“Hello?” I said.
Without pause I was greeted with the response, “You sound tired, little man.”
The voice that flowed into my ear was one that I had never heard before. However, there was no mistaking who was behind it. If the choice of words wasn’t enough evidence, the drawling accent that artificially insinuated itself on top of them was familiar on levels beyond just the audible.
“I am tired, Miranda,” I replied.
The response that came was unexpected, to say the least.
“As am I, little man,” she said.
Her tone lent a bewildering substance to the comment. She literally sounded as if exhaustion was taking a heavy toll. Had it not been for the obvious distinguishing differences in the voice itself, I would have almost believed that I was talking to Annalise instead of Miranda. But, I knew I wasn’t. I couldn’t identify the body at the other end of the line, but it definitely didn’t belong to the malignant soul that was using it at the moment. That simple fact made anything she said to me automatically suspect.
“Are you honestly expecting me to believe that?” I asked.
“It really does not matter what you believe,” she told me.
“If that’s true, then why are you calling me?”
“To give you one last chance.”
“One last chance for what?”
“To be with your wife, of course,” she replied.
I felt a wave of anger wash over me at her mention of Felicity. I still had to find a way to undo what she had done to her, so the fact that she was using my wife as a carrot to dangle in front of me was incendiary. But I’d traveled this road with her before, and I knew that was her game. So I took a moment to breathe before offering a measured response.
“What’s the catch?” I finally asked.
“We share her,” she said.
I stifled a disgusted snort. “You know that isn’t going to happen.”
She paused and then replied with an oddly dejected sounding tone backing up the words. “I thought that might be your answer.”
“I’m surprised you even bothered to ask,” I said.
A heavy silence flowed between us. I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. Now and then I thought I picked up a sound that was akin to distant traffic.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me where you are?” I asked.
“Close,” she replied.
“That’s a little vague. Would you like to be more specific?”
She ignored the second question and said, “You only have yourself to blame, you know.”
“For what, Miranda?”
“All of them,” she said.
“All of them?” I repeated.
“Yes, all of them. Everyone who has had to die because you kept her from me,” she explained.
“Nice try,” I told her. “But a guilt trip isn’t going to get you anywhere. I feel enough of it as it is, I’m not taking yours on as well.”
“You should feel guilty,” she replied. “They are all your responsibility.”
“Sorry, Miranda, but their blood is on you, not me.”
“Is that what you want me to tell Lisa?” she asked, her voice soft.
The cycling ache that was pressing against the interior of my skull ramped up the scale a bit and then added a sharp stab of intense pain for good measure. The name itself didn’t ring a bell, but something about the way she said it told me the situation was heading south in a big way.
I twisted to the right while holding the phone tight against my head and then sent my free hand searching for the call pendant once again.
“Who’s Lisa?” I asked.
“The person who used to live in this body,” she said.
“And where is she now?” I pressed.
“Where she will be forever, little man,” she replied.
“And where is that, Miranda?”
She sighed. “You know. You have been there.”
Images of the grey cell from my vision flashed through my mind, and I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.
“Why, Miranda?” I demanded. “Are you planning to keep Lisa’s body?”
“No, little man,” she replied. “I told you. There is only one that I want, but you will not allow me to have her.”
“So then what now?”
“I am too tired. You have won.”
“Then you’re leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“You have no reason to,” she replied. “I understand that. But it is the truth. I am leaving. Forever.”
“But if you leave, shouldn’t Lisa come back?”
“Not if she has nothing to which she can return.”
Her comments glanced from one another like steel on flint, sparking a recent memory. A searing flash from my tortured visions shot through my brain, and it immediately twisted my stomach into a tight knot.
“Some people need to stay dead, Rowan,” Ariel says. “Even if they have to die again.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded, my tone rising in pitch as Ariel’s ghostly voice continued to echo in my head.
My hand was still frantically feeling about for the call button but finding nothing more than a twist of sheets and blankets. On a whim I moved it out to the edge of the bed and dragged my fingers along the side until they bumped against the point where the mattress met the railing mount. Digging into the gap, I finally felt a round cord and sought to hook my digits beneath it.
“If you had simply given her to me, little man,” Miranda said. “Then this would not be happening.”
“What are you going to do?” I demanded once again.
“End this,” she replied. “Like I said. I am going away. Forever.”
“How, Miranda? Tell me.”
“Why do you ask what you already know?”
“Don’t do this, Miranda,” I told her. “This woman doesn’t deserve to die.”
“Neither did I,” she whispered.
My fingers tunneled beneath the cord, and I slipped them along its length as I pulled. The pendant clattered against the side of the bed but then caught on something as I yanked.
Silence was filling my ear at this point, and a horrible sense of dread was welling in my chest.
“Talk to me, Miranda,” I snapped. “You wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t want to talk this out.”
“I overestimated you, little man,” she said.
“How?” I pressed, trying to hold her attention. “How did you overestimate me?”
“I thought that you would at least want to see her again.”
“You mean Felicity?”
“Of course.”
“I do, Miranda. You know that.”
“I gave you a chance,” she said.
“I wasn’t good with the terms of your offer.”
“Just remember, you are the one doing this to her.”
“Doing what?”
“Once I am gone, what makes you believe you can find her again?”
“I know where to look.”
“I have a question, little man…”
“What is that?”
“How long do you think it takes to fall from a ten story building?” As if the words themselves weren’t frightening enough, a gut-wrenching melancholy overshadowed the statement.
I was starting to panic. Grasping for something to keep her on the line I said, “Let’s discuss this, Miranda. Exactly how would we work out this sharing?”
“It is too late for that,” she replied. “If I cannot have her, neither will you.”
I was still tugging on the call pendant cord, flipping it with quick jerks in an attempt to shake it loose. Finally, it broke free and I pulled it up. Sliding the sheathed wire through my hand as I released then gripped and then pulled, I dragged the control forward. The moment it was within reach, I jammed my thumb down on the button.
In that moment, Miranda spoke again, offering me a sing
le word, “Goodbye.”
I shouted into the mouthpiece, “MIRANDA, NO!”
Barely three horribly prolonged seconds later, I heard a sickening thud and clatter, punctuated by a distant scream, and then nothing.
As the emptiness burned itself into my brain, light filled the room. I could taste salt as hot tears trickled across my face to meet up with the corners of my mouth. I held the now silent handset in a vise-like grip, still pressed firmly against the side of my head. I could feel fingers working against mine in an attempt to pry it loose. My entire body trembled from the mental pain.
And, although through the watery blur I could see the nurse’s face, and beyond my sobs I could hear her calling my name, my own voice was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 34
“You’re absolutely sure Felicity is okay?” I asked.
This was the second time I had ventured the question in the last five minutes, but at the moment I needed all of the reassurances I could get.
“Yes, Rowan, for the third time, I checked on her myself,” Constance told me, an almost impatient tone shrouding her voice. She outlined the answer once again, giving me a demonstrative nod at the end of each sentence. “Agent Parker is still with her. She’s safe. Don’t worry.”
Apparently my personal count was off, but in my mind it didn’t matter; I continued to press her on the subject anyway. “But her condition hasn’t changed?”
She shook her head. “No. She’s still the same as before. No better, but no worse either.”
I laid my head back against my pillow and sighed heavily. My throat was raw, and my eyes still burned from the earlier bout of weeping that came along with the almost convulsive hysterics. A quick shot of diazepam directly into a port on my IV had quelled that quickly enough, but it wasn’t really doing anything for my foul mood other than to dull it a bit. Between the antibiotics, sedatives, and painkillers being pumped into me at what seemed an almost constant rate, I was beginning to feel like some kind of pharmaceutical dumping ground. But, under the circumstances I didn’t really care. In fact, right now I welcomed the numbness.
I brought my forearm up and rested it on my brow to shield my eyes. The severely reclined angle of the bed was allowing the overhead light to shine directly into them, and that wasn’t helping with the irritation. However, I just didn’t feel much like sitting up at the moment.
“So…” I finally said. “Are you going to fill me in, or are you just going to leave it all up to my imagination?”
“It’s not very pretty, Row,” Constance replied.
“Trust me, neither is my imagination.”
As I was speaking, a quick rap came at the door, and then it opened. Ben followed it in and then turned and levered it shut.
“How we doin’ in here?” he asked as he ambled over to the foot of the bed.
Rolling my arm up a bit more so that I could see him better, I grumbled, “Not especially well.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Doesn’t look much like it.” He continued to stand there quietly for a moment and then huffed out a breath as he reached up and massaged his neck. “Well, if you’re up to it, here in a little bit they’re gonna wanna take your statement about that phone call. Ya’know… While it’s still fresh and all.”
“I doubt it’s going to go stale anytime soon,” I replied.
“Yeah…I hear ya’,” he said. “But it’s procedure.”
“Yeah, I know. You can tell them I’m good with that,” I agreed as I rolled my arm back down to cover my eyes. My heart definitely wasn’t in the task, but I realized the interview had to be done. Much like ripping a bandage off quickly made the removal a little easier to bear, in this case sooner would probably be better than later.
“How is it out there?” Constance asked.
“It’s still a fuckin’ circus,” Ben replied. “Right now we’re basically sandwiched in between two crime scenes, two P.D.’s, Major Case, and the Feebs… No offense, of course…”
“Of course.”
“And that’s not ta’ mention the media vultures are all over the parkin’ lot too.”
“Two crime scenes?” I asked, rolling my arm up once again.
“Yeah,” Ben grunted and nodded at me. “The guy upstairs that she turned into a Rowan doll. He’s dead.”
“He died? I thought he was stable?”
“He was,” Ben replied. “And he didn’t just die. She got in there and killed ‘im.”
“How?”
“A clusterfuck across the board, unfortunately,” he replied. “She walked right in, told the admissions desk she was his sister and that we had called her. Friggin’ media had it all over the tube, so it wasn’t really that hard for her ta’ find out where he was. So, anyway, whoever was workin’ the desk didn’t catch the flag, and they sent her right on up to his room even though visitin’ hours were over. After that the onus falls on us, I’m afraid.”
“How so?”
He gave his head a disgusted shake. “Miscommunication, I guess. I’d reported what you said about ‘er knowin’ the vic, but apparently it didn’t trickle down through the ranks, or it got lost in translation or somethin’. When she said she was family, the security guy on the door let ‘er through, no other questions. Ten minutes later she walked out, told the guard she was goin’ ta’ get somethin’ ta’ drink, and disappeared. Few minutes after that the nurse went in for her rounds and found the vic dead. He was a coupla’ quarts low, and there was friggin’ blood all over the floor. It’s a goddamn mess.”
“That was the phone call you kept pushing me about earlier,” Constance added. “We had to assume she was still in the building, which obviously she was. That’s why I was ‘skulking around,’ as you put it. But there was no reason to get you worked up about the situation.”
“No, Miranda did that for you.”
She blinked and nodded. “True.”
I let out a slow breath as I mulled over the explanation and then said, “I guess that was her last shot at trying to use magick to kill me.”
“Yeah, could be,” Ben agreed. “It’s not like she was gonna get at ya’ any other way.” He paused for a moment, rubbing his neck while staring at some imaginary point in space. Eventually he looked at me and half-shrugged. “Not ta’ be morbid and all that, but since ya’ brought it up…”
I finished the thought for him. “Why didn’t it work? Why am I still alive?”
“Well, yeah,” he grunted as he shrugged again. “I mean, not that I ain’t happy that you’re still with us. But the whole blockin’ ya’ from the Twilight Zone thing seemed ta’ work okay. So why not that too?”
“Well, it was a long shot in the first place, and she knew it,” I explained. “Magick affecting the ethereal is one thing. Directly affecting the physical is much harder. Besides that, she had already used him as a poppet for a different spell, so she was dealing with conflicting magicks right from the start. But, I guess it was all she had so she went for it.”
“So what you’re sayin’ is it coulda’ actually worked?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t very likely, but if the conditions were just right, it could have. Especially with me like I am right now.”
“That’s fucked up, white man.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” I mumbled. I took a couple of deep breaths then asked, “What about the second crime scene. I guess that one would be Miranda herself?”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Body belongs ta’ a Lisa Carlson actually, accordin’ to her driver’s license. She’s the one who came in posin’ as the sister, and apparently who you were talkin’ to. Found ‘er cell phone about fifty feet across the parkin’ lot from the impact site, and it actually still kinda works believe it or not. This room was the last number dialed. And…well, I’m sure ya’ already know she took a header off the roof of the hospital. Right in front of the main entrance.” He grimaced a bit then exhaled heavily before continuing. “Not pretty at all.”
“How did she know to call this par
ticular room?” Constance asked.
Ben shrugged. “Dunno. We’re lookin’ inta’ that, especially since ICU rooms don’t normally have phones in ‘em. But we’re thinkin’ it was probably the hospital. She was able ta’ find out about the vic, so maybe she asked the right person an’ got Row’s room number and just took a chance.
“Anyhow, once we had an ID, we sent a unit to this Carlson woman’s address in Saint Flora… They found…well…I’m not gonna get into it. Let’s just say it’s more than a little disturbing, and the DNA guys are gonna be busy for a while. Plus, the whole vampire thing suddenly adds up, if ya’ get my drift. And from what I hear, there might even be some evidence connectin’ the vics from last month. Right now they’re waitin’ for the county crime scene unit ta’ come process the place.” Ben paused for a moment then shrugged again. “At any rate, that’s pretty much it. Right now, we’re still puttin’ pieces together, but best guess is that when the hospital got locked down and she couldn’t escape, and still couldn’t get to you or Firehair, she just took the only way out she could find.”
“She said she was tired,” I offered.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Miranda. She told me she was tired. That she couldn’t keep fighting me.”
Ben pursed his lips thoughtfully then gestured as he offered a hypothesis. “So maybe your Witch-fu is better’n you thought it was.”
“I dunno. Maybe…” I sighed and pushed my head back into the pillow then spit out a flat, “Dammit.”
Despite what I had said to Miranda during that final conversation, I was now taking ownership of the tragedy in full. The fresh guilt was already assuming its place next to my overabundance of other self-condemnations—each of which had been bought and paid for by my curse.
In the back of my mind, I wondered if there was anything I could have done differently that might have affected the outcome. If I hadn’t been so fixated on that necklace… If I had just refused to go to Texas in the first place… If I had left it all alone… Then maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have provoked her into taking action. And then, perhaps four people would still be alive. On top of that, maybe Felicity wouldn’t be dwelling in a catatonic stupor either.
Miranda: A Rowan Gant Investigation Page 28