The Tangled Bridge (27 page)

Ethan said, “He has a way of getting inside your mind and compelling you to act against your will. If you don't know what's going on, it can be confusing. Feels like your own idea.”

“What exactly are we up against? Isn't there anything we can do?”

Ethan nodded. “If you suspect you're being manipulated, you have to blank out your mind. Don't fight it. Just accept and observe no matter what happens, and you'll be yourself again.”

Madeleine said, “The light that's in Bo, it's gotten into the people around him, like you and Ray and your neighbor Cheryl. It makes it difficult for the bad ones to get a foothold.”

“But he got a foothold on me,” Esther said.

Ethan shook his head. “If you let yourself get bogged down in worry or anger or panic or guilt, it's an opening for them.”

The sound of the door swinging came from the other side of the curtain. Madeleine and Ethan both looked. A nurse was coming in.

“Do you mind coming back in a few minutes?” Ethan said, striding to the door to block her entry.

Madeleine moved around the bed to position herself in front of Bo.

“It's time for her meds,” the nurse was saying.

But Ethan was gently guiding her back out the door and Madeleine could hear his tired, reassuring voice: “Just a couple of minutes is all. We'll let you know when we've gone.”

Madeleine looked at Esther. The beating she'd taken after stealing her coworker's stash was a harsh one. It had happened only because Zenon wanted to isolate Bo and make him vulnerable. Madeleine thought Esther was probably safe now as long as she wasn't around Bo. Bo, however, was not safe. Especially not here. They had to go.

Madeleine turned and looked through the curtain but didn't see Ethan. Not in the room, and he wasn't standing on the other side of the wire glass window, either.

“Hang on.” She walked to the door and opened it.

Ethan wasn't there.

She swallowed, looked left and right. He hadn't said anything about going anywhere.

But she already knew where he'd gone.

Madeleine turned back and went swiftly to where Bo was listening to the iPod in the far corner. “Come with me, honey. Can you be really quiet and hide in the bathroom?”

“What's the matter?” Esther asked.

“I need to check on something.”

Bo had pulled out the earbuds and was following her to the bathroom. “Did Mare come back for me?”

“No, no, we're just playing safe.”

Madeleine secured him inside the bathroom, then stepped back into the hall, closing the door behind her. It had only been a minute or two since the nurse had tried to enter. If she hurried, she could get to Zenon's room before Ethan did.

*   *   *

THE CORRIDOR WAS QUIET
. Madeleine scanned ahead as she jogged toward Zenon's room, drawing curious glances from the staff. From halfway down the hall, she could see that there was no guard posted out front.

She hurried to the open door and caught her breath. Ethan was already there. Zenon was not.

She stepped inside, looking from Ethan to the bed—empty and stripped down. No quilt, no shortwave radio. The chair the guard had been using in the hall was now pulled inside and placed by the door.

“What's happened?” she asked.

Ethan said, “You shouldn't have left them alone.”

“I didn't feel I had a choice! What exactly are you doing here, Ethan?”

“You know damn well what I'm doing here.”

And then a voice from behind said, “Well maybe you can enlighten me.”

They turned.

Standing in the doorway, arms folded, was the short blond nurse, Vessie. “I don't recall y'all having checked in at the nurse's station. You can't just wander into patients' rooms like this.”

Madeleine said, “What happened to my half-brother?”

Vessie shrugged. “Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“No one knows. The hospital tried to reach you.”

Madeleine frowned. “Well they didn't try very hard. How do you lose a patient with a guard posted at the door?”

“From the looks of things, he up and walked out on his own.”

Ethan said, “The man's been in a coma for the past several months!”

Vessie's hands went to her hips. “I don't like your tone of voice. If you have a problem you can take it up with the administrator, but for now you better get off my wing before I call security.”

Madeleine stepped toward her, teeth clenched. “No, my dear, you are going to tell us exactly what happened.”

And she found that little catch inside Vessie's mind, and she pulled. Hard.

Vessie sat down abruptly. “I took him out.”

Madeleine exchanged a frown with Ethan and then looked at Vessie again. “Go on.”

“That's it. I took him out on a stretcher. Covered him with a sheet.”

“What about the damn guard!” Ethan said.

Vessie looked at him. “He helped. We went in the early hours when no one else was around. I know where the blind spots are in the security cameras. It was easy. There been all kinda investigators come askin questions.”

Madeleine said, “Just tell us where he is now.”

“I don't know. Me and the guard, we took him down to patient transport. There was a man waiting there for us. No one I know. Loaded him up and took him away. Bye-bye.”

 

thirty-two

NEW ORLEANS, NOW

MADELEINE AND ETHAN FOUND
Bo waiting safely in Esther's bathroom. Esther looked anxious.

“We've got to go now,” Madeleine said.

Esther reached for Madeleine's hand. “I have one more thing to ask you. And I'm sorry. You've done so much.”

“What is it?” Ethan asked.

Esther took a deep breath and looked at Ethan. “Doctor Manderleigh, I want to ask you to personally watch over my boy. And Doctor LeBlanc, I want to ask that you not be alone with him.”

Silence settled over the room. Esther was still holding Madeleine's hand, her fingers cold and moist.

Bo said, “But Mom!”

Ethan started to say, “Do you realize—”

But Madeleine shook her head. “No, it's OK. I understand.”

Because Esther was right. Esther had looked at Madeleine and seen shadows of the monster inside. A relief, actually, that the truth was out there. She squeezed Esther's hand and did not look at Ethan.

*   *   *

SEVERIN WAS RUNNING. SHE
clearly wanted Madeleine to chase after her but Madeleine didn't want to go any deeper. She looked back and saw only the black trees with their coils of thorns and the curling mist. Already she wasn't sure where the entry point was. Beneath her feet the spongy, pale green duckweed rolled with the water's surface. She could slip into that water or she could run across it. Water in the briar wasn't like water in the material world.

“Severin!” she called.

Rustling of leaves. The child's laughter echoed back to her, echoed among the trees, and did not seem to come from any direction in particular. Irritating.

The dragonfly beasts sprang up from the duckweed. But before they could sting her she turned and stared them down. They hovered, watching. She let her fury course through and away from her so as not to indulge them.

She sang softly against her frustration, “Three blind mice, three blind mice…”

The dragonflies receded. They could be lulled like Severin.

Or was Madeleine just lulling herself, she wondered. And the other creatures were reacting in kind?

She heard the rustling again, and wondered if Severin was making the noise. Everything around her was silver and black or faint green or red. Leaves fluttered everywhere but she couldn't pinpoint the origin of the sound.

She felt …

Something out here. An airless, cold void. The chill came not so much from an active source as from an absence of warmth. Of life. Blackness, thickening the shadows. She wondered if Severin had caused it.

She watched.

Emerging from the trees came the colorful flying lizards: sylphs. They formed around her, their hues shimmering, their backs gleaming, their collars puffed. Madeleine could not help but feel awe. The void was still there, but now less important to her. The sylphs circled around her like the wind patterns of a tropical storm, then trailed off into the woods on a stream of mist.

Deeper into the briar like Severin. She didn't follow them, either.

She wasn't going to fall for these tricks—chasing deep into the woods, where the trees might fall away to tunnels of thorns. Where she might lose her bearings.

She had no intention of staying here for days, weeks, months, the way her father had been known to do. She was going to return to the material world tonight.

At the base of one of the great trees, a shelf of lichen had formed a sturdy half-ring. She went to the shelf and lay down. It felt soft as any feather bed. The mist settled over her face in a crisp, cool mesh. She closed her eyes.

“Ah, so as to sleep? Should you sleep it does not count for our bargain.”

Madeleine opened her eyes and saw Severin crouched on a limb above where she lay.

“What bargain, Severin? You only honor it when it suits you.”

The little river devil's face formed a sly frown that became a grin. “You blame me. You should blame yourself. I come at your will.”

“Why do you keep saying that? You show up uninvited and I tell you to go away!”

“What you say with words is not all that I hear from you.”

The rustling sound came from the trees again. So it wasn't Severin making it. Madeleine looked, and saw that Severin was watching for the origin of the sound, too.

“What is it,” Madeleine asked. “What's out there?”

“It is there and wishes to be everywhere. It is what makes us.”

Madeleine sat up on the shelf of lichen. “Severin, I need to find where Zenon is hiding.”

“He is here in the bramble. Call to him—”

“No! I need to find his physical body. Where is he hiding?”

“Let us take a look to see.”

Severin climbed down from her branch and settled in next to Madeleine on the shelf of lichen, pushing herself up under Madeleine's arm. Madeleine waited. The sensation began only as a matter of equilibrium, a sudden feeling of weightlessness. Her mind went dizzy. The platform of duckweed suspended over the water's surface—though only inches beneath the lichen shelf—seemed to wobble in such a way that Madeleine thought they might fall in. And then the duckweed was disappearing to whirlpools. Madeleine held on to Severin. The world around them fell away, and she couldn't tell if they were lifting or falling. Everything shifted to black.

Then, Madeleine saw a gleam. Far down below. A long, shimmering dendrite shape that stretched as far as she could see. And then she saw that it led to a strange spread of light: a circuit board with lighted parallels. It bent itself in a crescent moon shape around a bend in the glassy dendrite. A city. Her city. New Orleans.

But before she could even steal more than a glance, it went dark.

Everything was dark. And then there was a patch of duckweed just a few feet away from her. And trees were stretching up from the duckweed, black and thorny, stretching impossibly high.

“What happened?”

“No, we cannot,” Severin said.

“What do you mean ‘we cannnot?'”

“He is not there where we can find him.”

Madeleine pulled away from Severin. “Why not? Is he … dead?”

Severin shrugged, growing bored. “He found a trick of hiding, is what he's done, surely.”

“Is there any way to find him?”

And then Zenon's voice came from across the duckweed. “Who you looking for?”

Madeleine jumped.

He was watching her from between two wide tree trunks, looking satisfied with himself. “Look at you, pretty as you please, stretched out like a bayou fairy.”

She rose from the lichen shelf. “How long have you been standing there, Zenon?”

He strode toward her, walking over the duckweed. “Honey, you don't need to go to no special lengths to find me. Just call. I'll come every time. Hell I'll come even when you ain't callin.”

“You really have become a damned river devil.”

He laughed. “And you, baby, are still good and stained.”

She looked down at herself, her blood pulsing with phosphorescence beneath her skin. Bo's light.

“Stay away from me, Zenon. I'm done with you.”

“Honey, you ain't never gonna be done with me. We connected just as sure as our river devils are bound to us. It's in our blood and our genes. Ain't nothin gonna change that. Besides.”

He sat down on the lichen shelf and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. “Weren't for you I wouldn't have any friends 'sides that bastard, Josh. You're fresher company.”

“We'll never be friends again.”

“Sibs then.” He struck a match and flared the end of his cigarette.

Severin stretched out on her back in the duckweed and floated across the surface, the tiny pads clinging to her, making a garland in her hair.

Zenon took a drag from his cigarette and pointed it at Severin. “Your devil's underdeveloped, baby. You need to work to get her bigger, more coherent.”

Madeleine would sooner nurture a patch of poison ivy, but she asked, “How do you do that?”

“You get your hands dirty. Right now she just antagonizing. Am I right?”

Madeleine nodded.

“All that's good for is putting you in the insane asylum. You don't have to go nuts. What you do is make your kills, but you control your mind when you do it. Don't go postal. Can't be rage or nothin. Like you did with the little blind boy, that was fine. Calmly drownin him under that trailer like he's a sack of kittens. More of that and you train for the briar.”