in the kitchen that led down there. I panicked, threw up about nine different wards, and chased something out of there."
Wait… I held up a hand. "You chased something out of there?"
"Yeah. Made a noise when I cast my momma's own Get Back spell—that's an old magic that I don't use much. Never saw who it was, but I heard them yell upstairs, heard them run out, and the door slammed."
Someone corporeal had been in that house.
"I saw what they'd done to her, so I sent out the call and then dialed 911. He beat her, Zoë. Like a dog. I don't know what with but it was enough to mess her face up. Broke her nose and slit her throat."
I swallowed. "Was there anything missing?"
"Just her necklace. Nothing else was gone from what I could tell. Cops chased me out of there."
Her necklace. Aw, damn it. Damn, damn, damn. Whatever it was had been in there looking for the stones like Geist said. It'd beaten my mom up and taken the Creation Eidolon.
"So once I got here, I called Joe because he's one of our best at healing, though what she needs is Darren." She put her hand on my arm. "You haven't found him yet, have you?"
The thought of Dags jerked at my chest. I shook my head and put my hand on hers. "No. We're not sure where he and Rhonda are."
"Son of a bitch," Joe said from the door, and was followed closely by a woman in scrubs. I immediately phased into Wraith and went incorporeal, although Jemmy could sense me, and I was pretty sure Joe could as well. He might even be able to see me. I never knew about him.
"Sir, you're not family. You can't be in here—"
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his badge. "This gives me permission. I'm the lead detective on this case. Tell me exactly what happened to her."
The nurse, though flustered, gave him close to the same account Jemmy had given me, only from her point of view, Nona was brought in barely alive. She'd lost a lot of blood, and the wound had cut deep enough to slice into her esophagus and nick her spinal column, but hadn't completely severed her neck.
Bastard.
Any lingering anger faded away as I listened and watched my mom.
Truth be as it was, I'd do anything to save her life. Even if she rammed a knife into my heart.
Joe dismissed the nurse and shut the door. Then he turned and waved at the camera. I wasn't sure what he'd done at first, until I heard them fussing at the front counter. Sounded like the cameras were off. "Jemmy, can you keep them busy?"
"I sure can do" She stood and ambled out of the room, but closed the door behind her.
"Zoë, I know you're there, and it would help me a great deal if you'd give me a little juice."
I became visible and approached him. "Give you juice?"
"Yep. Like this." He put a Hulk Crush grip on my shoulder with his left hand and then put his right hand on my mother's chest. I felt a weird tingling where his finger
s gripped me, and soon that tingling became a more insistent numbness when I watched his right hand glow the same way Dags's did when he healed someone.
Wait a second—Joe was trying to heal my mom? Since when could he do that? I remembered Jemmy saying he was the best healer they had, but I don't think I'd ever seen him put it to practical use.
A circle of spinning light moved out from Joe's right hand, and then was joined by another circle made up of symbols. Then another like the first, and the pattern started to rotate just above Mom's chest.
I didn't dare speak when I saw Joe's eyes close and his jaw clench. He concentrated with everything he had on this, and I didn't want to…
Whoo…dizzy. I staggered a few steps, and his grip tightened. I couldn't feel my arm, and the numbness spread down my leg. I contemplated a serious collapse when he let go, but stayed on my feet. I did reach out to grab hold of the bed's metal railing.
"What the…" I muttered as I stared at my hand. It blurred, and then it darkened before the room lit up again. "Who's toying with the lights?"
"Those are your lights," Joe said. He still had his hand on Mom's chest. "I am sorry, Zoë. I think I took too much, and it's not going to make a big difference."
"Joe…" I licked my lips and thought of a tall cold glass of water. "What…since when have you been a healer?"
"Since I had to be when Rhonda took control of Dags," He removed his hand and looked at the monitor. "She's stabilized for now, and the damage to her neck's now little more than a half-healed scar." Joe turned and looked at me. Circles hung beneath his eyes. I expected him to pass out. "Do we have any idea who attacked Nona and why?"
I told him what Jemmy had told me. He ran his fingers through his hair. "Whatever it is, it's solid enough to do this to Nona and ransack the house. Which means it has the ability to be corporeal or it's in a human host. But what are they looking for?"
I was going to tell him what Geist said, but I didn't want to do it here. "I'll tell you, but first, can you put up one of those protection things? For my mom, so nothing can get to her and Jemmy? Then can we go see the shop?"
Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 Page 11