by SM Reine
Marion looked down at her chest. Nothing had changed physically, but her hand was clenched into a fist, and her knuckles ached as though she had just rapped her hand hard against the door in her mind, asking someone to open it.
And someone had.
Coming in contact with Dr. Flynn had helped her remember…something.
“Can you help me remember everything else?” Marion asked, and it surprised her how easily it came out.
His mouth opened. It closed.
“I can order some tests,” Dr. Flynn said.
He moved to leave the room, and sudden fear struck her. What if she only spoke English when she was in this doctor’s presence? What if someone else came in to draw her blood, and the doors in her mind shut again, blocking out the words she had learned—maybe even her name?
She whipped the sheets aside and leaped from bed. “Wait, Doctor.”
He stopped in the doorway. His knuckles were ashen because he gripped the tablet with her chart on it so hard. “Yes?”
“Can you run the tests yourself?” Marion asked. His brow furrowed, and she added, “Please.”
After a pause, he said, “Okay. I can do that for you.”
* * *
Luke got Marion a hospital gown, clean socks, and a hairbrush, then sent her into the bathroom to change. “You’ll wait for me?” she asked, lingering in the doorway with a hand on the knob.
He’d been planning to check on the other patients, but he said, “Yes.”
She left the door open a tiny crack when she went inside. He could hear her rustling around in there—the slide of cloth against skin, bare feet padding on linoleum, a comb through hair. Luke was painfully aware of every little movement she made.
Marion shouldn’t have been there.
Oliver rapped lightly on the doorframe before stepping into the room. “Are you okay, doc?” he asked without preamble.
Luke gave himself a moment to compose his thoughts by filling a cup with water at the sink. “How did you know to get me for her?”
“I’ve always known,” Oliver said. He cleared his throat. “You always see the preternatural patients anyway.”
“How did you know that she’s preternatural?”
“You had to have seen her eyes. Didn’t you?”
Luke drank the water just as slowly as he’d filled it. It would have been impossible not to notice Marion’s eyes. They were such a pale color that they barely qualified as blue.
“I’m going to be busy with this patient for a while,” Luke said. “I want you to validate the werewolf bite on the patient Charity pulled aside for me. Make sure it was, in fact, a shifter. Can you do that?” Luke didn’t wait for Oliver to agree before saying, “And then we need to talk about…everything. I need to know what you know about me. Don’t leave the hospital.”
“I won’t. I’m looking forward to talking.” Oliver didn’t immediately leave. He was watching the door to the bathroom, as though contemplating whether Marion should be left alone in there.
Luke was wondering the same thing, though he wasn’t sure if Oliver’s motivations were the same.
Oliver knew who Luke was. If not for Marion, the doctor would have run from the hospital and never looked back. He was still tempted to do it.
But first things first.
“Go,” Luke said.
Oliver finally stepped outside. He shot one last look at Luke before shutting the door behind him.
3
Dr. Flynn showed Marion where the shower was and waited in the hospital room while she cleaned the dirt off her body. She appreciated having him nearby, even when he was in a separate room. She was acutely aware of his physical presence and the deep murmur of his voice on the other side of the wall, and it was irrationally comforting.
His presence made her feel safe enough to strip down in the chilly bathroom—a thin-walled room with a drafty window over the toilet. Patterns of moonlight frothed on the tiles, shadows foaming as howling wind bent the trees outside. It felt as though there were enemies lurking in wait for Marion.
She wasn’t alone, though. She could get dressed without fear.
At least, she didn’t feel fear until she inspected her naked body. Her legs were mottled with bruises from the knees down, she had several scrapes along her hips and shoulders, and she felt like her back was injured, although she couldn’t see anything in the mirror.
Whatever had happened to Marion—however she had lost her memory—it had not been gentle.
Speaking of the mirror, Marion was pleasantly surprised to find that she was not just female, but a beautiful female with striking features. She had a strong bone structure. Chestnut hair made her blue eyes look unnaturally bright—the white-blue of a Husky’s eyes, which did not match her otherwise dark coloring. She suspected she was no more Caucasian than Dr. Flynn was, though her memories seemed to have left a gap that would have explained her geographic origin. Somewhere that spoke French, apparently.
“I’m a model,” she said, testing the words to see how they felt. They didn’t resonate with her.
What would a French-speaking amnesiac model be doing stumbling around Ransom Falls?
Marion dried off and combed her fingers through her tangled curls, never once breaking eye contact with her reflection. Some part of her feared that she might somehow vanish if she stepped away from that mirror.
Her neck was lean, her shoulders bony, her large breasts perky. Definitely young. Very little muscle definition, though not in poor physical condition. No old scars.
She stroked her hands down her cheeks, neck, and chest. Her skin was dark-olive in color. Not a wrinkle or blemish in sight. “I’m a student. I’m an artist. I’m an actress.”
None of that stuck out to her.
Marion pulled her hair over her shoulder. Her fingers moved swiftly, twisting it into a thick brown braid that got all of those curls out of her face, revealing her high cheekbones, wide eyes, and pointed chin. Marion liked the look of it. She wanted to let the others in the hospital see her face. She wanted to know if anyone recognized her. And if they happened to admire her in the process, that wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, either.
Whoever she was, and whatever role she held in society, she was a little bit arrogant. “No harm in that,” she murmured to herself.
Marion wrapped herself up in a hospital gown, as it was much cleaner than the pajamas she had been found in.
She hesitated when she turned away from the mirror. The door into the hospital room was waiting, and the sight of it made something strange ring within her skull.
Marion lifted a hand to knock.
Why did she want to knock? It didn’t have a lock, presumably in case she fell trying to use the bathroom and needed a nurse’s assistance.
She pushed it open.
Dr. Flynn waited on the other side. His expression was guarded. “This way, please.”
She studied him as they walked down the hall. It was hard to tear her eyes away from a man as attractive as Dr. Flynn. The doctor was probably too old for her, she acknowledged internally. He must have been through eight years of medical school, and her reflection made Marion suspect she would have been lucky to have completed eight days of university. But still attractive. Easily the sexiest man she’d ever seen.
To be fair, her memory didn’t extend very far back, but if the world had many men sexier than Dr. Luke Flynn, people surely couldn’t get very much accomplished. Such men would be terribly distracting.
“Do I know you?” Marion asked.
“If you’ve been in Ransom Falls for long, you might have seen me around. It’s a small town,” Dr. Flynn said without looking at her.
“Do you know me?”
A flicker of a smile crossed his mouth. “I do now.” He was being evasive. Marion wasn’t quite optimistic enough to call it flirtatious.
Dr. Flynn led her to another room, this one with blue walls and an arched white doorway. When she passed through, her skin broke out in pric
kles. She rubbed her upper arms. “What was that?”
He tapped his tablet, making a note. “Sit in the chair, please.”
Marion did.
Another man, whose nametag identified him as Nurse Machado, approached her with a wheeled tray. He had a needle, an elastic strap, a couple of empty vials.
Her spine stiffened. “You’ll not take my blood. Only Dr. Flynn may touch me.”
At a look from the doctor, Nurse Machado stepped back. Dr. Flynn took the tray.
“Explain what you’re doing before you begin,” Marion said.
“All right. This needle here is for drawing blood. I’ll take three vials. That’s not enough for you to feel any side effects from blood loss, although it will pinch when I insert the needle. I’m going to run some standard labs and see if we can narrow down a reason for your memory loss. The lab will take a few hours to get through everything.”
“Not if you take the samples to test yourself,” Marion said. “You’ll be able to work quite quickly, I’m sure.” The men exchanged looks. She lifted her chin to shoot a look at them down the bridge of her nose, arching an eyebrow. “Will that be a problem?”
“The lab here is great,” Dr. Flynn said. “I can attest to that. I trust them.”
“Regardless, I’d like you alone to handle my case.”
Nurse Machado flung his hands into the air. “Why pay our lab techs thirteen dollars an hour when a doctor with a quarter million-dollar salary can do it? I’m out of here. You know where to find me, Luke.”
The door had barely swung shut behind him when another nurse entered, this one female. Marion knew instantly that this woman was attracted to Dr. Flynn, though she couldn’t have put her finger on why that was. Marion simply knew it.
This nurse’s nametag said Ballard. She was a diminutive woman, though it was more to do with posture than stature, as though her confidence had been drained by a vampire. She hid her face behind glasses with thick black frames. “I’ve called the priest. He should be here in an hour. We’re almost out of Retrolycathol and—”
“Not now,” Dr. Flynn interrupted.
“But Doctor—”
“Not now, Charity.” It came out a little sharper the second time.
Being snapped at by Dr. Flynn must have been an unusual incident. Nurse Ballard looked as shocked as though he’d dropped an anvil on her head.
She slunk away, hugging the paperwork to her chest.
Marion wanted to tell Dr. Flynn that it was okay. That he could attend to other patients, particularly ones in such a state that they needed the attention of a priest.
But it wasn’t okay.
Until she walked out the doors of that hospital, Marion had no intention of letting the doctor out of her sight.
* * *
Dr. Flynn had different plans.
He returned Marion to a private room and instructed her to sit. “You’ll be safe here,” he said. They had just finished running several tests, one of which had involved a very large, alarmingly noisy MRI machine. “I’ll make sure nobody comes in while I’m gone.”
She didn’t sit. “I want to come with you.”
“You can’t. The lab is a secure area.”
“You’ll be escorting me.”
“No,” he said sharply. “You’ll be staying right here. You’ll be safe. There are other people in this hospital who need my help while your labs are performed.”
Her cheeks warmed. She sat on the bed. Marion was rewarded by another of those warm smiles from the doctor.
“I’ll check in on you soon,” he said.
And he was gone.
Marion counted to ten, using the clock on the wall to measure the seconds.
Then she tested the door.
The handle turned easily under her hand. It wasn’t locked. She was almost offended by that. Wasn’t the doctor concerned for her safety? Did he want to permit any hospital employee to wander in at will?
Luckily, doors that allowed people in would also allow them to come out.
Marion stepped into the hall.
The hospital was pleasantly quiet, sterile, and tan-walled. It was also very small. Marion suspected that she had seen everything there was to see when walking from her room to the MRI machine, including a nurses station that was currently unoccupied. Nurses Machado and Ballard were nowhere in sight.
She stepped behind the desk, pressing a button on the workstation keyboard. The screen flicked to life. It was locked with a password. Disappointing.
No papers had been left out on the tables, no drawers left open. Marion didn’t try very hard to break into them. She wasn’t even sure what she was looking for.
Footsteps echoed down the hall. She stepped through the door behind the nurses station to hide, and she found herself in a break room. There was a table, a microwave, a mini-fridge.
A pair of thick-framed glasses sat unattended beside that microwave.
“Hello there,” Marion murmured, picking them up. She cleaned them off with a paper towel, blew a fleck of dust off of the glass, and then slid them onto her nose.
The room came into focus. Now she could see the far wall clearly, though the lenses were a mite strong, making the world look fish-eyed. It wasn’t too distracting. They would work.
Nurse Ballard didn’t really need those more than Marion did. Marion removed them, folded the arms, tucked them inside her hospital gown.
“Do you need something?”
She turned to see a very suspicious Nurse Machado in the doorway. He didn’t look angry, so she believed that he hadn’t seen her taking the glasses.
“I was alone in my room and became afraid,” Marion said, most likely too confident to sound properly frightened. “I was looking for company.”
Nurse Machado stepped into the room. He was very imposing, large enough that he would have been able to pin down struggling patients if necessary. “Where did you hear the name Seth Wilder?”
“It’s not your concern.” She flicked her fingers. “Out of my way. I’ll return to my room now.”
Nurse Machado advanced on her. “I thought you wanted company.”
He was a very large man.
“You’ll get away from me, or I will scream,” she said.
“For whom?” he asked. “You sent Dr. Flynn to the lab. It’s in the basement. And Nurse Ballard’s down in the waiting room.”
Another step forward.
Marion braced herself, refusing to move back in response. She squared her shoulders. Lifted her chin. “What do you want from me?”
Now he was so close that she could smell his aftershave—and underneath that, the coppery scent of blood.
A threatening aura haloed him, his mood sour on her tongue and making her hair stand on end. Marion could feel it crawling over her skin the way that she had felt that Nurse Ballard was attracted to Lucas Flynn. It felt like if she squinted hard enough, she might be able to see through his skull to the specific phrasing of his unfriendly thoughts.
“You don’t remember, do you?” Nurse Machado asked. “Where I found you?”
The lights in the break room flickered. She glanced up at the ceiling and held her breath, praying they wouldn’t go dark. They didn’t. “I don’t remember anything before waking up in my room here.”
“So you expect me to believe that you don’t remember the circle.”
She blinked with surprise. It was the only outward show of emotion she permitted herself. “Circle?”
“You’re a good liar, but I still know you’re lying,” Nurse Machado said. “Watch yourself. And know that I’m watching you too.”
“Are you done? Now get out of my way.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he did as she ordered.
She kept a hand on the glasses within her hospital gown so that they wouldn’t slide as she strode down the hallway.
The nurse didn’t follow.
When she shut the door to her hospital room, Marion’s knees gave out. She sat on the edge of the be
d. Marion was shaking all over—shaking with fear, she realized, which she hadn’t felt when she’d been making demands in the break room. She’d reacted on instinct. And her instinct, apparently, was to be imperious and demanding.
Marion took the glasses out of her hospital gown. What was she thinking, stealing some nurse’s glasses? And then ordering a man around when she was trapped alone with him.
Who had Marion been that these were the behaviors that came naturally?
She set the glasses on the counter where Nurse Ballard would be able to find them later. Then she wedged a chair against the door, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers over her head.
Marion didn’t feel any safer alone with herself than she did with Nurse Machado.
* * *
It took less than an hour for the doctor to return. The longest, most miserable hour in Marion’s short memory.
“The results have come in.” Dr. Flynn sat on the stool by the counter and rolled it to Marion’s side. He held the lab sheet so that she could see it, even though the medical codes didn’t make any sense to her. “The good news is that you’re perfectly healthy. I see nothing in your blood work that should impact your memory.”
Hot worms of anxiety writhed through her heart. “What about the MRI?”
“You need to see something else to understand that.” He flipped to the second page. “The doorway into the lab has magical stones set into it. Each one reacts to a different preternatural breed. When you walk through, it records your presence, registers which stones react, and a witch analyzes the results.” He pointed at one box. “You aren’t a demon.”
“Is that good news as well?” Marion asked.
“Very good news.” His forefinger slid to the next box. “You aren’t a werewolf, shapeshifter, sidhe, or other common gaean breed.”
“Gaean?”
“Okay, damn. There are three major factions: gaean, infernal, and ethereal. Infernal creatures come from the Nether Worlds—they’re usually called demons. Gaeans are all the preternatural creatures natural to Earth and the Middle Worlds.”
