Winded

by Emma Shelford

  “Yes. Yes. Well, it was great seeing you, Merry. I won’t keep you.”

  “See you Thursday.”

  “Yes, of course. See you Thursday.” She beats a hasty retreat down the sidewalk. I’m left baffled.

  “Who was that, Merlo?” Alejandro says. “She was very nervous. I think she likes you.”

  “You think she—? She’s not a teenager, Alejandro. And besides, she’s my therapist.”

  “Your what?”

  “My psychologist, shrink—I tell her what’s in my head.”

  “Surely not everything?” Alejandro looks horrified.

  “Not everything.”

  “Good. Her brain might explode if she wasn’t sufficiently prepared.”

  I laugh.

  “Indeed. I’ve no idea why she was acting so oddly.” I glance at the pharmacy then pull out my phone. “Let’s find out what pills she was popping.”

  “You saw the name?” Alejandro looks down the street, but Dr. Dilleck is nowhere in sight. “That seems a little personal.”

  “I lost my inhibitions a few centuries ago. Ah ha, here it is. Diazepam, common brand name of Valium, a common anti-anxiety medication. Well, that’s interesting. I thought she was looking peaky.”

  “Funny to have your therapist on anxiety drugs.”

  I feel myself bristle on Dr. Dilleck’s behalf. What an odd reaction on my part, especially since Alejandro is correct. I try to soften my tone when I speak.

  “No one is without their own demons. Come on, let’s find out what Bethany has to say.”

  As we walk toward Westerly Gifts, I’m left with an anxious feeling in my stomach. The lauvan that inexplicably connect me to Dr. Dilleck tingle uneasily. What’s happening to Dr. Dilleck? Why did she act so strangely in my presence? And why do I care?

  ***

  The door to the occult shop bangs open to the accompaniment of wind chimes. I close it behind Alejandro with a familiar shove of my hip against the resisting frame. A tall figure with long silver hair rises in a swirl of scarves.

  “Afternoon, Bethany,” I say. Bethany smiles warmly.

  “Merry Lytton. How lovely to see you. Please, come in.”

  “This is my friend Alejandro. He knows all my secrets, so you may speak freely.”

  Alejandro reddens with shy pride, and Bethany nods gravely.

  “Of course. Here are the gloves that Drew left. Do you think they’ll help?” Bethany brings out a pair of soft leather gloves and lays them carefully on the counter. A faint humming starts in my ears and I shake my head to ignore it. There are no obvious lauvan on the gloves. I’ll need a closer look.

  “I hope so. I’m looking for a trace of Drew’s presence on the gloves. Someone’s been following me, and I think it might be Potestas, the organization he works for. He’s my only lead so far, so…” I lift the right glove up gently and peer inside. No matter which way I twist the hole toward the light, no errant lauvan emerge. I lay it down on the counter, my hope rapidly fading.

  “Nothing?” Alejandro asks.

  “It’s been so long, especially for a mundane object like a glove. I shouldn’t have expected anything. I suppose I’m back to square one.” I pick up the left glove and peek in. Is there a glimmer in the thumbhole? “Wait, I might have something.” I reach into the glove and carefully feel around with my thumb and index finger. Both Bethany and Alejandro stare at me in expectation. Alejandro might even be holding his breath. Closer and closer, until—a muted zing thrills up my arm and it takes all my self-control not to twitch my hand away.

  “I have it,” I say, barely breathing myself. This lauvan is infused with a powerful sensation, just like the gray lauvan shed from whoever has been following me. Sure enough, when I carefully extract the fragile lauvan, it is faded and wispy but undeniably gray. There is a faint iridescent sheen on the end of the lauvan, as if it has been dipped in an oil slick. Odd. But otherwise, there is no doubt.

  “Well?” Alejandro says. “What is it?”

  They both look at me, waiting. I forget sometimes that no one else can see what is obvious to me.

  “Proof that Drew is my shadow. Potestas is after me.”

  “Oh dear.” Bethany looks woeful. “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “Keep your ear to the ground. I appreciate you calling me about this, Bethany. You stay safe.” I beckon to Alejandro and turn to the door.

  “You too, Merry.”

  ***

  Alejandro finally starts to droop when we leave Bethany’s shop.

  “So, you do have a limit. I was beginning to think your energy was boundless.”

  “I’m okay. Where are we going next?”

  “Home, for a well-earned rest. Shower, dinner. We can pick up some beer on the way.”

  Alejandro sighs in contentment.

  “Yes, please.”

  We walk around a corner to the back alley where my car waits for us. The blue of my Lotus appears from behind a red minivan, then a steely gray lauvan floats by my face.

  Drew’s lauvan again, without a doubt. He’s persistent. I wonder with growing unease what his purpose is. I pluck the lauvan from the air and snatch my hand back reflexively at the sensation.

  “What happened?” Alejandro peers into the space where the lauvan writhes.

  “Another lauvan from Drew. There’s so much anger and agitation pent up in the strand—it shocked me.”

  “He’s here? Why would he follow you, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, pensive. “He must have a deeper purpose than simple curiosity or fear to send him across the city. I suppose we’ll find out sooner or later.”

  A crack like a gunshot rents the still air. Time slows as lauvan in the air twist, buffeted this way and that by the passage of a tiny projectile.

  It is a gunshot. And the bullet flies directly at my heart.

  CHAPTER VIII

  There’s no time to think, hardly any time to move, only enough time to lunge sideways and twitch my fingers around the closest lauvan I can find. My questing fingertips grasp my own flowing strands and I pull in a desperate maneuver to harden a shell of lauvan around my body as a defense. These are the tricks that have kept me alive for all these years—this is not the first bullet I’ve had winging in my direction. The shell works to deflect projectiles, allowing them to bounce harmlessly off.

  But my fingers encounter tremendous resistance and my own lauvan are unresponsive. There is no time for second chances. The bullet slams into my body like a punch, tearing deep into my shoulder and forcing through the other side with a terrible burning sensation. My quick lunge prevented it from piercing my heart. I should be grateful but the pain overwhelms every other feeling. My back wound is on fire and blood gushes down my shirt in front. I drop to my knees and slump over my damaged shoulder, gritting my teeth. Dimly I hear Alejandro shouting my name. I need to pull myself together. I need to know who shot me.

  Slowly, so slowly, I squint. My vision blurs, in and out of focus. Down the alley, tires squeal. A gray compact peels out of a line of vehicles and races to the road. It leaves a cloud of glossy gray lauvan in its wake.

  Too late, I think of the license plate number and the information it could have provided. Damn. But I don’t have any more concentration to devote to Drew. People are running our way and one is filming me on her smartphone. Double damn.

  Alejandro kneels before me, his terrified face bobbing in my sight.

  “Merlo, Merlo! What happened?” He blanches when he looks at my shoulder and breaks into rapid Spanish. “Oh god, there’s so much blood. Where’s it coming from? What can I do?”

  “Help me get away.” I take a shallow breath and wish I hadn’t. I need a chance to heal myself out of sight of prying eyes. “Too many people.”

  The growing crowd chatters in excitement. Someone babbles into their phone.

  “Where can we go?” Alejandro’s eyes dart around frantically. “Can you make it to the car?”

&
nbsp; I’ve done more on worse injuries, but just because it’s happened before doesn’t make this time any easier.

  I sit up straight and nearly scream from the stabbing pain. The car feels a thousand leagues away, and the exertion increases the steady gush of blood from my wound.

  “Stop! Stay still. The blood…” Alejandro grips my uninjured arm tightly to prevent movement. He needn’t worry—I have no intention of recreating that particular sensation.

  A faint siren builds in volume. Someone in the growing crowd must have called an ambulance. I resign myself to a trip to the hospital, and focus instead on breathing.

  ***

  The ambulance is a nightmare. The attendant never leaves my side for a moment, checking blood pressure and pulse and bandages. Alejandro holds onto a handrail, white-faced, his eyes darting back and forth from me to the attendant and back again. I grit my teeth and take shallow, steady breaths to manage the pain. Blood seeps through the bandage and the attendant looks worried.

  If I don’t untangle my lauvan soon, it might be too late. I’ll have to risk it. Not yet, but soon. The little I managed before the ambulance arrived was not nearly enough. A wave of pain throbs across my shoulder and chest and I lose concentration.

  “Are we almost there?” Alejandro peers through the front windshield.

  “Nearly,” the driver replies. The siren howls above us, drowning out his words, wailing over the pulse of blood in my ears.

  At the hospital, the attendants slide me quickly but efficiently from the ambulance stretcher onto a gurney. They’re smooth but the slight motion almost makes me pass out. I could more easily handle the pain if I had something to do, some reason for distraction. My wound is more dire than I thought. I need to fix my lauvan while I’m still conscious. I reach my right hand up to my injured shoulder.

  “Best if you don’t touch.” The attendant firmly presses my hand back to my side. “Let the doctor see it first.”

  No doctor will be as effective as me. Dammit, how can I be alone?

  A nurse rushes over.

  “Gunshot to the shoulder,” the attendant says without preamble. “Exit wound. Fair bit of blood loss.”

  “We’ll take him straight to the trauma room. And what is he doing here?” The nurse points at Alejandro with a frown. “You know the protocol for suspicious injuries—he shouldn’t have been in the ambulance.” She turns to a fellow nurse and says, “Get security to watch this patient—in case the attacker comes back.”

  The attendant looks sheepish and I interject.

  “It’s fine. Alejandro’s with me. And the security won’t be necessary.”

  “Standard protocol. You can take it up with the police later.”

  They push me to a large room with over-bright lights and wheeled tables filled with medical equipment. Before I disappear from Alejandro’s sight, I give him a beseeching look. Time, I mouth. I need a chance to stop the bleeding.

  Nurses and a surgeon gather around my gurney. The lights dim slightly, and it’s not from someone hitting the light switch. I need to stop the bleeding now.

  CRASH.

  The nurses gathered around me look up in surprise. I seize my opportunity and bury my fingers in the mess of lauvan above my shoulder. It won’t take much more to staunch the blood, just a few strands in place will do…

  “Lo siento, sorry, so sorry. I am clumsy. Let me help. Oh! Sorry!”

  A grin flits across my face despite the pain. It sounds like Alejandro has upset a cart of supplies and is pretending to help tidy. The nurses start to turn back, but Alejandro bursts into the room, falling head over heels.

  “Sorry, so sorry! I fell, so sorry!”

  One of the nurses runs forward to usher him out of the trauma room. The others look scandalized, then turn back to me. One shakes her head and tears my hand away from my shoulder.

  “No touching. Let’s have a look at that wound.”

  She gently lifts off the bloody compress that covers my injury. The surgeon leans in and her brow furrows.

  “You were shot in the shoulder a few minutes ago, isn’t that correct?”

  I look down at my shoulder, smeared with fresh and drying blood. The wound itself is little more than a scratch, perhaps what might happen if I cut myself lightly with a knife. Damn and double damn. I healed the skin over the wound to stop the blood, but went too far. I had no time for finesse.

  “Yes, but I don’t know if it went in. Perhaps it glanced off? You know, I’m feeling quite a bit better now.”

  The surgeon looks skeptical. It’s not a convincing explanation, but the evidence speaks for itself.

  “I was told there was an exit wound. Can you sit up?” She helps me raise my torso into an upright position. I hide my grimace as fresh waves of pain roll down my chest. I didn’t heal enough for that.

  “There’s only a scar on the upper shoulder. Have you recently recovered from a wound to that area?” She presses the healed exit wound, and I attempt to keep my face impassive while a searing jolt of pain lances through my flesh.

  “Yes, last month I fell on a sharp corner. I’m feeling better. Can I go home now?”

  The surgeon shakes her head in bewilderment, not denial.

  “We’ll clean the area first, and prescribe you some antibiotics along with instructions for dressing the wound properly. Follow the instructions, and check in with your own doctor in a few days to make sure it’s healing nicely.”

  The surgeon leaves, still with a puzzled expression on her face. The nurses bandage me and help me into a hospital gown—my shirt is ruined after the blood and the ambulance attendants cutting it away—and transfer me to a wheelchair to take me back to the exit. Alejandro meets us at the door and puts my good arm over his shoulders.

  “Now where?” He looks exhausted.

  “Home. Let’s find a cab. I need to finish healing myself.”

  ***

  Alejandro ushers me into my apartment and helps me lower onto my bed. I wince with the motion.

  “What can I do?”

  “I’m fine.” I grin weakly at Alejandro, who appears unconvinced. “Honestly. I need some time to untangle my lauvan, then I’ll be as right as rain.”

  “Untangle?”

  “It’s a wound, and my lauvan are snarled above it. If I remove the knots, I can heal the wound.”

  “Nice trick.” Alejandro yawns. I point toward the living room.

  “You’re on the couch. Sheets and blankets should be there. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. Sorry this evening wasn’t quite what we envisioned.”

  “Your life is more exciting than you said, Merlo.”

  I lay back and sigh in discomfort.

  “Lucky me.”

  Alejandro leaves me alone to ready himself for sleep. I pull off the hospital gown to reveal bare skin and position a mirror for a better view of my shoulder to begin the lengthy process of untangling. I removed some of the knots in the hospital, but there’s plenty to do. I resign myself to the task. It’s tedious, but pain is worse.

  After three quarters of an hour, my brown lauvan are free-flowing once more, and my mind turns to stickier problems. Why the hell did Drew shoot me? And how can I find the bastard to strike back?

  I sink into my pillows and prop my phone against bent legs. Let’s see what the all-knowing Internet can show me. I have a last name now, thanks to Bethany, so I’m searching for a needle in a much smaller haystack. I type in “Drew Mordecai.”

  There are no pictures of interest—none are of the same person and I can discount the ones that don’t match Sylvana’s previous description of a brown-haired man in his thirties. I return to the links. There is one for Facebook, a White Pages ad, some blogger from Minnesota, all of which I ignore after a quick view. Below those, however, are some businesses. In the text preview for each link, “Drew Mordecai” appears next to a list of other names. But when I search the sites themselves, there is no trace of his name on any page.

  I’m flummoxed. Someon
e with Drew’s name has connections with these businesses, but not in a public capacity. Unfortunately, I’ve reached the limit of my technological skills. I try to keep current but there is only so much I can do.

  I can visit in person, though, since I can see much more than most. The addresses of the four businesses with Drew’s name are all local, none of them very far away. Tomorrow I will visit each and see if I can sniff out my attacker. I’m itching to meet him face to face and show him my appreciation for his gun work.

  CHAPTER IX

  Dreaming

  Celeste takes a sip of her coffee from its tiny, dainty cup. A sip at a time is all one can handle of the bitter brew Café de Foy serves. The tiny cups it’s served in protect our tongues as much as our purses. Celeste sits up straight and waves to a figure striding under sweeping chestnut trees in front of the café. I turn when the man approaches our table.

  “Monsieur Fragonard,” Celeste says and pats her shawl in place. “How are you?”

  “Madame Linne, Merle, good afternoon,” says Jean-Honoré Fragonard, a promising Rococo painter and a friend of ours. “I would be better if I hadn’t run out of Prussian blue. And my usual color man has none! Now I must wait until I go to Montmartre tomorrow to buy some. Bah!”

  “What are you painting, Monsieur?” Celeste asks. She loves Jean-Honoré’s work and has sat as a model for him a few times in the past. He carefully positions her so her fire-ravaged right cheek is not visible, leaving only the smooth skin and high color of her left cheek. For my part, I love both her sides and have sketched her entire face in my book, to Celeste’s consternation.

  “A great tableau of a picnic by a river. I’ve put you in, Madame, and your beauty glows far beyond what paint can achieve.”

  Celeste smiles with pleasure even as she bends her neck in an instinctive gesture to hide her cheek.

  “Are you meeting the marquis this afternoon?” I nod at a table on the far side of the room where a young man in a high powdered wig sips coffee with an older portly gentleman. They are both a cut above most of the bourgeoisie who frequent this café.