by LJ Rivers
I could ask Mum to heal me, but that would be selfish. There were a lot of Mags much worse for wear than me coming with us to the clinic. She would have her hands full, and I didn’t want to get in her way or risk a confrontation yet. She had been so distant on the phone once I started telling her about where I was, and how I got there. I omitted to tell her that I had killed people or that I had used my recently discovered firepower to do so. Although, she would probably put two and two together on her own. When I told her about the injured Mags, however, Mum didn’t hesitate. She told me to get moving and bring everyone to her as quickly as possible.
So, here we were, headed towards Mum’s clinic with a heap of injured Magicals and a heck of a story to tell.
We pulled up to the back delivery entrance of the clinic as Mum had instructed.
A man in a white coat waved at us from outside the steel doors. I’d met him a few times before when visiting the clinic with Mum, and he had that kind of look you never forget. Wisps of stringy, white strands were all that could be said to pose as hair on his head. He had ears that would make Dumbo proud, and a long beak-like nose set under wise and beady eyes. The furrows on his skin portrayed roadmaps for a life long-lived, yet he appeared exactly the same to me as the first time I remembered seeing him all of fifteen years back. He had known me prior to what I could recall from memory, though, as he was there the day I was born.
“Hi, Hugo,” I said as I popped the door closed behind me.
He tilted his chin at me. “Lots of folks you’re bringing, Ruby.”
“There’s twenty-seven of us, though not all of us need instant care. We have seven with gunshot wounds, five with other severe injuries, and the rest are minor, though most of them could use a full check-up.”
“I see.”
I looked past him into the corridor beyond, which was more like looking over him. Hugo was short, as if he had stopped growing at the age of ten. “Where’s Mum?”
“Elaine’s here. She went to prep the rooms. The clinic isn’t really equipped to deal with this amount of special guests.”
“Thank you. We’ll need gurneys.”
“You got some able bodies in those cars? I have five gurneys inside, though not a lot of staff to manage them. Bring in the ones who need it the most first, then return for the others.”
“Right on it,” I said.
I continued to instruct Duncan, Nick, Jen, then reluctantly Brendan, taking charge of the fifth gurney myself.
“I’ll help you with that,” Charlie said.
We proceeded to get those with gunshot wounds onto the gurneys, and pushed them inside, following at Hugo’s heels. He turned a corner, then pressed the button for the lift.
I cleared my throat. “The ER is on this floor.”
“I should know,” Hugo said.
“Are you going to get Mum? Should we continue to the ER alone?”
“No, child. We are going downstairs.”
There was no downstairs. This was ground level, and there were only two floors above us. Had the old man finally lost his marbles?
“You really shouldn’t gawk like that. It’s not becoming of someone such as yourself,” Hugo said.
The doors gave a ding, and Charlie and I pushed the first gurney inside. Duncan followed, then Nick. There wasn’t enough room for the last two gurneys, however, and Hugo made the rest wait by the door for his return.
I narrowed my eyes at the buttons. Had Hugo meant up when he said down?
Instead of pushing any button at all, Hugo reached into one of the large pockets on his coat and fished out a key. He inserted it into the keyhole underneath the panel of buttons and turned it until it gave a click.
“Why down?” I asked.
“Can’t very well have all these Magicals in the regular ER. I’m sure you understand the need for discretion.”
Shortly thereafter the lift moved and the doors opened back up.
“No time to dawdle,” Hugo said, hastening out of the lift and into a wide corridor. We pushed the gurneys after him as I surveyed the space. There were no windows, just a long, empty corridor with a few doors on either side. The walls looked thick, as if they were reinforced with some material I didn’t recognise. In fact, I didn’t recognise this place at all. Downstairs. Hugo hadn’t lost any marbles—there really was a downstairs. One I had never been privy to. Another deception.
“In here.” Hugo pressed a switch on the wall and a set of double doors opened for us. The room was spacious; enough for all five gurneys along with a range of medical equipment, monitors, and cabinets covering the back wall. In the centre of the room, by a large desk, sat Mum.
“Right, I’ll leave you to it and go fetch the others.” Hugo walked back out and down the corridor again.
Mum looked up at me from the microscope she had been staring into. Her gaze moved up and down, and her smooth forehead wrinkled into a slight frown. A few strands of strawberry-blonde hair stuck out underneath her head cover. She stood and walked up to the closest gurney, the one Nick was in charge of.
“Status?” she asked.
“Gunshots. Three of them. Critical, I think,” Nick said.
“And the others?”
“About the same.”
Mum sighed, then came up to me. She gave me a quick hug, void of the usual warmth she carried. “Can you heal?”
“Hi, Mum.” A sense of annoyance crept over my skin. “I’m fine thanks. I’ve done as much healing as I could manage, however, and I don’t have much more left in me right now.”
She stroked a hand over my hair and shook her head. “Then you should go home. Take your friends who are not in dire need of medical attention and come back in the morning. The rest of the Magicals can stay in the rooms we’ve got here.”
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Later,” Mum said. “I need to help these people now. I promise we’ll talk later.”
Another doctor and a nurse entered the room, and the three of them busied themselves with tending to the new arrivals.
“I guess we go home then,” I said.
Charlie grinned. “Sleepover at the Morgans’.”
“It’s a small house. I’m not sure if we can fit everyone in.”
Jen wrapped her arm over Charlie’s shoulder and shrugged. “I’m fine with the floor.”
“All right, then Charlie can sleep in my bed with me. Duncan can get the sofa.”
“My bed is available,” Mum called, her hands glowing brightly as she moved them over one of the injured Mags. Whoever the other staff were, they knew what she was. Were they Mags, too?
“Sweet. I’ll get Mummy Morgan’s bed then,” Nick said, a little too much enthusiasm in his voice, and a low growl sounded from Jen’s throat.
“That leaves Brendan, Oliver and Teagan.” As I said it, the three of them came through the doors. There really was no need for Teagan as she was clinging to Oliver like a bee to honey, clearly not helping with the gurney at all.
“What are we doing?” Oliver asked.
“Leaving.” Inhaling sharply, I forced myself to meet Brendan’s eyes. He averted his gaze and moved closer to the door.
“Sleepover at the Morgans’,” Charlie quipped. “I have dreamt of this.”
“I actually think we should head back to London,” Brendan muttered. “I have a fencing class tomorrow, and I don’t need any treatment. Neither does Teagan.” He still wasn’t looking at me when he spoke, his face lowered as if he was inspecting his shoes.
“I’m cool with driving back tonight,” Oliver said. “There’s nothing wrong with me that a few days’ rest won’t fix.” His arm slid around Teagan’s waist as he said ‘rest’.
I was about to argue when Hugo lumbered inside. “You’re crowding the room. Get the rest of the injured inside, and leave. Nothing more you can do here. I’ve prepared food and drinks for the lot of them. I promise, they would not get better treatment anywhere else.”
Too tired to start arguing wi
th anyone, I conceded. I made an attempt to wave at Mum, but she had moved on to her next patient, even though her first patient was far from fully healed. She was saving energy, distributing it as best she could to make sure she kept everyone alive. It was something I needed to learn.
At least the Mags were in good hands, and as Hugo had pointed out, there was nothing more for us to do here. Besides, my stomach was growling like Jen’s wolf, and I was about to fall asleep on my feet. Charlie and Jen linked their arms in mine, and we walked out.
Teagan and Ollie got back in his car, and Brendan promised to dump the van near the farm on the way back before catching a ride to campus with the others.
The rest of us, Charlie, Jen, Nick, Duncan and myself, drove towards the little brick house—home.
On the way there, we stopped at my favourite pizza place, buying one pizza for each person, two for Jen.
We huddled together in the small living area, and I ate like I hadn’t had food for weeks. The room looked exactly the way it had when I left for uni, apart from the cat bed beside a scratching post next to the sofa.
A soft purr caught my attention as Kit strutted in from the kitchen. He stopped suddenly, his hairs on end, and hissed. Jen narrowed her eyes at him, her lip folding away from her teeth. The staring contest ended with Kit taking a detour across the room and behind the sofa to jump into my lap.
“Hey, Kit.” I scratched him behind his ears. He had grown.
“Gawd, this is a class A pizza, Ru!” Charlie licked her lips, aiming for another slice.
“Right!” And it had never tasted as good as it did at that moment.
Duncan turned the telly on, and it was somehow comforting how normal it felt.
“So, I want a full account,” Charlie said.
I wanted to tell her everything, while at the same time, I was afraid of what she would think of me.
“Ruby is like an effing goddess,” Nick said. “You should have seen her! Fire and wrath. Total sock-knocking experience. And Jen’s wolf! Just wow! I had no idea you guys were packing this kind of mojo, or I would definitely have kept my gob shut.”
Jen rolled her eyes at him, though the corner of her lips quirked up. “Hashtag Girlpower.”
“Sorry, Jen, this does not end up on your Insta.” I wasn’t really worried. Jen posted all sorts of pictures to her Insta, all of which were made to fit her feminism profile, but she had more common sense than most people. I didn’t have to tell her to keep our recent escapades under wraps.
“Hey, turn the sound up,” Nick said.
Every one of us gaped at the screen.
“—being brought to the waiting police cars. We’re speaking to Inspector Nigel Travers of Scotland Yard. Inspector Travers, what can you tell us about today’s operation?” The reporter held a microphone towards the uniformed policeman.
“Not much at the moment, I’m afraid. The situation is ongoing. What I can say is that several high-level officers in the Metropolitan Police have been brought in for questioning.”
“There are rumours of corruption, Inspector.”
“No comments at this stage.”
The clip in the background showed several men being escorted out of the Richmond Police Station, some in uniforms and some in black suits. The press, with shouting journalists and flashing cameras, surrounded the men and the cars. What chaos.
The reporter turned towards the camera. “Back to you in the studio, Jon.”
“Thank you, Steve.”
The anchor cleared his throat and turned to a woman on his left. “And just arriving in our studio is Gwendolyn Sparks, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice. What can you tell us about this shocking situation?”
“Well, Jon, as our Secretary of State for Justice, the Right Honourable Martin Cheeves, promised four years ago, we have put measures in place to handle these matters.” Jon, the anchor, leaned forward.
“And what matters are we talking about?”
“I cannot go into details about the composition of the … let’s call it a task force for now. They have gathered huge amounts of evidence over the past months, and today we see the results of their excellent work. A group of police officers, ranking from the lowest PC to the highest levels at the police station in question—”
“That’s Richmond Station, right?”
The woman held her hand up to wave him off. “As I said, the station in question. This group of police officers have operated outside the scope of the law, and Scotland Yard has, therefore, intervened on behalf of the Crown and the citizens of London. And our country.”
“They call themselves ‘Sentries of Camelot’, we’ve learned during the last hours.”
“So we’ve heard, yes. Apparently, they’ve used codenames to stay hidden.”
“Knights’ names, right?”
“Yes, so it seems. But instead of dwelling on such nonsense, I would like to point out what an excellent job our protectors at Scotland Yard have done. We are talking day and night surveillance, months of meticulous research across several branches of the force, including undercover work on the dark web, and—”
“They seem to have used secret chat rooms,” Jon said. “On the dark web. How were they spotted?”
“That would be too risky for me to go into details on, Jon. Suffice to say that our friends at Scotland Yard have some of the best cyber-investigators on the face of the planet.”
“Turn it off.” Charlie stretched her arms behind her head. “Let them gloat. We all know who the real cyber-investigator is, right?”
She grinned at me, and I couldn’t help grinning right back at her.
Twenty-Two
Charlie’s snores were comforting after the time I had spent at the farm. I tossed and turned through the night, however, and as the first hint of light crept over the windowsill, I got up.
I pulled on a pair of my old sweats and struggled to lift my arms to get the t-shirt on before I slipped into my furry tiger slippers, and stepped down the stairs with Kit bouncing lightly by my feet.
“Stay close,” Jen whispered from where she lay curled up on a sheepskin by the fireplace.
“Just going outside for a bit,” I whispered back.
She stretched and turned to curl up again as I walked out onto the back patio. The grass was frosted, and it glittered in the dawn. I shivered a little from the cold but didn’t want to disturb anyone by going back inside to get a jacket. Instead, I sat down on the garden swing, facing the pond and the trees beyond. The last time I had sat by the pond felt like forever ago, almost like a dream. Mum and I had performed a ritual before I left for university, and we had written down three wishes each, offering them to the Lady of the Lake. I hadn’t thought much about my wishes since.
What had I wished for?
Friends had been my first wish, I recalled. True friends with whom I could share everything. Had that wish not come true? I had real friends in Charlie and Jen, loyal and caring friends. Duncan had shown up when he learned I was in trouble, and he knew what I was as well. Even Nick was becoming a closer friend than I could have imagined. He could’ve run when he freed himself, yet he went looking for me and saved my life. Although Brendan was mad at me, or whatever he was, my first wish had come true. As for my second wish, I had wished for Mum to find purpose with me gone, so that she wouldn’t be lonely. Was that what she was doing at the clinic? Finding her purpose?
My third wish, however, was something I had yet to see granted, and probably never would. But it didn’t matter. I would work on that one later. I should be happy I was granted one wish, and maybe even two of them. Mum had been so sure that the Lady had heard us, and maybe she had. I crossed my legs on the swing and pulled my arms into my sleeves as the coughs of the old Ford Fiesta issued from the gravel road on the other side of the house. The engine noise cut off before the door popped shut and footsteps followed.
Mum came around the corner of the house as if she had known I was there.
“Morning, love,” she s
aid, taking a seat next to me. “Got you a blanket and green tea with a splash of lemon for the both of us.” She placed the blanket around my shoulders and gave me a disposable cup from a cup holder, making me insert my arms into the holes on the t-shirt again.
“How did you know I was back here?” I asked.
“Darling, you always come here when you’re broody.”
I hadn’t given it much thought before, though now that she mentioned it, I realised she was right. This had always felt like a safe zone, a good quiet place to think.
I looked at Mum from the corner of my vision. The fine wrinkles around her eyes had deepened since I left home, and there was a sort of drawn expression on her face. She sighed and leaned back on the swing, giving it a light push that made it sway gently back and forth.
I took a sip of my tea, the warmth spreading through me like a shield against the cold. “How are the Mags doing?”
Mum pulled her feet onto the swing. “We lost one of the young girls.” A tear ran down Mum’s cheek. “She had internal bleeding. We didn’t catch it in time, and when we did, I had no more healing power in me to save her.”
I drew in a breath, the cold air surging back into me.
“The rest are in recovery.” Mum wiped her cheek. “They’ll all recover in time.”
The tea was already lukewarm as I took another sip. “What was that place, Mum?”
She sniffled, inhaling deeply. “We have seen an increasing amount of Mags coming through the clinic these past few years, and the hospitals are noticing as well. All information goes on record, making the Magicals vulnerable, not to mention easy pickings for any Harvester. But you know that. It’s why I always healed your wounds and major illnesses, instead of taking you to the hospital when you were little. So, over the past few years, Hugo, his wife, and I have worked to create a place where we can treat Magicals off the record. It’s not much, and it doesn’t have the required room for what we want to be able to provide, but it’s a start.”
