Karin shook her head. “No, there was a committee and everything.”
“Maybe it’s not about boundaries.” I bounced my foot, my legs restless. If I was right, this was very bad.
“What do you mean?” Jayce asked.
“Maybe Toeller didn’t help shift the boundaries to keep the Bell and Thistle in Doyle for her magical purposes,” I said, my insides shriveling. “Maybe she shifted it to keep it and Doyle from becoming overrun as a resort.” If this was true, it wouldn’t matter where Karin had her baby.
“You think she didn’t want to share the water?” Karin asked. “It might track. There are stories around the world of fairy springs. When they’re tampered with, bad things happen to those involved.”
“Did bad things happen?” Jayce asked. “To the people pushing for the health spa, I mean?”
“The president of the committee was one of the murder victims at the wellhouse,” she said.
My foot stilled. “It’s strange. I’ve never seen ghosts at the wellhouse. You’d think if more than one person was murdered there – how many were killed?”
“Three,” Karin said. “The killer was never found.”
“How did we not know this?” Jayce asked. “You’d think that would be scandalous enough to make it into a modern tourism brochure.”
“But the wellhouse was never developed as a tourist site,” Karin said. “At least, not during our lifetime. It’s–” Her face distorted.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said. “I just feel–” She went rigid and fell sideways, crashing to the paving stones in a pile of glass and crockery.
“Karin!” I cried out.
Jayce and I leapt from our chairs and knelt beside her. People at nearby tables murmured, watching, their expressions uncertain.
Face ashen, Jayce lightly slapped Karin’s face. “Karin!” She looked at me. “She’s breathing.”
I fumbled in my purse and grabbed my cell phone. Beneath my tunic, beneath my skin, my heart thundered, painful. I called nine-one-one.
A slender, blond waitress hurried to us. “What’s happened? Is she all right?”
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“My sister’s unconscious,” I said. “Please send an ambulance to...” I glanced at the waitress.
She gave me the address, and I repeated it to the dispatcher. “She’s pregnant,” I said, my voice tight and sharp. “We have a family history of preclampsia.”
“Has your sister been diagnosed with it?” she asked.
“I don’t... I’m not sure.” Whenever I’d asked Karin about the pregnancy, she’d told me everything was fine. And I hadn’t pressed, because I’d wanted to hear everything was okay.
The dispatcher was saying something.
“What?” I asked.
“An ambulance is on the way,” she said. “Help will be there in ten minutes.”
“Thank you,” I choked out and hung up. “Ten minutes,” I said to Jayce.
Her face tightened. Ten minutes might be too late.
“Lenore,” she said in a low voice, “can you...?”
In answer, I took Karin’s limp hand and closed my eyes. The other customers probably thought I was praying. In a way I was, asking the Divine to be with me, calling my animal spirits to guide me to wherever she’d gone.
Fleeting images passed before my closed eyes. A little girl with auburn hair in a blue dress. The sun behind redwood branches, swaying in a breeze. A rabbit wriggling into a hole in the earth.
Karin, where are you?
And then Karin and I were standing in the center of the labyrinth in her yard, the scent of lavender blossoms heady in the balmy summer air. One of the low bushes that made the labyrinth tickled the backs of my knees.
She grasped my hand. “Thank God you’re here. What happened? How did I get here?”
“You fainted in the restaurant.” I’d found her. She was still alive. Shaking my head, I briefly closed my eyes.
She blanched. “But how... Am I dead?”
“No. You only passed out. You’re alive.” For now. I rocked in place. I had to keep her safe, keep her well.
A crow settled on the sloped roof of her shingled bungalow and cocked its head.
Uneasy, I turned from it and focused on the labyrinth. “Why did you come here?”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t... I didn’t plan it. One minute I was with you in the restaurant, and the next I was here and too afraid...”
“Too afraid to what?” I asked.
“To leave.” She glanced down. The center of the labyrinth was a patch of tanbark no more than three feet across. “Labyrinths are portals, you know.”
I didn’t.
She gulped. “There are rituals surrounding labyrinths. When you enter, you’re supposed to say thank you to the lady of the labyrinth, she who can never be unveiled.”
Karin was rambling, fear wide in her eyes. I let her talk.
“When you leave a labyrinth,” she continued, “you’re supposed to back out the last three steps. Is that what I should do? I get the sense that if I stay here, I won’t wake up, will I?”
Wings flapped. The crow croaked, harsh and loud.
I glanced at Karin’s house. The turkey vulture had joined the crow. The smaller bird hopped, flapping its wings, as if attempting to drive it off.
“I should go.” She turned toward the open path.
A sick certainty grasped my throat. “No,” I said quickly. “It isn’t safe.”
“Why?”
“You feel safe here,” I said. “So do I. This is your place, your power spot. It’s been a power spot for us all. Remember when Jayce was attacked by those crows last winter? She was safe in here. They couldn’t get at her.” The vision of Karin and the labyrinth turned watery, and I grasped her hand more tightly. “Stay here until I come and get you.”
My sister telescoped away from me. A mist formed between us.
“Karin? Karin!” And then I was stumbling backward. My hip struck a round table. Glass shattered. Paramedics surrounded Karin, and a police officer was pulling me away.
“Lenore?” Jayce asked, her green eyes dark with worry.
I shook my head, unable to speak. I didn’t know what would happen to Karin now, or if I’d helped or hurt. I hadn’t had time to plan. This wasn’t the way a shamanic journey was supposed to happen!
“I’m okay,” I told the policeman, and he released me.
We watched the paramedics lay our sister on a stretcher, followed them as they wheeled her through the restaurant. The other patrons stared, silent.
“Where are you taking her?” Jayce asked a paramedic.
“Doyle,” he said.
“No!” I shouted. Toeller was at Doyle.
“It’s the best and closest hospital,” the paramedic said. “We’re going.”
“But–”
Jayce grasped my arm. “She’ll be okay,” she said fiercely. “We’ll meet them there. We’ll protect her.”
“How?” We had no power there, no right to override the doctors. We couldn’t protect her from Toeller.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We paced the blue-carpeted waiting room. An African-American family huddled around a cluster of pale yellow couches and chairs, waiting for news of a loved one.
An old man sat slumped in a wheelchair beside the reception desk. The nurse behind it rose and rolled him through the swinging doors into the emergency room’s inner sanctum.
Bloodied ghosts, some clasping their broken limbs, wandered, searching for help. I couldn’t meet their gaze. Tonight was for Karin.
Nick strode through the automatic glass doors, his dark hair mussed. Tension lined his face, and his business suit was rumpled. “Lenore, Jayce! How is she?”
Jayce hugged him. “We don’t–”
A doctor in blue scrubs walked through the double doors. Spotting us, he nodded and smiled briefly.
“There’s the doc
tor,” Jayce said. Toeller had been out of the hospital when they’d brought Karin in, and we prayed she stayed out.
“Ms. Bonheim, Ms. Bonheim,” the doctor said to us. “Your sister is resting.”
“She’s okay?” I motioned to Nick. “Sorry, this is her fiancé, Nick Heathcoat.”
The two men shook hands.
The doctor turned to me. “Your sister had an eclamptic seizure.”
“But she didn’t have any hypertension,” Nick said. “We’ve been watching for it, since preeclampsia runs in her family.”
“It’s unusual, but some women do have eclampsia without exhibiting hypertension,” the doctor said.
“Will she be all right?” Nick clawed his hand through his black hair.
“We’re treating her with medication and rest, but the only real way to treat her is to deliver the baby.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. We’d counted on having three more months to solve our problem, but an early delivery changed everything. How much time did we have left?
“But she’s only six months along,” Nick said.
“We’ll see how the medication works,” the doctor said. “Then we can make a decision.”
“Can I see her?” Nick asked.
“We’re moving her to a new room now. Give it an hour, and then ask at the desk. They’ll tell you where she is.”
Nick wrung his hand. “Thank you.”
The doctor nodded and vanished through the swinging doors.
“How did it happen?” Nick asked, hoarse. “What happened?”
Jayce shot me a worried look. “We were having brunch–”
“Where?” he asked.
“In Angels Camp,” I said.
He took a step back, his face paling. “You weren’t in Doyle? But we thought...” He turned away. They’d thought what we’d hoped, that she’d be safe outside Doyle.
“Maybe it’s the mountains,” he muttered. “Maybe she wasn’t far enough.”
“I could use some coffee,” Jayce said. “Nick, would you come with me?”
“Sure,” he said absently.
“Can we get you anything, Lenore?” she asked.
I shook my head, unable to speak through the icy fear flowing between us.
“We’ll be back soon,” Jayce said.
I watched them leave, then I rose. I walked through the sliding glass doors and outside, into the parking lot. The sun, almost straight above me, warmed my shoulders and glinted off the snow-capped mountains.
Winding through the parked cars, I walked to the end of the lot, where the concrete ended and the forest began. Karin had once found a woman in these woods – an escapee from the unseelie’s world. The old woman had died before we’d gotten the chance to ask her how she’d broken free. We’d taken her escape as a sign that the fairy’s power was waning. I hoped to hell we were right.
A breeze shifted the tops of the redwoods. Their branches whispered against each other.
I stepped off the macadam and onto the bracken-covered earth. In the shade of the redwoods, the temperature dropped.
Fists clenched, I made my way down the slope, careful on the damp earth and leaves.
I brushed past ferns and coffee berry bushes until I reached a fallen log. Five redwoods loomed around it, forming a sheltered clearing. I listened and heard only the sounds of the woods. A bird twittered. Branches rustled. Far off, water trickled like running footsteps. I bent my head and thought I heard a far-off echo of sobbing.
This would do.
Karin was in danger. I’d gone to Lower World before to find the spiritual cause of infections and pull them from their host. This was no different. Doctor Toeller’s curse was an infection in Karin that didn’t belong.
I sat on the log. Closing my eyes, I went inward, to my breath, to the beat of blood in my veins.
Sinking deeper, I found my heartbeat. I followed the sound, my own internal drum. I imagined myself walking to the roots of the largest redwood. I dropped alongside the roots, into the earth and an underground cavern.
Crystals in the walls lit the uneven earth and the three passages sloping downward before me.
A man stood in the left-branching passage.
I froze.
Scars crisscrossed his face. His plain, white t-shirt, stretched too tight across his broad chest. The man’s jeans sagged around his hips. Light from the crystals glinted eerily off his golden hair. The look he turned on me wrung my heart with memories of loss and missed chances. “Are you willing?” he growled.
“What are you?” I whispered.
Silent, he turned, vanishing down the left-hand passage.
I hesitated. The spirits always met me in Lower, Middle, or Upper Worlds. I’d never encountered anything or anyone in this passage between worlds before. “Willing to do what?” I called after him.
“Lenore.” The word was a whispering echo.
Leaden, my legs stumbled forward, pulling me down the left passage. “Who are you?”
But the man had vanished.
His footsteps padded steadily down the corridor.
I stopped resisting and hurried forward. “Wait!”
I followed the sound of his stealthy footsteps down winding passages, going ever and ever deeper.
The air grew stale, warm. “Are you the Rose Rabbit?” My words bounced off the rough stone walls.
I rounded the corner.
The man stood beside an outcropping of stone, so black it appeared burnt.
“Tell me who you are,” I said. “Are you the Rose Rabbit?”
He ducked down and slithered through a gap in the rocks.
Getting on my hands and knees, I followed, grazing my elbows on the jagged stone.
His bare feet vanished through a gap in the tight tunnel.
The heartbeat that had guided me now thundered in my ears. Blind, I felt my way. The rocks were too close. I’d be stuck here, trapped. But the man had gotten through, and he was twice my size.
Ahead, a faint, watery light turned the passage charcoal. I thought I caught a glimpse of white fur.
Panting, I clawed my way forward. There was always a barrier like this on my journeys – usually through water, occasionally through fire. I always had to pass through one of the four elements to reach Lower World. This passage through earth was no different, even if someone or something had appeared to guide me here.
The light brightened, glittering off the damp rocks. A brilliant, vertical arc of light – the exit – made me wince. I was nearly there.
Something grasped my foot.
I shrieked, banging my head on the rock ceiling.
And then I was being dragged backward. I clawed at the earth. The light dimmed. The man howled my name, a fearful echo.
My fingertips scraped stone. I squirmed, my heartbeat exploding in my chest.
The grip on my ankle tightened, cold and hard as iron chains.
And then I was flying, the cave telescoping, the glowing crystals a blur.
Gasping, I tumbled backwards off the log and landed in ferns. Above me the towering redwood branches framed a blue puzzle-piece of sky.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice?” Doctor Toeller stood over me, one corner of her mouth slanted upward. Dazzling, a sunbeam haloed her silver-gold cap of hair. A breeze stirred the hem of her ice-blue duster. Light streamed from her alabaster skin. Once again, I glimpsed her true form – pale and feral and glowing with power.
Fear coursed through my body, freezing me in place, hardening my stomach.
She cocked her head. “What did you think you were doing?” The vision faded with her words, and she was the doctor again, her skin merely odd in its perfection. She turned and walked away.
I scrambled to my feet. “Why?” My voice cracked. “Why do you need us?”
She paused and looked over her shoulder at me. “I don’t.”
“Every seven years, someone disappears. Why? Why take the Bell and Thistle and all the people inside? Is it
a sacrifice, like Alba said?”
Her lip curled. “Alba was a foolish old woman.” She waved her hand negligently, and a cold wave shuddered through me. “Besides, you’ll all die one way or another. What are a few years?”
“A few years?! They’re our lives! They mean something!”
“But you’re meant to die. It’s what makes your world so charming, so interesting. It’s fascinating.” Her blue eyes glowed. “It’s why I became a doctor. To study you, to see all your pain and mortality in their full glory.”
“You don’t belong here.” My voice trembled. I couldn’t breathe, my chest constricting.
“You are the ones who don’t belong.”
I pointed a quivering finger. “Doctor Toeller, I banish you from this plane!”
She burbled with laughter. “You? Mousy little Lenore? Banish me? You barely exist on this plane yourself. And you thought you would invade my home and… do what?”
The wind stilled in the branches. The birds fell silent.
“You thought you’d treat me like one of your Lower World spirits? Rip me from your patient and discard me in lower world? You can’t possibly be that arrogant, so I can only assume you’re stupider than I gave you credit for. This is my world now. I like what I’ve created here, and I’m not leaving.”
“No.” But the word was a whisper, so quiet even I could barely hear it.
The doctor vanished.
Strings cut, my knees buckled and hit the soft earth.
There was a loud crack, and I looked up just in time to get a face full of rain. The sky was sullen gray. Had the fairy caused the downpour for dramatic effect? Could she control the weather too? I’d been stupid – stupid and arrogant – to attack something that powerful.
Something bit into my palm, and I opened my hands. A rough quartz crystal, partially covered in loose earth, lay in one hand. I stared, my mind a dull blank.
She’d pulled me out of the passage. She’d frozen me in place. She’d moved about by magic, appearing in the passage between worlds and vanishing in this one. My power was in my shamanic ability, and she’d easily thwarted me. I choked, nauseated.
Water puddled around my knees. I couldn’t beat her. I was done.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
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