“What he always says when I ask him stuff.” I did my best impression of Chet's uncomfortable face. “It's classified,” I said in a deep, irritated voice. “Now I'm just going to be all broody and then rip my clothes off with no explanation at all, because I'm Chet, and that's what I do.”
The guys chuckled harder, enjoying my impersonation.
“Typical Moore,” Rob said. “Always taking his clothes off, rather than taking an extra second to shift with them on. If I had a dollar for every time I had to loan him the jacket off my back, I'd be a rich man.”
Knox said to his shorter buddy, “You could loan me a few bucks to buy a memory wipe, to erase the sight of Moore, completely nude, slaying those Bone Crawlers with his bare hands.”
They both shuddered.
Chet didn't join in the joking around. He leaned in between them and pressed a button to restart the elevator.
Rob gave me a quizzical look, eye to eye. He and I were the same height. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“It's classified,” I said with an eyebrow waggle.
Knox said, “Coma ward. She's here to do her spirit voodoo and talk to Chessa.”
Rob swallowed audibly and backed up to the doors of the elevator as though I had girl cooties. “Good luck with that.”
Chapter 17
After the longest and strangest elevator ride of my life, we arrived on the floor with the coma ward.
Rob paused in the open doorway and gave me a playful look, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes mischievous. “Try not to zap anyone else with your blue lightning, okay? Most of us meat units down here are so expendable, we should be wearing red shirts. But the DWM has a lot of sensitive electronics down here, and they don't take kindly to equipment destruction.” He shot a meaningful glance up at Knox. “Which is a lesson this big guy learned the hard way.”
Knox furrowed his large brow. “So what? Everyone gets a bit wild at the staff Christmas party.”
Rob shook his head. “They'll never let you play Santa Claus again, man.”
“We'll see about that,” Knox said. “Nobody else can hold a candle to my deep baritone ho-ho-ho.”
“Your ho-ho-hos are unmatched,” Rob agreed. “As are those tree trunks you call arms. Have you been hitting the gym without me?”
Knox gave him a puzzled look. “You don't even know what floor the gym's on. If you want to get pumped, you're welcome to come with me, any time.”
The two exited the elevator and turned left down a brightly lit gray hallway.
I turned to Chet. “Your coworkers seem nice,” I said. “I'll try not to electrocute them anymore.”
“You should have more control over your powers,” he said coolly.
“And you should have more control over who you kiss when you think you're kissing someone else with borrowed lips.” I tilted my head and gave him a studious look. “Speaking of which, how did you know it switched back to me? I'm not asking because I want to trick you into smooching me, honestly. Do I shimmer, or give off a weird smell when I'm possessed? I need to know so I can teach my daughter how to tell when I'm being a puppet for a spirit versus being a puppet for my regular wacky self.”
He led the way out of the elevator and turned to the right. “I knew it was you because Chessa would have pushed me away rather than kiss me back. She was extremely flirtatious, but only with words. She would never show physical affection in front of our coworkers.”
“Why not?”
“Because of her powers of attraction. If she became activated, it had unpredictable side effects.”
An image flashed through my mind. Rob and Knox fighting each other while Chet pulled them apart. An instant later, the two of them were acting dazed and apologizing to each other. Another memory from Chessa's vault.
“Men would fight over her,” I said. The pieces were falling into place. That sort of effect sounded like the powers of either a siren or a mermaid, for sure.
Chet stopped at a door and pressed his hand to a panel next to it. He turned to me, his green eyes burning brighter than ever.
With a deep, serious tone, Chet said, “Men would die for her.”
“Including you?”
The door clicked, and he pushed it open.
“First things first,” he said, nodding for me to stick close to him.
We entered a clean, bright room with lighting so pleasant, I almost forgot I was twenty-some stories beneath the sunny surface. The room had equipment on the walls for six beds, but five of the spots were vacant, the beds wheeled away elsewhere. In the corner was a fabric curtain drawn across one lonely bed, its wheels visible at the bottom of the pale-green divider.
The seriousness of the situation struck me mute. As much as I wanted to tease Chet about kissing me or ask what Knox did at the Christmas party, no words came to my lips. I was about to see Chessa's dormant body for the first time, to gaze upon the face of the woman who'd been gently possessing me, revealing to me the wonders at the bottom of the ocean, as well as the taste of her fiancé's lips.
My stomach clenched. Anger coursed through me without warning. Oh, how I hated her, this woman I'd never known. I suddenly despised her for showing me everything she had, and all the powers I didn't have, and the love I didn't deserve. Who did I think I was? I hadn't earned my gifts. What right did I have to receive so much power through no self-sacrifice? I was still alive, breathing, walking around. The nerve. I could move objects with my will alone. I could...
Someone was waving a hand in front of my face.
I straightened up and breathed out my tension. Where had that sudden flare of self-hatred come from? I could be hard on myself, but never like that. Those were the emotions of someone who'd lost everything, and thought I had been the benefactor. Chessa? I'm trying to help you. Please don't hate me.
“Ms. Riddle,” a man said. It wasn't Chet.
“Hello,” I said with forced lightness. The self-hatred was still lingering, and it was hard to be polite through clenched teeth.
The man, who had a musical lilt to his voice, an Indian accent, said, “It didn't take you long to find your way back here, did it, Ms. Riddle?” I knew him. He was the doctor who I'd last seen drugging me back to sleep after my head injury. Anger flared up again, this time at a target other than myself.
I reached out to shake the man's hand, and accidentally discharged a blast of blue lightning. The light flared as it struck the man right in the solar plexus.
He flinched and took two stumbling steps back but recovered quickly.
“She's quite the handful,” the man said to Chet. He rubbed his chest where I'd jolted him.
“Oops,” I said. “Maybe I should invest in some gloves for these things?” I wiggled my fingers apologetically.
The man gave my hands a solemn look and introduced himself as Dr. Bhamidipati. “Don't even try to pronounce that,” he said. “Everyone calls me Dr. Bob.” He kept looking down at my hands. “I'd offer you my hand, but my sense of self-preservation tells me you might eat it, or turn me into a frog.”
“Sorry about my hair-trigger reflexes,” I said, checking my hand for blue lightning before offering it to him.
He shook my hand carefully yet firmly.
“Delighted to meet you, Ms. Riddle.”
“We've met before,” I said, waggling a finger at him. “The last time I saw you, I was down here with a concussion, and you were putting a sedative in my IV line. You knocked me out before I could get answers.”
“I do hope you'll forgive my lack of bedside manner,” Dr. Bob said with a kindly smile. He was roughly sixty years of age, and a very short man—so small-boned that my own hand had engulfed his when we shook. He'd looked a lot more menacing when I'd been dazed and confused in a hospital bed. Dr. Bob had black hair, brown skin, and a dark birthmark on his right cheek. His upper lip was asymmetrical, with a vertical scar that turned from pink to white as his kindly smile widened. He looked like a doctor who'd sell a line of vitamin supplements on telev
ision—the perfect mix of east and west, wisdom and modernity.
He exchanged pleasantries with Chet, then turned back to me. “Ms. Riddle, I was just writing up a glowing report of your friend Frank. I was very impressed by his resilience.”
“He's a tough old bird,” I agreed.
The doctor chuckled. “Ms. Riddle, you're very fortunate to have such a fun coworker to keep things lively at our town's library. And he's lucky to have you in his corner as well.” Dr. Bob flicked his gaze to Chet, frowning briefly before looking back at me. “The DWM could use a few more gems like yourself and Mr. Frank Wonder. Some of the people around here take themselves way too seriously.” He reached up and took hold of the ends of the stethoscope slung around his neck, striking a casual pose. “How is Frank feeling today?”
Chet shifted restlessly from one foot to the other, but Dr. Bob held still, waiting for an answer from me. He seemed genuinely interested in my friend, which made me like the man, despite my first instinct to electrocute him.
“Frank Wonder is feeling terrific,” I reported. “He told me that for the first time last night, he didn't dream about flying.”
Dr. Bob's dark-brown eyes twinkled, and the birthmark on his cheek creased with lines emanating from his eyes. “How exciting it is to discover your own abilities.” He released the stethoscope and turned toward the curtained bed. “Speaking of abilities, let's observe how powerful your connection is with our Chessa.” He cleared his throat. “We all miss her so much.”
The three of us walked around the curtain and gathered around the hospital bed. Nobody said anything. Machines were whirring steadily, but the woman in the bed was breathing without the use of a ventilator.
Chessa lay on her back, the very picture of a beautiful yet cursed princess in a fairy tale. Her light hair wasn't gold like her triplet sisters', but platinum, and wavy rather than curly. Like Chloe and Charlize, she had a round face and delicate features, with a small mouth and large, wide-set eyes that were softly closed. A few flaws marred her perfection. Her lips were chapped and cracked despite a glossy application of salve, and her eyes were sunk in too deep. She was gaunt, and her soft-pink cheeks were crisscrossed by thin white scars.
Chet shifted closer to her head as he made a strangled, pained noise. It obviously hurt him to look at her, yet he wouldn't look away.
When I looked at her, I got an eerily familiar feeling, mixed with the sensation I was floating around outside of my body again. In my mind's eye, I could see the group of us as though I were a fly on the wall—the doctor in his white lab coat, me in my ridiculous musical theater costume with the pink poodle on my skirt, Chet twitching on the edge of shifting into a wolf, and Chessa playing the role of Sleeping Beauty. What a curious assortment of humanity we were. How strange that fate had brought us all together this way. Fate, and a partially translated prophecy.
After a few minutes, Chet said to Dr. Bob, “Someone's been putting makeup on her. Was it Charlize? She's usually more pale.”
Dr. Bob leaned over and examined the comatose woman's face. “It could be a trick of the new lighting down here,” he answered with his lilting Indian accent. “And she looks positively tanned next to Zara, on account of her milky pale skin.”
I held up my left arm, showing the whitest part on the underside of my forearm. “In the Riddle family, we call this shade 'marshmallow.' By midwinter, it's dangerously close to 'skim milk,' though.”
“Ms. Riddle, your type of genetic mutation is very rare,” Dr. Bob said. “In Denmark, it is very much an honor to give birth to a redheaded baby.”
“Sure, but in some parts of France, if you pass a redhead on the street you've got to spit and turn around or you'll be cursed.” I grinned. “Growing up this way, I've heard about all the redhead superstitions from around the world.”
He leaned his small head back in a relaxed, conversational gesture. “In Greek mythology, they say certain redheads don't ever die. They become vampires.”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Then I must be a vampire, since I've already been killed once.”
“You were killed?” He seemed about as surprised as any person would be.
“I was shocked and then lightened right out of my body. I floated around for a while.”
“How very interesting.” He rubbed his clean-shaven brown chin. “Did you see anything on the other side, when you were a spirit?” The doctor kept his eyes trained on me. It seemed we were both avoiding looking at Chessa, both avoiding dealing with the business at hand. Chet, meanwhile, had already taken a seat next to her bed.
“I saw a few scary things,” I said lightly. “Such as Grampa Don Moore in his underwear.”
“You poor thing,” Dr. Bob said warmly. He raised his dark eyebrows. “Did you know that redheads are more difficult to sedate? They require twenty percent more anesthesia. That's why some wake up during surgical procedures.” He glanced over at Chessa's inanimate face, as though hoping the words 'wake up' would have some effect.
I joked, “We need more anesthetic because we have no souls.”
He smirked. “I don't believe it's true.” He took two short steps toward the head of Chessa's bed, stopped, and looked at me expectantly.
Chet was also watching me.
Enough with the bedside small talk, I thought. It's showtime.
And showtime was what, exactly? I had to try direct communication with Chessa's spirit, which would be a new skill for me. Up until now, the spirits who'd visited me had simply turned up whenever it suited them. Once, my aunt had purposefully summoned the ghost of Winona Vander Zalm, with mixed results. It was a two-witch spell that she'd performed on her own, dangerously opening a hole to somewhere that terrified her. My safety-conscious aunt had screwed up royally. On a scale from one to ten, with ten being the freakin' apocalypse, she'd rated the danger as four and a half, then spent a whole day fretting about our imminent doom. And for all of that fuss and worry, we'd only gotten two cryptic words written in the mist of the bathroom mirror.
Surely, I could do better. In Chessa's office, I'd been getting warmer and warmer.
Attention, Spirits of the Deep, I thought to myself in an announcer's voice. Then I imagined what Frank would say if he'd been there in the coma ward, watching me do an impression of his uncle, and I got the giggles.
The doctor and Chet continued to watch me. I clamped my mouth shut and cut off the giggles.
Time for some magic. Time for me to charm a spirit.
In movies, people always take the hand of the coma patient and talk to them. I took a seat on the chair opposite from where Chet sat, and I did that.
Chessa's hand felt waxy, and warmer than I expected. Someone had buffed her fingernails to a shine. Under the green sheet, she wore a pink summer dress. She smelled of perfume. The wall-mounted computer screen on the wall at her feet showed a pastoral scene, with sun dappling through gently swaying trees. If she did wake up, she'd see something beautiful to counter the shock of seeing me. I turned and watched the TV screen for a peaceful moment before turning back toward the sleeping woman. Except for the tubes snaking in and out of the covers, she fit perfectly with the image on the screen. In the blink of an eye, she could be taking a nap on the grassy mound beneath a giant oak tree.
Her hand didn't move. When I wiggled my fingers, I felt elasticity in her fingers, but that was from her tendons.
I looked across her at Chet. The devoted, heartbroken fiancé. His eyes were now fixed on the TV's summer scene, or some distant point beyond. I guessed he was thinking about the past or the future, anywhere but here. His jugular pulsed visibly in his muscular neck, but that was the only sign he was still alive. If he was still breathing, it was shallowly.
I felt neither the Spirits of the Deep nor any sign of Chessa. I did feel hungry. My stomach growled. I cleared my throat. The spicy scent of Dr. Bob's cologne filled my nostrils. I'd almost forgotten he was there with us, patiently waiting.
I gave him a wan smile. Dr. Bob returned the s
mile, the thin scar on his upper lip turning white.
Go on, he seemed to say with his eyes. Show this scientist what your witch powers can do. I dare you to be better than all my medicine.
I flicked my gaze away from the beseeching doctor, up to the ceiling. It was just an ordinary ceiling, like you'd see in any hospital. I counted the tiles above the space comprising Chessa's area of the ward. Ten by twelve. If each tile measured a foot across, Chessa's space within the ward—her whole world for the last year—was one hundred and twenty square feet. The typical prison cell is six feet by eight, or forty-eight feet. Chessa had more space than a prisoner, but not much. And prisoners got to use the common areas throughout the day. All Chessa got was a few brief seconds inside my body, getting kissed by her fiancé. Or watching him kiss a redheaded witch.
My hand twitched. Had Chessa's fingers moved just now? I waited.
Once Dr. Bob's cologne cleared from my nostrils, I smelled the underlying scent of commercial, pine-scented floor cleaner. If I were Chessa, I'd never want to smell pine ever again, not even the real stuff, in a forest.
My butt was falling asleep. Why were the chairs down here so uncomfortable? I shifted. My skirt was noisy, the crinoline protesting even the smallest movements. My back was damp with sweat that had cooled. I tried to focus on Chessa, repeating her name in my head, but my stomach kept turning it from Chessa to cheesecake. Cherry cheesecake. It wasn't fair that her name sounded so delicious.
I wondered, how long had I been sitting next to cherry cheesecake? Uh, Chessa?
An hour already? Two hours?
I checked the time on the clock on the wall above Chessa's head.
Twelve minutes had passed.
Now what?
Another five minutes of obsessing over cherry cheesecake passed slowly.
Dr. Bob broke the silence. “I'll give you some privacy.” He left the eight-by-ten area, and exited the ward on soundless footsteps. Once he was on the other side of the door, in the hallway, he sighed loudly enough for me to hear him inside the room.
I raised my eyebrows at Chet. Had he also heard the doctor sigh? Chet continued to stare at the TV screen, which was now showing frolicking sheep in a bucolic pasture.
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