Malignant Magic (Medicine and Magic Book 3)

by SA Magnusson

  “By saying that, you mean you still have some fun with him.”

  “What can I say? We’ve known each other a long time.”

  “But he’s married, Jen.”

  “So was the dad of the kids I babysat for when I was sixteen,” she said, winking at me. “Now, if we’re going to get to this, I think we need to figure out what it is that happened to her.”

  The sudden serious change was enough to make me laugh. It wasn’t that Jen wasn’t a good doctor. Far from it. She was incredibly smart, and if I ended up in the ER, I would gladly take her working on me over someone like Dr. Locks. Now that we were second-year residents, we didn’t often work together on patients all that often. It was a little disappointing, but at the same time, we each needed to continue to develop our own skills, and we wouldn’t be able to do that if we were working together. There were times when we would bounce ideas off each other or share patient stories. ER physicians were nothing if not morbid and wanting to impress each other with just how bizarre our last case was.

  “Vitals are stable,” she said, “and—”

  Jen cut off as a heavyset nurse entered. Joan was in her late fifties, with dark red hair, and something of a stern demeanor. She was a good nurse, if sometimes a little too overbearing.

  “I didn’t know we got a patient in here Dr… Michaels? I didn’t know you were working today.”

  “I wasn’t, but I brought in a friend of mine.”

  “What happened?”

  I hesitated answering. It was already bad enough that Aron was known to be a friend of mine. Having brought him in had certainly raised questions about the people I consorted with. Enough rumors ran through the ER about me the way it was, but with Ariel, I suspected there was no getting around it. I was the one who had brought her in and considering that I intended to break her out if it came to it, I needed to be willing to admit to the fact that I had brought her here.

  “I don’t know. I stopped by her house and found her like this.” That was near enough the truth that it would avoid questions, though with someone like Joan, she’d probably still ask questions of me.

  “Drugs?”

  I shook my head, glancing over at Jen. She was placing orders in the computer, likely requesting a CT and labs. Hopefully we would be able to get those results quickly. I didn’t like spending too much time here. If anything happened, it would be on me.

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  “I put in a toxicology screen,” Jen said.

  Joan began to get Ariel all set up, hooking her up to the heart monitor and placing an IV. By the time she was done, the lab tech swept in and started drawing blood.

  I looked over at Jen. “We have to be quick,” I whispered. “I don’t know how long we have before her friend makes it here.”

  “I got it,” Jen said.

  When the lab tech was done, someone from radiology came over and wheeled Ariel out.

  All I could do now was wait.

  I started pacing, and Joan looked over at me, frowning. “She a close friend of yours?”

  “Close enough,” I said. I didn’t really need Joan questioning me on this, but I was all too aware of how I would be perceived. The fact I was here at all would potentially get me into trouble with the attendings.

  “You can go out to the lounge, and I can call you when the results are back,” Jen whispered.

  “I’m not sure I can,” I said.

  “Then you need to settle down,” she said.

  “You don’t understand. I don’t know that we’ll be safe if they come after her.”

  It looked as if Joan were listening. It was just what we needed. Questions from Joan. She was far too nosy as it was. There were other nurses who might have been better, and certainly safer in the situation. At a time like this, having Derek here would have been beneficial. Not only would he have understood the consequences, he would have been able to help expedite things. It was one more reason I missed him.

  Then again, I missed him for more reasons than that. He was my friend, and though I hadn’t always been as good to him as he really deserved, I still wished that he were here.

  It didn’t take too long for the CT to get done, and they wheeled Ariel back into the room. She was still breathing regularly, and as far as I could tell, there didn’t seem to be anything even wrong with her.

  “Maybe this is magical.” I whispered.

  “What was that?” Joan asked.

  I glanced over. I should have known better than to say anything aloud and hadn’t realized that she was still standing there.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “It didn’t sound like nothing.”

  I ignored Joan and turned my attention to the computer, logging in and pulling up Ariel’s chart. She was registered as a Jane Doe, and I waited for the questions that would spring from Joan, especially as she knew that I knew Ariel. Maybe I should have given her name, at least as much as I knew it. What harm would there have been in that?

  “Why was she registered as a Jane Doe?” Joan asked, checking Ariel over again.

  There it was. It hadn’t taken long at all for her to raise questions. “I think registration was trying to get her put in as quickly as possible.”

  “Yeah? Usually they put in their real name once we get them set up. They can merge the records.”

  I forced a smile. “You’re right, Joan. I’ll talk with Betty up front.”

  “Betty,” she grunted as she said her name.

  “You don’t like her?”

  “What’s to like? Doesn’t need the job and comes in here just to hear gossip. She got more than enough money to stay at home.”

  “Maybe she likes the work.”

  “Registration work?” Joan asked.

  I only shrugged. Betty always seemed to be in a good mood, and though she didn’t come off as someone particularly lonely, it was possible that was her reason for staying here and working.

  The labs came back, and so far, there was nothing abnormal. I guess I really hadn’t expected anything much to come of it, especially as I had a hard time believing they would do anything to Ariel if they intended to send her across the Veil, but she seemed to have something wrong that her magic didn’t fully restore. What was it? Whatever it was had to be powerful—at least powerful enough to put her into this state. And according to Gran, it wasn’t magical in origin.

  And if it wasn’t magical, that meant it had to be something that medicine would allow me to heal.

  The door opened and I glanced back to see Dr. Allen sweep into the room. He frowned when he saw Ariel. He was young, with dark brown hair that he kept shorn close to his scalp and wore thick glasses today. I wasn’t sure that I’d seen him in glasses like this before.

  Just what I needed.

  “Dr. Michaels? I didn’t realize you were on.”

  “She’s not,” Joan said. “Apparently this is a friend of hers.”

  Allen looked over at me. “Is that right?” He grabbed his stethoscope from around his neck and started examining Ariel. “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “I don’t. I found her like this.” As much of an inconvenience as having Dr. Allen here might pose, he was incredibly bright and maybe he would be able to come up with the diagnosis more quickly. I could imagine Aron and my grandparents sitting in the back of the car, arguing about the appropriate use of magic according to the council. Eventually, I anticipated one or more of them would come in looking for us, and when they did, we had to be ready to grab Ariel and go. The more attention she got in the ER, the harder that would be.

  “I see that Dr. Stone ordered toxicology. Do you suspect she had an ingestion?” He asked the question without looking up. It was a reasonable assumption to make, especially considering the state that Ariel was in. She acted like someone who was sedated, but without knowing what the shifters would have used on her, we might not be able to determine it quickly.

  Maybe there was a way for me to find out what
Allen was getting at without telling him too much.

  “She was into naturopathic sorts of treatments,” I said.

  “Did she have an herbalist she worked with?” Allen asked.

  He handled it all in stride, as if it was nothing all that surprising. Then again, people who came into the ER often had strange beliefs, and this wouldn’t be the first time we had encountered someone who used herbal remedies when traditional medicine was necessary. There were plenty of people who even thought to treat cancer with herbal remedies, and I remembered far too well the stage IV colon cancer patient who had come in after ignoring the advice of her surgeon to have part of her colon removed and the cancer had spread far beyond what was treatable.

  “I don’t really know who she might have worked with. She was always very health conscious.” That much was believable, especially considering how fit Ariel was.

  “There are plenty of natural ingestions that we won’t detect on our traditional toxicology. If that’s what this is, we might need to run additional tests.”

  Was there anything that I could say that would encourage Dr. Allen to work more quickly? Probably not. Not without drawing the wrong kind of attention to what I asked. And certainly not with Joan watching me the way she was. She suspected something, though I doubted even she would think of the possibility that Ariel was a shifter.

  Jen came back into the room, her gaze fixed on me. “The CT didn’t show… Dr. Allen. I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “I got called in. There was a little activity, and Locks needed to go. I agreed to come in and finish his shift.”

  That was surprising. I don’t remember the last time Locks took off early. He might be lazy when he was here, but he always stayed.

  “Well, it’s good to have you here. I haven’t worked with you in a while,” Jen said, smiling at him. I wanted to groan. She didn’t need to flirt with everyone, and certainly not with attendings, but I wouldn’t ever dream of telling her that. She didn’t see her flirtation as any sort of issue.

  “Did you come up with a diagnosis?” Jen asked.

  He shook his head. “It sounds as if Dr. Michaels believes this might have been an ingestion.”

  Jen looked over at me. “Really?”

  “It needs to be in the differential diagnosis,” I said.

  “It certainly does,” Allen said.

  “We don’t have anything else that is suggestive of an ingestion,” Jen said. “Her vital signs are normal and we have no reason to think that she did ingest anything.”

  “Other than the fact that she is like this,” Dr. Allen said.

  “Other than that,” Jen said.

  “I suspect our internal medicine colleagues will enjoy working her up. This is just the kind of case they get excited about.”

  Maybe it had been a mistake coming here. At least we knew there wasn’t anything seriously wrong, but coming up with an answer about what had happened to her would be more difficult than I’d realized. And this time, both medicine and magic had failed to help come up with the answer.

  When Dr. Allen left, I looked over at Jen. “We need to get her out of here.”

  “Now? You don’t even know what’s wrong with her yet.”

  “That’s fine. If we know there is nothing seriously wrong, then at least we can go from there.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure what there is to do at this point, only that there is some nasty power out there and we’re going to have to deal with it.”

  “How do you intend to get her out of here?”

  “That will be a little trickier,” I said.

  “You can’t be a part of it,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Could your big friend come in and help?”

  I didn’t see why not. Aron had already been involved in taking one shifter out of the hospital; what was another? There are already questions about him, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising if there were more.

  “Don’t let her go anywhere until I get back.”

  Jan frowned at me. “And where would I let her go?”

  “No more tests, I guess.”

  “I don’t think that Allen ordered any, so you don’t really have to worry about that.”

  I hurried out of the ER, making my way toward the ambulance bay. Once outside, I found the SUV still parked on the street. I hadn’t been entirely sure that it would still be there.

  “Aron,” I said, pulling the door open and peeking inside. “I need you to go and grab Ariel.”

  “You aren’t able to figure out what was wrong with her?” Gran asked.

  “Not yet. We ran some tests and some of them aren’t back yet, but everything I’ve seen so far has come up unremarkable. Whatever happened to her is either something I won’t be able to detect easily with the labs I have access to, or it’s magical.”

  “It’s not magical,” Gran said.

  I hoped she was right, but it was possible Gran simply wasn’t able to detect the magic used on Ariel, and if that were the case, we might not be able to help her.

  Aron got out of the car. “You will show me to her?”

  I glanced over to the ambulance bay. “I… I don’t think I can. If I go with you, others will see that I am, and it will raise questions about why I’m breaking out the same patient I brought in.”

  Aron nodded. “I see. Then you will have to be ready to drive.”

  I headed around the car and hopped into the driver’s seat, pulling my seatbelt on, and adjusting the seat. I watched the ambulance bay, knowing it wouldn’t be long before Aron popped out, and when he did, we had to be ready to take off quickly.

  “Katie, I’m not sure this is the—”

  Gramps didn’t have a chance to finish. Aron came sprinting out of the ambulance bay carrying Ariel, who was wrapped in a sheet. He grabbed for the door and hopped in, motioning for us to get moving.

  “Go,” he said.

  I shifted the SUV into gear and started off. As I did, I risked a glance back and saw Dr. Allen staring after the SUV.

  I hope he didn’t know I was driving, and I hope he didn’t connect the dots between Aron and me. Regardless of how much magic I might using these days, I still wasn’t ready to lose my residency.

  14

  “Where should we go?” I asked Aron.

  We reached the end of the block and I slowed for a stoplight. He would have blown right through it, but then, he would have been driving a whole lot faster than what I was comfortable doing. It had grown overcast, making it difficult to know how late it was, but while it might feel like the end of the day, it was still pretty early. We hadn’t been gone all that long.

  “We need to find someplace where they won’t be discovered.”

  “Right. Like I said, where should we go?”

  Aron looked over his shoulder to Gran and Gramps. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  Gramps and Gran met each other’s eyes. “We could try to go to neutral ground,” he suggested. “Shifters know better than to attack there. It would give us more time to figure out what we can do with her. Perhaps wake her.”

  Neutral ground. That meant the basilica. Would the people there be willing to allow us to bring shifters onto their ground, especially if it risked opening them to an even greater danger?

  “Is that even safe?”

  “Neutral ground is safe regardless of what magical source you have,” Gran said. “That’s the purpose of neutral ground.”

  “I understand that it’s supposed to be safe, but is it actually safe? Do the shifters—and whatever it is on the other side of the Veil—respect neutral ground the same way?” And by that, I needed to know whether one of the Great Ones would respect it.

  “They should,” Gramps said.

  Should. I didn’t like that.

  I headed west, stopping at each stoplight, not driving as recklessly as Aron would have. His agitation at my cautious pace rose with each stop.

 
; “You can drive if you want to,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  He cradled Ariel as we traveled, holding her close. She hadn’t come around at all since we had first grabbed her, and I began to wonder whether she would. Usually with some sort of ingestion, it would begin to wear off. It wasn’t so much that she wasn’t breathing on her own, and it hadn’t affected her vital signs. Her lab values had all been normal during the workup at the ER, which meant that whatever it was that affected her either had a long duration of action and we hadn’t seen the end of it, or it had left her permanently like this. And maybe it was magical, though I’d need more time were I to detect it.

  As I drove, I felt the distant bloom of magic.

  It didn’t come from within the SUV, but there was something familiar to it.

  “What is it?” Aron asked.

  “Probably nothing,” I said.

  “You detected something.”

  I shrugged. “It was magic, but I’m not entirely certain who it came from.”

  “Then you should hurry,” Aron said.

  We turned onto Hennepin Avenue and the basilica loomed in the distance. It was difficult to miss. The basilica cut quite the profile, sitting up alongside the interstate, with architecture that practically demanded someone stop and stare. Returning here was harder than I had expected. The last time I’d been here, I’d come with Derek. Would his brother still be here?

  In that way, it probably felt much like Aron felt for Ariel. I hadn’t ever had a relationship with Derek, but our friendship had been enough. And from what he had said, he had committed much of his life to medicine because of me and the request my grandparents had made of him.

  I pulled up to a stop outside the basilica. After throwing the SUV into park, I sat, clutching the steering wheel and looking out the windshield. The surge of magic came again, this time closer.

  “You detected something again.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know what it was.”

  Whatever it was had enough power that I could feel from a distance. And it was familiar. Because of that, I wondered if it came from the Dark Council or whether this was something else. Something like the shifter.