by J. A. Pitts
So Jones, Carnes, and I had our hands full of gotchas and hooters for the better part of the hour that JJ was dazzling the crew with his work. We could hear the rehearsal, but not really see what was going on.
Then all hell broke loose. There was this moment, right at five-thirty where a wave of energy broke over me—like something brushed my soul. It was magic, I knew it by the taste.
I looked up, turning to face the actors, when JJ made a gargling sound and fell to the floor.
“Shit!” Carl swore and dropped his clipboard onto the floor. “Beauhall,” he called.
I was on my feet and half way across the sound stage before he took his second breath. He looked terrified.
“Call 911,” he ordered. “Beauhall?”
“Here, boss.” I skidded to a halt next to him and looked down. JJ was flopping around on the floor, convulsing. Blood was running from his mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.
I dropped to my knees and grabbed his head, cupping both sides with my hands and bracing it between my knees to prevent him from bashing his brains out. There was a lot of blood.
People were standing around us, watching like our species was born to do, mesmerized by pain and blood.
“Scatter,” Cry-baby Carnes called, pushing through the crowd. Grandma Jones followed closely behind him.
“I’m a nurse,” Jones called, squatting beside JJ. She didn’t touch him, but watched as he convulsed, his feet drumming on the wooden floor.
“Don’t touch any blood,” Jones called to those around us. Everyone stepped back. Not me, of course, I was already holding his head steady. My hands were covered in blood.
“Ambulance is on the way,” Nathan called from the back of the crowd. Nathan was our security guard. Good kid. Three tours in Afghanistan and a heart of gold.
Three and a half minutes. That’s what it took for the EMTs to roll in with a stretcher. JJ convulsed the entire time. The crowd just stood there, watching. Several people were crying, and I think someone threw up. The whole world had narrowed down to this young, arrogant man whose life was leaking out of him for no apparent reason.
Then the crowd parted and two EMTs materialized beside me.
“Don’t move,” the first one said to me. He was gruff but gave me a quick smile. “We’ll take care of things,” he said again. “Just keep his head steady.”
His partner, a young red-headed guy with a face full of freckles and green, green eyes was cutting JJ’s sleeve open to expose his arm.
The ginger kid shot JJ with something that caused the convulsions to lessen and you could feel the tension in the room drop a few notches.
He’d lost a lot of blood, but he was breathing. The gruff guy was getting vitals while Ginger started an IV. Once the IV was in, they scooped JJ onto a body-board, got him onto the stretcher, and out the door. They were in and out in under three minutes.
I sat there while they disappeared. I couldn’t move.
The whole time I’d been holding his head I could hear him screaming. Not out loud, but in my head. There was something deeply magical about all this. I couldn’t tell if it was an actual attack or some external catalyst that had triggered this reaction in him. Whatever the hell had swept over the room, JJ was the only one affected.
A second ambulance showed up, as well as two senior fire and rescue folks who began asking all sorts of questions and cordoned off the studio. They checked each and every one of us to make sure no one else was affected, then they began testing the area for contaminants. I could’ve told them it was no use. The thing that had triggered JJ’s seizure was long gone, a ripple in the fabric of reality that had washed over us all like a shockwave.
That’s what it was, I realized. A shockwave. Somewhere, a magical explosion of sorts had happened. Now I just needed to know where the epicenter was. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to be near ground zero. JJ’s head may have exploded.
“As soon as the emergency folks clear everyone, send them home,” Carl said to Nathan. “I need to find Jennifer.”
“You got it, boss,” Nathan said. He put his arm over Clyde’s shoulder. “Come on, big guy. Let’s see about the hospital.”
“Harborview ,” Grandma Jones said, standing and placing a hand on my shoulder. They’ll chopper him in. He’s lost too much blood. “
“Holy Jesus,” Clyde said.
I looked up at him, caught by the sheer terror and despair in those two words. Clyde was one of those bearded and tattered men, mid-fifties, rough around the edges, but knew more about camera work than anyone I’d ever met. Of course, I was only twenty-eight. He and JJ were best friends, a relationship I never could figure out.
“We should call Wendy,” Clyde said. “She’ll want to go to the hospital.”
“You can use the phone out at the security desk,” Nathan said, steering the dazed man.
The room cleared and I just sat there and tried to find the thread of that wave, concentrated on the feeling that had passed over me. I wanted to burn it into my mind. I bet if I had Gram I could pinpoint the disturbance. As it was, I was afraid that if I moved I’d lose it altogether.
No one bothered me, no one asked me anything. I was an island of pain and concentration amid a maelstrom of chaos. Eventually the pins and needles grew strong enough to drown out the thread. It was definitely south of us, but I had no clear idea where. This was not my area of expertise. I was sensitive to magic, but to pinpoint it and follow it, that was beyond me.
When I was done, Grandma Jones helped me to my feet and back into the locker rooms. I ducked into the shower and hosed all the blood off me. I’d been in this situation more times than I like to remember. I bundled the soaked jeans into a garbage bag. My first inclination was to burn them. Maybe I’d take them out to Black Briar.
By the time I got back into the soundstage, Jones and Carnes were the only two left. They’d been mopping up, using a lot of bleach by the smell of the place.
Carl and Jennifer were closed up in his office. I could see them talking through the big window. Time to head out.
I thanked my lieutenants for all the help and sent them on their way with a promise to call once we figured out when we’d work again. With JJ in the hospital, we were out of commission. We’d been working this film for a few months. Shooting live for six weeks. Six weeks with JJ in the lead role. With him down, we either started from scratch, or gave him time to recover. I wasn’t betting on a swift recovery—Hell, I just hoped he lived.
I walked back to the props cage and grabbed my personal kit. Jai Li might still be over at Circle Q with Julie, Mary, and Mrs. Sorenson. They did some part-time babysitting for us when Katie’s and my schedule wouldn’t work out to keep her. I tapped on the office window and waved at Carl and Jennifer, pantomiming leaving. Jennifer gave me the universal hand signal for “I’ll call you.”
The parking lot was nearly deserted by the time I hit fresh air. Nathan stood there waiting. He wouldn’t let any of us be here after dark without him. Good kid. I waved at him from my truck and watched as he settled back against the wall by the exit door. He’d stay until Carl and Jennifer left.
Katie didn’t answer her phone. Since I didn’t have any messages, I called Julie to let her know what was going on out at Flight Test. She said they could keep Jai Li until Katie came. Not sure what good I’d be, but I thought it best if I went over to see how JJ was doing. Carl and Wendy needed the support, if nothing else.
I expect Katie was on her way out to pick up Jai Li; it was still pretty early. She put in a lot of hours outside of the typical school day. I called her again, but it went straight to voicemail. I left a quick message about JJ and Jai Li. She must be in with one of her peers or something. Not like her to ignore my calls.
Good chance we wouldn’t have any work for a few days with JJ out and things in flux. I hated that, damn it. Disruptions to the cash flow were less now that I was living with Katie, but old habits were hard to break, old worries too familiar a friend.<
br />
The whole way to Seattle the anxiety rode high in my chest. We’d had five months of almost normal. What crazy shit were we facing this time?
Ten
Clyde and Wendy were already in the waiting room outside the ICU by the time I’d found my way through the maze of corridors at Harborview. I collapsed onto the vinyl couch on the other side of Wendy and patted her arm.
“You doing okay?” I asked.
She turned and hugged me, burying her face in my shoulder. I stared at Clyde who looked down at his hands. I’d never seen him look so lost.
When Wendy had gotten herself collected a little, she let go of me and sat back, wiping her face. “Tha … Thanks for coming,” she stammered, taking in halting breaths. “JJ always said you were good people.”
Clyde’s eyebrows shot to the top of his head, but didn’t look up. He just studied his hands like he was hoping to find something new.
JJ thought I was good people? When had that changed? There was definitely something odd about his behavior. Was Wendy that strong an influence on him?
“What happened?” she asked.
“He was going over his lines, rehearsing, you know?”
She watched me, desperate for it to make sense.
“Then he just collapsed.”
She touched her face, staring off into the vague distance.
“Blood started coming out of his mouth, nose, ears …” I trailed off. “His eyes.”
Clyde grimaced and took her hand. She squeezed his in both of hers and rested her head on his shoulder with her eyes closed.
“It was horrible,” Clyde whispered.
We sat there for a few minutes before the doctors came out to let us know that JJ was stable. They were doing everything they could for him.
So we waited.
It was going on nine when Clyde offered to go down and get us coffee. I could tell he was agitated with waiting. Didn’t blame him. Wendy and I sat there in silence. Misery loves company, at least the pain can’t overwhelm you with someone sitting with you.
She got up to go to the bathroom and I watched her. She was young, maybe twenty-one, but carried herself well. I was already impressed with her ability to write screenplays. Couldn’t say I liked her taste in guys, though. JJ had always been arrogant and egotistical on a scale that rivaled his real world standing as a B-movie front-man. Maybe he’d changed. Didn’t jive with my world view, but I’ve been wrong before.
When Clyde got back with the coffees he had Jennifer and Carl in tow. They came and sat with us. Carl said something quiet to Wendy, who hugged him, then he slid over to sit with Clyde and me across the room while Jennifer sat with her and chatted. She and Jennifer had been working pretty closely on the script together. Jennifer was closer to her than any of the rest of us, with possible exception of Clyde.
When it was clear that JJ was stable and his condition wasn’t likely to change in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, I begged off to head home.
Wendy hugged me again before I left, thanking me again for coming. That girl was too good for JJ.
As I was climbing into the truck my cell phone buzzed. I looked down and saw that it was Jimmy. Not that ten-thirty was late for Jimmy, but why was he calling?
“Hey, Jim. What’s shaking?”
“Sarah, where are you?” It was Deidre. “We’re on our way to Valley Medical. Katie’s in trouble.”
A shudder ran through me. Not again. “What happened?” I asked, resting my head on the steering wheel.
“Blood loss we know,” Deidre said, her voice stoic. “Janitor found her in the bathroom off her classroom. Lot of blood. Thought maybe she’d been attacked.”
Attacked? That was nuts. I resisted the urge to start swearing. What the hell was going on? She should’ve been done hours ago. “Any idea how bad? Is she conscious?”
“No,” Deidre said. I was beginning to hear the strain in her voice. “Jimmy’s driving a little wild at the moment—”
That was directed at him.
“—but we should be there within the next twenty minutes. You in Everett?”
“Seattle, Harborview Hospital.”
“What? Why? Are you okay? You weren’t attacked as well? Were you?”
“Yes, no, I’m fine. No, I wasn’t attacked. It’s one of the actors. He collapsed, started hemorrhaging pretty bad. There was a lot of blood.”
The phone went silent and I could hear Jimmy swearing in the background.
“Lots of blood?” Deidre asked. “That a coincidence?”
“Not one I like,” I said, starting my truck. “I need to call a couple of folks, but I’ll meet you in Renton in twenty minutes or so.”
“Drive careful,” she said, and disconnected the line.
I called Melanie and left her a message. She was most likely on shift, but she’d want to know about Katie.
Then I called Circle Q.
Julie answered. “Sarah?”
“It’s Katie,” I said, turning onto James Street. “She collapsed at school—might have been attacked, no one is sure yet. Jimmy and Deidre are on their way to Valley General.”
“Damn,” she said, “hang on.” I heard her close a door. “They do good work there. Go on, we’ll keep Jai Li overnight.”
“Thanks,” I said. “This is just fucked up.” I gunned it and skated through two very deep yellow lights and turned onto Sixth Avenue. I got caught in a row of traffic to the onramp for I-5.
“Something funny’s going on,” Julie said. “Jai Li’s been drawing some odd pictures tonight. I think she knew something was wrong. Started around five-thirty. See if that lines up.”
I reached over the back of the seat and pulled Gram’s case up into the front with me. If there was something funny going on, something that Jai Li picked up from the ether, I may be needing Gram. “Funny how?”
Traffic was just not moving, so I swung around and hit the HOV lane. I’d deal with a ticket another time.
“She was just drawing lots of pictures of Katie and that actor fellow you work with. Kept crying while she was doing it. Took Edith twenty minutes to get her to stop.”
Holy mother … I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. “JJ’s in the hospital,” I said, the willies creeping up my spine. “He collapsed around five-thirty.”
“I don’t like it,” Julie said. “See to Katie.”
Damn straight. “Watch Jai Li,” I said, weaving around an eighteen-wheeler. Somewhere behind me there was the squeal of brakes and the honking of horns. Sue me. “Call me if she does anything else strange. And tell her I’m safe. That I’m going to get Katie, okay?”
Julie’s voice softened. “I’ll tell her. You just watch yourself. I need to go tell Mary and Edith. It’s going to be a long night. Think I’ll get out my shotgun.”
“I’ll call you when I know something for sure.”
“No matter how late,” she said.
I cut over onto the break-down lane and drove around the line of cars merging with I-90. This was too much bullshit. There was another call I had to make and I hated to do it. But if this was as fucking strange as it sounded, I needed some expert advice.
The phone only rang once when Qindra answered.
“What have you done now?” she asked. “Nidhogg is freaking out. I need to deal with this. I’ll call you when I can.”
“It wasn’t me,” I said, hating the defensiveness in my voice. Usually it was me, or actions related to me. Not like I went looking for trouble.
There were angry voices in the background and someone screamed.
Qindra’s voice rose, shouting something I couldn’t really understand. Not sure what language it was, but it had a lot of consonants.
Then the phone went dead.
Eleven
Katie was stable when I got to Valley Medical Center but they had her in ICU with stage four Hypovolemia. Fancy talk for shock and coma from sudden blood loss, which they estimated was just over t
hree pints. They had her on an intravenous drip trying to get her blood pressure to stabilize, but adding too much fluid too fast could damage the brain, or so the doc said. Something about permissive hypotension.
I’d have Melanie explain it all to me in English later. Right now, I was freaked that Katie hadn’t regained consciousness. That really worried the doctors. The blood loss and associated symptoms were manageable. Shock was the current worry, as well as figuring out just what the hell had happened.
Fortunately, there was no signs she’d been assaulted. There was a question as to why she had been found in the bathroom. The seat was down and she’d been completely dressed—no collapsing mid-pee or anything.
I wish either Melanie or Qindra would call me back. I needed answers.
Jimmy paced while Deidre rolled her chair back and forth, talking to fill the quiet. I sat on vinyl cushions combating a serious case of déjà vu.
Something didn’t add up. Around midnight I called Julie to fill her in.
“Jai Li has been bouncing off the walls,” Julie said when I called. “She’s drawn a dragon now, and a blonde guy with a funky stringed instrument. We looked it up, it’s a double necked lute called a chitarrone. Somehow that lute and the dragon are connected and they’re tied in with JJ and Katie.”
Wait, I knew a guy who played a chitarrone—Cassidy Aloysius Stone of the Harpers. We’d met the Harpers back in October when all that mess with the mead came up.
That was interesting. Was that a connection? What else had happened then? Maybe I needed to contact Frederick Sawyer and see what he knew about things. He’d gotten a sample of that mead. Nidhogg’s had been destroyed or so Qindra figured, when the house in Chumstick burned down at Christmas. The final two had gone to Memphis and Dublin, so I doubted they were connected. On the other hand, we really didn’t know anything about Mr. Stone, nor the rest of his band. Seemed like nice enough folks. Who knew what secrets they were harboring. I’d be calling him next. Katie had his number at home somewhere. I’d have to dig it out.
