Water to Burn

by Katharine Kerr

  Out in the hallway, Nurse Enderby returned and began to talk to Ari. I heard her suggesting politely that he go home and clean up.

  “No,” he said, less than politely. “Not until Nola leaves with me.”

  “Sorry,” Enderby said. “In your present condition you’re unsanitary. I’m not letting you near her.”

  There was a silence that could be described as strained. I suspected that the eye contact between them was less than pleasant. I was betting on Ari, but the impossible happened.

  “Oh, all right!” Ari snapped. He appeared in the doorway and blew me a kiss. “I’m going to go home and clean up. I’ll come back in a few hours.”

  “Get some sleep first,” Enderby said. “And a good breakfast.”

  Ari muttered something in Hebrew and left. I heard him stalking off down the hall. Father Keith slipped back into the room before Enderby could send him away, too, though he was doubtless clean enough to pass muster.

  “I’m wondering if we should tell your mother,” he said.

  “No.” My blood pressure raised itself a couple of points. “I’m not going to die, so she doesn’t need to know.”

  “Is that the only condition you’d see her under?”

  “Yeah, but don’t tell her that. She might arrange it.”

  He opened his mouth as if to argue, then merely sighed.

  Father Keith left when Aunt Eileen arrived a few minutes later. Came down a second time, she told me—she’d been there the night before, but of course I hadn’t known it. When Enderby brought me a high-calorie breakfast on a tray, Aunt Eileen helped me eat it. My fingers showed an alarming tendency to drop forks and spoons.

  “I’m very glad they’ll be doing more tests, dear,” Aunt Eileen said. “And you really do need to rest. Either Keith or I will be here on guard, so you won’t need to worry.”

  “On guard?” I said. “What happened when I was out?”

  “An invisible fiend tried to come into the room. Fortunately, I had the rosary from the Holy Land with me, and I chased it away.”

  She said all this in the calm, everyday sort of voice that she would have used to tell me that she’d dropped a tissue but picked it up again. I stared. Goggled at her would be more like it.

  “Well, I don’t know what else to call it,” Aunt Eileen said.

  “Uh, that’s fine, yeah. Invisible fiend, huh?” I leaned back against the pillows. Belial, probably. “Maybe I do need to have those tests done. The Agency will pick up the tab, after all.”

  “You’re going to need your strength.”

  “Yeah. My thought exactly.”

  At that point I realized Nurse Enderby was standing in the doorway. “Invisible fiends,” she said, in a matter-of-fact voice that matched Aunt Eileen’s, “are not allowed to mess with my patients in my ICU. Don’t worry about it.”

  If she could make Ari do something he didn’t want to do, I figured that she’d have no trouble with fiends, invisible or not.

  “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

  She gave me a smile—an oddly impish smile considering her strength of character—and left. The meaning of her acronym hit me. I was in the Intensive Care Unit. Intensive Care generally meant “you could die,” as far as I understood the label.

  “We were all so worried,” Aunt Eileen said. “You do look much better today.”

  “Good. You know, I was kind of worried, too.”

  During the rest of that boring day, filled with tests that mostly involved making me uncomfortable with various machines or drawing blood the old-fashioned way, Belial never dropped by. I had plenty of time to think over our battle. I made a few notes about the encounter on a pad of pink notepaper that Aunt Eileen found in the gift shop. Each sheet had a cartoon kitty printed on one corner, but it was better than nothing.

  The first note I made concerned Reb Ezekiel. When he’d talked about the flying saucer people getting him wet and chilled, he must have meant a similar attack to the one on me. The flying saucer people most likely meant Brother Belial, I figured, but the water and chills had been real enough. Either the rebbe had fought him off before Belial could drain enough Qi to put him in a coma, or something had interrupted our murderous little friend’s attack. I was betting on the interruption, but I’d probably never know which.

  The how of these attacks baffled me until I remembered Michael’s critter, Or-Something, picking up its liquid mess and dumping it onto another deviant level. I was willing to bet that Belial had a similar talent, strong enough in his case to transfer seawater by the gallon. I wondered if the skill Belial shared with Or-Something meant they came from the same world. Small details added up to indicate that his species lived underwater: the single “leg,” the tentacles, his skill with aquatic Qi, his need of a psychic mechanism to interact with creatures of the air, the Cryptic Creep’s remark about calamari. Belial’s ability to drain Qi, however, was a common Chaos weapon. So was Caleb’s ensorcellment attempt.

  One other detail came clear in my mind. I remembered the strange chilly premonitions I’d had when we went to see Reb Zeke in San Francisco General. They’d been warning me that I could end up in the hospital myself if I met the same being who had sickened Reb Ezekiel.

  Toward the end of the afternoon, Ari brought me my Agency laptop in its canvas tote to replace the kitty notepaper. He was wearing the pinstriped suit and a clean white shirt. Aunt Eileen tactfully excused herself to go find the coffee shop. Ari leaned over the bed rail and kissed me. He was shiny clean and smelled only of witch hazel.

  “Thanks so much for this.” I patted the laptop. “I see you’re going to consult with the Pacifica police.”

  “Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “What you’re wearing. No psychic powers involved.”

  Ari smiled. “I’ll be meeting Jack Donovan and his lawyer there. He’s going to press charges.”

  “Wonderful! That means they can issue a warrant for Caleb, right?”

  “A second warrant, actually. He’s a convicted felon, and he has a gun in his possession. That’s illegal even in gunmad America. They’ve already put out an all points bulletin on him.”

  “If he’s smart he’ll be miles away by now. Let me see if I can pick him up.”

  I set the laptop bag down next to me on the bed, then ran an SM:P. I received a strong, clear impression. Brother Belial must have been off recovering rather than helping Caleb hide.

  “He’s watching TV in a motel room somewhere,” I told Ari. “But I’ve got no idea where or which one. It looks like a pretty cheap room, though.”

  “Donovan told me over the phone that Sumner had withdrawn a lot of cash from the credit card account he’d given him. He can probably travel for some days on that amount. Donovan doesn’t know how much money from other sources Sumner has at his disposal. He must have other cards, too.”

  “Probably under assumed names, yeah. Say, was everything all right back at the flats?”

  “Yes.” He hesitated. “Except for one odd detail. The security system picked up some sort of energy discharge in the lower flat. According to the log, though, it happened just before we left to join Jack at the restaurant.”

  “Weird.” I remembered the transparent woman I’d seen at that moment. She might have been some sort of manifestation rather than an IOI. “I’ll investigate that once they let me out of here.”

  “Good, but for now, please rest.” Ari glanced at his watch. “I’d better go, but I’ll be back this evening.”

  “Okay. Just don’t go too near the ocean.”

  “Does it matter? After all, the ocean came to you.”

  “Yeah, but let’s not make it easy for the bastard. I doubt if he’s got enough Qi left to pull that stunt again.” Not right away, anyway, but I kept that thought to myself.

  Ari kissed me, then walked to the door, where he paused and looked back.

  “One last thing I’ve been meaning to ask you.” He kept a perfectly straight face. “Is this wha
t the Roadrunner does? Manipulate Qi?”

  I laughed, and he grinned at me. “Yeah,” I said, “that must be it.”

  After he left, Enderby unhooked me from the monitors, though the IV in my hand stayed, dripping assorted electrolytes into my bloodstream. Aunt Eileen returned, bringing big paper cups of coffee, one for me as well as for herself, bless her.

  “This is the first chance we’ve had to actually talk,” Eileen said. “Michael gave me that letter. Do you really think it’s from Flann?”

  “I do, yeah. The man who brought it to our world was a rabbi, and he was dying when I talked with him. He wouldn’t have lied. Besides, there’s the handwriting.”

  “Yes, seeing it gave Jim and me both quite a shock.” She sipped her coffee and gazed out the window across the room. “I’m glad he’s alive, but I really don’t understand why he’s in prison.”

  “I don’t know, either. I think it’s got something to do with world-walking. It must be illegal wherever he is.”

  “That’s what Michael said, too.” Aunt Eileen looked at me. “Michael’s determined to find him.”

  “So am I, eventually. I have a couple of cases on hand here, though. I can’t just drop everything and run off.”

  “I hope Michael realizes that.” Eileen sighed with a shake of her head. “Honestly, Nola, I used to think, when you children were all little, that it was going to be such a blessing once you were all grown up and out on your own and all. Instead, I really think things have gotten—well, I won’t say worse, just more complicated.”

  “Yeah. I have to agree.” I realized that we were talking around the biggest problem the letter had brought us. “What about Mother?”

  “I haven’t told Deirdre yet. I was thinking about asking Sean. He’s the one who calls her all the time, but I decided to ask Keith instead.”

  “I think that’s the best.”

  “Thank you. I was feeling like a coward, but there you are, no one wants to tackle Deirdre in one of her moods. Keith can always think of it as a spiritual trial and get something out of it that way.”

  Enderby returned at this point in the conversation to tell me that I was through with the humiliating tests. She also plugged my laptop’s transformer for the power supply into a nearby outlet, so I didn’t have to worry about running down the battery. After Aunt Eileen left to go home and start dinner for the family, I managed to type a report to TranceWeb despite the tube in my hand. I sent Y an e-mail stating that I was assessing the situation and would communicate further when I got my strength back.

  Ari returned shortly after with the news that the blackmail charges against Caleb Sumner had been filed and processed. The police had put out a state-wide alert and notified the FBI as well.

  “It sounds like they’ll get him sooner or later,” I said, “unless he leaves the country or something.” As soon as I finished speaking, I realized that Caleb was going to do nothing so sensible. “But he won’t. It’s the treasure. It’s his obsession.”

  “Good. Then we have a chance at him.”

  At dinnertime, Enderby came in with a tray full of awfullooking food. I managed to choke down about half of it with Ari badgering me to keep eating. When I was done, he went down to the coffee shop for a meal that, he told me when he returned, wasn’t much better. Not long after Father Keith arrived. He told us that Aunt Eileen had shown him the letter from Dad.

  “I’ll tell your mother,” he said to me. “The blessed Francis always preached that tribulation is good for the soul.”

  “She won’t believe you,” I said. “Why tell her at all?”

  “Get thee behind me, Satan. She deserves to know that Flann’s still alive.”

  With the matter in such good hands, I could rest. Nothing troubled my sleep but the usual noises of a big hospital. An hour before dawn, in fact, I woke up to the sound of hollow metal things bouncing and clanging out in the hall. Trays? Equipment? Garbage cans? I never did find out.

  Ari had managed to get himself next to me on the single bed by lying precariously on his side with his suit jacket thrown over him for a blanket. He slept, snoring, right through the clanging of the metal things. Even though I had the comfortable pillows and most of the bed, I couldn’t get back to sleep.

  Someone or something tugged at my consciousness. For a moment I froze, terrified, before I recognized the familiar touch of Y’s mind on mine. I realized that back in Washington the sun had already come up. I let myself fall into trance and saw his image as if he were standing beside the bed. Everything and everyone else in the room turned misty and pale.

  “I’m surprised to see you,” I said. “It’s Sunday.”

  “Something prompted me to log on,” Y said. “So I read your report and e-mail. I take it you nearly drowned.”

  “I didn’t, exactly, just got soaking wet. After he drenched me, I was so cold and shaky that it hampered my ability to fight. He damn near drained all of my Qi.”

  Y’s image shuddered. “Do you want me to fly out?” he said. “Do you need reinforcements?”

  At first I was shocked that he’d offer. Second, however, I felt shamed, that he’d think I needed help. “My bureau can handle this.”

  “Really?”

  Common sense took over. “Okay, I don’t know if I can or not,” I said. “At the moment I’m in no shape to decide.”

  “Aha, the truth stands revealed in all her glory. Very well. Contact me as soon as you’ve made up your mind. When do they let you out of the hospital?”

  “It better be today. I’ll make sure of it.”

  Y smiled and disappeared. I woke myself up. I felt entirely too tired, considering I’d only been in a simple trance state.

  When Doctor Poulis came in, I announced that I was going home. She made no objection, but she did warn Ari to make sure I took things easy. Thanks to that, he insisted on driving. Being in a car with Ari at the wheel was the opposite of taking things easy, but we managed to get back home alive, unmangled, and reasonably anxiety free.

  As we drove up to our flats, I saw a sprawling blot of graffiti on the outside of the stairwell, the symbol of Chaos magic once again. Another tagger had sprayed over it in red: NorXV. Oddly enough, the black Chaos magic symbol, stenciled as it was, looked precise and tidy, while the gang marker was smeared and sloppy.

  “Again?” I said. “These kids don’t give up easily, do they?”

  “Apparently not,” Ari said. “I’ll carry you upstairs and then wash it off.”

  “I don’t need carrying. What is this, your secret Tarzan Complex?”

  “Do you have to see psychology everywhere?” He glanced my way in annoyance and nearly drove into the apartment house next door.

  I shrieked. He swore and straightened the wheel just in time. We managed to reach the garage safely; I got out of the car before he drove in, however, just in case he went right through the back wall.

  By the time we walked back to the front of the building, I felt ridiculously tired. I just had enough energy to throw a couple of Chaos wards at that unbalanced arrow symbol. It hissed and died on my second attempt. I was so exhausted by then that sweat broke out on my forehead. The one-anda-half flights of stairs ahead of me loomed like a small mountain.

  Ari paused, looked me over, and picked me up before I could complain. To be honest, I didn’t want to complain. He carried me up the outside steps, set me down to open the door, then carried me up to our flat. He put me down on the couch.

  “I’ll be right back,” Ari said. “I just want to get rid of that sodding graffiti.”

  “Please and thank you,” I said.

  Ari took off his suit jacket and tossed it over one of the burgundy leather chairs. He also unstrapped his shoulder holster and took it off before he went outside.

  “No use in frightening the neighbors,” he said.

  While he worked, I dozed, recovering from the ride home, I figured. The sound of my cell phone buzzing woke me. When I answered, it was Aunt Eileen, who called to t
ell me that Aunt Rose and her husband Wally had arrived.

  “They’re going over to see your mother tonight,” Eileen said. “I thought we’d have a barbeque tomorrow, if it doesn’t rain. Dinner in any case. Are you well enough—”

  “Yes,” I snapped.

  “All right, dear. Four o’clock.”

  “We’ll be there. I’m looking forward to it.”

  I clicked off, then put the phone down on the coffee table. I could hear the hose running as Ari worked outside, a trickle of water that sounded like human voices, talking softly in another room. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. I remembered Belial’s attack and shivered. Water to burn, water to chill, water to drown a victim—like Bill Evers, I thought to myself. Now that I’d felt Belial’s malice, I was convinced that he’d murdered Evers with Caleb’s help. What to do about it still eluded me.

  I heard the front door open and someone’s footsteps on the stairs. Even though I knew it was Ari, for a brief moment I thought I was going to see a stranger arrive. Ari walked in, unbuttoning his wet shirt.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “You look worried.”

  “I see Belial everywhere,” I said. “Why are you so wet?”

  “The sodding hose leaked.” He took off the shirt. “I’ll hang this over the shower rail.”

  Even though he’d stopped running the water, the voices continued their murmured conversation. I heard Ari go into the bedroom and begin rustling around in the closet. I felt like yelling at him to be quiet, but even if he had, the voices still would have been incomprehensible. I knew that from prior experience. Ari returned wearing his jeans and a dark green shirt.

  “Did the graffiti wash off?” I said.