by Jenn Stark
Now she was striding toward me with a look of urgent concern on her face.
“I was advised you were in need of a full medical workup, but that I didn’t have much time to complete it,” she said with a hard glance at both Nikki and Brody. “Are you being followed?”
“No—yes. Maybe,” Brody said, and he ran a hand through his mop of sandy brown hair. “I don’t think she’s in danger, though. Not from someone hitting the clinic or anything like that.”
“I’m not in danger,” I confirmed. “I am, however, curious. What did Armaeus tell you about what happened to me?” I sent a tendril of connection out toward the Magician—but there was no response.
“He didn’t,” Sells lied, and my antennae lifted at the casual knowing I had of her duplicity. This was the observation thing, and it had less to do with identifying the tells of shifty eyes or tapping feet, and more to do with the realization that Sells’s energy had changed in the middle of her statement. It wasn’t quite that her adrenaline had jacked. She was a cooler customer than that. But her conversational redirection hadn’t quite worked. She’d just received information and had not fully baked her story yet.
“Right.” I glanced back to Brody. “Who else do we have in here? Sariah still?” Sariah, my own, well, sister, for lack of a better term, newly arrived from Hell. It was too bad Sells didn't have a resident shrink on staff, because he'd have a field day with my splintering family tree.
“Sariah, yes,” Brody said. “She’s not…adjusting well.”
That stopped me cold. “What do you mean, not well?”
“Sariah’s transition to this plane wasn’t a traditional reassimilation, Sara,” Dr. Sells said soberly. “She was a part of you, arguably not the most well-adjusted part of you, and the parts that are missing within her are becoming more obvious the longer she stays on Earth. It will take a while for her to—”
“Forget that. She’s waited long enough for normal. Where is she?”
At Dr. Sells’s blank glance, I wheeled around toward Brody, suddenly feeling better than I had since Nikki had scraped me up off the floor. “Where are they keeping her?” I demanded. “What floor?”
“Third—I’ll take you—”
“We really have to get you assessed,” Dr. Sells began, but no one was listening to her, least of all me. Following Brody’s lead, we marched across the lobby and into the first set of elevator bays, whisking upstairs in a blink. No one talked. There also was no announcement over the intercom, quiet or otherwise, for security to report to the third floor. I suspected that Dr. Sells would be following us close behind, if only to take notes for Armaeus. Well, she could take as many notes as she wanted, I knew what I needed to do here. Perhaps more importantly, I knew that I could do it. My intention was clear and full in a way that it simply hadn’t been before about anything, except perhaps in moments of extreme duress. But I didn’t feel under duress here. I simply felt like I could do what was required.
Was this how Armaeus felt all the time?
We reached Sariah’s hospital room thirty seconds later, and sure enough, Dr. Sells was emerging from the stairwell at the end of the hall. I didn’t acknowledge her but ducked into Sariah’s room behind Brody, immediately taking in the profusion of equipment and monitors that surrounded Sariah like a brittle hug. “What is all this stuff?”
“Her systems keep failing,” Brody said, and I could hear the dismay, even the fear in his voice as he gazed at the still form on the bed. “No sooner do they stabilize her heart than her lungs stop taking in oxygen. No sooner do they get that under control than she throws up everything she’s eaten. They tried a feeding tube, and her body reacted as if it was being attacked. They tried conventional drugs, and they created psychotropic reactions. Technoceuticals were even worse.”
I forced myself to look at Sariah…my twin, my sister, out cold in a hospital bed.
Now more than a decade ago, Sariah Pelter and I had been the same person. Literally. The event that had sent me on the path to becoming an arcane artifact hunter, and eventually the bloodhound of the Arcana Council, had sent her off on an entirely different trajectory. In the midst of horrible trauma, I had run from the fire that had destroyed my childhood home, while she had run toward it. As a result, she’d spent the last decade in Hell, not to put too fine a point on it. As in the Hell so immortalized in millennia’s worth of mythology and religious texts. In the meantime, I’d forged on, not realizing I had left a significant chunk of myself behind. I might not have left my heart in San Francisco, but I’d left the combative, daredevil side of me behind in Memphis, and had probably survived the years that followed because of it.
But that was no longer the case. Sariah was not merely some piece of me that needed to be reassimilated into my personal being. She was very much her own person and deserved her own life outside the boundaries of Hell. And for all that she was a badass who didn’t take anywhere near the level of crap I was used to enduring from those around me, she needed me. I could learn a thing or two from Sariah. I already had.
But I could help her too.
Sariah’s face was drawn and pale beneath her hospital blankets, her hair tucked under a surgical cap as if she might be rushed under the knife at any moment. I knew without asking that they hadn’t attempted any form of true surgery on her other than the insertions of various needles and tubes. There would still be blood on the walls if they had.
“So what knocked her out finally?” I asked.
“Scotch,” Dr. Sells said, striding into the room. She took up position at the front door, and I noticed two security guards were behind her, hovering in the hallway. Not to haul me off, I suspected, but to protect me. “Glenmorangie, to be specific. She no sooner started screaming for it than it appeared, compliments of the Council. It knocked her out within minutes.”
I smiled, but my heart twisted at this small detail. Sariah was very much not me, and yet—we were linked. Linked while I experienced all the world had to offer and she…had watched from afar. A drink I had turned to in moments of stress had become a solution of much greater proportions to her. I didn’t even want to think of what would happen when she tried coffee again.
But it was time for her to get that chance. I stepped forward, and Dr. Sells shifted slightly from her position. “We took off the heavy restraints when she passed out, Sara, but there’s no—”
Sells’s voice abruptly broke off as I lifted a hand. Not because I’d stopped her physically, but something in my manner, my expression, had apparently encouraged her to stop talking before I did something that would bring the security guards running.
“Heavy restraints?” I asked quietly.
“She asked for them,” Brody said, staying close beside me. His voice sounded right on the edge of breaking. “Sariah. When her lungs failed and we—we tried the tube. She asked for the restraints to ensure she would stay still.”
I nodded, my own lungs suddenly burning as I leaned over Sariah. I had cured people I didn’t even know, barely cared about. I’d cured people I’d outright loathed. And I’d helped bring the life back in people I loved so much, it took my breath away. But I’d never had to try my hand on my own flesh, my own blood.
My own sister.
“Sariah,” I whispered. There was no response, and I gestured to the bed. Without needing further direction, Brody eased her slim hand out from under the blanket, her hand nearly as white as the covers. Given where she'd lived the last ten years, Sariah was undeniably in need of some sunshine.
She would get that chance.
“Sariah,” I said again, and I laid my hand gently over hers, my third eye slipping open.
Instantly, I steeled my hold, as I was suddenly so panic-stricken that it was all I could do not to jerk away. How had I not seen this before? How had I not realized?
Sariah’s electrical circuits weren’t just knotted or shorting out—they were broken. All of them. Sheered off and veering wildly, like troll hair in a wind tunnel. There were s
o many interrupted circuits and so many crackling connections that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next one began. How had I missed Sariah’s distress all this time?
Even as I asked the questions, I knew their answers. I hadn’t wanted to see Sariah’s distress. Hadn’t wanted to witness such weakness—any weakness—in someone who used to be me. Because if I acknowledged it in her, then I’d need to acknowledge it in myself…and I had no interest in knowing exactly how broken I should be.
I shook my head desperately, trying to parse the facts as I saw them. Every time I’d seen Sariah since she’d burst the bonds of Hell, a member of the Council had been close by. Their influence might have masked the true nature of Sariah’s deterioration. And to be fair, I hadn’t seen her at all except for in the hospital, immediately after the altercation at the Emperor’s casino. At that point, she may have been passed out, I couldn’t recall. I hadn’t known there was anything more severe than exhaustion plaguing her, though. Certainly not this…
As quickly as my panic began, however, I felt a second presence reach out to me, settling over me with the softness of a sigh. The Magician. Finally.
“She is your sister, Miss Wilde,” he said in my mind. “You can heal her.”
My eyes were still peeled wide, seeing the flailing circuits, hearing the bleats of distress from the machines surrounding us. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?
“You have the tools you need to succeed. You can heal her. What you started in my presence is already done. Such is your power. Such is your bond. There remain some things that I can do that you cannot, but healing is not one of them. In this, your reach exceeds my grasp, in fact. Because you are still…somewhat human.”
I didn’t want to think about that too closely, but I held on to the important part of his words.
How? I pleaded. I don’t know—I don’t remember who she was, who she’s supposed to be. She’s not me. She can’t simply be a reincarnation of who I was, who I am, she—
But the Magician was gone.
I reached out and grabbed Brody’s hand, laying it on mine. Then I took Sariah’s hand again. “Think back to all that I was, when you knew me in Memphis,” I ordered. “Then think of everything I am now.”
“Huh?” he asked, clearly confused.
“Do it.”
The moment that his cop mind comprehended what I needed, even if his conscious mind was still reeling, I sensed the doors opening between the present and past. I reached through those doors to the Sariah who was standing there, the Sariah of seventeen years old, lit by the flames of Llyr’s devastation, furious and frightened. She was sure only of herself, and that she would survive, that no matter what, she would survive to get her revenge on everyone who had wronged her.
That spark of righteous anger was all I needed to begin, and the nonlinear cacophony of thoughts in Brody’s mind filled in the rest. Almost immediately, the flailing ends of Sariah’s circuits found their natural partners and began to knit together. I lifted my hands away from her and Brody, letting my fingers hover above Sariah’s body. Beneath the arc of my palms, her body arched, breath rushing into her lungs, her eyes flaring wide in panic, in fear. But when she glanced wildly to the side, it wasn’t me she saw, at least not at first. It was Brody. Now he was holding her hand with both of his, his mouth moving silently as image upon image washed through his mind of all the things he’d thought I would become. So many possibilities for Sariah to choose from as she learned to express herself and grow in this new plane.
It wasn’t enough, I thought. It wasn’t enough! I needed Sariah not only to survive on this earth, but to thrive. What would she need? What would she do? Still riding high on the surge of power from Armaeus’s dark wellspring of magic, I reached out to Sariah’s shell-shocked mind, the spark of her nascent Connected abilities, and—I gave. Whatever I thought she could handle, whatever wasn’t already such an innate part of me that I couldn’t do without it—I gave.
And gave…
And…gave.
As I worked my hands above Sariah’s body, I vaguely had the sense of excited conversation bursting forth around me, monitors being shifted and moved away, needles slipped out and unhooked, tools pushed off to the side as Sariah dropped back into unconsciousness. But in truth, I didn’t need to hear anything more to understand what I needed to do. The Magician was right. In this, in healing, I could see how I might become the better of the two of us. Although he had done so much with his skills alone, I brought the whole of my heart to the equation. A heart that understood the importance of the holistic end result, not merely what parts needed to be spliced back together. Never again would I need the Magician to heal me or anyone else, unless the numbers of the afflicted were simply too great.
A chill skated down my spine at the thought.
At length, I stepped back and let others crowd forth. Nurses, Brody. Nikki was now at one side of me, Dr. Sells at the other. Without asking, they shuffled me out of the room.
“How are you feeling?” Sells asked as we quietly stepped into the corridor. “More, ah, yourself?”
At my quick glance, she grimaced. “The Magician got word to me of what you were doing. How you chose to help Sariah.”
“She’s my…my sister,” I said, the word still strange to my ears. Strange, but wonderful too.
“Your sister.” She nodded. “Your sister who now has a brand-new list of abilities you possessed for only a heartbeat. You sure that was such a good idea?”
“I…I think so,” I said, glancing back into Sariah’s room. “I could read Brody’s mind in there, though. That ability was super handy, I’m not going to lie.”
Beside us, Nikki snorted. “Handy or not, it's better that you let her siphon off some of those skills, dollface, at least for now. You look better, anyway. The dizziness is gone. The gibberish in your mind too.”
I swung my gaze toward her, trying to read her mind but…no dice. I shook my head, trying to make sense of everything. “So you can connect with me again? I didn’t feel your touch through any of that, or really anything since we were in the Magician’s library.”
“I couldn’t read your mind the way I always have, you got that right,” Nikki said. “But I could read your emotions. That I have never been able to do before. Not as useful, but interesting.” She lifted her brows. “You picking up what I’m thinking?”
I tried again, but still…nothing. “I can’t,” I grumbled. “So, if I gave that up to Sariah…what, I never get it back?” I looked around the hallway, trying to see all the details I’d been able to about Brody’s car, the parking lot. “I don’t have the Mentalist thing going on either, anymore. I kind of liked that one.”
“I bet Sariah will too—though I suspect she won’t be able to manifest it so expertly right out of the gate.” Sells’s voice had taken on a speculative edge, one I recognized well. I winced.
“No poking her until she’s fully healed,” I grumbled. “She’s going to have enough on her plate if she suddenly wakes up a mutant.”
“I have a feeling she’s gonna be just fine,” Nikki countered. She hooked her arm in mine and steered me down the corridor. “Meanwhile, you’ve got me on tap for any mind reading you need, for as long as you want me.” She gave my arm a soft squeeze. “And I’ll be here even when you don’t want me, for that matter.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said, the resolve in my voice clear. Because I’d never stop needing Nikki, for whatever she wanted to give. There were those who assumed I couldn’t lead if I relied on other people. That I alone should stand before the gods and monsters bearing down on us and kill them all with fire and rage, ruthless and unforgiving. But I knew better.
This war that was coming would be fought on several fronts, and it would take all of us to fight it, no matter who stood first in line. To ultimately win the day, I’d need to strike a perilous balance between might and magic, love and death. I would need to be Connected, in the true sense of the word.
&
nbsp; Chapter Eleven
Sells’s workup told me nothing new. I was perfectly healed, I had no tumors, abnormalities, or ancient aliens running around inside me, and she had no idea what the long-term impact of my deep dive into Armaeus’s unholy swimming pool of power would be.
“You’re going to have to play this by ear,” she said as I shrugged back into my hoodie. Despite the recent heatwave, November in Las Vegas normally dipped into chillier temperatures. Beyond that, everyone in the city seemed to keep their air-conditioning on stun. “These observational abilities you’re noticing now are likely just the tip of the iceberg.”
“And Armaeus didn’t tell you to look for anything in particular?” I asked, not expecting her to give me an honest answer to that question.
To my surprise, however, Sells hesitated. She glanced to the door, then back to me, while Nikki shifted to full alert.
“What?” I prompted.
“The Magician hasn’t had the advantage of the full use of his abilities since he separated himself from the darkest reaches of his powers in…” She waved a hand. “I think it was the 1500s. There was a battle involved with many significant casualties, a battle he deeply regretted influencing. Since then, he’s advanced his abilities without that additional core resource, and so reassimilating with his original wellspring of magic has been a bit of a challenge. However, nothing in what he is now experiencing has been a surprise, exactly. He recalled quite well the previous range of his abilities. There was nothing he could not do without the darker magic; he simply couldn’t do it as well. Now he can.”
“And this is relevant how?”
“There are things you will be able to do now, that you could not do at all before you engaged with the Magician’s core magic,” Sells said. “Because you hadn’t fully explored your own abilities, it’s much more of a wild card as to what side effects you’ll experience. Was your observational ability new? The sense of knowing all of what was before you, whether it was something you could readily see or not?”
