Of Snow and Roses

by T. M. Franklin

  He smirked.

  “You’ve seen it all, haven’t you.”

  He stretched out on the ground, propped up on his bent elbows, legs crossed at the ankles.

  She shifted up onto her knees. “So, can I make it rain?”

  Torbin cocked a brow and nodded.

  “Snow?”

  Yes.

  “Hurricane winds?”

  An eyeroll. Yes.

  “Well, that could come in handy, I guess.” she said. “But I don’t think a stiff breeze is going to help us get out of here. Probably should focus on the lightning. Maybe aiming it?”

  Torbin shrugged and lay back, his head on his crossed arms.

  “Okay, then,” she said to herself. “Let’s work on that.”

  They stayed out in the meadow for as long as they dared－less than an hour, Neve didn’t think they would go unnoticed for much longer than that－then made their way back the way they’d come. She’d managed to aim the lightning, and control the power of the blast, to a certain extent. It took a lot of concentration, however, so she didn’t know if she’d be able to do it while under stress.

  And what they planned to do would definitely put her under stress.

  “So, I’ll meet you later,” she told Torbin, stepping over a fallen log. She caught his arm before they left the trees, her stomach churning with nerves. “We can do this, right?”

  When he simply arched a brow in response, she sighed.

  “Of course we can. We have to.”

  As usual, they went their separate ways once they emerged in the yard, and it was only when they were on opposite sides of the lawn that Neve let the curtain fall. She entered the common room, surprised to see Lily sitting at a table and reading.

  She wasn’t looking at her book, though. Instead, she zeroed in on Neve and got to her feet, crossing to her quickly.

  “Look,” she whispered. “You still kind of freak me out, and I don’t know if I can trust you, but you’re right. There is something weird going on around here.”

  Neve’s mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “I want out,” Lily said firmly, a muscle tensing in her jaw. “Can you get me out?”

  Neve’s gaze darted around the room. They were alone, except for Shelley, the cook, who was tapping away on her phone, not paying them any attention.

  “Yes,” Neve said quietly.

  Lily’s eyes narrowed and she lifted her chin slightly. “Then I’m in,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

  Thursday nights were movie night at the Blackbriar Institute, and although the cinematic selection was generally pretty lame—Beethoven’s 2nd, anyone?—the lack of alternate entertainment generally meant the common room was packed.

  Although packed, in this case, was a relative term. The population of Blackbriar, initially around fifty or sixty patients, if Neve estimated correctly, had dwindled to less than half that. They sat on folding chairs staring up at the shenanigans of Charles Grodin and a rather slobbery Saint Bernard, the staff leaning idly against the wall behind them.

  There was nowhere else to be at the moment, apparently.

  Neve puffed out a breath, her fingers tapping nervously on her thigh. She glanced at Torbin, who sat off to her right, his elbows on his thighs, fingers tented between his knees as he stared blankly at the TV. His head tipped ever-so-slightly in her direction, and she knew he was paying close attention to the room, even though he appeared relaxed.

  Relaxed for Torbin, anyway.

  Neve glanced at the clock.

  Two minutes.

  On their way to the common room, she and Torbin had argued briefly about Lily’s involvement in all of this. Neve believed they needed all the help they could get, but Torbin wasn’t convinced she could be trusted. Who knew what Doctor Alberich had done to her? How he’d tampered with her mind?

  It was a genuine concern, so they’d come to a compromise. Lily’s involvement would be limited－and in a way that, even if she wanted to, would be next to impossible for her to double-cross them.

  One minute.

  Lily knew nothing about the details of the plan－only her part in it. At first, she’d balked about being left in the dark, but eventually, she’d accepted it, admitting that if the situation were reversed, she’d probably feel the same way.

  Thirty seconds.

  Neve dared a glance to where Lily sat on the end of the front row farthest from the door. She looked better than she had in a while, actually, the dark circles under her eyes a little less prominent. She sat up straight, alert, her own attention flickering to the clock as she swallowed nervously.

  Ten . . . nine . . .

  Neve’s fingers wove together, twisting in her lap, and she reached out to feel for all the tethers in the room－Lily included－gradually building the concealment. Not making herself and Torbin invisible yet, but unnoticeable. Unremarkable.

  Boring.

  Three . . . two . . . one.

  Lily sprang to her feet with a wild scream, then picked up her chair and threw it at the television. It cracked and shuddered, then broke free of the wall, dangling by the power cord. Neve watched in awe as she grabbed another chair and threw it across the room, narrowly missing hitting a patient in the face. She danced away when Calum tried to catch her, ducking under his arm and stepping from one empty chair to another, then onto a long table along the back wall, holding the evening’s snacks. She picked up a bowl of popcorn and threw it toward the kitchen, and Neve jumped when someone grabbed her arm.

  Torbin was giving her his patented Are you kidding me? look.

  Right. The diversion.

  With one last look over her shoulder at Lily, who had jumped over the back of one of the orderlies and was tossing out Oreos to cheering patients, Neve strengthened the camouflage over them and they ran out of the room. They ducked into a small alcove and waited, the shouts from the common room getting even louder. If Lily did her job－and so far, it appeared she was doing it very well－the other patients would be joining the melee now. Neve took a moment to send a general wreak havoc message along the tethers and the noise level increased.

  But it still wasn’t enough. Not until they were certain the coast was clear.

  Torbin stood next to her, so close she could feel the heat off his arm, the in-and-out of his breathing. The seconds seemed to tick off in slow motion, her heart pounding faster with every one.

  Where was he?

  It seemed like minutes, but in truth, it was probably thirty seconds at most before Doctor Alberich passed them at a run, heading toward the common room. Neve smiled. So far, so good.

  With one last push for the residents to keep up the mayhem, she and Torbin ran in the opposite direction, toward the doctor’s office. Alberich should be kept busy for a while breaking up the fights, then making sure the patients all got to their rooms.

  Neve hoped it would be enough.

  Thunder rolled outside and Neve looked up in reflex. “Storm’s coming,” she murmured, feeling the electricity gather, even inside the building. It tickled along her skin, but also somewhere deep inside her chest, as if there was a storm building there as well.

  Neve didn’t waste time with the keypad, using the electricity to fry it completely. There was no need to try and hide their tracks. This time, it was all or nothing. She strode to the office door, but instead of opening easily, it was locked.

  “Crap,” she muttered. “Can you deal with this?”

  Torbin approached the door and reached out, wrapping his beefy hand around the knob. His whole body tensed, teeth grinding, biceps bulging with effort. He grimaced in pain.

  “No, stop,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm.

  Torbin pulled his hand away and shook it out.

  “You can’t go in, right?” she asked, purposely not mentioning Alberich’s name.

  Torbin shook his head. No.

  Neve chewed on her lip, studying the door. “But if you yanked the doorknob back, you wouldn’t be going in,
right?”

  He looked confused, but she smiled.

  “Do you think you can break it off?”

  At that, Torbin’s mouth curled in a slow grin. He strode forward and grabbed the knob again. He braced himself, then gave it a twist and a good, hard yank.

  It ripped a hole clean through the thin office door, which drifted open with a creak.

  “Nice,” she told a still-grinning Torbin. “Okay, my turn.”

  The lights were on, various books and papers strewn across the desk, as if the doctor had been working when he was summoned to the common room. Neve shuffled through the items, trying to make sense of what she was reading.

  “Some of this is in another language,” she told Torbin. “Latin and something else I don’t recognize.” There were some diagrams, notes about weather patterns, phases of the moon . . . what appeared to be a list of ingredients: Blackthorn, Adder’s Tongue, Crushed Bone, Magnetite, Blood . . .

  Blood. Neve swallowed nervously.

  “I don’t know what this guy is cooking, but it’s seriously creepy,” she murmured. Torbin made an impatient sound, and when she glanced at him, he waved toward the safe.

  “Okay, okay,” she said quietly, turning around so she could pull the painting out on its hinges. She studied the safe for a moment. It wasn’t large, maybe one-foot square, brushed steel with a black handle on the left.

  Nothing else. That was it. A flat surface with a handle. No lock. No keypad. Nothing.

  “Perfect,” she muttered. She hadn’t gotten a good look at it before, but she’d assumed there would be some way to open it.

  “There’s no lock,” she told Torbin. “I don’t know what to do!”

  What had she been thinking? She was no detective . . . no superhero. And now she’d put all of them in danger, for what? Poor Lily. Neve couldn’t even imagine what she－

  Torbin smacked his hand hard against the wall, jolting Neve out of her frantic thoughts. He pointed to the safe, then to Neve, then very deliberately covered his eyes.

  Neve’s eyes narrowed. “You think－you think he shielded it somehow, like I do? Disguised it?”

  Torbin shrugged. Maybe?

  “Well, that tricky little . . .” She placed a hand on the safe door and closed her eyes. Sure enough, she could feel the familiar buzz of electricity beneath its surface. Neve inhaled deeply, collecting the power around her and the lights flickered. She intended to send a burst through the door, as she had with the keypad earlier, but she noticed something she hadn’t before. She could actually feel the circuits . . . how they worked, the way the electricity was controlled and diverted by them.

  So instead of frying everything, she let out a mere trickle of power. The door buzzed and shimmered, and suddenly, there was an electronic keypad next to the handle, followed by a telltale click. Neve grabbed the handle, and the safe door opened easily.

  “I can’t believe that worked.” She shot a stunned look Torbin’s way before reaching in to pull out a small bag made of soft, black cloth. It rattled slightly, and she opened it, pouring the contents onto the desk.

  It was an odd collection of items－some obviously valuable, others mere trinkets to Neve’s untrained eye－a small wooden cross, a medallion carved with the head of a wolf, a silver coin, a blue teardrop earring, an old key. There were a few gemstones as well, the largest appeared to be an emerald, oval in shape and about two inches long. She held it up between her thumb and forefinger.

  “This is probably worth a pretty penny,” she said, but she couldn’t keep the disappointment out of her voice. “I don’t know how any of this is going to help us, though.”

  A strange sound caught her attention, and when she looked at Torbin, she couldn’t believe the anguish in his eyes as he stared at the emerald.

  “Torbin? What is it?”

  He pointed at the gem, then at his own chest.

  “This?” She held it up. “It’s yours?”

  Torbin nodded, pulling the necklace he wore from under his shirt. She’d seen it before－when she first came to Blackbriar－but only now realized that the center of the pendant was recessed.

  As if something was missing. A stone.

  An emerald.

  And given the insanity of her life lately, Neve had the strongest feeling that it wasn’t a simple emerald. There had to be more to it. Could the emerald be the key to breaking whatever control Alberich had over Torbin?

  He held out a hand, eagerly waving her forward with the other.

  “Okay, hang on,” she said, sweeping the rest of the items back into the bag, in her haste knocking the key onto the floor. It bounced under the desk, and she tucked the emerald into her pocket, dropping to a knee to retrieve the key, slip it into the bag, and pull the drawstring closed. She was about to put it back in the safe, but Torbin made another sound, indicating she should bring the bag with them.

  “Really?”

  He pointed at the bag, then back the way they’d come. And it all clicked into place.

  “Are you saying Alberich stole all of this?” she asked. “From the patients?”

  Torbin didn’t respond. Couldn’t respond. So she knew she was right.

  “What a－” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “Never mind.” Neve quickly closed the safe and swung the painting back into place, figuring the longer it took Alberich to realize he’d been robbed the better. She grabbed a few of the papers off the desk－the ingredients list, along with a few of the more disturbing drawings and diagrams.

  “I hope this will be enough,” she said, rolling them up and sliding them into the bag. She hurried toward Torbin and had her fingers wrapped around the emerald in her pocket, about to pull it out and place it in his outstretched hand－

  －when his eyes rolled back into his head and he slumped to the ground in a heap.

  “Torbin?” She fell to her knees, dropping the bag on the floor as she touched his face. “Torbin? What’s wrong?”

  Then she saw it－Two coiling wires led from Torbin’s shoulder, curling across the floor and up . . . to a taser held by Doctor Alberich. He stood, flanked by Calum and Angelica, with his hand wrapped tightly around Lily’s knobby wrist. She didn’t even fight against him, her eyes wide and vacant, and a sick feeling roiled in Neve’s stomach.

  “What did you do to her?” she demanded.

  Instead of responding, Doctor Alberich strolled toward her, a smug smile on his face. “I’ll take that,” he said, pointing to the bag with the taser before he dropped it on the floor. “And don’t try any of your little tricks or your friend here will have a most unfortunate accident.”

  “Don’t hurt her!” She slid the bag across the floor, and he stopped it with his foot.

  His eyes widened. “I wouldn’t hurt a patient,” he said mockingly. “She might, however, hurt herself, if it’s suggested.” He addressed Lily now. “Pick up the bag.”

  She bent down woodenly and followed his orders.

  “Stand on one foot.” She did.

  His black eyes took on an evil gleam. “Kill your friend.”

  Lily’s face twisted and she bared her teeth, lunging toward Neve. “Just kidding!” the doctor said with a laugh. “Don’t kill her. I have need of her.”

  Lily relaxed back into her slumped posture, eyes glassy and unseeing.

  “Interesting, isn’t it?” He shot a look at Neve. “She’ll do anything I say. Anything. So if you want to keep your friend in good health, you’ll get up and come with us. There’s a good girl.” He watched with satisfaction as Neve got to her feet, then jerked his head toward Torbin, who was coming to, groaning on the floor.

  “Get him up.”

  Calum and Angelica grabbed him by his arms, heaving Torbin to his feet. He stood, shaking his head to clear it, then glared at Alberich.

  “Ah, yes. There’s my little lapdog,” he said.

  Torbin saw the bag in Lily’s hand and his eyes fluttered closed, shoulders falling in defeat.

  The emera
ld. He didn’t know that Neve had it.

  “Torbin,” she said, waiting until he met her gaze. “It’s going to be all right.” She flicked her eyes down and made a fist in her pocket around the stone. Torbin caught the movement and nodded slowly, then looked away.

  “Isn’t that sweet,” Alberich said, rolling his eyes. “But I’m afraid there’s no time for a lover’s reunion. Off we go.” He gestured for her to proceed out to the hallway, followed by Torbin－Calum and Angelica close on his heels－and finally the doctor and Lily.

  “So what now?” Neve asked through gritted teeth. “You drug me again? Give me amnesia?”

  Alberich laughed. “Oh that time has come and gone, I’m afraid.” They headed down the hall, then around the corner, and Neve knew they were going to the basement.

  “I have to hand it to you,” the doctor said. “You had me convinced you’d lost your memories again. How did you do it?”

  Neve lifted her chin stubbornly.

  “No matter,” he said, grabbing her elbow with his free hand as they turned another corner. Torbin growled, but Alberich shot him a quelling look. “Really? Haven’t we moved past the theatrics yet, Torbin? Move.”

  She saw Torbin fight the command, then he exchanged a significant look with Neve before continuing on the way. She could see the anger and hatred burning in his eyes.

  “I’m okay,” she said quietly.

  “Of course you are,” Doctor Alberich said, pulling her down the hallway, past the rest of the little group. “I wouldn’t hurt you. I need you. You’re kind of the point of all this, you know?”

  “What－” She stumbled as the basement stairway came into view, and a chill of fear ran down her spine. “What are you going to do to me?” The gemstone bounced against her thigh with every step as they made their way down the stairs.

  Let us go. Let us go. Let us go. Neve figured it was worth a shot.

  He gave her an arch look. “Haven’t you figured out yet that you can’t bewitch me?” He huffed. “It’s pathetic really. I expected more.”

  She glanced back and caught Torbin’s eye over her shoulder. He looked murderous, fists clenched by his sides, but he made no move to act on it. Calum and Angelica exchanged a look behind him and she wondered if they were fully aware of the doctor’s plans or simply going along with them.