Touch of Madness (28 page)

Probably not, but he didn’t need to know that. I could find another location and bring in Miles or Joe if I absolutely had to. “In a heartbeat.”

He shook his head. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists. A deep flush was creeping up his neck. “Doug said you were a ball-busting bitch.”

His mention of the Denver Thrall Queen didn’t improve my mood. My voice dripped icicles when I said, “You have no idea how much of a bitch I can be. Now make up your mind, Dr. Simms. I don’t have all day.”

I could see him consider letting me walk. His pride was such that giving in was almost more than he could bear. But he loved his daughter. In the end, his feelings for her won out. “Fine. Have it your way.”

I stayed in me hall with the guard. He went back into the room alone. A moment later angry people began filing out of the room. One or two gave me dirty looks, most chose to ignore me completely.

“Kate,” Mary came up to me with Mike and Tom a step behind. “Dr. Simms says you refuse to do the experiment until everyone but Melinda, Bryan, and him leave the room.”

“That’s right.” I decided to head off her temper with an explanation. “I need to concentrate.” I gave her a rueful grin. “Besides, there won’t be much to see. I’m going to go into a trance and think at them. It’s liable to be a pretty boring show. About like watching me and Monica negotiate to implant the hatchlings in my arm.” I had no doubt she remembered the infinitely tedious stretch of nearly an hour, watching two women staring at each other silently.

“And you think this is going to work?” Her eyebrows rose high enough to disappear beneath her bangs. I shrugged, because I honestly didn’t know. “I saved Rob and the vampires. All I can do is try.”

Simms glanced pointedly at his watch. He was holding the door open.

Mary shook her head and looked at me so hard I could feel her power boring into me. “Try hard, Kate. Because if this fails it’s going to kill Joe.”

No pressure there. “All I can do is my best.” I walked through the door. Simms closed it behind me, leaving the three of them standing outside.

Simms took a seat at the head of the table, next to his daughter’s still form. I sat between Melinda and Bryan. This was it.

For a few moments, I concentrated on Bryan and Melinda. I put a finger to my lips when Bryan put down his crayons and opened his mouth to speak. “You need to be really, really quiet for just a few seconds, Bryan. Can you do that for me? Maybe you could sing to yourself in your head? How about ‘London Bridge’? I know you like that one.”

He cocked his head, curious, but then must have seen the intensity on my face, because he nodded and picked up the red crayon, his favorite color, and started to turn the sky in the barnyard scene the color of fire. He tapped his other fingers in time to music only he could hear.

I closed my eyes, taking slow, deep breaths. I willed my power to build, felt it filling me like water fills a cup, until it reached the very brim. With every ounce of will, I blocked myself and those in the room from the Thrall. Not even a whisper of this event would escape to reach the queens. Every hair on my body was standing on end, and an electric tension filled the air in the room like the air before a lightning strike. I opened my eyes and saw Bryan staring at me, his eyes wide. It’s okay, Bry. I watched his body relax. He’d heard me thought as clearly as if I’d said me words aloud. Take my hand.

He put down the crayon and took my hand. The touch was the last drop needed to make the cup overflow. I felt my mind slip the confines of my body; as it had when I healed Rob, and before that, when the Thrall egg had hatched in my body.

I knew I should be frightened, but I wasn’t. It felt good and somehow right, to slide into my brother’s mind—as though I’d been here before. Like walking through a familiar building, I knew where things were stored. It was all still there, like the records in the church’s basement. The boxes were dusty and water damaged, but the files were readable. I sent tendrils of power through the scarred passages, felt new pathways form within his brain to connect his old memories to his current awareness. He gave a violent shudder and started to breathe in little gasps, like after being underwater too long. His heart began to beat faster and his palm blossomed with cold sweat. I could hear Dr. Simms push back his chair quickly enough for it to fall over and hit the floor. I managed not to break concentration, but only just.

“It’s okay,” I whispered with my eyes still closed, and he paused. “Give him a few minutes to adjust.”

Simms didn’t move forward, but he didn’t sit down again, either. He fought against his instinct to rush forward and separate us, but he remained where he was.

I held tight to Bryan’s hand as he fought back into his own mind. Finally, he let go of my hand, and I could hear his heartbeat steady. But the power in my head wasn’t finished. There was still so much energy. I couldn’t hold it all. My mind burned, until I felt as though my skin might explode and my hair would combust. I needed to use it, get rid of it somewhere.

I turned to Melinda Simms and took up her hand.

22

« ^ »

I woke in a hospital bed. All of the lights were off in the room, the curtains had been shut tight so that not a hint of daylight shone through. An IV was attached to my arm, clear fluid dripped slowly into the tube. Tom sat on the opposite side of the bed, his hand holding mine.

“You’re awake!” His whispered words sounded as loud as a shout. Pain stabbed into my left eyeball like a heated ice pick. I rolled over in the bed, grabbing frantically for something to throw up into, barely managing to grab the little plastic pan in time. The monitors had started beeping vigorously. The pitch was penetrating and loud enough to bring tears to my eyes.

I hate migraines. I’ve only had four in my life. This was the second one in about a week. Both times it came after trying to manage a psychic healing. If Bryan was okay it would be absolutely worth it. If not, I was going to be seriously pissed. I knew I should care about Melinda Simms, but I just didn’t. I remembered bits and pieces of touching her mind—finding it horribly disfigured and burned. There was so much damage and it took so much energy, not only to find the memories, find what had been Melinda, but to connect them. I’d used all the power filling my mind, and then some.

I’d come to know Melinda Simms through her memories, but she wasn’t such a wonderful person—much like Amanda had been. Pretty, popular, and…intentionally cruel…petty because she could be. There was a certain poetic justice to the damage inflicted on her and I’d wondered at the time if someone had given her a bad dose intentionally. Her last memory was of the satisfied look in the girl’s eyes when she’d handed over the syringe. I’d also wondered if she was worth saving.

But in the end, I did—because I also saw those around her who didn’t deserve to live in misery because of her fate. Her father, and mother, friends and a handsome boy who had love in his eyes in her faded memories. But either she was better, or she wasn’t. I couldn’t remember how it had come out before I’d fallen off my chair to the floor, weary beyond belief.

“How is he?” The words came out in a hoarse croak.

“Bryan is fine. So is Melinda.” Tom’s voice was thick with more emotions than I could sort in my current condition. “You’re not. You…died, Kate. Your heart stopped. You weren’t breathing. It was all they could do to bring you back.”

I lay very still beneath the stiff cotton sheets and thought about what he said. I didn’t remember dying. Shouldn’t I? The knowledge of that felt…odd.

The door opened and a doctor came in carrying a manila folder with my name on it. Bright light shone in from the hallway, and I shut my eyes. The afterimage of the light burned against my lids.

“Good morning, Ms. Reilly. I’m Dr. Watkins. I’m a neurologist. I was called in after the…incident yesterday afternoon.”

I opened my eyes to see that he had used the dimmer switch to up the light so that he could see more clearly, but had kept it dim enough that it wouldn’t be painful to my hypersensitive vision. There was a button on the side of the bed to change positions. He held it down until I was propped in a sitting position. Dr. Watkins was a tall, gangly man with crisply cut graying hair and a hang-dog face. His eyes held a keen intelligence and more than a hint of kindness. I would’ve guessed his age in the fifty to sixty range, but it was hard to tell. Other than the gray, he’d probably looked exactly the way he had now for the past twenty years, and would for another twenty should he live that long. He held out his hand and I shook it. He had a good, firm handshake. The skin of his hand was rough, and I wondered briefly what hobbies he had that would give him calluses. Not that it mattered, but I was curious.

Without my really willing it, my mind slid into to his. Gardening: he was an avid gardener. Digging in the earth relaxed him, helped him get rid of the inevitable stress of dealing with patients who were generally frightened and in pain.

With a blink, I was back in my own head. He was talking, but I’d only missed a word or two.

“…I want to congratulate you. We’re going to do extensive testing, but at first glance both your brother and Melinda Simms appear to be back to normal. A truly miraculous feat.”

His expression held equal parts awe and astonishment. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been working with Eden zombies for most of my career. It’s absolutely amazing.” He turned to look at the printouts spewing from the nearest machine. “But my concern now is for you. Whatever you did appears to have caused you some slight brain trauma and swelling. It triggered the onset of a major migraine headache with light and aural sensitivity and nausea.”

I nodded and immediately regretted it. He noticed it, and a small frown crossed his face.

“Have you had migraines prior to this?”

“Once or twice.”

“When was the last one?”

“Last week. It was right after I used my psychic gifts to heal someone for the first time.”

He took a pen from his pocket and folded open the file. His hand sped across the page with a soft scratching sound as he took notes. His large hands shouldn’t have been able to move with such delicate finesse.

“And after that healing, did you collapse?”

“No, but I was working with…someone else that time.”

He made a little harrumphing noise and scribbled some more. “When was your last migraine prior to the one last week?” His gray eyes locked with mine over the folder.

“Not for years.”

“Approximately how many years?”

I thought about it and couldn’t remember for sure. It had been when I was in high school. “Probably a decade anyway.”

“Two incidents isn’t exactly conclusive, but it’s probable that the use of the psychic talent is triggering the migraines.”

I gave a minuscule nod. The less I moved, the less it hurt.

The doctor sighed. He looked from me to Tom, and back. “All right. We’ll need to do more tests to determine if there’s any permanent damage. But until we know more about what’s going on…no more healings. And you need to rest for the next couple days. I’m going to schedule an MRI for you for early next week and compare it to the one we took yesterday after your collapse. I’ll check to see if there are any from when you had the concussion a few years ago. Your brother mentioned you’d had X-rays, but couldn’t remember if they’d done an MRI. I’ll let you check out of the hospital tomorrow if the migraine is under control, but I want you to take it easy.”

He took a deep breath and I could tell he was annoyed. He lowered his voice until it was actually at a really comfortable level for my hypersensitive ears. “The media are going to want interviews. So far, the hospital management is allowing me to call the shots because of your condition. But if possible, you need to avoid them even after they overrule me. I never said that, though. Is your phone number unlisted?”

I managed to stop myself from shaking my head. “No. I run my own business out of the house.”

His face took on a sour look, as though he’d bit into something bitter. “You’ll need to unplug the phone or change the number. Distraught families are going to want you to heal their sons and daughters. I heard on the news that a prince from the Middle East announced an offer of ten million dollars to heal his son.”

At that, my jaw dropped and it caused a brief spasm in my temple. “You’re kidding me!”

Tom shook his head no. Apparently he’d heard about it, too. Wow. That was a lot of money. Not worth dying over, of course—but… damn.

“Katie—” Tom’s voice held a warning. Apparently I’d looked interested. I wasn’t…much. But damn! Ten million dollars. “Don’t even think about it!”

“I’m with your fiancé on this one.” The doctor said. “No more healings for now. Agreed?”

I tried to hide my shock at his use of the word fiancé, but my voice was a little higher and breathier than normal when I replied. “Agreed.”

Dr. Watkins slid his pen back into the pocket of his lab coat. He closed the folder and tucked it under his arm. “I need to go talk to your brothers. They’ve been pestering the hell out of me, but I’ve insisted on only one visitor at a time.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Tom and I said it in unison. It made me smile—for a brief second before the pain spiked behind my eye again.

“You’re welcome.” He smiled at the two of us. “The nurse will be by in a few minutes with the medicine for your headache. I’ll check back to see how you’re doing in a couple of hours.” He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

“Fiancé?” The lilt in my voice made it a question.

The light was dim, but I saw a flush rise to Tom’s cheeks. “Joe and I got into it in the hallway. He was going to have them throw me out after they rushed you to the ER. I told him they couldn’t throw me out, because I was your fiancé and had more right to stay than he did.” He hung his head but thrust out his jaw. “I’m sorry, Kate, but I couldn’t stand to let them send me away. I had to be here. I had to.”

“I don’t mind.” I took his hand in mine and squeezed it until he would meet my eyes. “What was the fight about?”

Tom shook his head no, letting me know he wouldn’t tell me. “It doesn’t matter. He was scared. He was frightened and lashed out. I was just the closest target.”