CarnalHealing (11 page)

He stared at the mirror for another few seconds, then shook
his head, as if that would make everything clearer. It didn’t.

He heard voices downstairs, and recognized Leonore’s.
Another voice, also female, was unfamiliar. He went back to the bedroom, got a
pair of jeans out of his closet, and put them on. Leonore was sitting at his
kitchen counter, opposite an African-American woman in a Boston Police
Department uniform.

The stranger saw Jeff first and nodded toward him, which
caused Leonore to turn her head.

“You’re awake,” she said, then smiled. “Jeff, this is
Tish—Letisha. She came by to say that the thing with your car is all taken care
of.”

Letisha, who had stood while Leonore was speaking, came
around the counter and extended a hand. Jeff shook it automatically.

“Taken care of?” he asked, stupidly. The last he saw his
car, it was an upside down wreck.

“I made sure I caught the call,” Letisha explained. “A
flipped car on the roof of a parking garage isn’t something you see every day.”
She grinned. “It took some creative writing, but I managed to prevent anyone
from opening a case file on you. Your insurance company might be another
matter, though.”

“I, uh, thank you,” Jeff replied, not knowing what else to
say. Then he remembered something. “What about the cameras?” There were
security cameras all over the garage, at least on the floor where he parked.

“It seems that something was interfering with the signal.
The last thing that showed was Leonore getting out of the elevator. After that,
it all goes blurry.”

“The
Draíodóir
must have done that,” Leonore said.

“The what?” Jeff asked. He felt like someone else was having
this conversation.

“The sorcerer who was trying to kill me,” Leonore said. “The
Draíodóir
are—well, it’s a long story.”

“Something to do with you being a—” He couldn’t quite make
himself say it.

“A witch,” Leonore replied. “Yes, they have something to do
with it. Ancient enemies who, up until last night, we
hoped
were
mythical. We don’t know much about them.”

“And,” Letisha supplied, “from what Leonore told me about
them, they seem to know everything about us.”

“About you—
Leonoreans
.” The word still sounded strange
to Jeff, but Leonore and Letisha both nodded, perhaps thinking that because he
had used the word, he was accepting the situation.

Well, he was still working on that. Weirdly, the stuff that
had happened
after
the bizarre happenings on the roof—the attack and the
subsequent healing—seemed more like a dream than the magical events. Leonore
had helped him to her car, although he’d hardly needed her support. His injury,
which should have killed him, had seemed to be—absent. They’d driven out of the
parking garage and come back here as if they were returning from a night at the
movies.

Except that Leonore was covered with concrete dust and
grime, and his bloody shirt had a couple of ragged holes in it. She’d calmly
pulled her cell phone from a pocket and called Letisha, explaining briefly what
had happened, and asking for help with the police report. Jeff had listened in
silence, still too stunned to react.

Once back at the apartment, his tongue had finally started
to work again. Leonore had patiently answered his questions, sometimes the same
ones over and over, until he was too tired to ask any more. Then she’d coaxed
him into the shower, persuaded him that he should call the hospital and explain
that he wouldn’t be in the next day, and put him to bed like a child. He’d
thought his swirling thoughts would keep him awake, but he’d slept like the
dead.

He came out of his reverie to see that the cop—Tish, Leonore
called her—was talking to him.

“I gotta get back to the station. See you tomorrow, okay?”
Letisha gave Jeff a sideways glance, then, shrugging, took both of Leonore’s
hands. The two women quickly chanted a few words in what sounded like Latin,
then the policewoman released Leonore’s hands, nodded at him, and walked out
the door.

Jeff sat down on the barstool Letisha had just vacated
opposite Leonore, and they stared at one another for a moment.

“You must still have a million questions,” she said.

He looked at the counter, then at her. “Yeah. But you
already answered most of them. I just can’t seem to process the whole thing.”

Leonore got up and poured a mug of coffee, then returned to
the counter and slid it in front of Jeff before sitting back down.
Such a
typical domestic scene
, Jeff thought. A woman has spent the night at her
boyfriend’s apartment and, when he wakes up, they have coffee.

Except that it’s late afternoon, the woman is a witch, and
the man should be dead.

A new question did occur to him.

“Why were you at the hospital, anyway?” Jeff sipped the
coffee, surprised that it tasted totally normal.

Leonore was silent for an instant before she answered. “I
was…healing someone. A child.”

He thought about that. “Do you do that often? Lurk around
hospitals and heal people?”

“Sometimes. Not as much as I’d like.”

“Why not?”

She sighed. “I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of
saint. I don’t do this all the time. I might if it was possible, but it’s not.
It takes too much out of me.”

“What do you mean?”

Leonore took a deep breath, as if marshalling her thoughts.
She stood up and started to pace.

“When I first found out I had the ability to heal,” she
started, “I was still pretty young. A teenager. I thought it meant I was
destined to be some sort of healing angel—that I was supposed to become an Army
nurse, and save wounded soldiers, or maybe join the Red Cross and swoop in
after a natural disaster and reattach limbs or something.” Her smile was
rueful. “I was naïve. And I didn’t understand my gift—I thought it would get
more powerful. But—”

She stalked back over to the barstool she had abandoned. “It
turns out that every time I heal someone, it drains my magic. I have to
recharge in between healings. And that can be…complicated.”

“How do you recharge your magic?” Jeff asked.

Lenore looked up at him, and he thought her cheeks looked
pinker than usual. He hadn’t imagined Leonore would blush at anything. “I, um,
have sex. To the point of orgasm.”

“Do you mean that you masturbate?” Jeff asked.

Leonore shook her head. “No, that doesn’t really work.
I—we—haven’t ever really figured out why. No, there has to be another person
involved. Something about drawing on their sexual energy.”

The full implication hit Jeff. “You mean when you met me in
that bar—when you said you were out to get laid—you were telling the truth? You
were just, like, recharging your battery?”

This time, Jeff was sure that the deepening of the blush on
Leonore’s cheeks was not his imagination. But, mortified or not, she looked him
in the eyes. “Yes,” she admitted. “That’s exactly what I was doing.”

Jeff wasn’t sure how he felt about that. “Then, when you ran
into me at the hospital…”

Leonore shook her head firmly. “No, that was different. I’d
never actually done that before.”

“Done
what
before?”

Leonore shrugged. “You know…gotten together a second time
with someone I’d previously, um…”

“Used as a fueling stop?” Jeff could see Leonore was
becoming increasingly uncomfortable, but he wanted to understand.

Leonore nodded again. “Right. Exactly. And I have to tell
you, I really surprised myself when I agreed to go on an actual date with you.”

To Jeff’s surprise, Leonore’s last statement made him feel a
little better. She’d used him, sure. But he believed her when she said that her
decision to accept a date with him had been an unusual step for her.

“Okay,” he said. “That explains what you were doing at the
hospital the other day. But, what I meant was, why were you looking for me last
night?”

She took another deep breath before replying. “I was there
to see Lucy.”

It took a moment to register. “Lucy? As in my patient Lucy?”

She nodded. “I wanted to make sure she was still…healed.”

Jeff stared at her, trying to comprehend. Then, light
dawned. “You mean it was
you
who…who made Lucy well? You healed her
cancer?”

Leonore’s voice was soft. “Yes.”

The world reeled and, if Jeff hadn’t been sitting, he would
have staggered. “It wasn’t the treatment,” he said, and his voice sounded
strange in his ears. Dead. “It was you and your…your magic. The experimental
treatment—”

He stopped talking, afraid he would choke on the bile rising
in his throat. He got up and walked to the sink and poured the still-warm
coffee down the drain. Suddenly, he couldn’t imagine drinking it.

Leonore stepped behind him, and Jeff felt hands on his back,
massaging. It felt good, but he pulled out of her grasp and took a couple of
sideways steps, putting distance between them. He crossed his arms, waiting to
see what she had to say.

“I couldn’t tell you,” she said, no hint of apology in her
tone. “When I…healed her the first time, I had no idea she was part of a study.
I just felt all that cancer and I had to get rid of it.” She searched Jeff’s
face and must not have like what she saw because she went on, “Surely, you’re
not angry that I healed her. The cancer would have killed her, Jeff. I felt it.
I wasn’t trying to sabotage your treatment—I was just trying to save her.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Leonore. Of course I’m not sorry you
healed her. I’m a fucking pediatric oncologist, for god’s sake. How could I not
want you to heal a child?” He still couldn’t believe it. “Jesus, I’ve been
totally deluding myself. I thought I was saving her—that the new treatment
might save a lot of kids. And, all the time, it was you.”

“I’m not being ridiculous,” she said. “Don’t say that. Look,
Jeff, every once in a while, yeah, I heal a kid. But in my whole life, I’ve probably
helped a couple of dozen. I never thought that healing one child could
compromise…”

She looked up at Jeff, seeming to implore him to understand.
“How many children have you helped, Jeff? Hundreds? And, once your new
treatment gets approved, it will be even more.”

Jeff wanted to shake her. “Don’t you get it, Leonore? The
treatment
doesn’t work
. It was
you
who healed Lucy. The
grant—there’s no way I could take it now. And all those months of research…”

“But it
was
working,” replied Leonore.

“No.” Jeff shook his head. “I wanted to believe it was, but
I was kidding myself.”

Leonore looked like she wanted to shake
him
. “You’re
not hearing me. I’m not just saying this to try to make you feel better. I know
it was working because I
felt
it.”

“What are you talking about?”

Leonore went on. “I’ve healed cancer before. I know what
cancer feels like. So, when I…first felt Lucy’s illness, it was totally
familiar. I knew what to do.”

She looked up at Jeff, as if waiting for confirmation that
he understood. He nodded and she continued.

“Well, I could feel the cancer cells, and everything about
them felt bad—unwholesome. But when I’m healing someone, I can feel other
things too.”

“What kind of things?” Despite being upset, Jeff couldn’t
help but be interested.

“I can usually feel someone’s immune system, if it hasn’t
been totally destroyed. I call the cells ‘soldiers’, and I have to be very
careful not to harm them.”

This didn’t make sense to Jeff. “By the time you met her,
Lucy’s immune system should have been destroyed by chemotherapy and radiation.”

“That’s just it. It wasn’t. I felt it very clearly. The
soldiers were weak, but they were definitely there.”

Jeff felt a cautious hope. “You can’t be sure of that.”

Leonore took his hand and, this time, he didn’t pull it away.
“Jeff, I know it’s difficult for you to comprehend what I do, but if you think
about it, it’s not really all that hard to understand. You can look at
someone’s blood under a microscope, or do a lab test, and you can determine how
many cells of a certain kind there are. I can ascertain the same information,
just in a different way.”

“Okay, let’s say for a minute that you can sense someone’s
immune system working. I’ll even buy that Lucy still had some immune function
at that stage in her cancer. It still doesn’t mean the treatment was working.”

“Yes, it does.” Leonore, still holding his hand, went on.
“There was something else in her body, something I’d never experienced before.
It was as if—as if something foreign was there, propping up the ‘soldiers’.
Protecting them or making them stronger, or both. I didn’t know what it was,
but I could tell it was good, so I left it alone.”

It took Jeff a moment to grasp the implications.

“Are you absolutely certain?” he whispered. He felt as if
saying the words too loudly would make them untrue.

“I’m positive, Jeff. One hundred percent.”

He believed her—absolutely
knew
she was telling the
truth.

“Do you realize what this means?” he asked.

“Yes. It means your research is valid and that you can take
that grant in good conscience.”

“No. I mean, yes, it means that. But…there might be more to
it.”

Leonore narrowed her eyes. “I’m not following you.”

To Jeff’s immense surprise, a laugh bubbled in his throat.
He struggled to suppress it, but it was no use. It burst forth into a snort and
a guffaw. After a moment, he got hold of himself but, when he saw the shocked
expression on Leonore’s face, another sprang up and, before he knew it, he was
on a full-on laughing jag. He couldn’t catch his breath. His sides ached and
his eyes filled with water, but he laughed on.

By the time the attack of hysteria ran its course, even
Leonore was starting to smile.