If I Die

11

“So what’s the plan?” Tod asked, as we stared at the building, sitting side by side on the hood of my car.

I shrugged. “Nothing complicated. You get me in, we find Farrah, I ask her questions.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“If you don’t count the million and one things that could go wrong. How long can you keep me invisible?”

“As long as we’re in physical contact.”

My throat felt suddenly dry. “Holding hands?” That’s how we’d done it last time.

“Unless you had something else in mind.”

“I…” Words deserted me until he grinned, and I realized he was kidding. “No wonder you and Nash can’t get along.”

“We get along.” He brushed that one stubborn curl back from his forehead. “We just don’t agree on anything.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It would if you had a brother.”

I could only shake off confusion and change the subject. “Last time we did this, you couldn’t keep me invisible and inaudible at the same time. Has that changed? Do you think you could make sure only Farrah can see and hear us?”

Another shrug. “Only one way to find out…” He stood and I slid off the hood, my palms suddenly damp from nerves, in spite of my determination to do what needed to be done. To protect Emma by getting rid of Mr. Beck and to face this, my worst fear, before I faced death. The thought of which was rapidly becoming my second worst fear.

Tod was already walking toward the building—no doubt moving corporeally for my exclusive benefit—but when he realized I wasn’t with him, he turned. “It won’t be like last time,” he said, with one look at my face.

“You don’t know what last time was like.” My hands started to shake at the memory of waking up strapped to a tall bed in an empty room.

“I know you couldn’t leave, and you didn’t know what was happening to you. And I know you’re more scared of going back in there than of crossing into the Netherworld.”

I stared at him, confused by the ache in my chest, like my heart suddenly needed more space.

“This time, you can leave whenever you want,” Tod said. “You just say the word, and I’ll make the rest of the world go away. I’ll take you someplace safe, where no one else can reach us.”

I couldn’t see anything but his eyes, staring into mine. I couldn’t take a breath deep enough to satisfy the need for one. I kept waiting for him to laugh, or grin, or do something to break the moment stretching between us. And when he didn’t—when he let that moment swell into something raw, and fragile, and too real for me to think about, I crossed my arms over my chest and scrounged up a challenging grin to lighten the moment. “You think I need to be rescued?”

“I think it doesn’t hurt to let someone else do the rescuing every now and then, when your own armor starts to get banged up.”

Maybe he was right. “And you think you’re up to the challenge?”

Some nameless emotion swirled in the blues of his eyes for just an instant. “I’m up to any challenge you could throw down. And several you’ve probably never thought of.”

I laughed out loud. “I’m starting to see the family resemblance.”

Tod frowned. “That’s not funny.”

“I know.” That time I took the lead and we stopped twenty feet from the back door, where the serene, manicured greenery gave way to cold concrete and two industrial trash bins.

“You ready?” Tod held his hand out and I took it, twining my fingers around his. His palm was warm and dry, and I tried to ignore the wave of confusion and possibility that crashed over me. There was no time—and no real purpose—for either one.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered, and I was happy to comply, because I couldn’t deal with what I might still see in his. Not now, anyway. “Here we go…”

My stomach pitched with the sudden sensation that I was falling. I fought the urge to grab on to something and clung to Tod’s hand instead, surprised that it still felt warm and solid while my own body felt oddly insubstantial.

Then the world seemed to settle around me and I felt the floor beneath my feet. The air was cold and had that distinctive hospital smell, somehow both sterile and stale at the same time. Tod squeezed my hand and I opened my eyes.

And the fears of my present slammed into the terror of my past.

Nothing had changed. Lakeside still looked and felt exactly the same.

We stood in the open common area of the youth ward, where patients gathered to eat, watch TV, play games, and have group therapy. The nurse’s station was only feet away, and the girls’ wing stretched out on my right. At the end of the hall was the room I’d occupied, and I was overwhelmed with the perverse need to go see who lived there now, and whether her delusions could hold a candle to my own.

You’re not crazy, Kaylee.

I had to remind myself, because just being back in that place blurred the line between delusion and reality for me. The last time I was there, I hadn’t known I was a bean sidhe. I’d only known that I was seeing things no one else could see—dark, horrifying auras surrounding certain people, and odd smoke, and things skittering through it. I’d fought, and failed, against an overwhelming need to scream, and it was those fits—what I thought were panic attacks—that landed me in Lakeside in the first place.

“I don’t suppose you know her room number?” Tod said, and his volume alone told me no one else could hear him. I shook my head, unsure whether or not that benefit of his abilities extended to me. “I think you can talk,” he said, and I lifted both brows, silently asking if he was sure.

Tod shrugged. “Give it a shot. Even if someone hears you, he won’t be able to see you, and I bet half of these people are here because they already hear voices.”

But I wasn’t particularly eager to add my voice to the general din of insanity.

The hall was empty, except for the canned laughter of whatever was playing on the common-room TV and the clatter of plastic utensils, which told me we’d arrived at the end of dinner. Any minute, the residents would emerge from the dining area and begin whatever doctor-approved leisure activities were currently available. But it wouldn’t be enough. Not even a lifetime of books, puzzles, or games could make them forget where they were or that most of them would only ever leave when they were transferred to one of the adult wards.

And nothing could make the time pass any faster.

“In here,” Tod said, tugging me toward the nurse’s station, which was temporarily empty.

He glanced around for a second, then zeroed in on a chart hanging on the wall. “What was her name?”

“Farrah Combs,” I whispered, terrified that the nurse on duty would hear me and step out of the break room. Maybe we should have tested this plan in an unsecure part of the hospital first…

“Room 304,” Tod said, and I scanned the chart long enough to see that he was right. And that Scott was in the first room on the left in the boys’ wing.

We headed into the girls’ wing, but before we were halfway down the hall, footsteps squeaked on the tile ahead and a woman in purple scrubs emerged from one room carrying a clipboard with a pen chained to the metal clasp. I stood frozen in the middle of the hall, suddenly sure she’d see me, in spite of Tod’s assurance to the contrary.

“Relax.” He squeezed my hand. “She can’t see either of us, and I don’t think she can hear you, either.” When the nurse got too close for comfort, I stepped out of her way, still clinging to Tod’s hand, and was both fascinated and a little scared of the fact that she obviously had no idea we were there. She didn’t hesitate or look up from her clipboard. If she got any telltale chills or weird feelings, I saw no sign. It was like Tod and I existed in our own world, population two, surrounded by the real world, but not a part of it.

“Is it always like this for you?” I asked in a spontaneous moment of bravery, and I couldn’t resist a sigh of relief when the nurse kept walking. She hadn’t heard me.

“Like what?” Tod asked from inches away, and suddenly I was very aware of his hand in mine, his fingers rough and real against my own, in spite of how very tenuous the rest of reality felt in that moment.

“Like this.” I gestured at the rest of the building as the first residents stepped into the hallway, girls with stringy hair and sweatpants, most wearing slippers or laceless shoes. Dinner was over. “Like you’re alone in a crowd. Like you’re not really here at all.”

Tod stared at me like I wasn’t making any sense. Or like I was making too much sense. “Yeah. Most of the time. But I’ve never been more here than I am right now.” His hand tightened around mine again, and my pulse raced, running from something I couldn’t think about yet.

As the girls shuffled toward us, a couple blinking in medicated dazes, several guys headed in the opposite direction, toward the boys’ wing, and I glimpsed a dark head that might have been Scott’s. Or might not have been. I wanted to check on him, but business came first.

Still holding Tod’s hand, I stared into the faces of the girls as they passed me, waiting for one of them to turn into room 304. I had no idea what Farrah Combs looked like—she could have been any one of the girls passing us. A couple of the faces did look familiar—it creeped me out to think we may have been residents together.

But none of them went into room 304, and before I could pull Tod into the room to wait for its resident, the woman in purple scrubs stepped in front of me and knocked on that very door. Surprised, I pulled Tod with me as she pushed the door open and stepped into the doorway, just far enough into the room to get the resident’s attention.

“Farrah?” she said, and my heart leapt into my throat. If there was a reply from inside, I couldn’t hear it. “You didn’t even touch your tray today. The doctor says if you don’t eat, they’ll have to feed you intravenously. You don’t want that, do you?”

Again, there was no audible response, and based on the nurse’s frown, there was no silent gesture, either.

I edged down the hall toward 304, my pulse racing fast enough to make me light-headed and Tod came with me.

“Normally we don’t make these kinds of accommodations,” the nurse said. “But considering your situation… Is there anything I can get you? Anything you’d particularly like to eat?”

Again there was no answer, and I was actually starting to feel sorry for the nurse. And to wish there’d been more like her when I was there…

“Okay then,” she said, in response to nothing I’d heard. “Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to make you feel better.”

Wow. She was really going out of her way for one resident.

I flattened myself against the wall when the nurse headed down the hall again, but Tod let her walk right through him. “What does that feel like?” I asked, whispering out of instinct. Talking when no one else could hear me felt weird.

He shrugged, looking right into my eyes. “Right now, this is all I feel.” He held our intertwined hands up for me to see and I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t break the hold his gaze had on me, like he could see more than anyone else saw. Things I couldn’t even see myself.

I didn’t know what to say—I could hardly remember how to take my next breath—but then he looked away first, like maybe he wished he could take it back. So I let him tug me toward the open door still swimming in confusion.

I stepped inside first with Tod close at my back. The room was a double, with two identical low beds against opposite walls. There were two sets of metal shelves bolted to the walls in place of dressers, and a door on the left led to a tiny private bathroom.

The bed on the right was empty and sort of haphazardly made, the plain white blanket pulled up and the pillow tossed on top. But Farrah Combs—it had to be her—sat cross-legged on the other mattress, white sheet and blanket shoved to the bottom of the bed, waist-length, greasy brown hair hanging like a curtain over her face and half her body. She stared at a book open on the bed in front of her, and I desperately wanted to see her face.

“Can you let her see and hear us?” I asked Tod, acutely aware of his hand in mine. “Just her?”

He nodded, and I turned back to the girl on the bed. “Hi, Farrah,” I said, and she looked up slowly, like she’d heard me on some kind of a delay. Her face was gaunt and deeply shad owed, her arms thin and knobby at the wrists and elbows. When my gaze met hers, I realized two things immediately about Farrah Combs. First, she was sick, and not just mentally.

And second…she was very, very pregnant.

Oh, wow. Questions flew through my mind so fast I couldn’t harness them. Was this Mr. Beck’s baby? If so, why had he tried again with Danica? Was one kid not enough? Was this one not a boy?

“Farrah?” I said, finally. “Are you Farrah Combs?”

“I used to be,” she said, her voice higher and sweeter than I’d expected.

I glanced at Tod, but he could only shrug.

“So…you’re not Farrah Combs now?” I asked, and she shook her head slowly. “Then who are you?”

“No one,” she said. “I’m not real.” Her brown eyes widened in sudden interest. “Are you real?”

“Yeah. For a few more days, anyway…” I said, and Tod’s hand squeezed mine again. “Farrah, can I talk to you about your baby?”

She shrugged and glanced at her round belly, barely covered by the T-shirt stretched over it. “He’s not real, either. Feels real, though.” She flinched and pressed one hand against her bulging stomach.

“Can you tell me who the father is?” I asked, and she shook her head solemnly. “Please, Farrah? It’s very important.”

“I can’t…” Her voice faded into a whisper on the last sound.

“Why not?”

“Because he’s real.” She barely breathed the words, and the tears standing in her eyes made my heart ache. “He’s still real, and I was real when he touched me, but he doesn’t touch me anymore. But I remember being real.” She looked at her book again and turned a page she couldn’t possibly have seen through her tears.

“Why do you think you’re not real, Farrah?” I asked, dropping into a squat next to her bed with Tod at my side.

“He told me. I’m not real, and this place isn’t real, so none of this matters. Soon it will all be over.”

Over? My stomach clenched around nothing, and anger on Farrah’s behalf blossomed like a fresh bruise on my soul.

“Are you sure you’re real?” she asked, and I could only nod, still trying to understand what she wasn’t really saying. “What about him?” She looked right at Tod and he gave her a small smile.

“Yes, Farrah, I’m real, too.”

Her frown was a child’s pout, innocently skeptical. “You ask a lot of questions for real people.”

“Yeah, I guess we do,” I said, though I had no idea what she meant. “Farrah, what can you tell me about your baby’s father? Can you tell me his name?”

She shook her head again, and long brown hair fell over her face, half hiding one brown eye. “The baby isn’t real,” she said. “So he doesn’t get a name, either.”

I stood, frustrated, and nearly jumped out of my own skin when cloth rustled behind me.

“Hope you’re not expecting any of that to make sense,” a new voice said, and my grip on Tod’s hand tightened as I whirled around to find another resident in the doorway. Her bright blue eyes—shadowed by dark circles—seemed to watch the entire room at once, but never quite focused on us, and I realized she couldn’t see us. Maybe she couldn’t even hear us. But she clearly knew we were there.

“There’s no message in her madness.” The new girl stepped hesitantly into the room, like a blind woman afraid of running into a wall. “No hidden code. She’s been told she doesn’t exist, so she believes it.” She took another step forward and I almost felt sorry for her, wandering around in the dark. Figuratively. “I tried telling her she does exist, but since I’m evidently not real either, she doesn’t believe me. I don’t think she even hears me.”

“She can’t see or hear us,” Tod whispered, and I knew by his volume alone that he was unnerved. “How the hell does she know we’re here?”

“Maybe you’re not as good at this as you think you are,” I whispered, my gaze glued to the new girl. Who was starting to look vaguely, uncomfortably familiar.

He shook his head. “I’m every bit as good as I think I am.”

“If you’re going to hang out in my room, show yourself. Loitering unseen is rude, you know.”

I glanced at Tod and he shrugged, waiting for my opinion. And finally I nodded.

I knew the moment Farrah’s roommate saw us because she gave a startled little yip and kind of jumped back, bumping her hip against the shelves bolted to the wall. “Two of you. Didn’t see that coming.”

“Sorry,” I said, and the roommate’s gaze narrowed on me like my face was a puzzle she needed to solve.

“Thanks for…showing up. I was starting to think I really was losing it.”

“Are you sure you’re not?” Tod asked, and I elbowed him in the ribs. No fair making the residents doubt their own sanity. They got enough of that from the doctors.

“As sure as I am that you’re standing there,” the roommate said. Then she laughed at her own joke, and discomfort crawled over my skin. I hate nut-job humor like Emma hates blond jokes.

“How did you know we were here?” Tod asked, his grip tight around my hand, suspicious frown trained on the newcomer.

“Because Farrah doesn’t talk to herself. She doesn’t talk to anyone, actually. At least, no one the rest of us can see. And I’ve seen enough to know that just because I can’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there.” Her focus shifted to me again, and again she seemed to be looking for something in my eyes. “You don’t remember me do you?”

“Should I?” I asked, my discomfort bloating like a corpse in the sun.

And then suddenly I did remember…something.

“Lydia…” I whispered, and she nodded, obviously pleased, while Tod’s focus shifted between us. “You were here when I… And you…did something. You helped me.”

“I tried,” she admitted, and her small smile faltered.

“And now you’re Farrah’s roommate?”

“Yeah. The staff thinks they’re doing us a favor. The residents think it’s a joke. You know, the two mute girls sharing a room…” She shrugged and sank onto her bed staring up at us.

“Because Farrah only talks to ‘real’ people, and you… You didn’t talk either, when I was here.” Or had she? My memory of Lydia was fuzzy, but her voice wasn’t unfamiliar. And the confusion I couldn’t quite see past made me worry that I might not be done with Lakeside after all….

Lydia shrugged. “I don’t say much to the staff because when I do talk, they tend to extend my stay. But you’re not staff.”

“Maybe she can help us. With Farrah,” Tod suggested, and Lydia’s eyes widened in interest.

“We need to know about her baby’s father,” I said, wishing I could sit, but unwilling to let go of Tod’s hand. I didn’t want to be seen by the next aide to walk down the hall. “Do you know who he is?”

Lydia shook her head. “She talks to someone at night sometimes. Someone I can’t see or hear. I’m assuming it’s him, based on the things she says.” Lydia glanced at the floor, cheeks flushed, and I realized she’d gotten quite an earful from the side of the conversation she could hear. “At first, I thought she was talking to him just now, but obviously I was wrong. Unless you…?” She glanced at Tod, and he shook his head once, sharply. I almost laughed.

“If you’ve never seen or heard him, how do you know he’s really there?” Tod asked, and Lydia frowned up at him.

“I know, because she talks to him like she was talking to you guys, and you’re really here.” Lydia turned to me. “How did you do that, anyway? You’re a bean sidhe, right? But bean sidhes can’t…be invisible.”

She knew what I was. She’d probably known before I had, back when I was still a Lakeside resident. Why did it always seem like everyone else knew more about me than I did?

“I’m a reaper,” Tod said, and Lydia’s eyes went round with the first sign of fear I’d seen from her. “Don’t worry,” he added before she could freak out too badly. “I’m off the clock.”

Lydia nodded hesitantly, like she didn’t quite believe him, and I got the feeling she’d liked him better when she couldn’t see him.

“Does anyone else ever visit Farrah?” I asked, drawing her attention away from the reaper. “Anyone other people can see?”

“Her dad came once, but her mom’s dead, and I get the impression her family doesn’t want anyone to know where she is. Or how sane she isn’t. Not that I blame them.”

“This is so messed up!” I glanced back at Farrah and that ache in my heart flared to life again. “If everyone else could see who she’s talking to, they wouldn’t think she’s crazy!”

“Oh, she is crazy.” Lydia folded her legs beneath herself on the bed. “She just doesn’t hear voices. And that baby’s killing her.” She rubbed both hands over her face, and I realized she was almost as pale as Farrah, the hollows beneath her eyes and cheekbones almost as dark. “I’ve taken what I can, but if I keep that up, the kid’ll just kill us both.”

“What did you take from her?” Tod asked, and Lydia turned to me instead of answering.

“Do you remember?”

“No.” But I was starting to. “You took something from me, too. Pain,” I said, struggling to pull the buried, fuzzy memory to the surface of my mind. “I needed to wail for another patient, and it hurt all the way down…” My free hand found my throat, and I could almost feel the echo of that old agony, so much worse back then, when I hadn’t understood it and couldn’t control it. “You took the pain, and that helped me hold it in.” And if I’d screamed again, they would never have released me. “You got me out of here…”

“I just did what I could,” Lydia insisted. “But there’s not much more I can do for Farrah.” She sighed, and the pain in that sound was beyond the physical. “Maybe I shouldn’t have done anything. She would have lost the baby if I hadn’t helped in the beginning, but at least she would have lived. Now it’s too late for both of them.”