Night Terrors (Sarah Beauhall Book 4) (11 page)

“I have another call,” Qindra said, clicking over.

I waited, holding the purse closed and watching the nurses work. A doctor ran into the room after a minute and then a second. Katie was starting to fight them. One of the nurses inserted something into her IV and she settled down.

So did the book.

“I have to go,” Qindra’s voice echoed out of the phone. “When I touched Katie, Nidhogg had another fit.”

The line went dead and I slipped the phone into my pocket. “What the hell is going on with you, Katie?” I asked no one. “What have you gotten into?”

Or, maybe the question was, what has gotten into you.

The doctors came out after another five minutes. Katie had never really woken up, they said. She was fighting in her sleep and ripped off several sensors. They were pleased she was showing signs of life. One of them was sporting a fat lip. “She’s a fighter,” he said, grinning.

I sat in the waiting room and called Jimmy to tell them about Katie’s condition. He tracked down Skella on his own, and within twenty minutes he was chatting with the nurse while Deidre and Skella sat with me, waiting.

I held the purse in my lap in a total death grip. I wasn’t letting that damn thing out of my sight. I was strongly debating having it around Katie at all.

I needed to know when she’d taken the diary. Before Christmas Deidre had refused to give it to her, said it was too dangerous. Hell, it had almost killed Jimmy when he touched it a decade earlier.

But it was her mother’s, right? Why would it be so damn dangerous?

Did it have something to do with Katie’s parents disappearing? Was there a connection here we hadn’t figured out? It all gave me a headache. Maybe I should just give the damn thing to Qindra and let her figure it out.

On the other hand, the diary reacted pretty damned negatively to Qindra. I sure as hell didn’t want her getting killed. Who else would control Nidhogg?

I looked down at my phone. It had been a couple of hours since Qindra had to rush home to a dragon in fits. Had she been in time.

Which got me to thinking on the nature of magic. How come Qindra could use a cell phone? Maybe she wasn’t leaking magic all the time. I bet when she was doing her squiggle magic, none of the phones worked.

Timing, I guess. It was just so damn confusing. I’d test the theory at some point.

I held Katie’s purse against my chest and felt the book through the thin leather. As I sat there, I noticed that it throbbed ever so slightly, like a heartbeat. I stood and went to the window, looking in on the room where they had Katie restrained and sedated. I could see the heart monitor, watched as each beat spiked and fell. Spiked and fell in time with the pulsing of the book.

Maybe this wasn’t Katie’s mother’s book any longer. Maybe it was Katie’s, like the amulet I wore became mine when Anezka had me hold it that first time back last fall. Made me consider if magic was sentient somehow.

Like my sword, Gram. She spoke to me, sang in my head. She was willful and had her own agenda. Why wouldn’t other artifacts behave the same. Gram chose me, the amulet chose me. This book chose Katie.

I just wish I knew why it was so damn dangerous. Was that what Qindra had sensed? A connection to the book? I needed more information. Needed to ask questions, but hell if I knew who to ask.

Sixteen

JJ died on the operating table around the same time Qindra had touched Katie. I’d bet money it was within seconds. Jennifer called me to let me know. Wendy had to be sedated. Her parents were coming up from Lacey to take her home with them for a few days, to let her find some balance. It was all so damned useless.

Melanie knew one of the nurses at Harborview who told her that it was like JJ’s head exploded. They were prepping him for surgery when a piece of his skull the size of a quarter erupted, spraying the operating theater in blood and brains. No one had ever seen anything like it. Except maybe from a bullet. There was no bullet, though. Not a physical one, that is. More like a psychic magical trigger of some sort. She said several pieces of the equipment were also fried at that exact same time, like a power surge. Really bizarre.

I know the book had something to do with it. It may not be the cause, but it was involved. The way it pulsed in time with Katie’s heart beat freaked me out a little. Part of me wanted to burn the book. I just didn’t know what would happen.

This was so far out of my league.

What the hell was I going to do? I knew deep down I was going to have to open that book, explore the pages within. The very thought scared the crap out of me. If me mucking around hurt Katie, I couldn’t live with myself.

In the meantime, I’d try and keep life as normal as possible for Jai Li. What else could I do? I’d figure something out, eventually.

Seventeen

I split my time between Circle Q and the hospital in Kent. Katie hadn’t made any further progress. The doctors had her on an IV but said she didn’t need any extraordinary life support. She was fairly strong. She just wasn’t waking up.

Reminded me of Gletts, the elf boy who’d fallen fighting the wraiths last October. He was in a similar state, body on pause, but his spirit was gone, fled into the mirror land—the sideways. Was that what had happened to Katie? Could I see the thread that tethered her spirit to her body if I slipped sideways?

I’d seen the silver thread that connected the various spirits to the bodies of the wounded when I visited the house of healing at the elf compound in Vancouver. Those lines were so fragile it amazed me we managed to survive all this time.

Maybe that’s what I had to do. Maybe I needed to go walkabout, get my astral projection on and see what I could see with Katie. Was worth a shot. I hadn’t done it in a while. I’m sure it wouldn’t be any harder than it had the last time I did it, up in Chumstick. Only this time, I hope I don’t run into the spirits of any more serial killers. There was that one guy in the top hat that totally freaked me the fuck out. He was bad news of a special sort. Like dragon level pain.

Flight Test was on hiatus and Julie was managing the smithing work without me. The rent was due on the apartment and I think I had enough in my account to cover that and the utilities. Would make things like gas and groceries a little thin, but we’d make do. Hell, being out at Circle Q saved us a ton on food. Those women sure loved taking care of Jai Li and me.

They had JJ’s funeral a week after he died. It was strange thinking about my life without him in it. The guy was a pig and I’d wanted to stab him on more than one occasion, but he’d been changing. Wendy had done something to him, or maybe he had already begun to change which is what made the whole Wendy thing possible. Either way I was going to miss the guy and that is not something I’d have thought in a million years.

I discussed it with Julie and the girls and we decided to leave Jai Li on the farm with them instead of taking her to the funeral. She was so young and had been through enough hard times in her life. Besides, she was pretty freaked out about Katie still and I didn’t want to add any more stress than we had to.

The funeral was at the Universalist church over in West Seattle. I’d never been there, but it had a good sized hall. I got there thirty minutes early, only to find the place almost completely full, with more folks coming in.

I grabbed a seat with the rest of the Flight Test crew. Jones and Carnes made it a point of corralling me and sitting me between them with a box of tissue shoved into my hands. My people. I didn’t deserve either of them, but luckily no one asked my opinion.

After the preacher spoke, people began to go up to the podium and give their remembrances of JJ. I was feeling a bit nauseous at that point. You’d think the guy was up for a Nobel Peace Prize or something. I must have voiced my incredulity a little too loudly, because Grandma Jones dug her elbow in my ribs and gave me a scathing look.

I shrugged innocently and sat back, listening to the testimonials.

I held it together with my sarcasm and cynicism intact right up to the point that Clyde got up and spoke.

Clyde had pulled his thick, shoulder length gray hair back into a ponytail and trimmed his usually unruly beard into something neat and stylish. He had on a pretty good suit, like from a suit place, not a throwback to the eighties or something. He looked nice.

His voice had that gravel edge of a pack-a-day smoker and it reminded me that he and JJ would stand out back of the studio on their breaks and talk about the women on the set. Since Wendy had showed up, however, that behavior had gone to the wayside. It’s like they both wanted to be a better person by knowing her.

He spoke of friendship and second chances. Carnes was crying quietly and I was having a hard time in that arena myself. I was fighting the tears and had begun to work up a head of pissed-off-by-it-all when Clyde finished. I didn’t really hear his closing remarks, my brain was firing too quickly. Too many memories, too much pain. I wish Katie was here beside me instead of Carnes and Jones. They were nice enough people, but I missed Katie.

Wendy spoke for a couple of minutes, and then JJ’s parents got up there and hugged her, thanking her for loving JJ. The father spoke of an honored son, how proud they were with his success and finally finding someone as wonderful as Wendy. Then the mother pulled the father away from the podium and the preacher came up again. There was to be a graveside service

The crowd began to break up and I moved to the side of the hall, watching as small clumps of people consoled one another, or as individuals shuffled out, heads down. Skella stood in the far back, closest to the door, with several kids I didn’t know. Probably part of the Bellingham crew she was hanging with these days. She waved at me at one point and they all left, heading for their car. I didn’t follow. I could see her later, and I was in no mood to meet new people.

Once the crowd had thinned down to a mere trickle, I paid my condolences to JJ’s parents, spent a few minutes letting Wendy hug me, then headed out a side door, hands in my pockets and my mind pinging all over the map, worry and anguish about Katie blurring the world around me.

I couldn’t do this with her as the guest of honor. I think I’d die of heartbreak. I had to do something, figure out what the hell had happened to her. I couldn’t lose her.

I pushed out through one of the side doors and stopped, shocked. Sitting in a wheelchair beside a dark blue Hummer was Frederick Sawyer. His able assistant, Mr. Philips, stood behind him, one hand on the wheel chair, one hand holding an umbrella over Mr. Sawyer, blocking the weak sun.

They were talking to Qindra and Nidhogg.

My heart began to race. Nidhogg was out of her house again? And at a funeral? What the hell was going on in the world?

I strode across the parking lot, my eyes boring a hole in the back of Qindra’s head, willing her to turn around.

Nidhogg saw me first. She stood to the right of Sawyer, leaning on her cane with one hand on Frederick’s shoulder. This made Mr. Philips uncomfortable, by the way he kept glancing down at that hand. Nidhogg said something too quiet for me to hear, but all four of them turned, facing me, expectant looks on their faces.

“Good,” Nidhogg said. “Now that we are all here, we need to find a quiet place for lunch. I’m starving.”

I stopped in my tracks. “I’m sorry, what are we discussing?”

Qindra smiled at me and Mr. Philips nodded.

“Lovely to see you,” Frederick Sawyer said.

The man looked haggard. Doubly so since he was also a dragon, and even in his human guise, he had always been a shining example of virility and good health. Now he looked broken and drained.

“I know a quiet place,” Qindra said. She took a card from her jacket pocket wrote something on the back and handed it to Mr. Philips, who glanced at it and nodded.

“Very good,” he said, his voice calm and smooth.

He wheeled Frederick away to a Hummer. Qindra motioned for me to follow her and Nidogg to a Town Car that was waiting in the back of the lot.

“Ride with us, Sarah,” Qindra said. It wasn’t a request. I shrugged and caught up with them, walking on Nidhogg’s right.

She placed her hand on my arm as we walked, letting her set the pace with her cane. The
tok-tok-tok
of the cane on the blacktop parking lot mirrored the pounding of my heart.

What the hell was going on? My mind, over-flowing with thoughts of Katie, was suddenly in full panic mode. Nidhogg had only left her house once in a few centuries, and that was this past winter solstice, when we fought the necromancer and his blood cult.

Nidhogg in her full glory was a sight to behold. She was both beautiful and terrible, but I hadn’t killed her, hadn’t killed Sawyer either. Oh, the sword wanted me to, in a big way, but I held my ground, let Nidhogg shelter a broken Sawyer under her wings.

And now we were all going to lunch like an old family. There was something critical I was missing, and I didn’t like surprises. Especially not when the dragons were involved.

Qindra glanced at me over the top of the car, just before she got in. Her face was stoic, but she gave me a quick wink.

Okay, maybe I wasn’t going to be killed right away. Not that any of them had considered it lately, but I was going to worry.

The thought of it all kept my mind split, the anguish of Katie tempered by the spiraling unknown.

Eighteen

We ended up at a small Mediterranean place off Anchor. Qindra spoke to the little man who was doing the seating and he swept us into a back room, segregated from the rest of the restaurant. Without us ordering he placed hummus and pita bread, along with a collection of other spreads: olives, pickled garlic, and feta cheese.

There was a pecking order to our seating. It was not spoken of directly, but Nidhogg sat next to Sawyer. The servants sat beside their respective masters, and I sat opposite them, a Ronin amidst the vassals and lords.

Nidhogg ate quietly, scooping hummus, fat green olives, and chunks of feta onto a triangle of pita and nibbling them into oblivion. After a minute, Frederick began to eat, which was the signal for Qindra and Mr. Philips. Once they had both taken their first bite, the old man scampered into the room and poured glasses of water, tea that smelled strongly of mint, and some pale golden wine with a rich fruity bouquet. I stuck with the water.