by Lee Dignam
Alice grabbed hold of the bathroom sink and used it for support.
“Your back,” Isaac said, “It’s… covered…”
“Covered in what?” Alice asked, but she knew. Her shirt was wet, her back was pained, and blood had seeped through the bandage on her arm. She became fixed with just how red the bandage around her arm had gotten. The last time she had looked at the bandage it had been mostly white, save for three thin red lines. The bandage was now splotched with red spots, some big and some small, some parts darker than others. She also noticed how little dribbles of blood were leaking out of the palm of her hand and slipping into the white sink. Alice watched one droplet zig-zag across the porcelain, leaving a fine, pink trail before disappearing down the drain.
“Isaac?” Alice said between breaths, “Isaac, what is it?”
“Stay here,” Isaac said, “Don’t move.”
Alice looked over her shoulder, but Isaac was gone. “Isaac?” she called. Her heart was thumping now, harder and faster than it ever had before. “Isaac,” she said, this time an octave higher.
Isaac returned with a large white towel. She tried to look as he placed it gently on her back, but she screamed as the towel touched her scarred back and turned her head away. Fire. It was as if the towel had been dipped in gasoline and set ablaze before being pressed to her skin. Her leg muscles gave and she slipped down to one knee, cursing and trying to hold in each scream as it manifested on her lips.
Unconsciousness knocked at the door, but Alice refused to answer. She held on, groaning and gripping the edge of the sink as if her life depended on it. The pulses of pain stopped coming, and slowly—at the pace that glaciers moved—her strength returned to her. Alice pushed herself back to her feet, breathed deeply, and splashed fresh water on her face. This helped.
“I’m sorry,” Isaac said, “I know it hurts.”
“What is it?” Alice asked, “What’s happened to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Isaac?”
“I said I don’t know. Let me call Cameron and see if he can do anything about this.”
“I want to know what’s happened to me.”
“I know you do, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Just don’t move.”
Isaac disappeared again. A moment later Alice heard him on the phone with Cameron. The call was quick. Isaac didn’t have to explain. Not long after disappearing, Isaac returned with a glass of water and some pills. He handed them to her and she took them in her uninjured hand, tossed them into her mouth, and drank deep. The water helped, the pills helped.
“Just hold on,” Isaac said, “He’s on his way. He won’t be long.”
“Am I supposed to just wait here?”
“I may have a PhD, but I’m not a doctor.”
Alice tried to turn her head but her skin could only stretch so far before it started to feel like it could at any moment start tearing apart like an old shirt. Alice cursed and went back to looking at herself in the mirror. When she did, she caught a glimpse of the towel Isaac had been gently dabbing against her scarred back.
The white was mottled with dark red.
Why had this happened? Had she been injured at the hospital last night and not noticed? It was possible, but she’d had a shower last night and hadn’t noticed any rivulets of blood curling along the floor of the bathtub and racing toward the drain. She also hadn’t felt any pain there, at least no more than normal. So why did there appear to be fresh cuts there now?
She had dreamt about the surgeon, but it had only been a dream. Hadn’t it? Jesus, Alice thought. Maybe it wasn’t really a dream. Or maybe it had somehow managed to pluck her dream out of the sea of millions of dreaming minds, infect it, and hurt her. Was that even possible? If so, why hadn’t it done this before? Why wait? Maybe because she had pissed it off by showing up at its haunt unannounced.
Or maybe her own powerful fear of having faced it again had given it the ability to bypass Isaac’s wards, serving as some kind of invitation into her psyche. If the surgeon had found a way to hurt her without needing to be in her presence, and despite Isaac’s reinforced magical wards, then was there any way to keep from getting hurt? Alice winced again and let her head hang over the sink. She turned the faucet on and let it run. The sound was soothing somehow.
“Do you have any idea how those got there?” Isaac asked.
“I dreamt about it… I was running from the surgeon, and it got a clean swipe into my back with its fingers.”
“My wards didn’t work, then.”
“I don’t think your wards had anything to do with this. I think it followed some kind of psychic link to find me specifically. I think it used that link to get into my dreams and hurt me.”
“Do you think it can do that to anyone?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. Should we do something?”
“We should wait for Cameron before doing anything at all.”
He was right, of course. Taking any action besides breathing caused an immense amount of pain to radiate through her. Each time she tried to turn left or right, the skin around her back would stretch, and it would be like getting clawed all over again. Alice bit her lip to stifle the pained scream and waited for the moment to pass.
“Okay,” she said, breathing through the pain, “It’s not like I can go anywhere.”
The painkillers set in after a couple of minutes, and the pain died down. Isaac continued gently pressing the towel against her back to soak up whatever excess blood there was. Every time he did, the towel came back more and more covered with her blood. Cameron, luckily, didn’t take long to arrive. He had chosen to stay in a hotel in town last night instead of going back to the sanctuary, so he had been able to zip over to Isaac’s place on his bike in only ten minutes.
There was little talking when he arrived. He asked what had happened, Isaac explained, and with Alice still hovering over the bathroom sink, Cameron got to work on her back. He hadn’t had a great deal of time with which to create a mixture that would help with the pain and the injury on her arm, but something strange happened to her back when he placed his hands upon it and pushed the magic of the Tempest into the wounded areas.
They began to heal.
Cameron removed his hands from her back, and Isaac came in with a clean, moistened cloth to wipe the rest of the blood off her back. The scars she had sustained the first time she had been attacked by the surgeon remained, but these psychically inflicted wounds had gone. Alice dared to stretch, and her back didn’t scream, didn’t protest—in fact, she felt empowered, invigorated. Whatever Cameron had done to her had filled her with vitality felt in the powerful beats of her own heart, her long, strong breaths, and a kind of inner warmth she only came close to feeling after consuming a soul.
Alice put a new shirt on and stepped out of the bathroom to find Isaac and Cameron waiting in the kitchen. “What did you do?” she asked.
Cameron turned his head to look at her. “Same thing I did yesterday,” he said. “It was worth a shot.”
“It paid off,” Alice said.
“I’m having trouble understanding why this worked today and not last night,” Isaac said. “The only explanation I have is that it wasn’t able to inflict the same kind of insidious damage to you through your dreams as it had in the hospital.”
“That’s what I think too.”
“Nice to know they have limitations,” Cameron said.
“Yeah,” Alice said. “Maybe we can use this limitation to our advantage. I’ll need every trick I can grab before I go hunting for it again.”
“Hunting?” Isaac asked, “You don’t think you’re going to try and track it down in your current state, do you?”
“I have to, Isaac. I haven’t seen that thing in years and it’s active again. If it’s hurting anyone else, that pain is on me. Besides, Cameron fixed me.”
“Dispatching it doesn’t fall on your shoulders alone.”
“It does. This is personal.”
<
br /> “So is everything else. You’re the catalyst for all of this.”
“Thanks.”
“No,” Cameron said, “I can see where he’s going with this. We’re all in this now. Just because this is personal to you doesn’t mean it doesn’t involve all of us. It does. Nyx, the surgeon, the Pain Children; they’re all our responsibility and we are a team.”
“When you first showed up at my museum,” Isaac said, “You had such disdain for the idea of having to work with someone else, but I know you’ve changed. So please, let’s do nothing on our own.”
“Why do you always have to be so logical?” Alice asked.
“I like to think it’s one of my more likeable qualities.”
“It isn’t. In fact, it’s fucking frustrating sometimes.”
Cameron laughed. Isaac shot him a look, and he shrugged. “Well, she’s right.”
“Suit yourselves,” Isaac said. “I’m going to make myself some breakfast. Are you staying, Cameron?”
“I won’t say no,” Cameron said, and he moved across the room to sit on the sofa. Alice joined him.
“Thanks,” she said, “For coming over so quickly and patching me up.”
“Don’t mention it,” Cameron said, “I had a feeling you’d need me close by.”
“A feeling?”
“Spend a lot of time with big cats and you start developing a weird kind of intuition.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” she said, smiling, but guilt suddenly gripped her chest. He had sped over to help her, no questions asked, and she hadn’t yet told him about Cora. “Listen…”
“Hm?” Cameron said, looking up from his phone.
“I’ve got to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
Alice took a breath. “Yesterday, after you left me in my office, Jinx didn’t just lead me to the surgeon—she led me to someone I didn’t think I would ever meet.”
“Oh?”
“The other Half-Lich. The girl who left Trapper and the Chest of Haunts on my doorstep, her name is Cora.”
“No way. How? I mean, why?”
“She was there, at the hospital, hunting the surgeon too.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was making up my mind about what to do.”
“Making up your mind?”
Isaac cracked an egg over a bowl and the sound caught Alice’s attention for a moment. He cracked another, then another. “When other mages first got involved in this, Isaac was afraid the magistrate would want to… study me. Figure out what makes me work, how I get my powers… how I feed.”
“We’re not all like that.”
“I know. Trust me, I know. But I guess I just wanted to try and protect her from that.”
“You don’t have to. Not around us. We’re the good guys.”
Alice smiled again. A genuine smile that caused her already warm, glowing face to light up. “Thanks, Cam,” she said.
Isaac came over, his hands wet from having just washed them. “Now that Cameron knows,” Isaac said, “We should talk about Cora.”
“What about her?”
“Is she a priority?”
“She is. She asked to be included in this, and I think we should. If nothing else, she may be able to tell us about the film reels we found in the Cinema Royale. She may even have made them herself.”
“Let’s not get too excited.”
“I’m trying not to, but you have to admit, it’s an interesting prospect.”
“It is. We should see about getting Jim’s input with the surgeon and see if he figured out why Nyx stole the mirror in the first place. I have the feeling she did something to it, but he disagrees.”
Alice nodded, and she let herself settle into the sofa. She made casual conversation with Cameron about Becky, his elusive girlfriend, and that double date they were going to go on, but this didn’t do anything to subdue the anxiety slowly growing in her chest like a colony of rats— multiplying, gnawing, biting. As she turned her eyes to the window, she noticed the street lights were slowly swaying, as if being pushed and pulled by a pair of invisible giants. The rain had picked up, too.
Storm’s coming, she thought.
CHAPTER 13
The Other Half-Lich
Alice hung up the phone after making plans with Cora to meet at a bar close by. The bar she picked, O’Rilley’s, was on Isaac’s street. Normally this street was a busy one, lined with outlets, restaurants, and shops down both sides, but the weather warning had been increased to severe. When Alice looked out the window, there were only cars on the road and very few people walking around. The bar, she thought, would be empty. The exception, of course, would be the regulars who needed their drink come hell or high water. This meant they could talk in relative privacy.
Of course, the fact that you could see it from the window of Isaac’s apartment was a plus. He and the rest of the group were on high alert after everything that had happened, and even a casual trip to a bar called for contingencies and compromises. There were also her injuries to consider. Cameron had done his best, but the wounds on her arm were insidious, and magic refused to work on them.
Alice grunted as she slipped her arms into the thick hoody she would have to wear today.
“Are you alright?” Isaac asked.
“I’m fine,” Alice said, “Really, I am. Just sore.”
“You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“I don’t need a babysitter, Isaac. I’ll be fine. Besides, this is girl talk anyway. You don’t want to be around for that.”
“You’re not serious, are you? Girl talk between two Half-Liches? I would love to be a part of that.”
“Next time. You stay here and I’ll be back in an hour.”
Isaac nodded and opened the front door for her. She reached up with her lips and gently pecked him on the cheek. “One hour,” she said, “And if I’m not back by then, it’s because I’m drunk.”
“Don’t get drunk,” Isaac said, calling out to her down the corridor.
“Can’t make any promises.”
Alice winked at him from the other side of the hall and disappeared into the staircase. She hopped down the stairs two at a time, trying to regain some of the mobility in her sore limbs, and managing only after a great deal of effort. The pain was there, but it grew more distant as Alice’s body warmed and her blood began to circulate.
The apartment building’s front door resisted at first as Alice pushed it open, but it gave, and a moment later she was outside, on the windy streets of Ashwood, watching fallen leaves drift along faster than the cars on the road. It looked like gridlock out there. Alice turned her head against the wind, put her hoody up, and walked with her hands in her pockets toward the bar at the end of the street.
Ashwood was all smoking tailpipes and red lights. Street-signs and overhead cables were swinging and clinking, trees were hissing and bustling, and those people unfortunate enough to not own a car or not be able to afford public transportation were hustling on foot to get from point A to point B.
When she reached O’Rilley’s, the bar greeted her with warm, open arms and the smell of beer and leather. The bar wasn’t empty, not by a long shot, but it also wasn’t packed. Two out of the three TV’s in the bar were showing a rerun of yesterday’s football game, but the reception kept cutting out in staggered moments of intense pixilation. The other TV was fixed on the local news, where the newscaster was covering a protest taking place a couple of districts away, concerning the police shooting of a young boy.
Poor kid, Alice thought, not for the first time. She had heard about the shooting just yesterday but hadn’t followed it on the news. Poor people, too, for having to hold a protest with a severe weather warning in effect. It spoke to their resolution to see justice done, though, that they would take to the streets on a day like this and demand restitution for the needless taking of such a young life. Alice realized she had let her gaze li
nger on the TV and went about trying to find Cora, figuring she would probably be at the bar.
She wasn’t.
Alice found the other Half-Lich sitting at a booth in front of a bay window overlooking the street. She approached, deciding she would grab a drink later, and slipped into Cora’s field of view. “Hey,” she said.
Cora, who looked to have been lost in thought, jumped at the sound of Alice’s voice, but then calmed quickly. “Hi,” she said, letting a smile form on her face. In the daylight, Cora’s Hispanic features—the tanned color of her skin, her full lips, her dark hair—were more prominent than they had been in the darkness of the hospital. She looked to be in her thirties, though Alice wasn’t sure how late into them she was.
“Mind if I sit?” Alice asked.
“Please,” Cora said, “I ordered a drink for myself; I wasn’t sure when you’d get here.”
“It’s alright. This place is busy anyway.”
“Yeah, more people in here than I thought there’d be. How’s your arm?”
“I can move it, so that’s something. At least my back isn’t in pain anymore.”
“Your back?”
“Yeah, that’s… something happened last night.”
Cora’s dark eyes narrowed. “To you too?”
“Too? What do you mean? Did something happen to you?”
“You first.”
“No, you go.”
Her lips pressed into a thin line. She looked around, leaned closer to Alice, and in a conspiratorially low voice said, “I think I was visited by that Pain Child we were hunting.”
Alice’s stomach went suddenly cold. “Get the fuck out,” she said.
“No, I’m serious. I dreamt about that guy, about the surgeon, and I woke up this morning with scratches on my legs and arms. They weren’t deep but they hurt like hell.”
“I woke up with scratches on my back, too.”
“That’s messed up.”
