by Rob Cornell
I stood. “He’s at Royal Oak General,” I said as casually as possible. “He’s in—”
Elaine trudged across the small space between us and smacked me upside the head. “What the heavens did ye take him there for?”
She hit me pretty hard. I waited a second for the stars across my vision to twinkle out. “He was coughing up blood, barely conscious. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You come an’ get me’s what.” She wrung her hands and paced away from me. She made a guttural groan that undulated in tone and volume. It almost sounding like a wordless chant. Then she spun around. “Can’t do it, love. They’ll kill me.”
“No one’s going to kill you. This is Sly we’re talking about. The doctors have no idea what’s wrong with him. They keep babbling about exactly nothing. But I don’t think he’s going to last long.”
She puckered her mouth so tightly her lips went white. Her nostrils flared. Her crystal eyes glared at me from their doughy caverns. “I should kill ya, love. But you don’t punish ignorance.” She looked up and laced her hands together against her heavy breast. She whispered something. A prayer or incantation maybe.
“Please,” I said.
“Hush, you,” she snapped then went back to her soft muttering. The second hand on the clock ticked fifteen times before she fell silent, unfolded her hands, and lowered her gaze to me. “He’s in the ICU?”
I nodded.
“Piss on an ant.” She pointed at me. “You’ll know better the next time.”
I held up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
She snorted. “You ain’t nothing like a scout, my dear. But you sure are a simpleton.”
Well, that wasn’t very nice. But I took it without protest. “So you’ll come with me to the hospital?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and a matching pair of tears rolled down each ruddy cheek. “You ain’t offered me much of a choice.”
Chapter Five
Elaine made me hold her hand from the moment we entered the hospital to the last possible second when we arrived at Sly’s room in the ICU. Any time a doctor or nurse brushed too close, Elaine would shove herself up against me, nearly knocking me over. She jumped at every bleat and beep. But, worst of all, whenever she heard a phone ring, she whined low in her throat like an injured puppy.
By the time we got to Sly, I couldn’t feel my hand, and my right foot ached from her stepping on it so many times.
But when she saw him lying in the bed with a respirator down his throat and taped to his mouth, when she looked at the digital display on the heart monitor and heard its steady but slow ping, everything else melted away from her attention.
She didn’t even seem bothered by the plastic, disinfectant, and piss smell that permeated the whole floor.
She waddled to his bedside and looked down at him, the history of her love for him written all over her face. She traced the stubble along his chin with a fingertip. She stroked his long, unkempt hair, wild across his pillow without his usual hair band holding it back away from his face.
“Oh, Sly pup.”
They had the lights dimmed in his room, but the wall the room shared with the hallway was glass all the way across, and enough of the fluorescent glare made the tears in Elaine’s eyes shimmer.
I felt a pinch in my chest. If I’d known her better, I would have gone over and given her a hug. Part of me still wanted to. At the same point, I couldn’t interrupt her moment with Sly. Sometimes you had to feel the pain alone.
I had called Mom on the way to the hospital to let her know we were coming. She had arrived first and sat in a chair tucked in a back corner. She and Elaine hadn’t so much as shared a glance. I wasn’t sure Elaine had seen Mom at all when she came in. I could read Mom’s expression, saw the same ache that I felt. None of her history with Elaine mattered right then.
After a couple minutes, Elaine took her gaze away from Sly and moved it to me. “Keep one eye at the door. I’ll be doing some things that would look a mite strange to passersby. Especially one of those white coat devils.”
I nodded.
She got to work.
She started simply enough, pulling back one of Sly’s eyelids, then the other, examining each eye with focused care. She frowned. Lines creased her brow. She shifted her position to the end of the bed and lifted the covers off of his feet. She looked pointedly to me, then nodded at the door. My cue that she was going to do whatever might look odd to one of the docs. And, yeah. It looked weird all right.
She leaned down and sniffed Sly’s feet. And not a little sniff either. In fact, it qualified as more of a snuff. She pressed her nose right against the top of first one foot, then the other. When she had her fill, she straightened and narrowed her eyes.
“Humph.”
She sidled up to the center of the bed and leaned over again, this time around where Sly’s crotch would be under the covers.
I checked the hall. A nurse in a floral print smock hurried by, but didn’t glance in. I held my breath until she passed. Then I turned back and found Elaine’s face buried into the covers, sucking in another hefty breath through her nose.
I didn’t know what to think. She was no doubt eccentric. But this? Eccentric didn’t cut it. Loony had a more truthful ring.
But she was the healer. What did I know?
I went back to keeping my eye out for any unwanted attention. I listened to Elaine sniff away, only glancing back at her to check her progress. She snuffled her way clear up to Sly’s hair, where she paused for a long moment, pressing his gray locks against her face. I had a feeling this was more personal than the rest of her check-up.
Finally, she stepped away from him. She chanced a look at Mom. Mom looked back pleadingly. Her eyes also gleamed in the hall’s cast of light. I wiped at a tickle on my cheek, and my fingertips came away wet.
A silent moment passed between the women. I felt a soft tingle of magic. The lights on the heart monitor flickered. Then the magic drew away and the monitor returned to its monotonous toning. For a second, Mom had let her emotion stir her magic. It surprised me. I didn’t think a sorceress as old and experienced as her would ever allow that. Then Elaine let free a hard sob, and I realized Mom had done it on purpose, a sort of signal of grief that Elaine sensed and seemed to accept.
She moved toward Mom. Mom stood, and they embraced.
That pinch in my heart tightened.
When they broke their hug, Elaine turned to me. She wiped her eyes with the back of her wide wrist. “I can’t help him,” she said. Another sob burst from her, and her face crumbled to misery.
My heartbeat quickened. My scalp tingled. “What are you talking about? Why can’t you?”
She wiped more tears off her red cheeks with a swipe of both hands, dragging them down her face. She visibly swallowed back another sob. “Whatever’s poisoning him ain’t the work of disease. His sickness comes from a deep place I can’t see.”
I shook my head. Denial closed in on me. I wouldn’t accept this answer. Hell, it didn’t even make any sense.
“A place you can’t see?” I asked.
I felt my voice rising out of my control. If I didn’t pull it back, I’d draw unwanted attention.
Who cares, I thought. Unleash, Sebastian!
“Or a place you can’t smell?”
She flinched.
A voice came from the doorway. “Everything all right here?”
I turned. It was Dr. Prashad. The good old useless fucking doctor who needed to run more tests. Maybe Elaine needed to run more tests, too. Another smell test. Or maybe she could lick Sly this time, get a good taste.
“Everything’s fine,” Mom said. “This is hard for us.”
Prashad studied me for a few seconds, his scrutiny making my skin crawl. I gritted my teeth until my jaw hurt so I wouldn’t say anything I might regret. Although I couldn’t think of a thing I’d say that would leave me feeling sorry. That was probably sign enough to keep my mouth shut.
He came
to some decision, nodded, and moved along.
I swung back to face Elaine. “You have to do something.”
“This isn’t a thing I have skills for.” Tears turned her voice to a watery mumble. “My work heals the body. This isn’t a sickness of the body. It’s a sickness of the soul.”
Chapter Six
Sickness of the soul.
The words sent a cold shudder through me. The ugly hospital stink suddenly seemed too much to bear, like it was suffocating me, poisoning my gut until it churned.
Sickness of the soul.
With that, Elaine had said all she needed to say. I knew what was going on. Not the details or the mechanics. But when it came to Sly’s soul, I knew something Elaine did not. Sly’s soul was not complete.
Elaine crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “You look like shit in a desert, love. What is it ya know?”
Either she was damn perceptive, or I wore my shock all over my face. Probably the latter. I couldn’t tell, though. To me, my face felt numb, except for a tingling around my mouth that made it hard for me to speak. I wondered if this was what a stroke felt like.
But after some working at it, I managed to say a few words. “Sly traded a piece.”
The combined intensity of both Mom and Elaine’s stare nearly staggered me backward like a physical force.
“A piece?” Elaine asked.
“His soul,” I croaked.
Elaine’s eyes grew so wide they didn’t look deep-set anymore, they looked ready to pop off her face. Their stark blueness shined. “Sly pup gave away a titch of his soul?” Soul came out loud and gritty.
I backed away until I bumped against a set of cabinets next to a stainless steel sink. My elbow knocked against a glass jar of tongue depressors that rattled and clinked. Elaine looked ready to deck me, and like I’d said before, she could probably knock me out with a single blow.
Instead, she turned on Sly, looked down at him with a mix of love and rage. She gripped the bed’s plastic railing meant to keep patients from rolling out. Her knuckles went white, and the railing itself wiggled as she trembled. I could see the muscles in her thick arm bulge, tightening the fabric of her sleeves against them.
“What kind of bloody muck you get yourself into, pup? I could kill you if yer weren’t dying already.”
She screwed her face up tight. It made her look like a little girl making a hard wish on a star. Then she relaxed, let go of the railing, and took a step back. She turned to me.
“Who’d he give if off to?”
Oh, man. She was not going to like my answer.
“A group of witches. He used it to barter for their help.”
The color drained from her face. “What witches?”
I looked behind me at the damn cabinets that kept me from backing away any further. Maybe I could climb into one of them before answering her question.
“Who?” she shouted.
I glanced toward the hall, half-expecting to see Prashad staring at us through the glass. He hadn’t returned. Yet.
I could see across the hall and through the glass to the room opposite. The lights were out, but I saw the empty bed well enough. Its emptiness felt like an omen.
Without looking away from the vacant bed, I answered Elaine’s question.
“The Maidens of Shadow.”
I kept my gaze averted. I didn’t want to see the rage, the horror, the pain, the…whatever I might see in her. It wasn’t like trading a piece of Sly’s soul had been my idea. In fact, I had tried to shut that shit down right then and there. But Sly had insisted. Still, the only reason he had done it was to help me. A shining example of his loyalty outweighing his own self-interest. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t brokered the trade myself. I was just as much to blame.
Turned out I should have been watching her. I didn’t see her come at me, didn’t know she was so close until her big hands circled my throat and started squeezing. I tried to take a breath, but it was like sucking through a bent straw, only more painful. My face swelled and throbbed in rhythm with my pulse. Her thumbs pressed into my trachea. I expected to hear a pop when they punctured through.
The edges of my vision went fuzzy.
“Elaine,” Mom said with firm but quiet urgency. “Let him go.”
Elaine squeezed harder. “I shoulda known all you Lights were the same. You don’t do your name a bit of justice.”
“Stop it.”
I grabbed Elaine’s wrists and tried to pulled her hands off me. I might as well have tried to lift a mountain. I would have had better luck.
She pulled me close, until our noses nearly touched. Her eyes glared into mine with a desperate madness. “Why would you let my pup do that? Why didn’t you stop him?”
It occurred to me I hadn’t told her why he had traded his slice of soul in the first place. I had assumed her attack had to do with my part of the blame. But what she was really mad about was me “letting” Sly make the trade, not because he had done it for me. If she’d known that, she would have snapped my neck already.
I tried to answer, but I never stood a chance with her grip on my throat. I creaked and croaked, my pulse quickening as my blood starved for oxygen. The thumping in my ears muffled everything. Mom said something else, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Whatever she’d said must have gotten through to Elaine. Elaine released me and turned her back to me.
I gasped. My first few full breaths burned my throat. My neck was sore. I’d probably have some bruising in the shape of her kielbasa fingers. I was glad my magic made me a fast healer. I could only imagine the looks I’d get from strangers with a pair of black and blue hand prints around my throat.
Bent over with my hands on my knees, I looked up at Mom. “What’d you say to her?”
“I told her that if anyone can make things right with those witches, you could.”
With her back still facing me, and her head bowed, Elaine said, “I’m no sorcerer. And I am no sort of fighter.” She turned slowly and lifted her eyes to meet mine. “You think you can take on the Maidens?”
Nope and no way. But I didn’t say that, of course. “I hope I won’t have to. I’m hoping they’ll listen to reason and fix this.”
Elaine’s laugh came so hard and suddenly, I jumped. But the laugh didn’t carry the mirth to support its volume. So, yeah, it made her sound a little crazy.
“Black witches don’t reason,” she said. “They spread the blackness of their hearts.”
“Well, we’ve had a history,” I said.
Which didn’t end that well, remember, dummy?
“They helped me get my memories back,” Mom said.
Elaine whirled on her. “They conjured on you?”
“They helped me, too,” I said. “They helped me take down Logan Goulet.”
Elaine looked back and forth between me and Mom, uncertain who to scold next. She picked me.
“They ain’t your friends, love. Not by any measure.”
“I know that.”
“There is only one kind of good black witch,” she said. “And that’d be a dead one.”
Chapter Seven
Whether a dead black witch was better than a living one didn’t much matter. I had to go see them, had to let them know whatever they were doing with Sly’s soul was killing him.
The Maidens of Shadow had some previous relationship with Sly. That’s how we’d gotten involved with them in the first place. I hoped, whatever the nature of that relationship, it meant they had some care about Sly’s wellbeing. I couldn’t—or didn’t want to, at least—believe they meant to harm him on purpose. Maybe it was some strange side effect from whatever kind of magic they were working. They might have no idea what was happening to Sly.
I had no illusion they would give his piece of soul back, but maybe they’d stop and use it for something else when I told them what was going on.
And I couldn’t help wondering what they were using it for.
Mom and I lived in the
city now, in one of several houses in Corktown currently occupied by various members of the paranormal community. This was part of a new initiative started by the Ministry’s interim leaders—the last regime had allowed a dangerous amount of corruption go on under its nose, in case you hadn’t heard.
The Ministry was slowly turning Corktown into Detroit’s premier district for the more agreeable supernatural races and magical practitioners of various stripes. It kept us among, if not friends, like-minded acquaintances. The consolidation also made it easier to contain knowledge of the paranormal from the uninitiated. Safer that way for all parties.
While I missed my old—now burnt down—house, I loved the new place. No more hiding our magical heritage from the neighbors. The ability to speak freely about our secret world. A sense of real community that had never existed before. And to the outside world, it looked like the same old Corktown the city already knew.
I swung by the house to drop Mom off and change out of my paint-spattered jeans and into a pair of black slacks and a gray sweater. I took a moment to check my hair in the mirror. I noticed I needed a shave again. I’d gotten lazy about that lately.
I realized all this primping was a stalling tactic. I had no good plan for how to approach the Maidens. Expect to walk up to their door and knock. I didn’t have a number for them, and I doubted they had it listed. And we hadn’t parted on very good terms. I believe the words Angelica, their unofficial leader, had used included never, cross, and paths.
You don’t take not-so-subtle threats like that lightly when given by the most powerful black witch coven in the Midwest.
I stepped out onto our covered front porch. It was a small porch, but had enough room for a pair of wicker chairs and a round stool that we used as a table. The wicker was painted a clean white that matched the posts on the railing around the porch.
