“Excellent.” I closed my eyes against the vertigo. I’d been afraid the elevator might move too fast to stomach, but I couldn’t take the stairs even if my aura was dragging behind me as we descended.
“You doin’ okay?” he asked, worry thick in his tone.
“Yep,” I said, propped in the corner. “It’s just fatigue.” I squinted to get him into focus, and then the world snapped back when the elevator dinged and the rest of my aura caught up. I took a breath, letting it slip slowly from me. “I’ve got things to do today, and I can’t do them lazing around in a bed that moves up and down.”
He laughed, and I pushed from the wall when the doors opened. If all was going well, it would be Ivy, and I didn’t want her to think I was a wimp.
Ivy was standing right before the doors, and giving me a glance, she darted in and clicked the button to close the doors. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“Peachy.”
Ivy exchanged a look with Jenks and hit the “lobby” button with a series of taps so rapid that they were almost indistinguishable from each other. A little nervous, are we?
The descent was worse this time, and I closed my eyes and leaned back in the corner as the elevator picked up speed, going almost the full height of the building.
“Rache, you all right?” Jenks asked, and I wiggled my fingers, too afraid of what might happen if I nodded. My stomach hurt.
“Too fast,” I breathed, worried about the ride home. I was going to be blowing chunks if we had to drive faster than twenty miles an hour.
I started to shiver, and I clutched my bag to me, feeling every muscle I had clench when the lift lurched to a stop. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Relieved, I opened my eyes to find Jenks hovering at the sensor to keep the doors from shutting. The soft sounds of a nearly empty lobby filtered in, and Ivy took my arm. I would have protested, except I really needed it. Together we started out of the elevator. God, I felt a hundred and sixty years old, my heart pounding and my knees weak.
But the slow movement started to feel good, and the farther we went, the more sure I was that this was the right thing to do. I glanced around—trying not to look like I was—scopin’ casual, as Jenks would say. The lobby had a few people passing through it even at midnight, and the lights shining down on the entryway illuminated the snow-covered vegetation to make it into indistinguishable blobs. It was kind of pretty with the flashing amber lights of the tow truck.
Tow truck?
“Hey! That’s my car!” I exclaimed upon seeing it parked at the curb in the pickup and drop-off spot. But it wouldn’t be there long from the looks of it.
At the sound of my voice, two people turned from the big plate-glass windows. They’d been watching the guy work, and my eyes narrowed when I realized it was Dr. Mape and the cop on duty. A big vamp from the I.S. Great. Just freaking great.
“Plan B, Ivy,” Jenks said, then dove into the elevator.
“That’s my car!” I shouted again, then gasped when Ivy spun me around and yanked me back into the elevator. My back hit the wall and I put a hand to my stomach. “Who said”—I panted through the sudden vertigo—“you could drive my car?”
The doors snicked shut and cut off the doctor’s protest. I clutched at the walls when the elevator started to go up, then forced myself to let go. Damn it, I am not going to get sick. “Who said you could drive my car?” I said again, louder, as if I could hold off the dizziness with my voice.
Jenks’s wings hummed nervously, and Ivy flushed. “What was I supposed to pick you up with? My cycle?” she muttered. “I’m in a legal spot. I had thirty minutes left.”
“They’re towing my car!” I shouted again, pointing, and she shrugged.
“I’ll get it out of impound.”
“How are we going to get home now!” I yelled, not liking the feeling of helplessness, and Ivy pulled out her cell phone from a slim case at her belt. God, the thing was the size of a credit card. “I’ll call Kist—” Her voice broke, and I stared at her suddenly riven features. “I mean, Erica,” she amended softly. “She’ll come get us. She works near here.”
Turn it to hell. Ill and heartsick, I pressed into the corner of the elevator and tried to find my equilibrium.
Jenks landed on my shoulder. “Relax, Rache,” he said, his eyes darting to Ivy as she hunched in pain, her fingers tapping out a text message as fast as if she were at a conventional keyboard. “You saw the hag of a doctor. It’s not Ivy’s fault. They knew you were making a run for it.”
Hands splayed, I propped myself against the two walls surrounding me. It felt as if we were rising through thousands of pinpricks of ice as the world hit me raw, unprotected without my full aura. It wasn’t as if I was in a position to do anything. And Dr. Mape would have been a fool for not expecting this. Multiple escapes were in my record. My mom used to sneak me out all the time. “Where are we going?” I breathed, forcing myself to keep my eyes open even though they kept shifting on their own, like I had been on a merry-go-round for too long.
“The roof.”
I eyed Ivy, then carefully leaned to push the button for the third floor. “There’s a walkway to the children’s wing on the third floor. We can go out that way,” I muttered, and my eyes slid shut. Just for a moment. Ivy and Jenks’s silence pulled them back open. “What?” I said. “Why should I go through the laundry chute to the basement floor when I can roll out in a wheelchair?”
Ivy shifted her feet. “You’ll sit down?” she asked.
Before I fall down? Not likely. “Yes,” I said, then accepted Ivy’s arm when the elevator stopped and the world magically returned to normal.
The elevator doors slid open with a ding, and Jenks flew out, darting back before we had gone three steps. “There’s a chair over here,” he said, and I leaned against the wall beside the fake potted plant as Ivy used one hand to keep me upright, and the other to almost throw the chair open, the locks snapping in place from the sudden shock of being jerked to a stop.
“Sit,” she said, and I gratefully sat. I had to get home. Everything would be better if I could just get home.
Ivy pushed me into motion, taking advantage of the empty hall to race for the walkway. Dizziness roared from everywhere, slipping out of the corners where the walls and floor met, chasing after me as Ivy raced. “Slow down,” I whispered, but I think it was my lolling head that got her to stop. Either that or Jenks screaming at her.
“What the hell are you doing!” Jenks was shouting, and I gritted my teeth, struggling to keep from throwing up.
“Getting her out of here,” she snarled from somewhere far away and distant behind me.
“You can’t move her that fast!” he yelled, dusting me as if he could give me a false aura. “She’s not moving slowly because she’s hurt, she’s moving slowly to keep her aura with her. You just freaking left it back at the elevator!”
Ivy’s voice was a mere whisper of “Oh my God.” I felt a warm hand on me. “Rachel, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
It was getting better surprisingly fast, and the world stopped spinning. Looking up, I squinted until she came into focus. “Yeah.” I took a cautiously deep breath. “Just don’t go that fast.” Crap. How was I going to handle the car?
Ivy’s face was scared, and I reached up to touch her hand, still on my shoulder. “I’m okay,” I said, risking another deep breath. “Where are we?”
She pushed us back into motion, almost crawling. Jenks, flying a close flank, nodded. “The children’s wing,” she whispered.
Fourteen
Anxious, I pressed my knees together as Ivy wheeled me down the hall. We’d passed the long walkway over the service drive, and we were indeed in the children’s wing. An awful feeling of dread and familiarity settled in me, and my gut clenched.
The smell was different, holding the scent of baby powder and crayons. The walls were a warmer yellow now, and the railings…I eyed them as we rolled past. There was a second, lower set, which just about kil
led me. Pictures of puppies and kittens were on the walls at seated height. And rainbows. Kids shouldn’t be ill. But they were. They died here, and it wasn’t fair.
I felt the prick of tears, and Jenks landed on my shoulder. “You okay?”
It isn’t fair, damn it. “No,” I said, forcing myself to smile so he wouldn’t ask Ivy to stop. I could hear kids talking loudly with the intensity that children used when they knew they had only a short time to make their voices heard.
We were going by the playroom, the tall windows with the blinds open to show the snow, and the ceiling lights turned up to make it almost as bright as noon. It was just after midnight, and only the Inderlander kids would be up, most of them in their rooms with a parent or two, having their dinner. If they could swing it, most parents visited during meals to try to make their child’s hospital room into a piece of the familiar by eating with them, and the kids—without exception—were too kind to tell them it only made home look that much farther away.
We slowly rolled by the bright room with its night-black windows. I wasn’t surprised to see it empty but for the pack of kids whose parents were too far away to stop in for meals or had other responsibilities. They were an independent bunch, and they talked a lot. I smiled when they caught sight of us, but shock filled me when one of them shouted, “Ivy!”
Immediately the table in the far corner emptied out, and I sat in amazement as we were suddenly surrounded by kids in brightly colored pj’s. One was enthusiastically dragging her IV stand behind her, and three had lost their hair from chemotherapy, still legal after the Turn, when more effective biomedicines were not. The oldest of the three, a skinny girl with her jaw clenched, lagged behind with a tired determination. She wore a bright red bandanna that matched her pajamas, and it gave her an endearing bad-girl look.
“Ivy, Ivy, Ivy!” a red-cheeked boy about six shouted again, shocking the hell out of me when he flung himself at Ivy’s knees in an enthusiastic hug. Ivy flamed red, and Jenks laughed, spilling dust in a sheet of gold.
“Did you come to eat with us and throw peas at the parrot?” the girl with the IV asked, and I turned in my chair to see Ivy all the better.
“Pixy, pixy, pixy!” the boy on her legs shouted, and Jenks flew up out of his reach.
“Uh, I’m going to do a nurse check,” he said nervously, then zipped off at ceiling height. There was a chorus of disappointment, and Ivy disentangled herself, kneeling to put us all on the same level. “No, Daryl,” she said, “I’m sneaking my friend out for some ice cream, so lower your voices before they check up on you.”
Immediately the shouts diminished to giggling whispers. One of the bald kids, a boy by the cowboys on his pajamas, ran to the end of the hall and peeked around the corner. He gave us a distant thumbs-up, and everyone sighed. There were only five of them, but they all apparently knew Ivy, and they clustered around us like…kids.
“She’s a witch,” the red-cheeked boy, still attached to Ivy’s leg, said, pitching his tone imperialistically. His hand was on his hip, and he was clearly the floor’s self-proclaimed king. “She can’t be your friend. Vampires and witches don’t make friends.”
“She has a black aura,” the girl with the IV said, backing up. Her eyes were wide, but I could tell by her plump, healthy body that she was going to survive. She was one of the kids who come in, stay, then leave, never to return. She must be special to have been accepted into what was clearly the clique of children who…weren’t going to have an easy go of it.
“Are you a black witch?” the girl who had lagged behind asked. Her brown eyes were huge in her medicine-ravaged face. There was no fear in her, not because she was ignorant, but because she knew she was dying, and she knew I wasn’t going to be the cause of her death. My heart went out to her. She was seeing around corners, but not yet ready to go. One more thing possibly to see and do.
Ivy shifted uncomfortably at her question. “Rachel is my friend,” she said simply. “Would I be a friend to a black witch?”
“You might,” Daryl said haughtily, and someone stepped on his foot to make him yelp. “But her aura is black!” the king protested. “And she has a demon mark. See?”
Everyone drew back with fear except the tall girl in the red pajamas. She simply stood before me and looked at my wrist, and unlike most times when someone pointed it out and I tried to hide it, I turned my hand up for all of them to see.
“I got it when a demon tried to kill me,” I said, knowing most of them had to gain a lifetime of wisdom in just a few years and had no time for pretend, yet pretend was all they had. “I had to accept a very bad thing to survive.”
Small heads bobbed and eyes grew wide, but the king lifted his chin and took a stance that was utterly charming—a round, chubby Jenks with his hands on his hips. “That’s evil,” he said, certain of his belief. “You should never do anything evil. If you do, you are evil and go to hell. My mom says so.”
I felt ill when the smallest girl, with the IV, shrank back farther yet, tugging at her friend to leave with her.
“I’m sorry,” Ivy whispered as she stood up and took the handles of the wheelchair. “I didn’t think they would come over. They don’t understand.”
But the thing was, they did understand. They had the wisdom of the world in their eyes. They understood too well, and seeing their fear, I felt my heart gray.
Ivy made shooing motions with her hand, and they broke their circle. All except the skinny girl in the bright red pajamas. Seeing my misery, she reached out with her small, smooth, child hands and delicately took my wrist with her pinkie extended. Turning my hand palm up, she used a finger to slowly trace the circle and line. “Ivy’s friend isn’t evil for doing something to survive what hurt her,” she said, her voice soft but certain. “You take poison to kill the bad cells in you, Daryl, just like me. It hurts you, makes you tired, makes you sick, but if you didn’t you would die. Ivy’s friend took a demon mark to save her life. It’s the same thing.”
Ivy’s motion to push the chair stopped. The kids went silent, each thinking, assessing what they had been told with the harsh reality of what they lived with. Daryl’s sure look faltered, and he pushed forward, not wanting to look like a coward, or worse, cruel. He peered over the arm of the wheelchair at my scar, then up to my face. His small round face broke into a smile of acceptance. I was one of them, and he knew it. My jaw unclenched, and I smiled back.
“I’m sorry,” Daryl said, then scrambled up to sit in my lap. “You’re okay.”
My breath came fast, in surprise, but my hands naturally folded around him to keep him in place so he wouldn’t fall. Daryl gave a hop and settled in, snuggling his head under my chin and tracing the demon scar as if to memorize its lines. He smelled like soap, and under that, of a green meadow faraway and distant. I blinked fast to keep the tears from brimming over, and Ivy laid a hand on my shoulder.
The girl with the red pajamas smiled like Ceri, wise and fragile. “You’re not bad inside,” she said, petting my wrist. “Just hurt.” She put her hand on Daryl’s shoulder, and her gaze going distant, she murmured, “It will be okay. There’s always a chance.”
It was so close to what I was feeling, what I’d felt when I was growing up, that I leaned forward, and with Daryl between us, I gave her a hug. “Thank you,” I whispered, my eyes closed as I held her to me. “I needed to remember that. You’re very wise.”
Daryl slid down and away, squirming to get out from between us, darting to stand nearby, looking uncomfortable, yet pleased to have been included.
“That’s what my mom says,” the girl said, her eyes wide and serious. “She says the angels want me back so I can teach them about love.”
I closed my eyes, but it didn’t do any good, and a hot tear slipped down. “I’m sorry,” I said as I wiped it away. I’d just broken one of the secret rules. “I’ve been away too long.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re allowed if there aren’t any parents around.”
My
throat closed up, and I held her hand. It was all I could do. Jenks’s wings clattered a warning, and all the kids sighed and drew back when he landed on my upraised hand.
“They know where you are,” he said.
Ivy, almost forgotten, shifted the chair, rolling it back as she turned to look behind us. “We have to go,” she said to the kids.
Instead of the expected complaints, they dutifully dropped away, all looking toward a distant clacking of heels. The king straightened and said, “You want us to slow them down?”
I looked up at Ivy, whose grin transformed her face. “If we get away, I’ll tell you two stories next time,” she said, and delight showed on every young face.
“Go,” the girl in red pajamas said, pulling the king out of the way with the gentle hands of the mother she would never be.
“Let’s save the witch princess!” the boy cried, and he ran down the hall. The others fell into place the best they could, some moving fast, others slow, the bright colors of childhood scarred with bald heads and gaits too slow for their enthusiasm.
“I’m going to cry,” Jenks said, sniffing as he flew up to Ivy. “I’m going to freaking cry.”
Ivy’s face, as she watched them, showed a depth of emotion I’d never seen; then she turned away, divorcing herself from it. Lips tight together, she started into motion. I turned to face where we were going, and her brisk steps seemed to carry the desperation that there was nothing she could do to save them.
Jenks flew ahead to get the elevator, holding it by hovering at the sensor. Ivy wheeled me in and around. The doors shut, and the tragic wisdom of the children’s wing was gone. I took a breath, and my throat tightened.
“I didn’t think you would understand them,” Ivy said softly. “They really like you.”
“Understand them?” I said raggedly, my throat still holding that lump. “I am them.” I hesitated, then asked, “You come here a lot?”