I admired Daniel as his soul watched the events. He looked good. Better than before. And then he caught my eye and he smiled. He spoke to me, but there was no voice. It didn't matter…I'd learned how to read lips.
Everything's okay, Zoë. Live, for me. I love you. I always have.
I closed my eyes as I felt him vanish. Joe and I could have been his tether, but neither of us wanted that for him. So he passed forward into bliss.
While I sank deeper into a darkening pain.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I sat in one of those weird, cushioned folding chairs they have in hospital rooms—the ones that fold down into a makeshift bed. Not all hospitals had them anymore. Lots of facilities had been remodeled and this type of retro chair wasn't part of the new look.
But they were here in EUH.
I watched as the nurse did her daily thing—checking vitals, changing IV bags, switching catheter bags. And then the doctor would come in and do his checks, read the chart, shake his head, and then leave. After that, the room remained pretty quiet.
Except for me. I was prone to burst into tears now and then. No warning. No real idea why. Except for the hole I felt in my chest. The aching, drowning feeling I'd had since I'd woken and realized…it hadn't been a dream.
Daniel Frasier was dead.
I'd watched his soul move on and hadn't had the strength to touch him. Or say goodbye.
I had overheard from some of the nurses and doctors—'cause, dude, they are the worst gossips ever—that Detective Joe Halloran was in jail for hitting Detective George Mastiff. Apparently the scruffy, attractive detective blamed his partner for his former partner's death. Truth was, they weren't releasing the identity of whose bullet killed him. Both Mastiff and Carter had fired.
What did it matter?
Daniel was dead.
Dags was missing.
Mom was still in a coma.
My best friend—I didn't have a best friend—
None of the Revenants had come to the hospital and I didn't bother to ask why.
I chased my dad out of Mom's room. Damned him to hell.
Jemmy left sometime during the night, muttering something about a shower and food.
And me?
Well…
If there were a hell…I had found it.
The door opened. I half-paid attention, figuring it'd be another scrubs-clad someone to take another sample or looking for where they'd left their cell.
I was mildly surprised when an older, almost handsome woman stepped in. She sort of reminded me of Alice, one of the Familiars in Dags's palms. Until she shuffled closer. Then I could see the tint of her skin was much darker, her eyes were black, and her profile much more…oh, I don't know…regal?
She resembled Umayma, Freyja's Revenant. But this woman's thick dark hair was streaked with white and gray, and her face was lined with a lot more wrinkles. She wore scrubs with little bears on them and surgery booties on her feet. She wasn't tall—probably came to my shoulders.
I watched her go to the bed and put her hand through the railing.
Ah…ghost. Not a Shade, because I could see color. An astral walker, maybe? Or the spirit of one of the hospital's doctors?
"She looks bad," the woman said. Her English was clipped with an accent. Her voice was a bit familiar. "The doctors say she might not wake up."
She could see me. "Might be better for her," I said. "Not having to survive in this world."
The woman smiled and turned her head to look at me. "You don't really mean that, do you? When there are so many of the dead that roam these halls, and the wish that is most on their minds is the one who brings them back to life."
I shrugged. "I stopped listening."
"Ah…bitter one." She shuffled toward me and, after a look around, sat down on the bench covering the air unit under the window. The sky darkened again, and it drizzled rain. A vast difference in the twenty-four hours since I was admitted. After a moment she put her hands on her knees. "So, you like wearing your hospital gown?"
Shrugging seemed to be the easiest response. "Didn't feel like changing. If someone sees me like this, they just think I'm a patient and they don't make me leave."
"You are a patient, aren't you?" The woman waited a few more minutes, and then, "My name's Eshe."
Eh-shee. I watched her for a second. "Zoë."
"Zoë…are you keeping watch?"
"No. Maybe. Well…I guess someone has to." I shifted in the chair, my bare feet hanging over the front with my knees pulled up under my chin. "I'm not sure why I'm here."
"Do you mean that literally…or metaphysically?"
I fixed my narrowed gaze on her. "Why are you here?"
"You mean right now?"
"Yeah."
"I'm here to see where your head's at."
That was a weird answer. I chewed on my lower lip. "What does that mean?"
"It means, are you just hanging around here in this room because you're worried, or because you don't care?"
"I do car.," I gave along, shoulder-dropping sigh. "But it's just….that's the problem. I care all the time. I act like I don't, but I do. I care about everything."
"You cared more for Daniel than you realized you did."
That made me look at her more closely. "Who are you and how did you know about Daniel?"
"I knew Daniel Frasier. And I mourn his passing, too. But he was a good man, Zoë. A damn good man." She turned her entire body to face me. "And you can't let yourself drown in self-loathing and pity because of all that's happened."
"You knew him?" It was possible, I guess. A nurse or doctor here would know the cops if they were in and out on a regular basis. For all I could sense, she was just Eshe, a disembodied spirit.
"Yes, I did. I knew him well and long enough to know he never, not once, blamed you for what happened with the Horror."
Okay, no doctor dead or alive should know about that! I was up on my feet, standing on that chair in a New York minute. I pointed down at her. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm Eshe. That is the truth." She stood as well. Then there was a flash and a man stood in her place. He was dressed like something out of the 1500s, and he bowed to me. "I am Johann Georg Faust. That is the truth." Then she shifted again and became another man, this one dressed much more recent, maybe 1800s? (What? I used to work in clothing.) "I am Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. That is the truth." She shifted again and became a much younger woman, dressed in similar period clothing. "I am Ulrike van Levetzow. That is the truth." Again she shifted into a man in his mid-forties, only this one was dressed in modern clothing. "I am James Wynne. That is the truth."
And then she became Daniel, standing in front of me in all of his beauty. "And I am Daniel Frasier. That is the truth." And then she shifted into a normal image of me. "And I am Zoëtrope Adiran Martinique. And this is my present truth."
I knew who she was.
"Inanna."
The image of me vanished and became Eshe again.
"How are you doing that? I mean…we're not in my head right now. We're here in the Physical Plane."
"I noticed. But apparently while bonded with you, I have the ability to manifest outside of the body just as you can." She smiled at me. "And this beautiful soul was the very first bonding I ever made."
"How long ago?"
"I'm not sure…1300s, maybe? I lived with her for a very long time. We found each other by accident after Sophia cast me out of the Abysmal Plane. I was little more than a wondering Symbiont, fading away the longer I remained in the Physical Plane. And then one day I heard her calling to me. A voice wanting to live. I was in Cairo, but I didn't know it at the time. And there I found her on a side street. She'd been stabbed and left for dead. She was a healer and cared for homeless children."
I slowly sat back down in that convertible chair, dumbfounded. It had never dawned on me that Inanna, a First Born, had had such a beginning. "So she survived when she invited you in?"
"Yes. And we
sought revenge on the ones who nearly killed her." She gave me a sweet smile, which was kinda freaky right after talking about revenge. 'Cause a Revenant revenge usually involved blood in mass quantities. "I could understand Eshe's need to destroy those who nearly killed her. I had been the last of our family, besides Azrael, left in my father's home. And when Sophia realized what I'd been doing, writing that journal, then she made sure I no longer had a physical body to write with."
I remembered that book. I also remembered it being sucked inside of Dags. "So…when you were Eshe, did you keep writing in it?"
"I had to find it first. And that took a long time. That's when I found Faust."
"Now…you're not talking about the Faust, are you?"
She looked surprised. "You know of him?"
"Like, the play? Faust?"
She laughed. "Johann Faust is not the same man as the fictional character in Goethe's play. But I'm not saying they weren't…inspired by the same First Born. You see, Johann Faust was an alchemist and a magician, and he'd been the one to find my book. So when I learned about him and met him, I found a way to…" She hesitated. "He was my next host."
"What happened to Eshe?"
Inanna/Eshe looked away. "She was killed. Mugged."
"In the same way before you saved her?"
When she kept quiet for a while, I sat forward. "Inanna?"
"I am not…you can ask my brother why I'm not as well…thought-of in my family. That my choosing to stay behind to take care of our father's last child was not looked upon well. But I saw it as them abandoning him to save themselves when she had them hunted down. I figured the best way to defeat her was to do it from the inside."
I got that part. I'd read her journal, or parts of it, before it was absorbed by the Grimoire. "Inanna, what happened to Eshe, other than getting mugged?"
She swallowed. "I…I made Johann my First and then I set…I set him and Eshe up to be attacked."
Okay, wow, damn… I got it at that second. And I understood why her family had always been a bit standoffish when it came to Inanna. "You…you had your host murdered, and your next one wounded so you could escape and he could, or would, invite you in."
"Yes."
"Damn, that's fucking cold, bitch."
"I am not proud of my actions. I just wanted to get my book back."
"You could have just taken it."
"And been caught with it? As a woman? Zoë, you clearly do not understand what it was to be a woman so long ago. It would be a long time before I chose a female again because of the way they were treated. And as a man, I could elicit punishment on men when I saw them mistreat women."
"Bitch, you are contradicting the hell out of yourself. You talk about mistreatament and look what you did to Eshe? But," Okay…I got it. I got it. Men bad, women good. But…that made me wonder.. "Inanna, did you trick Daniel?"
"No." She shook her head. "I, uh…wasn't sure I knew what I could do. I fell in love with him when I saw him, when I felt his strength, in his spirit. I saw what your Horror did to him, how it changed him, wounded his soul." She looked down. "I was honest with him with what he needed to hear."
"You lied."
"No, I didn't lie. I told the crazy part of him, the damaged part, that if he allowed me in, the voices would stop and he would be at peace." She licked her lips. "And that's what happened. Only, when Gabriel banished me…"
"I got that part. His crazy was free." It was an insane part of him that had always lurked just beneath her control during the few months she'd been bonded with him.
"My point was, and is, Zoë, is that we all make mistakes. We all…hurt the ones we don't want to hurt. And we all have guilt. I have a metric shit-ton of it, as I've heard a few kids around here say." Inanna/Eshe put her hands to her face. "I'm not…I don't want you to give up. It's not going to be easy to fix this last part…for us to do what Daniel wanted to do…but if we can work together—"
"Do what Daniel wanted to do? He have a different agenda other than getting Dags out of their hands?"
"Yes. He did." Her dark eyes focused on me. "While I took control and fixed a lot of things…for Daniel when we got out of that hospital…he did a bit of research into my memories. He found a lot of them that were part of the book, and he found…what he thought was something that could reverse everything that Rhonda did."
I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. "I thought…I thought the page of his memories of me was lost in the Abysmal Throne."
"Those are. But what this spell could do is more of a…" she shrugged "…reboot. If given a specific time, astral hour, and date, down to the very second of the Grimoire's life, then it's possible to reset it back to that time."
I sat forward, my hands gripping the edge of the chair. "Are you…are you sure?"
"No, I'm not. It might wipe the whole book, which, in my opinion, might not be a bad idea."
"What does that mean?"
"Meaning it would wipe the book. All the spells in it would be gone. The book and its magical self would still be fused to the Guardian's soul, which keeps him alive, but all the spells would be gone."
"And his memories?"
"I don't know." She shrugged again. "I don't know how that would effect him. I just know that all the spells I wrote, all that were added to that book, would be gone. It would cease to be an issue."
I wasn't sure I liked that scenario at all. "Then you could basically wipe his entire memory stick."
"Yes. Which was why Daniel was a bit hesitant to bring it up. That, and there were two other problems."
"Like…" I leaned toward her.
"Well, for starters, we'd have to get into the book and put the page in at the front. And two…we'd have to have a page of the book to write the spell on."
"Get into it…you mean, open it up?"
"Yes, and I know Rhonda's never going to agree to open it up so we can undo what she did."
"Opening it up isn't a problem. Maureen can do that. She did it before, and took parts out when she was killing Revenants."
Inanna's eyes widened. "That's right. So she knows how."
"Do you know how to disconnect her?"
"Her? Who? Maureen? You mean disconnect her from Dags?"
"Yeah, 'cause she might ask for that. If I remember Maureen well, she never wanted to be a part of him to begin with." And I'd be a lot happier if I knew one of his former girlfriends wasn't, like…up in him.
"I don't know. I'd have to see how the spell worked to create the Familiars. I can't promise anything."
"Just be ready. I think we can do that…but I have no idea how to get a page from the book."
"Exactly. And once again, Rhonda would never help us."
"Fuck Rhonda," I said, and stood up. "I really don't give a shit what happens to her at this point. I mean…you do realize she had to have been the one to lower the wards on the house, like Joe said."
"I know, Zoë." She stood and moved over to the bed. "Does this mean you're going to stop moping, and try to heal?"
I stopped pacing—not really realizing I was pacing—and faced her. I chewed on my lower lip. "Inanna, what if…what if I screw up…and someone else gets hurt? What happened to Daniel was my fault—"
She rushed me at that moment, becoming nothing more than a golden light. I froze as I felt the light wrap itself around me, enfolding me, hugging me…the way my mom used to when I was a little girl.
The way she did that night when Daddy didn't come home and she started letting me sleep with her.
I am with you, Zoë. And I was a part of all of my hosts. Please…look inside. Not from the surface…but let yourself feel Daniel the way I did. See him the way Nick sees Romina through Mephistopheles. Please… he left you something even I cannot see….
I couldn't stop myself if I wanted to. The golden light became him and we were entwined with one another. I could smell his aftershave, hear his laughter in my ears, and feel the warmth of his skin against mine. It was if we were the only
creatures in the universe.
And all I could think about was how sorry I was that I'd abandoned him.
"But you didn't," he said inside of me, against me, behind me, above me—he was all of me. "I abandoned you. This is not a memory Inanna is creating. This is my message to you, Zoëtrope. I always knew that raging part of me that wanted to destroy you was just beneath the surface. And I never…never wanted it to hurt you again. I was willing to love you from a distance. I only regret we never made love, so keep this memory of me with you, and know that I do not regret a single moment with you. I love you, Zoë. And I want you to be happy."
I felt him move even deeper inside of me and settle inside of my heart. I knew at that moment he would never leave me. And that he was happy. And I was not alone.
"It's…like a locket…inside of my heart," I heard myself say.
The heart monitor came into focus as I opened my eyes and I turned my head to see the brilliant ghostly Shade of Eshe smiling down at me. She was still standing where she'd always been. In the hospital room, at my side.
When she faded away I took a deep breath inside the body in the bed. "Owww…."
Chapter Thirty
I was not in good shape. That motherfucking Dominion had done a damn number on me, and then me running through the woods and being beaten by a crazy man….
Okay, not thinking about that. I had Daniel where I wanted him in my heart, and I had a plan now. It wasn't a fully formed one, but it was better than nothing. There were three parts:
Get the hell out of the hospital, get Dags back from Zacharel, and put the reboot page in the book.
Mmhm. Chipper.
And as odd as it sounded, the hardest part of that was going to be getting out of the hospital. I was probably in the worst physical shape since…well, getting out of the Abysmal Throne.
Dominion: Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book 6 Page 19
