Graveyard Child

chapter fifteen

The emergency room at Wesley Medical Center wasn’t the worst I’d been to. Which meant, in part, that I wasn’t actively worried about people trying to kill me. The halls were clean and bright, the intake nurse was calm and professional, and they got Ex into a room within ten minutes of our pulling up to the front door. The triage nurse and a couple of techs in blue scrubs cut away Ex’s pant leg and washed it down while I held his hand. I claimed to be his fiancée and that was enough to get me into the room with him, while Chogyi Jake was stuck in the waiting area.

Ex’s color was coming back, though he was still pale. Swaths of dried blood were flaking off his hands and cheek. Between his black eye and mine, we looked pretty rough, which I didn’t figure was likely to make the doctors more responsive. If I’d seen us, I’d have dialed straight to drug-addicted spousal abuse too. The nurse on duty came by after an hour and sprayed something on his wounded foot that seemed to take the edge off the pain. They weren’t dosing him up with any pills more powerful than Tylenol, probably on the assumption that we’d shot him in the foot ourselves in a bid to score pain medication.

Somewhere nearby, a woman was groaning and calling for someone named Steven. Over the previous few months and years, I’d been in more hospitals than I liked, and other than making me feel profoundly self-conscious and unwelcome, this one wasn’t bad. A nurse came and drew some blood for routine testing. She had a discreet bandage on the side of her nose to cover up the piercing there.

I held Ex’s hand while she did it, more for myself than him, and I didn’t let go when she left. After a few minutes his breath got heavy, slow, and regular. I assumed he was sleeping until he spoke.

“What is it with your family and firearms?”

“My family and . . . You mean Jay did this?”

“What we get for bringing civilians in,” he said. “We were waiting just past the shed. The warding was light there, and we had a decent line of sight on the back of the house. They brought her to the back when you showed up on the street. I figured the longer we could put off using the cantrip, the longer it was until they noticed us. Jay went up the back steps and waved at her through the window. She came out, and he put his gun under his armpit and blew my foot off.”

“It’s not off,” I said. “It doesn’t even look all that bad.”

“It looks like a sausage with a dozen little raisins where the blood’s clotting.”

“I was comparing it to blown off,” I said. “It looks better than that.”

Ex smiled without opening his eyes, and I smiled with him.

“They got away?”

“I think so,” I said. “He’s not answering his cell.”

“And the homestead?”

“I don’t think Mom and Dad are likely to accept my calls anytime soon,” I said. “What about the other shot? I heard two.”

“After he shot me, the other two noticed we were there. I tried to slow them down.”

“It worked,” I said.

“Sort of,” Ex agreed. “The trap. They were working a binding, weren’t they?”

“Trying to,” I said. “They didn’t do a great job of it.”

“Well, thank God we’re all the Keystone Kops,” he said.

We waited. The woman who was calling for Steven had stopped. I texted Curtis to see if he’d heard any news, and Chogyi Jake to let him know that I hadn’t. I listened to the nurses talking at their station, I paced quietly beside the bed. The monitors said that Ex’s heartbeat was regular, his blood pressure a little high. I wanted to go find Jay and Carla, wherever they were. I kept suffering visions of them in some dark place, caught by Rhodes and his cabal. Of course, if I left, I’d start imagining the Invisible College coming to the hospital to finish the job. We were too scattered, and we didn’t know enough. One worry followed the next, anxiety building on anxiety, and behind it all was the sense that I’d forgotten something. Something important.

The doctor arrived about three hours later, and I had to tell myself that the long delay only meant that Ex’s condition wasn’t bad enough to get worried about. He was a young man, probably not more than a year or two ahead of me, but he affected a world-weary attitude. Maybe he’d even earned it.

“So you did this to yourself, or did you have help?” he asked.

“Little help,” Ex said.

“That was my guess,” the doctor said.

“Is he going to be all right?” I asked.

“Sure,” the doctor said. “We’ll numb him up, dig the shot out of him, and send him home. We see this kind of thing every night. Only thing that’s strange about this one is that he came in sober. There’s going to be a form to fill out, though. Police like us to let them know when someone comes in shot. In case it matches up with something that happened.”

“Ah,” I said.

“That wouldn’t be the case here,” he asked, “now, would it?” I didn’t know what to say, and a few heartbeats later the doctor shook his head. “Well, I’ll need to fill out the form, so you two start thinking about what you want to say on it.”

“We’re not as bad as we look,” I said.

He smiled at me. His eyes were gentle.

“If I was one to pass judgment on people, I’d be in the wrong job,” he said. Honestly, I could have kissed him.

The whole thing start to finish took another four hours. I left during the extraction of the shot, since they wouldn’t let me stay in the room. Chogyi Jake had gone across the street and gotten McDonald’s. I didn’t realize how late it had gotten until I saw he’d ordered off the breakfast menu. I still hadn’t heard from Jay or Curt or my parents, and I still had the growing unease that came from something only half-forgotten. Something I was supposed to take care of and hadn’t.

We got back to the hotel with the late winter sun just beginning to lighten the sky. Ex’s foot was wrapped with pads and gauze until it looked almost like a cast. He’d been given the option of a crutch but turned it down. The doctor hadn’t offered pain medication, and Ex hadn’t pushed for it. When we went in through the lobby, I had my arm around him on one side, Chogyi Jake had his arm around him on the other. The woman at the counter looked a little alarmed but didn’t say anything.

When we got to their room, Chogyi Jake used the key card. The electronic lock wheezed open. The first thing that struck me was the smell of shit and rank urine. Both beds had been stripped, the coverlets pulled to the floor. A pillow had been ripped apart, the stuffing strewn on the carpet.

I knew what I’d forgotten.

“Ozzie! Oh my God,” I said. “What did you do?”

Her claws tapped against the bathroom tile, and she came trotting out, tail wagging so hard it swung in a circle, tugging her hips along after it. She looked from me to Ex and back, her canine expression caught between worry and delight.

“In her defense,” Chogyi Jake said, “we were gone much longer than we expected.”

“I know, but she trashed the place!”

“She was worried,” Ex said, scratching her behind the ears. “Weren’t you? Weren’t you a worried dog?”

I flapped my hands in wordless distress. The truth was I felt guilty. How was I going to save innocent people from the overwhelming power of riders when I couldn’t get it together enough to look after a Labrador?

“Any chance we could bunk in your room?” Ex asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. Take her too. We didn’t feed her either.”

“Where are you going?” Ex asked.

“To give housekeeping a lot of money.”

By the time I got back to my room, Ex was already stretched out on the second bed and snoring softly. Chogyi Jake lay beside him, eyes closed in what could have been meditation or sleep. Ozzie was curled up on the foot of my bed, chewing contentedly on her right front paw in a way that meant all was forgiven—on her end, anyway. I put the Do Not Disturb thing on the door, changed into some sweats, and crawled into bed.

I hoped that sleep would come quickly, but I was disappointed. My mind kept looping back on itself: Where was Jay, was Carla all right, what if the Invisible College went after Mom and Dad and Curt, didn’t people get blood clots in their feet and die from it and what if that happened to Ex, why didn’t the binding spell Rhodes put on me work, was I a bad pet owner . . . The waterfall of fears and anxieties promised to run on forever. I stared up at the ceiling, watching tiny web works of light that snuck in at the edges of the curtain shift and brighten and fade as the sun rose. I tried to meditate the way Chogyi Jake had taught me, but I’d fallen out of practice and I couldn’t seem to maintain my focus for more than a few seconds at a time.

What had they called me? Puer Mórtuus? Abraxis something or other? Graveyard Child was the only one I remembered for sure. I felt like I’d heard the term before. Like it had something to do with the constant fighting that went on between riders in their own environment. I couldn’t place it.

When my phone rang, I was the only one awake, and I answered almost immediately.

“Jayné?” Jay said as I crawled out of bed and slipped into the bathroom, closing the door behind me so I wouldn’t wake anybody up by talking.

“Where are you?” I said.

“I’m okay. We’re okay. I did what you said. I got Carla on a plane. It took a while, but she’s going to Memphis. I gave her enough money to get a hotel for a few days. They won’t be able to find her there, will they?”

“They might,” I said, “but I don’t think they’ll have reason to. Their plan failed, and bait’s not much use without a trap.”

“What . . . what happened?”

“You mean after you shot Ex?” I asked, more sharply than I’d mean to.

The line was quiet for a moment.

“After that. I’m . . . I’m really sorry about that. I should have been more careful. And . . . I shouldn’t have left him behind like that.”

“Well, yeah, they’re going to take away your gun safety merit badge,” I said. “But getting out was the right thing to do. The whole point of being there was to get Carla out safely. Ex knew it wasn’t safe. We all knew.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Turns out this is what I do these days. I’ll need to talk to Carla, though.”

“Why?” Jay asked.

“See what she heard. What she saw. She was with the bad guys for hours, and they might have been in touch with her before she went.”

“They were,” Jay said. “They told her that you were possessed by a demon and that it was going to leave your body and take over the baby. That whole thing at the house? They did it to force you into doing magic in front of her, so that she’d believe them. She said she texted them when you showed up at the house. She’s sorry about it now, though. Really.”

“It’s a big world,” I said. “Everyone screws up. It’s all right. Still, when she’s somewhere she can use the phone, I’d like to ask her a few questions.”

“She’s not going to want to do that. She’s scared of you, sis. And no offense? You’re kind of scary.”

I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. I hadn’t turned on the overhead fixture, since it would have meant cranking up the exhaust fan with it. The only light coming off my phone. Between my bruised face, hair that spoke of a night at the ER, and the pale glow spilling across my cheek, I did look like a poster for the sort of movie that parents don’t let their kids see.

“We’ll work something out,” I said. “Where are you?”

“I’m at a friend’s house. He’s out of town for the holiday, and I had a spare key so I could water his plants. I figure they wouldn’t know to look for me here. Also . . . I hope this is okay. I called Dad. I told him that the guys who broke into the house were still around, and that he should be careful. I hope that’s all right?”

“It is. I’d have done it myself, if he was taking my calls,” I said. And then, a second later, “You didn’t go with her.”

“I didn’t, did I?” Jay said ruefully. “I thought about it. They’re still here, though. Those people. I told her I was staying until I had everything with them resolved.”

“Yeah, that’s going to be tricky.”

“I’m not sure it was true when I said it. I don’t know if we’re going to get married after all.”

“What about the baby?”

“I don’t know.” The words were so simple, and the way he said them was so rich, so complicated.

“You know what you’re hoping for?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t even have that.”

I wished he were with me instead of talking across the phone. I wanted to see his face, take his hand. Offer some kind of comfort. He was trapped. If he stayed with Carla and the baby, he would be living a life he didn’t want in a loveless marriage. If he didn’t, he was going to spend the rest of his life hauling along the knowledge that he was the kind of guy who’d get a girl pregnant and leave her.

“Sorry,” I said. It sounded powerfully inadequate, even to me.

“What about you guys?”

“Holed up. Licking wounds, figuratively speaking. I’ve got some things I need to follow up on.”

“The bad guys? Did you . . . are they still around?”

“I didn’t kill them,” I said. “Got away, though. And I have some things I want to look into. They were doing something, and they did it wrong. If I can figure what they were trying for, I’m hoping it’ll aim me in the right direction.”

“I want to be in on it,” Jay said. “Whatever you wind up doing, I want you to let me know.”

“You’re feeling guilty about shooting Ex, aren’t you?” I said, teasing him.

“I am,” he said. “And I also just got my sister back. I’d rather not have her just vanish again.”

My tears weren’t a surprise, really. I should have expected them.

“I love you too,” I said. “You know that when I said these guys were my family now, I didn’t mean that you weren’t, right?”

“Of course I knew that,” he said. “Dummy.”

I laughed a little. “We’ll get through this.”

“We will. We’ll track those bastards down wherever they go.”

“Yeah. First, get some rest. Can I reach you here when we’re up?”

“Absolutely. I’m going to try to get a little sleep myself.”

“Take care of yourself,” I said.

When I crawled back into bed, my brain felt less like an accident in a fireworks factory. Talking to Jay, knowing he was safe, even for very narrow definitions of safe, calmed me down. I pulled the blankets up to my chin and snuggled down into the pillows. Ozzie stood up, walked around in a circle, and lay down again with a contented sigh. I knew what she meant.

In the darkness, I listened to Ex’s soft snoring and Chogyi Jake’s slow, deep breath. I felt every time Ozzie shifted, chasing dream rabbits. My mind started to drift. I was glad, I decided, that Ozzie had wrecked the other room. If it had just been me and her in the place, it wouldn’t have felt right. Part of that came from spending the last day fighting and afraid, but part was just that these were my people. This was my pack, and having us all together in the same room was right. This was the way it was supposed to be.

I reached my mind down, deep into my body. Thank you, I thought. The Black Sun didn’t respond. Maybe she was asleep too. I didn’t know if riders did things like that, but I couldn’t see why they wouldn’t. She was part of my pack as well. Part of my self.

Back in college, a deeply unethical teaching assistant had told me that there were two kinds of family: the one that you’re born into, and then the one that you make for yourself. He’d been trying to seduce me at the time, but that didn’t make the sentiment wrong. I had made myself a family, and it was one that I liked a lot. I would always be my parents’ daughter. That was just history, and there was nothing that could change that. But what that meant was up to me and the people—and the dog—I kept with me.

I closed my eyes and listened to the cars on the highway, the voices in the hall, the breath of my family. I slept.

And when I slept, I dreamed.