“No! That’s mine.”
Her screech was the only warning I got before she leaped on my back. She dug her nails into my scalp, pulling my hair; her weight toppled me over. I wound up on my back with my good arm braced against her chest, trying to keep her off me.
“You just want it for yourself!” she screamed into my face. Her thumbs came to rest on my cheeks just below my eyes and I froze. No sudden movements.
“Those eyes, those judgemental eyes. I’ll scratch them out,” she hissed, but made no motion to complete her threat.
“I don’t need it or want it,” I said, “but I could use it to save Trinket. Wasn’t she your husband’s best work? Wouldn’t that be a more fitting tribute to his memory?”
She looked at Trinket, her face very still; but then the sound of a door opening somewhere nearby spooked her. She raised her hands, aiming her nails at my eyes.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” I turned my palm into her chest and blasted her back into the table on which the tripod sat. “Doesn’t mean I won’t.”
The table toppled. The vial fell to the stage—miraculously unbroken—and began to roll toward me. I sat up, holding my hand out to catch it, and turned my head to see who had come through the door.
Incarra was standing in the stairwell doorway.
“Inc, stay back!”
“The police are coming,” she called.
“About damn time,” I groused. I hoped Hamilton had his warrant now. I scooped the vial up in my good hand just as the Madame recovered from her fall. She wiped her hand across her face, leaving streaks of red behind, and started to laugh, crazy suicidal laughter.
“Incarra,” I hollered, “go back into the stairwell and wait for the police.” Incarra didn’t move. “Now!” I barked.
I felt the Madame pulling more magic; she was going to do something reckless. I heard the door swing shut again just as she screeched and came at me again. I held up my good hand, frantically pulling power, feeling the hair raise on my arm until it was like a prickling glove from shoulder to fingertip, then threw the blast at her. When the blast hit the energy that she was summoning, the two combusted, throwing me to the floor and her backward into the wall.
Her body flattened, her hands spread palm down against the brick; pop-eyed with rage, she started laughing like a woman with nothing left to lose. I realized what she was about to do a moment too late: she funneled the blast into the wall, bringing it crashing down on both our heads.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I heard someone calling my name, but all around me was dark. I rolled onto my side, coughing through a thick miasma of brick dust. I held the palm of my good hand up and focused.
“Lumos,” I croaked. A sputtering ball of light coiled into life; I held it up to look around me. I lay under a dome of blast-fused wood and brick. I took a second to check for new injuries and discovered that I was nearly naked. My shirt was gone to just below my bust and hanging on only by a prayer at one shoulder. My jeans were reduced to hot pants. My shoes were completely gone. I needed to start enchanting my clothing.
“Cassandra!” The voice calling my name was closer now, and it sounded panicked. I put out the light and punched through the dome, then reached up through the hole and wiggled my fingers.
“Over here,” I called. “Over here.” Hands pulled away debris, gripping my good arm, pulling me up into fresh air and twinkling star light. I took in deep, pure lungfuls of the cool air.
Incarra threw her arms around my neck a moment later. I winced.
“Oh gawd, are you hurt?” she cried. “Of course you’re hurt, a wall fell on you. How badly are you hurt? What happened to your clothes?”
“I’ll be fine! Just help me out, okay?”
With some pushing and pulling, we managed to get me free. I surveyed the damage—the end wall was reduced to rubble, and the remaining three walls didn’t look so great either. I heard sirens approaching in the distance.
“Where is she?” I asked, looking around.
“Bitch is down,” Incarra said with the tiniest of snarls. “Over there. Dead, I think.”
“Are you sure?”
“She could be faking.”
I saw the Madame; she lay sprawled on the floor, a large chunk of wall pinning her legs.
“What’d you want to do, go poke her with a stick?” I said dryly.
“Yeah, kinda,” she said, demonstrating ‘this much’ with her fingers, “li’l bit.”
I shook my head. “How about this? Can you see her ghost?”
There was no way in hell that woman would have gone peaceably into the good night. Incarra did a sweep with her eyes, as though she’d completely forgotten about her new talent.
“Nope. Only one, over there—desperately hanging on, looks like.” She pointed to the bar.
“Trinket!” I ran over and dropped to my knees beside her, then stupidly checked for a pulse. “Moron,” I chided myself. I started fumbling with Trinket’s collar. “Incarra, come help me!”
She knelt beside me and took over the job of pulling Trinket’s dress out of the way.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” she asked as she worked.
“Broken, I think.”
“What?” she squealed.
“First things first,” I said sharply. I searched Trinket’s torso for a crack in the surface. There was a small square, almost like a door in her chest; it was hinged on one side, but offered no way of opening it.
“Can you get your nails under the edge and pull it up?” I asked.
Incarra dug at it; a broken nail later, she had it open. The small chamber held two copper nodes in which sat the broken ends of a vial. I carefully cleared out the glass and pulled the green vial from where it had been in my pocket.
“Help me get it into place,” I pleaded. Incarra helped me guide it into the nodes. I placed my hand over the compartment, warning Incarra to lean back. Energy cannot be destroyed, I told myself, but it can be changed into something else. I muttered an altered spell of binding and shot power into the vial, like an electric paddle to a stilled heart. Trinket’s body bucked wildly; then her eyes shot open, and she began to sit up.
“It’s alive. ALIVE,” I crowed in my best Frankenstein impression. Incarra blinked at me, gaping. “What? Too melodramatic?”
The little vial, now filled with a red liquid, bubbled in her chest. Incarra shut the panel, then pointed, eyes wide: there were now symbols tattooed in a circle around the compartment.
“You did it!” Trinket squealed, throwing her arms around me and knocking me back down to the floor. I cried out as my bad arm got squished; and of course, that was when the police arrived, guns drawn.
Trinket froze on top of me. I rolled my head to look across the room. Two uniformed officers had guns pointed at the three of us, a couple of paramedics hovering behind them. Incarra raised her hands up in surrender. I smiled at the nice policemen.
“Howdy fellas. What brings you here?” I called out.
Incarra gave me an incredulous look.
“We got a call that you were in some dire distress,” Hamilton said as he emerged from the stairwell. I grinned at him. The pain in my arm was beginning to make me a bit loopy.
“Hamilton! Better late than never.”
“You know me. I like to make an entrance.”
Incarra said sharply, “When you’re done with the sassy banter part of the evening, might I remind you there is still a gun pointed at me?”
Hamilton stepped up to his officers, putting a hand on each of their shoulders. “Stand down gentleman, they’re the good guys.”
They put their guns up.
“Feel better?” I asked. Incarra nodded. “You can put your hands down.”
Incarra looked at me, at the officers, then at her hands, slowly lowering them. Trinket got off me, righting her dress, and I sat up, using my good arm for support.
“Another interesting night out, huh?” I said.
“You could say tha
t.”
“This one’s alive,” called one of the paramedics.
Incarra huffed. “I could have told you that,” she muttered.
I burst out laughing and wound up on my back again, gasping for breath. Two polished black shoes overhung by green pants cuffs appeared next to my head. I looked up at a burly woman with buzz-cut blonde hair.
“You hurt?” Her name stripe read Dixie.
“Nope.”
“Her arm’s broken,” Incarra said. I shot her a glare.
“You’ll have to have a doctor look at that,” the paramedic said.
I sat up and swiveled on my butt to face her. “No, thanks,” I said.
The paramedic eyed me and my floppy arm. “Looks like you’ve got a dislocated shoulder too, poppet,” she said in her best reasonable tone. “You’re going to have to go to the hospital.”
“I don’t want to go to the frikkin hospital. I can get medical attention elsewhere.”
“Mister Hamilton,” Incarra called, drawing him back over to us.
“Judas,” I exclaimed at her.
Hamilton joined us, eyebrows raised. “What seems to be the problem, ladies?”
“She’s one of yours?” Dixie asked. “She’s got a dislocated shoulder and her friend says her arm’s broken too.”
Hamilton looked at my arm; I’d automatically begun cradling it protectively to me. He hesitated, then shook his head. “To the hospital with you and I’ll brook no discussions about it. I’ll look after them,” he nodded at Incarra and Trinket, clearly forgetting their names. I grumbled and glared at the floor. I didn’t want to go to the hospital. Hospitals meant needles and tests, neither of which I enjoy.
“Can you walk or do I need to get the gurney?” asked the paramedic, correctly reading my reluctance.
“I can walk,” I said, using my good arm to push up onto my knees and then to my feet. Hamilton put his hand on my good shoulder.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure everything gets wrapped up for you.”
I pointed at the chair I’d been tied to.
“There is a knife in the chair over there,” I told him. “You’ll find it’s the murder weapon and it should have her prints all over it.” I nodded in the direction of the Madame, who was being loaded onto a gurney.
“Come on now, sweetheart,” Dixie said, “we’ll get you seen to. This way.”
I rolled my eyes. “My arm’s broke, not my brain, lady.”
Scowling, she held the door for me; we walked up the stairs to where people were rushing about—officers securing the scene and a third ambulance arriving.
“This one over here,” she said, pointing me in the direction of an open ambulance where another paramedic was pulling bits of a kit together. “Chris, we got a passenger. Help her into the back, I’ll drive.”
She dumped her own kit on the end of the gurney. Chris, a gawky boy whose lapel read “trainee”, finished getting his kit out of the way and turned to help me. He put one hand on my good elbow and the other on my waist, pulling me up into the back. He pulled the doors closed and directed me to the gurney. I sat on it.
“Would you like to lie down?” he asked me, smiling.
“Not particularly,” I said.
He scratched his head. “Umm … you’re supposed to. You’ll be much more comfortable.”
“I’d rather sit up, thanks.”
He looked over the arm that I was cradling. “That’s got to hurt.”
“Like a son of a bitch. Think we can do something about that?”
“I’m not authorized.”
I grumbled and finally did lie down so I didn’t have to look at the kid. I stared at the roof of the van as we drove through the town, headed for the hospital. I heard Dixie radioing my condition so that appropriate measures could be taken for my arrival. Trainee boy took my blood pressure and filled in a number of things on a little clipboard chart. I was thinking over my options—I couldn’t go home, but a doctor looking at my arm would tell I didn’t heal like a human. I was still trying to keep it from common knowledge. If I’d been given a choice, I could have gone to the were doctor at the community—I had good will there, they would have helped me. I only knew of one human doctor I thought I could trust here.
We pulled up a few minutes later. Chris pushed open the doors, rushing out. I gingerly lowered myself out of the back of the ambulance. Chris reappeared with a wheelchair.
“Hell, no, I can walk.” I turned to go into the building but was blocked by the massive form of Dixie.
“Stop giving us trouble and sit down.” She gave my good shoulder a little push and I fell back into the chair. I grumbled viciously under my breath as Chris arranged my feet onto the pedals then pushed me inside. A male doctor joined us.
“What do we have here?”
“Female, early twenties, dislocated left shoulder, query broken arm,” she said, rattling off my injuries while I grumbled ‘I am not a number’. “And one hell of an attitude. All yours, doc.”
I cradled my arm and glared at my feet in protest.
He said, “Bring her through to cubicles and let’s take a look.”
We took a maze of blue and white sterile corridors until we were in a room with curtained off little cubbies. We pulled in next to a bed.
“Okay, young lady; think you can hop up here on the bed for me?”
I got out of the chair and sat on the edge of the bed. Chris took the chair away and Dixie followed after him. The doctor closed the curtains and I pulled away from him.
“I want to see Doctor Armitage.”
“Doctor Armitage is with another patient. Let me take a look at your arm.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Now, young lady–”
“Don’t young lady me, doc. I’m twenty-two, hardly that much younger than you. I want to see Christine Armitage. She’s already apprised of my special care needs, and I’ve said I’ll wait.”
He got an unhappy twist to his mouth and marched off, leaving me in the cubicle by myself. I sat back on the bed, closing my eyes. I almost wanted to call him back and tell him he could give me some pain medicine, then go find Doctor Armitage.
I’ve never been a fan of hospitals. I don’t like the bleached clean smell and the needles and the fact that lots of people go into them only to come out dead. Okay, I didn’t really need to worry about that last one so much, but there were still the needles. I rubbed my hand slowly along my sore arm, feeling it tingle in response. I felt things already moving about under my skin, trying to put things right. It was a feeling I was getting used to. I had no real choice.
The skin felt twitchy; that was an emotional thing, I suspected, more than physical. I didn’t feel comfortable inside my own skin any longer. I kept thinking that one day I’d grow a beak or sprout feathers or get exceptionally long, talon-like toenails. I worried about it so much that some nights I lost sleep.
The curtain swished open and closed again. Doctor Armitage said, in a tired voice, “Hello, Miss Farbanks.” Her blonde hair had grown out some since the last time I’d seen her; now there was enough of it for a short ponytail.
“You can call me Cassandra.”
She twisted her lips slightly. “Mmm hmm,” she said, picking up the notes that the other doctor had started taking. “I haven’t seen you since you walked out of my office, and now you demand to be seen by me.”
“I trust you to be discreet.”
“I have little choice. If I claimed to have discovered a new species, but you look just like us, I’d be laughed out of the hospital.”
She flipped through the paperwork, which was scarcely filled in.
“You’ll have to have an x-ray.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked suspiciously.
Well, there were two reasons, one being that I didn’t want to have proof that my arm had indeed been broken lying around when I knew it wasn’t going to take as long as it should to heal, but I went with the second reason.
“Because an x-ray machine is an expensive piece of machinery that you don’t want to replace. I’d probably short it out or blow it up. Magic and technology don’t like each other. It’s why I can’t get more than dial-up and am banned from ever visiting the senior center again.”
She looked me over, visibly uncertain whether to believe me.
“All right, let me take a look,” she said, taking my floppy arm and feeling along the bones. I winced at the uncomfortable pain it generated. “If this was broken, it’s setting already.” She felt up to the joint at my elbow. “You still have the dislocation here though.” She pushed on my shoulder. I grunted.
“I still feel pain, y’know, doc.”
She nodded. “It’s only going to get worse,” she said, peeking out of the curtain to call out. “Can I get a hand in here please?”
A wiry black nurse in blue scrubs entered the cubicle. He looked to the doctor for instructions.
“I need you to hold her shoulders,” she instructed, raising my arm and twisting it a little to the right. When the nurse had a tight grip, she said, “On three. One, three.” She shoved my arm. I heard my bones jam back into place and I screamed with the pain. I lashed out with my good arm, knocking the nurse onto his back.
“Son of a bitch!” I yelled.
“I warned you,” she said, and pulled up my chart, scrawling across it in that illegible script only doctors have. “Are you all right, nurse?”
He pulled himself up using the bed for support. “Yeah, must have slipped.”
“That will be all, thank you.” He nodded and ducked out of the cubicle. She put the chart down next to me.
“You forgot two,” I grumbled.
“You’ll forgive me once I give you something for the pain. Your strength seems more constant than before.”
“Yeah, I had a period of a few weeks where I kept breaking everything I touched, but I think I have the hang of it now.”
“I’d love to talk about it more but let’s take care of the pain first.” The pain she spoke of was more a dull, unending ache now, but I was ready for it to go away. She left me for a few minutes, returning with splints, bandages, and a tub of clear liquid with a needle. She started to wrap the bandages and splints around my arm.
Silent Doll Page 22
