“I feel fine, Mommy.”
Mommy pulled back from Joanna to look her in the eye. “I’m sorry, baby, but you almost died. You need to rest.”
“But Mommy—”
“Your mother’s right,” Emma said. “You need to get some rest.”
“But—”
“I know you want to help and I appreciate it, but I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you. Your mother couldn’t either.” She patted Joanna’s back. “It might be hard to understand, but being a grown-up means learning to be patient.”
Joanna couldn’t deny Emma was right. It wasn’t just Emma and Mommy who would need her but the others too. They would need her help to get to Emma’s world so they could help defeat Isis. She was the only one who could do it, but first she would have to make sure she was good and strong.
“All right,” she said. She gave Emma a hug and then sagged back onto the mattress. “Mommy, can you bring me some books from home?”
“Now, baby—”
“Please?”
“Sure I will, sweetheart. Whatever you want.” She kissed Joanna on the forehead. “I’ll take Emma home and then bring them back. You promise to be good while I’m gone? You’re not going to go anywhere?”
“I promise, Mommy.”
“Good girl.” Mommy led her from the room. Before she left, Mommy paused at the door to blow a kiss to Joanna. Then Joanna closed her eyes and dreamed about flying horses.
Chapter 28
After she pulled onto the road towards home, Dr. Reed looked over at Emma. “I really don’t know how you can do it,” she said. “You’re so incredibly brave, putting on that armor and fighting monsters like Isis. I get nervous if Joanna sneezes.”
“I’m sure you’d do the same thing in my position. You are me after all.”
Dr. Reed laughed nervously. “When I was Joanna’s age I wanted to be a superhero. Now I find out I actually am one—sort of. How do you do it?”
“It’s just something that has to be done,” Emma said with a shrug.
“Don’t you ever get scared?”
“All the time. Especially now, with Louise. It was easier when I only had to think about my own life, but now I have to think about hers too.” That was why she had given herself to Isis, which had unleashed this Hell on Earth that had swallowed most of her friends—and Louise. When she had stood in that old bedroom in Aggie’s ancestral home and seen Louise turned into a thoughtless, wild creature, Emma had known her own life didn’t matter. Her duty as a mother to try to protect her daughter had outstripped her duty as the Scarlet Knight—just as Isis had known it would. No doubt Isis knew she would have to come back for Louise, to try to save her daughter. She shivered again as she thought of what Isis might have done to Louise, how she might torment her.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Dr. Reed said to snap Emma out of her dark thoughts. “Joanna is a lot like you that way. I knew it after what happened with your friend Akako. She almost died holding that doorway open but she did it without question because your friend was so sad and she wanted to help. She’ll probably kill herself now to get you home and to stop Isis. You’re both so noble and I’ve never done anything like that.”
“You’ve made a lot of sacrifices for Joanna. You quit your job—”
“That wasn’t really for her. I couldn’t stand being in that building anymore where he died. It gave me the creeps, like visiting a tomb.”
“But you spend a lot of time with her. You’ve brought her up to be so noble. That has to count for something, doesn’t it?”
“I’m sure you know about the nature versus nurture arguments in child psychology.” Dr. Reed shook her head. “Mostly I think she’s a product of nature more than my nurturing.”
Emma nodded at this. Louise seemed to be more a product of nature than nurture as well. She had been raised by a Russian gangster and yet in the brief time Emma had known her, Louise seemed like a good girl—like her. “Well, she had to get that nature from somewhere.”
There was no doubt in her mind that her nature had come from her parents, who had always been so kind and loving towards her. They weren’t superheroes either, just decent people who cared about their daughter. Emma thought of that fateful night again, how Mom had run from the car, most likely knowing she wouldn’t make it. “You never know how noble you can be until you’re called upon. I didn’t want to be the Scarlet Knight, but my friend was in trouble, so I put on the armor to help him, just like Joanna did with Akako. When the time comes, I’m sure you’ll make the right choice too.”
They arrived back at Dr. Reed’s house, where she led Emma to the living room. “I’m going to get some books and then go spend some time with Joanna. Are you going to be all right here by yourself?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“If you get hungry there’s lunchmeat and stuff in the fridge. There’s probably still a couple of TV dinners in the freezer.”
“I’m not that hungry right now.”
“I’ll be back in a few hours. I was going to make macaroni and cheese tonight—it’s Joanna’s favorite.”
The way Dr. Reed’s lip trembled prompted Emma to take her hand. “Joanna will be OK.”
“I know. Thank you.”
After Dr. Reed left with a tote bag loaded down with books, Emma went back to “her” bedroom. The bed was still unmade from when she’d woke up earlier. She crawled onto the mattress and then pulled the My Little Pony comforter up to her chin; she felt warm and safe, as if she were home again.
***
When she opens her eyes, she sees she’s on a floor with rugs around her. She stands up, but her legs wobble for a moment as if unable to carry her. She manages an uncertain step and hears the crinkle of plastic. She’s wearing a diaper! Emma puts a hand to her head to feel only red down there. She’s a baby again—but how?
She sees a couple of little girls over by a pink plastic castle. The little girl with the curly gold hair seems familiar, but not the girl next to her with the brown hair and glasses. To toddle over to them is a long, arduous process that seems to take forever. As she gets closer, the girls stand up and come towards her.
“What are you doing here?” the brunette asks.
“Where am I?” Emma asks, grateful she’s at least old enough to talk.
“You’re on our turf, that’s where you are,” the brunette says. She gives Emma a slight push that’s still enough to topple her onto her rear. Emma’s eyes water but she tries not to cry. “Babies play in that corner over there.”
The brunette points across the room to where a smaller blond girl squats, her hair more white than gold. Emma turns back to the older blond girl and looks into her blue eyes. Finally she realizes why the girl is so familiar. “Aggie?”
“What? She said to get out of here. Stupid baby.”
“But Aggie, it’s me: Emma. Don’t you wemember?”
“I don’t play with babies. Go away.”
Emma tries to get to her feet, but the brunette pushes her back down. “Crawl over there—like a baby.”
Emma knows better than to say anything. She rolls over onto her belly and with the laughter of the older girls in her ears, she crawls back over to the mats, where she started. She stops when she reaches the corner with the little white-blond girl. The girl stacks wooden blocks to build not just a castle but also an entire medieval town. Emma waves a hand in front of the girl’s face but she doesn’t so much as blink. This girl seems familiar to her too. She searches her memory and then remembers. “Megan?”
Megan says nothing. Emma puts a hand on the girl’s shoulder and gives it a slight shake. Megan’s face turns red and a terrible wail escapes her lips. Startled by this, Emma stumbles back to again land on her rear. She crawls back a few feet until Megan goes silent to resume her building.
Emma toddles over to a circle of girls finger painting. One of these girls is much fatter than the others and her dark pigtails mismatched. Emma taps her shoulder. “B
ecky?”
“What do you want?”
“Where ow we?”
Becky only shrugs. “You want to paint with us?”
“No.”
“Fine.” Becky turns back to painting a series of joined circles with two triangles for ears that Emma assumes is a cat.
She continues her exploration of the nursery; her heart leaps at the sight of a baby with stubby red pigtails who plays with a pile of colored blocks on the floor. Emma hurries over to her as fast as her tiny legs can carry her until she’s beside the baby. “Louise?”
The baby continues to play with the blocks. Emma sits down next to her and picks up one of the wooden blocks. Unlike Megan’s elaborate structures, the redheaded baby constructs a simple tower with the blocks that’s taller than she is. “That’s pwetty.”
The baby ignores this compliment. She knocks over the tower with one chubby hand. Emma waits for the girl to cry, but instead she giggles and claps her hands. Then she turns to face Emma—
Emma’s eyes water again as she realizes by the girl’s green eyes that she isn’t Louise. She looks more like Sylvia—or Sylvia’s daughter. “Cecewia?”
The baby shows no reaction to this. She rips the block from Emma’s hands and then turns back to the pile to reconstruct her tower, probably to knock it down again. The girl looks so much like Sylvia and Cecelia, but they both were dead. Does that mean everyone here is dead? Is she dead?
As she considers this, Emma hears a girl laugh from around the corner. She gets back to her feet and toddles towards the sound. She hears a familiar voice say, “I love you, Mommy.”
Emma stops so quickly that she nearly falls again. Ahead of her she sees Louise, just as she remembers, with her tangled red hair, pointed nose, and blue eyes. Her daughter. Except her daughter hadn’t spoken to her; she’s curled up against the body of another woman, a Middle Eastern woman with black eyes. Those black eyes focus on Emma even as she says to Louise, “I love you too, sweetie.”
“No!” Emma shouts and stamps one foot. “She’s not yours! I’m her mommy!”
“Now, Emma dear, you know that’s not true. You’re not a mommy. You’re just a baby. A tiny, little baby.”
As Isis says this, Emma’s legs wobble again to dump her to the floor. She feels something bitter in her mouth. When she touches it with her tongue, she realizes it’s a pacifier. She crawls forward, to reach Louise, but the room keeps getting bigger. No, she’s shrinking, until she can’t even crawl anymore. She can only lie on her back and watch Louise hug Isis. The nursery darkens—
Emma felt someone shake her. She heard her own voice say, “Emma, wake up. Come on, sweetheart, wake up.”
She opened her eyes and saw an older version of herself beside her. She remembered then that it wasn’t herself; it was Dr. Emma Reed, Joanna’s mother. Emma held up a hand and saw to her relief it was adult-sized. She brushed a tress of platinum hair forward. She was still with Joanna, who had disguised her as Megan.
Dr. Reed said, “You were having a bad dream.”
“No, it wasn’t a dream,” Emma said. “It was her. It was Isis. She’s found a way to reach me, even here.”
“Emma—”
“It was her!” Tears stung Emma’s eyes. “She has Louise. And Becky and Aggie and Megan—and others. She’s brainwashed them to think they’re little. She has them in a nursery.” She couldn’t stifle the sob that came out when she thought of Louise saying she loved Isis. “Louise thinks Isis is her mommy.”
“You’re sure it was real?” When Emma nodded, Dr. Reed’s face paled. “If she can get to you here then—Joanna!”
Dr. Reed helped Emma out of the bed and practically dragged her out to the car. She didn’t wait for Emma to close the door before she began to back up. Emma hoped they weren’t too late to save Joanna.
***
For the second time that day, Dr. Reed sprinted through the hospital with Emma in tow. This nearly became a disaster when an orderly inadvertently pushed a gurney out of a room in front of them. Dr. Reed stiff-armed the gurney back. “Sorry!” Emma called out.
They didn’t bother with the elevator; they raced up the stairs to the fifth floor, where Joanna was being kept for observation.
That Isis could reach into Emma’s dream, into this universe, could only mean that her power had grown. Dr. Reed was right that Isis wouldn’t settle at one world; sooner or later she would want them all. The worst part for Emma was the guilty feeling of knowing she had led Isis here. If she hadn’t given Isis the power back in France, Isis wouldn’t be so strong, able to turn her will against anyone who stood in her way.
Dr. Reed threw open the door to the fifth floor and then she skidded to a halt. Dr. Pavelski stood in front of them, her arms crossed over her chest and eyes glaring daggers. “It’s past visitor’s hours, Emma. You know that.”
“Joanna is in trouble! I have to see her,” Dr. Reed said.
“I just checked on her a few minutes ago. She’s doing fine.”
“Then check on her again. Please.”
“I do have other patients, you know. Your daughter isn’t the only one.”
Emma gasped in surprise as Dr. Reed lunged forward to take Dr. Pavelski by the collar of her shirt. “Goddamnit, I don’t have time for this! Go check on her or let me do it!”
“Calm down, Emma. Joanna is fine. Now, let me go before I call security.”
“Laura, please, this is important. Joanna is in trouble. I can feel it. Please let me check on her to make sure she’s all right.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t keep bending the rules for you. I know how much she means to you—”
“No you don’t! You don’t have any idea what she means to me. She’s all I have left of him, so don’t you dare tell me that you understand.”
While the two women argued, Emma seized the opportunity to slip into the room. By all appearances, Joanna hadn’t changed at all. She sat calmly on the bed and read a Nancy Drew paperback. She lowered this and turned to Emma. “Hi,” she said.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine. How are you feeling?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you. You were a toddler in a nursery. Then Isis made you into a baby. You were practically a newborn when Mommy woke you up.”
“You saw that?”
“Yes. I was sleeping too. That’s how she got to you. It’s my fault.”
“No, it’s my fault. I brought her here. She wouldn’t know about you otherwise.”
“She’s known about me since I was about three. That’s when she first came to the sandbox. The first time she was a grown-up, really pretty but with those scary black eyes. She said if I helped her, she would bring Daddy back. But I knew she was lying. Mommy said Daddy went up to Heaven, so no one can bring him back.
“The next time she came to the sandbox she was a little girl, younger than me but she had the same eyes. She said that if I didn’t help her, she was going to kill Mommy. I knew she was lying again because she was too little to hurt Mommy yet. That’s why she had to get help from that awful man.”
“Harry Ward?”
“Yes. She needed his help so he could blackmail your friend Sylvia to help him kill you and lock up the armor. Then nothing could stop them.” Joanna looked over Emma’s shoulder, towards the door to make sure they were alone. “That’s why I brought the others to the sandbox, so we could get ready for her. And it’s why after Red died I made sure Akako could find her way there—I needed someone to be my eyes and ears.”
Emma gaped at Joanna in disbelief. Here was an eight-year-old girl as cunning as any CIA agent and as good of a strategist as Napoleon. When she was Joanna’s age, Emma hadn’t even been able to stop Jimmy Gates from bullying her. “You didn’t tell your mother?”
“No. You’ve seen how she worries about me. She couldn’t handle the truth, so I told her that I was pwaying and that I had to help the pwetty wady because she was sad.” The way Joanna mimicked a childish lisp as sh
e said the last part of that sentence brought a smile to Emma’s face. It was clear now who the real genius was here.
“So are you actually sick or is that an act too?”
“No, it’s not an act. I wish it were.” Appropriately, Joanna coughed. “Every time I bring someone here—or especially if I open a gateway like with Akako—I end up feeling hollowed out, like I’m a hundred years old. If I were a grown-up then I might be strong enough, but I’m just a kid.”
A kid with a mind cleverer than most grown-ups, Emma thought. She took Joanna’s hand to give it a squeeze. “If you can get me back home, that’s all you need to do. Tim and I can find a way to do it.”
“No you can’t.” Joanna shook her head. Her voice took on a patronizing tone Emma had become very familiar with from dealing with Marlin. “You’re going into a city of nine million people—all of whom can be programmed by her to turn on you. Not to mention she can reshape the environment however she wants. You can’t possibly do it alone.”
“But if you try to bring over anyone else you could die.”
“Let me worry about that. You just go back and see Merlin. He’ll help you.”
“Joanna—”
“I’ll see you again soon.” Joanna squeezed Emma’s hand so tightly that Emma couldn’t break free. She felt her body become lighter until it was as if she were nothing more than mist. She seeped through the floor to sink all the way to the hospital basement, into the sewers, and beyond—
Chapter 29
When she was growing up, Emma had never blacked out and unlike most of her college peers, she never woke up in a strange place. Since she’d become the Scarlet Knight, though, she would need at least four hands to count the number of times she had woke up with no idea of where she was. And in at least half those instances she couldn’t even be sure of who she was or what she might look like.
So when she woke up this time, she immediately began to take inventory. She felt around her mouth with her tongue and felt the awful vampire fangs Isis had given her. When she patted her head, her hair felt long and greasy, which probably meant she was in need of blood. She saw stacks of crates around her. A warehouse?
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 170
