“-I’m not drinking a bunch of chopped up plants that are going to taste like crap,” said Riley. “No matter how much you love me Clyde!”
“God woman!” yelled Clyde. “You are so infuriating!”
“Riley,” hissed Ari, but her words seemed to have the desired effect and she watched as Lea moved over to Riley, touched one hand to her forehead and muttered something under her breath. “Thanks for helping.”
“I’m not healing her,” said Lea, breaking off from her mutterings to glare at Ari, “I am just making sure that there is nothing seriously wrong with…”
But Lea’s words died in her throat, just as her hands became rigid, her eyelids fluttering open to reveal two ghostly white eyes. Ari gasped at the sight of her and quickly rushed to Lea’s side. At the same time Clyde moved instinctively to Riley, pulling her away from Lea, as if the other girl might be contagious.
“What is it?” asked Ari, shaking Lea.
“Lea?” said Ragon, his voice tense. “What’s going on?”
It took a moment for Lea to come out of her trance. Finally she shook herself, looking around the room, apparently surprised to find it occupied.
“What the hell was that?” asked Riley, watching Lea with wide eyes. “What happened to you?”
“What?” said Lea, shaking herself as she moved over to Riley again, “Oh that was… it was normal.”
Reluctantly Clyde allowed Lea to examine Riley again, just as Lea repeated her previous actions, placing her hand on Riley’s stomach. This time when she touched her, Lea’s eyes did not roll up, though almost as soon as she had begun, Lea was shaking her head, slowly backing towards the door, her face pale.
“I’m… I can’t heal you,” Lea mumbled, straining to regain her breath. “But I think the others are right; you should go to see a doctor.”
“What, why?” asked Riley, “What aren’t you telling me? Am I dying?”
“Dying?” said Clyde, looking at Riley in horror.
“Nothing, no, it’s nothing like that. I just tried a detection spell, just to see if there was any sign of injury, but, but it didn’t work,” said Lea, her eyes looking down, as she continued to back out of the room. “Look guys, I have to go. I am supposed to be meeting with my circle now. Besides,” she added, seeing the hurt look on Riley’s face, “I can’t use magic to heal you Riley. I’m sorry. They’re right; you need to see a doctor.”
After that Lea raced from the room.
“What the hell was that all about?” asked Clyde, shaking his head in confusion.
“I don’t know,” said Ragon, looking worried.
“Maybe her powers only work on people who are more injured,” suggested Ari, “and because Riley only has a cold, there was nothing she could do? Or maybe they only work on people who have been attacked by vampires, or wraiths, or whatever.”
Clyde paced around the room several times, finally turning to Riley, as he said, “You’re going to the doctors and that’s final!”
Riley looked as if she wanted to argue but lacked the strength.
“You don’t have to go alone,” added Ari, “I can come with you.”
Ragon looked as if he were going to protest but then Clyde spoke, saying, “Thanks Ari.” He then turned to Riley, his face stern as he asked, “Riley?”
“Ok, ok,” she said, her head falling in submission or fatigue, Ari wasn’t sure. “My keys are over-”
“-you’re not driving there!” Clyde protested. “You can barely stay awake now.”
“Well you can’t drive me. What if someone sees you? A vampire dropping off a sick human will look suspicious, even if I do just have a head cold.”
“Ari, can you-” Clyde started to say, but Ari cut him off.
“-I don’t have a license to drive in England,” she said quickly, shaking her head.
“Maybe it’s time we did something about that,” Ragon said, his hand on his chin. “I can organise for you to have a few driving lessons and then you could go for your-”
“-Riley needs to go to the doctors today, not in a few weeks,” spat Clyde.
“We could ask Chris,” suggested Ari.
Clyde nodded while Ragon reached for his phone, saying, “Well, now I am defiantly going to organise a driving lesson for you!”
Later that afternoon Chris drove Ari and Riley to the Pasteur Hospital.
“You want me to wait for you?” asked Chris, when he had pulled into the medical centres entrance, which was on the opposite side of the emergency section they had been to last week.
Ari looked back at Riley but the girl did not answer, and so Ari said, “Maybe you should just head back. I will give you a call when we are done. You know doctors… we could be here for ages.”
Chris nodded and after both girls left the car, sped away.
“You alright?” asked Ari, looking at Riley sideways, as the pair began walking towards the front entrance.
“Yea, just nervous. I’m not really a big fan of doctors. And, and there was something weird about what happened with Lea earlier. I don’t know if she was telling me the truth.”
Pushing the door to the hospital open, Ari thought that Riley had a point. Lea had acted strangely, and there was defiantly something unusual about the way her eyes had gone white; it reminded her of the way Lea’s grandmother’s eyes had looked just before she started talking in riddles about Ari’s destiny.
“May I help you?” asked a tall and horsey looking woman, sitting behind a large counter.
“My name is Riley. I have an appointment.”
The woman looked curiously at Ari and Riley then down at her computer screen.
“Ah yes,” she said, “please have a seat. Dr Lynda Fishman will be with you shortly. She’s running a little late, but it shouldn’t be more than a twenty minute wait.”
Ari moved over to a large plush couch and sat down, while Riley near collapsed into it.
“Twenty minutes!” said Riley, sounding exasperated. “Good thing you got Chris to drive back.”
It was then, as the pair took in their surrounds, that Ari saw a girl with long red hair standing at the discharge station. She stared at the back of the girl in confusion for a moment, until the girl turned around and Ari gasped.
“That’s her,” Ari whispered, shrinking in her chair as she tried to hide from sight.
It was the waere-girl they had taken to the hospital a week ago. She looked almost unrecognisable from the bleeding unconscious girl that Chris had carried in, but Ari was sure it was her. She had instantly recognised the small silver necklace that sat prominently in front of a pair of borrowed hospital clothes. The girl looked young, no more than nineteen, with a small button nose, high cheek bones and a heart shaped face.
“That’s who?” asked Riley, looking around obviously.
“Shh,” hissed Ari, still trying to remain hidden. “It’s the were-girl me and Chris found the other week, She’s standing at the discharge area; the one with the silver necklace. How the hell is she being discharged already? She was half-dead when we brought her in.”
“Waeres heal fast.”
Ari blinked at Riley in confusion. If waeres healed quickly then why the hell was Riley so sick? She pushed this thought aside; there were more pressing matters to deal with.
“Do you recognise her?” asked Ari.
“Never seen her before,” said Riley, studying the girl’s features and shaking her head.
“Oh god,” said Ari, dropping still lower in her chair when the girl turned to face the front doors. “I think she saw me,” she mumbled, her lips thin as she tried to speak without moving them.
“Yep,” said Riley, apparently unconcerned with any of this, “I think you’re right and she is coming this way.”
“Shit,” said Ari, no longer trying to keep her voice low but actively looking for the nearest exit.
A few feet from the couch she sat on, Ari spotted a disabled bathroom. If she could only get inside, then she could wait until the
waere-girl left. The girl could hardly hang around all day. Ari had just gotten to her feet and was striding across the waiting room, when she felt someone reach out and place a hand on her shoulder. Turning around very slowly, Ari stared straight at the red-haired waere.
“Hey wait,” said the girl, when Ari tried to continue to reach the bathroom, “I recognise you.”
Ari looked around desperately. She had no idea what to do or say.
“Um,” said Ari, “yea… I get that a lot. Guess I just have one of those faces. Anyway, I was just going to the bathro-”
“-no,” the girl said quickly. “You brought me here!”
Ari looked around helpless for Riley, who was trying to get out of the couch, finally managing to un-wedge herself as she made her way towards them.
“So,” said Riley, looking directly at the girl and then adding in a barely audible whisper, “you’re a waere too?”
Ari’s mouth fell open and she looked around the room nervously. Fortunately no one seemed to be suspiciously of the trio standing in the middle of the waiting room, whispering tentatively to one another.
“You’ll have to forgive my friend,” said Ari, blushing furiously as she glanced around again, “she’s not well. She broke out of her physc ward last week. Too many drugs,” she added, rolling her eyes and sticking out her tongue, “makes her say crazy things.”
“How do you, how do you know?” the girl asked, looking at Riley in confusion.
“Really?” asked Riley, a small smile spreading across her face. “You can’t guess?”
“You’re, you’re one too?” the girl whispered.
Riley nodded; seeing this Ari reached for Riley’s elbow and steered her away.
“Um Riley,” said Ari, “I don’t think it is a good idea to have this conversation in here. Remember what the other’s said… about some of the doctors here having excellent hearing.”
Seeming to understand Ari’s meaning, Riley glanced nervously around the waiting room.
“Lucky we have twenty minutes to kill,” she said, her eyes slightly narrowed. “Come on, we can talk outside.”
With her mouth open in sheer disbelief, Ari followed Riley and the other waere out of the medical centre. What the hell was Riley thinking? Had she completely lost her mind? Had the bug she had caught attacked her nervous system?
Instinctively Riley walked over to the edge of the hospital, where a large conifer forest, the same one Ari and Riley had driven through in order to get to the hospital, hugged the parking lot. The waere girl followed shortly behind, while Ari dragged her feet, her hands in her pocket, ready to call Ragon or Clyde at a moment’s notice.
Chancing one final glance back at the medical centre entrance to make sure they weren’t being followed, Ari noticed a large sign above the clinic which read, ‘Free flu vaccines. See staff inside for details.’
When the three girls stood at the edge of the forest, Riley leaned in and said, “So, what’s your name?”
“Natalie,” the girl admitted, her eyes peeled as she glanced around nervously.
“Well Natalie, what are you doing here all alone?” asked Riley.
“Who says I’m alone?” Natalie asked, slightly defensively.
“Um,” said Riley, seemingly pointing out the obvious, “you were hit by a car right? But your pack didn’t take you to a hospital, and now there is no one picking you up. Kind of seems like you’re alone.”
Shifting her weight, Natalie looked Riley up and down and asked, “How do I know you’re a waere?”
Riley was just about to answer when Ari cut in.
“I saved your life; why would we lie to you,” she said, feeling slightly annoyed and forgetting that up until that point, she had being trying to protect Riley’s secret.
“I get that you don’t trust us,” said Riley. “I know what you’ve been though. Your whole life you have had to hide. Hide from vamps and wraiths and always keep strangers at arm’s length. But I’m not a stranger. I’m one of you.”
Natalie’s hands were on her hips but she leaned in while Riley had spoken, betraying her eagerness.
Slowly Riley removed her coat before walking past Natalie and saying, “Anyway, I can prove it.”
“No Riley you can’t. Clyde said not to shift,” Ari said warningly.
Riley seemed not to hear Ari’s concerns and unable to think of anything else to do, Ari followed her and the girl into the forest. When they were hidden from sight, Ari saw Riley stop walking and waited for her to shift. One tense minute passed, then two, and after a while both Ari and Natalie looked confused, still waiting for Riley to transition into an animal.
“What the hell?” Riley said, looking down at her body in disbelief.
“What’s wrong?” asked Ari. “Why aren’t you shifting?”
“I, I can’t,” Riley stammered.
“What do you mean you can’t?” said Ari, moving quickly over to Riley. “You mean, you’ve come to your senses and realised that you should listen to Clyde, or you physically can’t?”
“The second one. I can’t shift,” Riley said agitatedly.
“Maybe it’s because you’re sick,” suggested Ari, still looking at Riley with concern. “You couldn’t maintain your animal form when you were injured. Remember? You turned back into a human almost straight away. Maybe that’s it.”
Behind them Natalie was backing away, slowly making her way deeper into the forest, clearly unsure what to make of Ari or Riley.
“Hey wait,” said Ari, turning to face Natalie. “Where are you going?”
Natalie did not reply but moved further into the forest and soon vanished from sight. Seeing the girl disappear, Ari moved to Riley. Riley was standing in the forest, her coat on the floor, her eyes wide and fixed. She was pale and still, as if she had just seen a ghost. Clearly her inability to shift into an animal had unsettled her.
“What were you thinking?” asked Ari.
“Huh?”
“Clyde would kill me if he found out what just happened,” Ari explained.
“Ari, I just found out that I can’t shift. Don’t you think that is a bigger problem than what Clyde thinks?
“What? No. How could you tell her what you are?” asked Ari.
“I am a waere, like it or not. Clyde knows that.”
“Yea, but that doesn’t mean you need to advertise it,” Ari argued.
“Natalie is all alone, separated from her pack... who knows if she even has a family. What did you want me to do? Just ignore her?”
“Well, she seemed willing to ignore you,” Ari indicated, pointing to the spot where Natalie had vanished.
“She doesn’t trust me. There’s a difference. You don’t understand. You aren’t one of us. It’s hard trusting people when you have had to spend your whole life on the run.”
Ari felt her heart rush in her chest at this statement. Did Riley really believe that Ari couldn’t understand her predicament? Ari was an orphan; she had spent her whole life not trusting people, afraid to connect with them for fear of abandonment. If anyone could understand what Riley had been through, it was Ari. She thought about trying to phrase this into a sentence but decided against it. Riley was looking fatigued and drawn out, as if the act of trying to shift and realising that she couldn’t, had cost her greatly.
Instead of reprimanding her further, Ari helped Riley with her jacket and directed her back towards the hospital entrance.
“Come on, let’s go back inside. I think the bug you have is affecting you more than you think,” said Ari.
“I don’t know. I mean, I know I am sick but, I haven’t ever heard of the flu stopping waeres from shifting. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The moment they were back inside, the door to the nearest consult room swung open.
“Riley,” said a crisp female voice, and both Ari and Riley looked up to see a short woman with elbow length grey hair, waiting for them in the frame of a consult room.
“Want me to come with you?
” asked Ari, helping Riley manoeuvre towards the consult room.
Riley nodded, apparently still too in shock after discovering that she couldn’t shift, to speak.
“So my dear, what seems to be the problem?” the doctor asked, her kind and wrinkled face reminding Ari of what she thought a grandmother should look like.
Riley didn’t speak at first and Dr Fishman leaned in, apparently confused.
“Riley has the flu,” Ari said finally.
Bound (The Grandor Descendant Series Book 3) Page 6
