by Cat Adams
Ms. Graves, if you can hear me, nod your head. Ivan’s voice came clearly inside my skull. He’d told the cops he was a registered mage. I’d forgotten he was a telepath. He’d only used that talent in front of me once—at the World Series game when we’d discovered one of King Dahlmar’s sons was being kidnapped.
I gave a tiny nod. Nothing noticeable.
Good. I was afraid the spelled circle would interfere, as the barrier around the car did.
Since until recently I had no psychic talent, I’m not very good at talking mind-to-mind. I hoped my intense concentration wasn’t showing on my face as I replied, Not that I’m complaining, but how did you know to come riding up like the cavalry?
I could almost hear the puzzlement in his thoughts. Either I sucked at thinking at him or the reference was too American for his English.
I was waiting outside the tribute to your deceased friend. I wished to speak with you. I saw them attack the driver. When the police guarding the doors did nothing, I decided to wait for a better opportunity.
Shit. The police outside the party had seen the switch? And didn’t stop it? That was wrong. Really wrong. Thank God Ivan had been there. But why had he? And why had he come riding to the rescue? My past experiences with him hadn’t shown him to be the most altruistic guy on the planet. In fact, he’d calmly left a man to die in order to follow his orders.
He answered my questions as if I’d voiced them aloud. I wasn’t surprised he’d been listening to my thoughts. Not everybody has Jeff’s ethics.
My king does not know I have come to you. But you may be our only hope.
What in the world could I do that a nation’s king and all the money and favor of a hundred countries desperately trying to gain a strategic ally couldn’t? What do you want from me?
“All right. That’s enough, you two. I said no talking.” Ivan’s reply—if he had been going to make one—never came. The detective who’d set up the magic circle I was standing in straightened from where he’d been chatting with someone near the bodies. Whatever the guy had told him hadn’t made him happy. He stalked over to where I stood, my hands securely cuffed behind my back. He bent down, pressed his finger to the edge of the circle, and began muttering a spell. Sound disappeared from the world and my vision sparkled like I’d been slammed face-first into a brick wall. I gasped in pain as the increased power burned across my skin. I didn’t say anything, but he must’ve seen me flinch, because a look of satisfaction flickered across his face for just an instant. It was so quick, it could’ve been a trick of my imagination. But I knew it wasn’t.
When they eventually released me to go to Birchwoods, Ivan was long gone. We never did get to talk. That worried me. Because once I got inside the facility, I probably wasn’t going to be allowed calls or visitors for quite some time. There wasn’t anything I could do about that, but it was a problem just the same. I pondered it on the long drive down Ocean View. This time I had a real police escort, and more. News crews had been minding their scanners and we wound up with lots of company. The more the merrier, as far as I was concerned. I wanted witnesses to this whole debacle. Something had gone horribly wrong within the police force to have this happen. There apparently hadn’t been any sort of citywide all-points bulletin when I went missing, because that was one of the questions the nice reporters asked the incident commander. Keeping everything public and under the media microscope offered me the best possible protection. It’d be a damned nuisance. But I could live with that. Emphasis on the “live.”
We made the drive in broad daylight because it had taken hours to deal with the fallout from the kidnapping attempt. I was glad for the press and for Roberto Santos. My attorney had rightfully insisted that I be moved out of the confining circle and behind tinted windows before the sun could crisp me.
I stared out the window at Birchwoods, wondering what it was that Ivan needed and wishing for about the millionth time that the damned bat had just bitten me and been done with it rather than trying to bring me over. He’d turned me into an abomination that was not vampire, human, or siren but some unholy mix of the three.
In the eyes of most of the cops I was a monster, one step below a dangerous animal, and now I’d publicly embarrassed the whole department. There were bodies on the ground and the police cars were real. Of course, the fourth suspect had gotten away. Maybe they’d catch him. Maybe not.
I had the sickening feeling this whole night was somehow going to wind up being my fault.
3
The covers went flying off the bed, but I grabbed an end and pulled the soft comforter back over me. Then the drapes opened abruptly to let in bright sunlight. I flipped the pillow so my head was underneath and returned to warm darkness.
“I don’t want to go to therapy today. Go away.” I heard a familiar squeak, like fingernails on chalkboard, and lifted up just enough of the pillow to peek out from underneath.
Have to.
The words were written in beautiful script on the dresser mirror, etched into the frost Vicki had formed on the surface. Technically, I wasn’t allowed to have a “roommate,” but there wasn’t much the staff could do about it since she was a ghost and a former resident. I let out a little growl and dropped the pillow back over my face. Yeah, I knew she was right. If I didn’t play by the rules now, they’d only get more restrictive and it would be a nurse or, worse, a mage attendant with compulsion magic who came to get me.
Another squeak and this time I smelled flowers. I lifted the pillow again and there was a single yellow daisy lying next to my face. The frost had formed a new word.
Please?
Well, hell. I couldn’t help but let out a little laugh. Vicki always could cajole me into doing stuff. “Okay, okay. I’ll get up.” I spun my legs off the bed and walked to the dresser. “Let’s see, let me choose from my expansive wardrobe.”
I opened the first drawer to reveal gray T-shirts and sweatshirts. The second drawer held gray sweatpants and the third? Yep, gray undies. Everything gray except the bras. They were white. Whoo. All newbies to the Birchwoods program have their past stripped away so the healing can begin. Or so say the ads. Gray is the great equalizer among the classes. No amount of fame, money, or family title can stand against it. It’s only later, further into the program, that personalities and preferences are allowed to reemerge, under strictly controlled circumstances. I took a quick shower, pulled on my graywear, and slathered on enough sunscreen to get me through the first part of the day. A baseball cap with the facility’s logo would protect my scalp.
The windows were flung open and I got the day’s first breath of salty sea air. The room was flooded with the sound of the ever-present gulls that were probably considered nuisances by the staff and other residents. What can I say? Gulls seem to be my thing lately. They’ve been flocking around me ever since I fought against my vampire sire by pulling on my siren talents. I have no idea why, or what to do about it, which is as frustrating to me as it probably is to the birds.
I looked out the window and tried to lighten my mood. It didn’t take all that long. Birchwoods is a lovely compound, filled with flowers, stunning landscaping, and rolling, grassy hills. The view included the ever-present guards, who dress like tour guides but are actually tough and smart.
Security is tight, but that’s as much for the protection of the guests as for the public. I looked over the campus: hospital, administration building, youth facility, main residential building. It’s a good thing I’m not an autograph hound, because coming out of the youth facility at that moment was one of the biggest teen pop stars in the world. There were a lot more inside the building. The crème de la crème come here when they need to dry out or heal up and they don’t want anyone to know about it, ever. The tabloids try desperately to get through security, knowing that if they did they’d get the scoop of the century. Thus far, they’d had no success.
More squeaking and I turned my head. Hurry. Waffles today!
It made me smile. It was so Vicki
. We’d learned in the interval between her death and the wake that she could carry on a full conversation with only minimal responses. Whole sentences tired her quickly, but a few carefully chosen words were enough to interact.
For a moment I wondered how the investigation into her murder was going. Alex had specifically warned me to back off, to let the police do their job. God knew they were under enough pressure already with Vicki’s parents in the mix.
Vicki’s parents were Cassandra Meadows and Jason Cooper, the Hollywood power couple and an industry unto themselves. Jason wasn’t such a bad guy, but Cassandra could be absolute hell on wheels. Not just a bitch, a raging bitch. I knew this from personal experience. The woman hates me with an unholy passion.
Another squeak underlined the Hurry. Vicki’d loved waffles in life—thick Belgian ones with malt in the batter. Coat them with fresh butter and real Vermont maple syrup and she could probably tie the Guinness record holder for number eaten in a sitting.
I let out a little chuckle as my shoes made a little hop across the floor toward me. “Okay, okay. I’m hurrying.”
I shoved my foot into a pair of (you guessed it) gray slippers. I didn’t like them much, no arch support and they were too loose to be completely comfortable, but nobody was allowed shoes with laces at Birchwoods. A precaution against suicides, no doubt, but annoying as hell.
You okay? screeched across the mirror in front of me and I smiled sadly.
“Think I’ll ever make it out of here?” I paused as the frost began to form. “Truthfully?”
There was a pause on her side, too. Vicki had been a patient at Birchwoods for a long time. There was a good chance she really had been mentally unstable, but certain traumatic events pushed her over the edge. She came to Birchwoods looking for peace and for the most part had found it. But we weren’t the same sort of people . . . our friendship was based on the “opposites attract” principle. While I like quiet, peace isn’t really my thing. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be a bodyguard for fun and profit.
Dunno . . . , was the reply, followed by a :-(
“C’mon,” I said after a long silence that threatened to ruin what small amount of good mood I had. “Let’s go do waffles.” Even though I really don’t like waffles all that much.
The frown was replaced by a :D
Text messaging from the beyond. My life is so weird.
Like most of Birchwoods, the cafeteria is bright, sunny, and clean. It looks more like the restaurant of a nice hotel than a cafeteria. Lots of plants and greenery, round wooden tables with matching chairs with a light oak finish. There are two separate sections, divided by a glass partition. Not smoking and non-smoking: suicidal and not. Those with any hint of suicidal tendencies get foods that don’t require cutting and there’s a much higher supervisor-to-patient ratio.
I have plenty of problems, but suicidal tendencies aren’t among them. So I chose a corner table just outside the reach of the sunlight shining through the windows and sat at a place set with a real china plate and actual silverware. Not that I could use it. The changes to my body mean I don’t get to eat actual solids. Not now. Maybe not ever.
Still, the waffles, even though in blended, liquid form, were actually good. Enough for seconds. My first gulp caused a surprised smile and Vicki showered me with flower petals right there in the cafeteria. Of course, having a four-star Michelin chef working the line probably helped. Money talks and what chef wouldn’t love a truly captive audience to experiment with new textures and flavors? It was the ultimate test of his skill to make diners with weird-ass physical requirements happy.
I had just started a second helping when I saw Heather walk into the cafeteria. Heather was Dr. Scott’s personal assistant. According to hospital gossip, she’d gotten the promotion thanks to her cool head in a crisis—helping Dr. Scott face down my bloodlust. She didn’t like me much. No surprise there. But she was the only person here who might actually be able to tell me if Ivan had tried to reach me. Assuming Jeff let her. That was a coin toss.
I waved to her and waited for her reaction. She was too polite to grimace and it was too late to ignore me, so I got to watch her steel herself and bring her tray over to my table.
“Can I help you?” She smiled, showing lots of straight white teeth, but her eyes were wary, her body language nervous. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. A couple of the nice attendants began moving closer, more or less discreetly.
I decided to cut to the chase. I figured she’d appreciate it. “The night I was picked up, a man from the Rusland Secret Service was there. He said it was urgent that he speak with me, but what with the kidnapping and all we didn’t get to talk. Has he, by any chance, tried to get in touch? Left me a message or anything?”
She gave an unhappy sigh and looked put-upon, as if every patient in the facility was constantly trying to get messages in or out. Then again, they probably were. I tried a slightly different tack.
“Can you check with Dr. Scott to see if he’ll let you look into it?”
“Fine. I’ll check with Dr. Scott. If he says it’s okay, I’ll see what I can find out for you.”
That was the best I was going to get and I knew it. So I smiled sweetly and said, “Thanks,” and Heather hurried over to the table where a number of other staff members were eating. The attendants went back to their posts, back to scanning the room.
I left the cafeteria at 8:50, giving me plenty of time to make my way to Dr. Hubbard’s office for my 9:00 individual therapy session. On the way I pondered whether or not I could stand living here long term. It wasn’t a bad place. But I was already restless, after just a couple of weeks. And I couldn’t stop thinking about things on the outside. I was seriously worried that I hadn’t heard a peep from Ivan since the night of the attack. While I tried to tell myself that the situation, whatever it was, had probably blown over, I didn’t believe that. I hoped Heather was being honest about going to Dr. Scott; I hoped that Dr. Scott would be willing to let her follow up. Neither seemed like a good bet. It made me feel helpless. I can’t tell you how much I hate that.
“Good morning, Celia.” Dr. Hubbard’s greeting drew me out of this fairly unpleasant reverie. She greeted me with a warm smile that lit up a face that was otherwise plain. A woman of late middle age, she was attractive but not stunning, with ash-blond hair, minimal makeup, and a suit that was both businesslike and unremarkable. Then again, therapy is about the patient, not the therapist. The non-threatening, unnoticeable doctor might not bear a lot of resemblance to the woman I’d meet outside of work.
“Ann.”
“So, what would you like to discuss today?”
This was how the sessions always started. She’d ask what I wanted to discuss, but in the end we’d wind up digging into all the stuff I really didn’t want to talk about. Gotta love therapy.
An hour later, wrung out from crying, I was done with Dr. Hubbard for a few days. I’d recover just in time to go back and dredge more gunk out of my subconscious.
Usually I had group therapy at 10:30 A.M., but today I’d be skipping it. I’d be meeting with my attorney instead. Doing witness prep and going over my testimony for my court hearing wasn’t going to be fun, but I was tired of being the center of the group’s attention. I mean the others had drug problems, depression, maybe out-of-control talent. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff. My problems, on the other hand, were spectacularly weird. My fellow patients waited for each session like soap opera addicts. Which seriously creeped me out. The only upside I could think of was I was meeting a lot of high-end potential clients.
We were scheduled to meet in one of the small conference rooms in the administration building. I went there under escort. Patients don’t get to leave the main building without. Because of the whole siren thing, I got to be escorted by a female guard. Greta was big, blond, Nordic, and no-nonsense. When she talked, which was seldom, she had a thick accent. Her uniform might look like that of a tour guide, but she herself looked like a prison guard.
&
nbsp; I’d slathered myself with another layer of sunscreen, so I was able to walk down the sunlit sidewalk without singeing, but I was still glad to get back indoors. I was even more glad when Greta left me alone in the conference room, shutting the door behind her. No doubt she’d be waiting right outside when the meeting was over. But in the meantime, I wasn’t sorry to see her go.
I settled into a comfortable leather chair at a small, round table and proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait. Since Roberto is normally excruciatingly prompt, I had to wonder what was wrong. But nobody came to tell me anything. So I sat at the little wood-laminate table and watched the hands on the wall clock move slowly around the dial. Forty minutes had crawled by when the door finally opened and my attorney came in, looking harried and worried.
“What’s wrong?” Okay, maybe not the best conversational foray. I mean, usually I lead with “Hi,” or “Hey, Roberto, good to see you’ ” But something was obviously amiss. It wasn’t just that he was late. He was troubled and he wasn’t bothering to try to hide it from me.
Shaking his head, he set a large briefcase onto the conference room table and took the seat across from me.
“Has anyone else been here to meet with you?”
That was an odd question, especially since Birchwoods’ rules allowed me to meet with my attorney and no one else. I told him as much.
“I know.” He took off his glasses and proceeded to clean the lenses with a snow-white handkerchief. It was a nervous gesture and so completely out of character it threw me. Roberto doesn’t get nervous. He just doesn’t. Which is why he’s been lead counsel defending the famous and infamous, winning the unwinnable cases.
