Deceptions
Page 117

The nurse squeezed Isolde’s bird-thin arm and the old woman’s chin jerked, as if she was waking.
“Daere is here to see you,” the nurse said. “With John and little Pamela.”
Isolde’s mouth opened, and she made a sound. A garbled sound, like speech but not, and from where Pamela hung, in her father’s arms, I could see into her mouth, the stump of her tongue—
Pamela shrieked, her scream joining the one echoing through my head. She fought, and I seemed to fight with her, clawing and scratching, then hitting the floor and scrambling up and running as fast as Pamela’s small legs would take us, that scream still resounding in her head, all but drowning out the cries of her parents behind her.
Pamela turned down one corridor after another, zigging and zagging as the footfalls behind her grew distant, her parents missing her turns. Finally, she threw open a closet and flew in, slamming the door behind her and huddling in the dark, knees drawn up, gasping for breath as she shook uncontrollably.
Footsteps passed but kept going. Then the door creaked open and the nurse stood there, her body shimmering with light, features morphing. Pamela shrunk into the shadows, but the nurse only smiled and bent to the girl’s level.
“Scary, isn’t it?” she said in her soft voice. “Your poor auntie. She’s had a hard life, Pamela, but it will be over soon. She’ll be at peace, and, I hope, happy.”
“Liar.” Pamela spat the word, small body quaking with rage.
The woman backed up. “What—?”
“I know what you are. I see it. Behind your face. The glow.”
A pause, and the nurse gave a slow, sad smile. “Ah. So you see me, do you?”
Pamela nodded, and in a blink the nurse disappeared. In her place was something my brain couldn’t quite latch on to, the form ethereal, more glow than substance. I could make out a face, beautiful with sharp features and golden hair.
“Is that better, then?” the fae nurse said. “No disguises?”
She smiled, but the rage still whipped through Pamela.
“It’s your fault,” Pamela whispered. “What happened to her. She was tainted.”
“Tainted?” The nurse tilted her head. “That’s a big word for a little girl. Who told you that?”
“No one. I know. I just know.”
“I see.” The nurse crouched lower. “Then I won’t deny it, bychan. The fault was ours. In her blood. I wouldn’t call it a taint, but sometimes, when you’re different, your mind can’t quite manage it. Have you ever tried to hold a raw egg?”
Pamela squeezed herself tight, as if trying to block the words.
“It’s like that,” the nurse continued. “You can see us. You have memories. You know things you shouldn’t. And as little as you are, your mind is strong. It can hold those ideas tight, like a hard-boiled egg. But for some, like your poor auntie, it’s like trying to hold a raw egg. It slips and slides and oozes, and they try harder and harder to hold on, until they just can’t. Do you understand, bychan?”
“I understand that it’s your fault.”
The nurse sighed. “It was not me, specifically, and we did try to help—”
“Liar!”
Pamela flew at the nurse. She hit her and I kept going, tumbling out, falling into darkness again, and then . . .
I bolted upright, the vision gone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
As I struggled to my feet, I felt a familiar weight in my pocket. I reached in and touched my gun and switchblade. I patted my other pockets. Cell phone and tusk, right where I’d left them.
“Liv!” It was Ricky, shouting, his voice distant. “Olivia!”
At first, I thought I was in the grave, that I really had fallen in. But when I reached out, I touched only air. I pulled out my switchblade and flicked on the light.
I was inside the hospital. In a room I didn’t recognize, one without windows.
“Liv!”
“I’m here!” I shouted. “In here!”
He kept calling my name, obviously unable to hear me. I took out my phone, speed-dialed his number, and got a “customer unavailable” message. I hung up. Tried again. Same thing.
I looked around. The sequence of events that had brought me from the graveyard to there should have been of some concern, but really, all that worried me was the possibility that I was still trapped in a vision, and only because that would mean it was futile to keep shouting and phoning. Yes, that’s what my world was reduced to: zap from location A to location B, only wondering, Is it live or is it memory?
The fact that I was dressed as I had been, with my phone, suggested this was live.
I set about finding my way back to Ricky. I could hear him, and the building wasn’t that big.
I walked into the next room, the one with creepy human-sized cribs for patients. Ricky and I had found Macy locked in one. I could even see our old footprints in the dust.
As I turned to the door, something scraped behind me. I glanced back. Fingers poked out from the crib slats. I froze. Swallowed. Stared at those fingers.
“Is someone there?”
A muffled response, as if from behind a gag. I walked over carefully, gun in hand. More fingers appeared between the slats. Then more. I stopped short and looked at the third hand. There wasn’t enough room in that crib for two people, not unless they were crushed together—
More fingers appeared, and more, and more, reaching through the slats, beckoning me, that muffled cry turning to grunts and squeaks and snarls, the fingers clawing, one hand slashing at another, catching it in the wrist, blood spurting—