Storm of Shadows

by Christina Dodd

  Was the older woman going to say something else? Had she taken possession of his brain? Could she control him?

  And Rosamund said, “I know you weren’t raised in normal circumstances, but didn’t anyone ever tell you not to stare at people who are scarred?”

  “What?”

  “You don’t stare at people who are scarred.” Rosamund sounded exasperated and a little angry. “I mean, that poor woman. Isn’t it enough that someone slit her nose down the middle, without having some guy in a suit staring at her?”

  “What?” Aaron searched his brain. He seemed alone, but then, he hadn’t been aware of anyone in there until the words had whispered through his head.

  “Aaron!” Rosamund let go of his arm. “Are you really so insensitive?”

  He looked down at her.

  She looked flushed and indignant, her violet eyes narrowed behind dark-rimmed glasses, her carroty hair almost sparking. “You really are that insensitive!” With a huff, she stalked away.

  Nothing else could have yanked him out of his stupor. After all that had happened in the last five days, and now this, he was not letting Rosamund escape him. Lengthening his stride, he caught up with her, took her arm, and hustled her toward the street. “I’m not being insensitive. I recognized her, and she could cause problems.” It was sort of true, and he needed to soothe Rosamund, get her to Irving’s, and in a hurry.

  “You know her? I take it she’s not a friend.”

  “No.”

  “Did her husband do that to her?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “In old Spain, a husband would slit his wife’s nose down the middle as a punishment for infidelity.”

  Rosamund would know something like that. He suspected she was a repository of odd facts. . . . “I don’t know who did it.”

  “I hope she got her revenge.” Rosamund stalked along beside him. “You wouldn’t think that kind of barbaric behavior was possible today, but husbands still have too much power over their wives. She looks Romany—”

  “Gypsy. Of course. She’s a gypsy!” He couldn’t believe it took Rosamund to point that out. Where was his brain?

  Maybe the gypsy was blocking his thoughts. Or maybe he was just petrified.

  “Romany, maybe from another country. The injury must have happened when she was young. I think she’s had plastic surgery, but probably it had healed so it was too late to really fix it. How could you recognize her and not know this? What do you mean, she could cause problems?” Rosamund pulled her arm free. “And would you stop shoving me around?”

  “I’m sorry. I saw a cab. On the street. I wanted to catch it. Rush hour, you know? Are you hungry? Irving has two cooks now, good ones, and I make a point of being there for dinner.” He was babbling, trying to distract her, herding her through the exit from the zoo.

  “You’re not answering any of my questions.” The girl was too smart for her own good.

  “I will. When we get to Irving’s, you can ask anything you want.” Not that she was going to get any real answers, but she could certainly ask. He flung his arm up at the oncoming cab and the driver swerved to the curb.

  As she climbed in, Rosamund said grudgingly, “You’re really good at that.”

  “What?”

  “Making the cabs stop.”

  Certainly it made sense that, looking like she did, like an incredibly intelligent bag lady, she would have trouble getting a cab.

  Irving’s mansion was less than a mile away, a nineteenth-century, perfectly preserved behemoth complete with dozens of bedrooms, a library with shelves that rose from floor to ceiling, a cavernous dining room that would seat thirty, and at least a dozen bedrooms. Usually Irving, the ninety-three-year-old former CEO of the Gypsy Travel Agency and protector of the Chosen Ones, lived alone with his butler, went to work in the mornings, and went home at noon for his nap. That nap had saved his life, for he had been sleeping when the explosion occurred.

  McKenna, the butler, and Martha, the dedicated servant of the Gypsy Travel Agency, rounded out their beleaguered group.

  As Aaron paid the cab, Rosamund stood admiring the mansion’s exterior, talking about neo-French Classic style and finials until he took a long breath to stave off boredom. Then he hustled her up the stairs to the front door. As he reached up to ring the bell, the door was flung open and Aleksandr Wilder rushed out. The twenty-one-year-old was tall, rail-thin, with big bones and the facial features of a Cossack. He was also as clumsy as a puppy, smacking into Rosamund’s shoulder. If Aaron hadn’t had his arm around her waist, she would have tumbled down the stairs.

  “Take it easy!” Aaron snapped, and when Aleksandr would have steadied her, Aaron pushed his hands away.

  “I’m sorry!” Aleksandr looked into her eyes and blushed bright red. “I’m just . . . I tutor calculus at Ford-ham in the summer and I haven’t been there because of . . . you know . . . so they called home and talked to my grandmother, who is a scary woman when she’s mad. She called and spoke to Irving, so now I get to go out, but I’m late. So . . . sorry!”

  “Be careful out there.” Aleksandr scanned the exclusive neighborhood, hoping not to see that woman, never to experience that mind-speaking again.

  “I am careful,” Aleksandr assured him. “My grandfather taught me careful before I could walk.”

  Aaron supposed that was true. The boy was related to the famous Wilders. Nineteen years ago they had broken their pact with the devil—the pact that gave them infamous powers—and in doing so, had freed everyone in their extended family, too, even the Varinski branch of the Ukraine. Apparently, not all of them had taken the downfall with any grace, and while no one knew for certain, Aaron suspected the devil was none too pleased, either.

  But while Aleksandr claimed he had been trained to watch for danger, he showed no signs of caution now. Instead, he backed down the stairs, stumbling over every other step, and all the while, he stared at Rosamund. “Hi.” He waved a hand malformed by fire. “You must be the librarian. Will I see you later?”

  Obviously, he didn’t give a damn about seeing Aaron later.

  “She’s got a date tonight.” Aaron hadn’t thought he would be glad to say it, but he was.

  Aleksandr slumped. “Man, Aaron. You move fast.” Turning, he galloped down the steps.

  “Not with Aaron,” Rosamund called after him.

  “He’s out of earshot.” A fact Aaron felt great satisfaction in telling her.

  “How did he know I was a librarian?”

  Aaron guided her through the open door. “Because I went out to find the world’s foremost expert on prophecies.”

  “I’m sorry you didn’t get my father, but I really am awfully good with prophecies and languages.” Abruptly, she stopped walking, stopped talking.

  Shutting the door behind them, he could see her absorbing the marble floor, the soaring gilded ceiling, the matching Chippendale tables, the original Chagall hanging on the wall. He saw the moment when she made her decision about the decorating.

  Her quiet face lit up with pleasure; she clutched Aaron’s arm, and turned those warm violet eyes on him. “You were right. The ambience is a stunning mix of nineteenth-century glamour and mid-twentieth-century modernism. Did Mr. Shea put this together himself? Because if he did, he has a discerning eye.”

  A form moved out of the shadows, took the shape of Irving’s man of all trades, and bore down on them. “Actually, Dr. Hall—I assume you are Dr. Hall?”

  Aaron said, “Dr. Rosamund Hall, this is McKenna, Mr. Shea’s butler.”

  She shook McKenna’s hand.

  “I did the decorating, using original antiques from the mansion and adding the best of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, taking care to imbue this area with wealth and quiet elegance to match Mr. Shea’s image.” McKenna, a middle-aged, conservatively suited hobbit of a man, had a ponderous way of speaking that could possibly go on forever.

  Aaron was preparing to intervene when, across the foyer,
one of the doors slammed open.

  A young woman walked out. Her hair was jet-black with purple highlights, her eyes were rimmed in black kohl, and she wore a plaid skirt, gold lamé platform heels, a studded dog collar, and matching leather bracelets that covered the tattoos Aaron knew were there. Holding an empty paper tube aloft, Charisma stalked toward the library and bellowed, “All right! Who left the toilet paper for me to change again?”

  Chapter 7

  “It’s a miracle.” Dr. Campbell slipped his stethoscope into the pocket of his white coat and beamed. “In this place, it’s not often I get to say that. Mr. White, you are a miracle.”

  “I appreciate that.” Gary restrained his impatience, using the controls on the hospital bed to move himself into a sitting position. “Now, please, I’ve been asking for food and I’m getting no cooperation at all.”

  The doctor’s tired face grew serious. “You have to realize, Mr. White, you’ve been in a coma for four years. You’ve been fed through an IV.”

  Like Gary didn’t know that. Days and weeks and months and years of that eternal drip, drip, drip landing in his veins and echoing through his head, and every time, his rage and frustration—and fear—grew.

  But Dr. Campbell was still babbling. “Until we do some testing, we’d like you to keep eating through a tube—”

  “I want some food.”

  The floor nurse moved restively. “I told you, doctor, he’s been very insistent and not at all cooperative. He tore the IV tubes out of his arm.”

  The doctor, the nurses, the technicians lined the little private room in this cold, dim mausoleum of a nursing home where Gary’s living body had been stored, out of sight and out of mind, for the last four years. They stared at him as if he were the freak in a sideshow, and acted as if he should be happy to look on their faces.

  Instead, he wanted to rant and rage.

  But he didn’t. He kept his voice low and in a reasonable tone said, “I am the patient. You’re the medical staff. My insurance is paying you to take care of me. I don’t need to cooperate with you; you need to cooperate with me.” Then his voice changed, grew deep and commanding. “And I want to eat.”

  Slowly, with great patience, as if Gary were simple-minded, Dr. Campbell said, “Mr. White, your muscles are atrophied, your digestive system is compromised, and until last night, when you woke up so unexpectedly, your brain showed little activity. We believed you were on the verge of death. Please let us revel in the miracle of your recovery while we do the necessary tests to determine how—”

  Gary interrupted. “Let me make myself clear. I don’t want anyone to know that I’ve come out of the coma.”

  “But your relatives!” the nurse said.

  “I don’t have any relatives.”

  “Just two days ago we had inquiries about your condition!” she insisted.

  God, she was a stupid cow. “My employer who hopes I will die, no doubt.”

  “No.” Nurse McStupid sent an appealing glance toward the doctor. “No, not your employer.”

  Dr. Campbell shook his head at her.

  Gary pounced on that. “What about my employer?”

  Dr. Campbell said, “Mr. White, you really should focus on your recovery—”

  At the same time, Nurse McStupid said, “There’s been an accident.”

  He looked back and forth between them, then saw the technicians were watching the television, eternally turned on and now muted.

  The Gypsy Travel Agency building, a sight Gary knew all too well, flashed across the screen.

  Gary reached for the remote, turned up the sound, and got the last of the story.

  The Gypsy Travel Agency had exploded five days ago in a still unexplained demolition that left the building and everyone in it vaporized.

  The technicians and nurses were shaking their heads as if it was a tragedy.

  Nurse McStupid was watching Gary anxiously, as if expecting him to dissolve in surprised tears.

  But he felt nothing but a bone-deep satisfaction.

  Dr. Campbell took the remote out of Gary’s hand and turned off the television. “The world has changed while you were asleep.”

  “So true. It appears I’m no longer employed.”

  “But you do have at least one relative,” McStupid said. “The very night of the explosion, you had two visitors, a woman named Martha—I thought she was your aunt—and an elderly man who escorted her. He was tall and black; I don’t remember his name.”

  “Irving,” Gary said with loathing.

  “Yes, that was it. Your aunt said you used to be a hero.”

  “I am a hero.” Being a hero was how Gary got in that coma, and without help from any of his “relatives,” he had gotten himself out.

  “You’ve been one of our favorite patients. The story of the blast that caused your head injuries indicated that you tried to save six lives at great risk to your own. It’s that kind of behavior that has won you the admiration of everyone here.” Gary could see through the doctor’s machinations. He was trying to make Gary be a good guy and live up to his reputation.

  Gary had spent his life living up to that reputation, and look what it got him. Four damned lost years. “I am not going to hang around here, being a human guinea pig so you can get published in the New England Journal of Medicine.” The doctor wanted to speak, but Gary had no intention of yielding the floor. “So bring me food, help me get on my feet, and get me out of here as fast as you can.”

  The festive atmosphere in the room faded as the medical staff grew quiet, hostile.

  “Well,” Dr. Campbell said stiffly, “I’m sorry to hear you feel that way, especially about the nurses who have worked so vigilantly to care for you for so many years.”

  The doctor wanted Gary to feel guilty.

  He didn’t.

  The doctor straightened his skinny shoulders and prepared to throw his weight around. “Nevertheless, your best interests are at the heart of my concern, and I intend to personally supervise your recovery. Until you can stand up and walk out of this room, this is where you will stay.”

  “Walk out of this room? Is that all I need to do?” Shoving the covers aside, Gary sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.

  The floor nurse, Miss McStupid Cow, rushed to his side. “Mr. White, you shouldn’t do this.”

  “Let him go.” Dr. Campbell watched with the grim satisfaction of a man who expected to be momentarily vindicated. “He wants to prove something to us. He’s going to prove something to himself, instead.”

  Gary wanted to laugh, but he saved his breath for the effort of getting his feet on the floor.

  The linoleum was cold. So was the bed rail he used to steady himself. He leaned against the mattress until the muscles in his legs were once again used to holding his own weight; then slowly he pushed off.

  The nurse hovered there, hands outstretched.

  He snorted. Lifting his foot, he took a shuffling step.

  The whole room took a collective breath of surprise.

  He balanced again, and took another step. He let go of the railing, steadied himself, and took another step. And another.

  His hips ached from the unaccustomed weight, his knees creaked, the legs that stuck out from beneath the flowered hospital gown were emaciated and stringy with sinew. Yet with each step, he could feel his strength returning.

  Yes. This was what he had bargained for. This was what he’d been promised.

  He got to the door, took two steps outside, then returned to step across the threshold. Staring at Dr. Campbell in cold triumph, he said, “So as you can see, I can leave whenever I want. But first—I want a god-damn meal!”

  Dr. Campbell turned to Nurse McStupid. “Start him on clear liquids, and as soon as he holds them down and passes fluids—”

  “I know the routine,” she said.

  Turning back to Gary, the doctor said, “Mr. White, I don’t know how it is possible for you to wake from such a debilitating coma and be alert a
nd strong enough to move, much less walk, but I can assure you we’ll do everything we can to get you out of here in a hurry. In the meantime, you should be thanking God for bringing you back from the brink of death.”

  “Thank God? I assure you, God had nothing to do with it.” Gary grinned savagely as he made his way back to the bed. “Rather—I’ll pay the devil his due.”

  Chapter 8

  McKenna gave a pained sigh. “I’m sorry you had to witness that, Dr. Hall. I’m afraid our little group is growing impatient with each other ’s foibles.”