The day that had started out so badly did not improve. Eric was inattentive in class, and Levoisier took a sadistic delight in gigging him for it. He was sloppy in rehearsal, fumbling around like a novice, unable to keep time with the other musicians or make his entrances on cue. Finally he gave up. The world wouldn't come to an end if he cut his last class. And besides, Eric wanted to see how Toni and Hosea were coming with the basement apartment.
The phone was ringing as he got into the apartment, and when he looked at the counter, it registered 27 previous messages.
"Eric," he said, picking it up.
"Eric!" Ria sounded absolutely frantic. "Where were you? I've been trying to reach you all afternoon!"
"Not everybody's cellular," Eric said irritably. "Sorry. Bad day. What's up?"
"Kayla's coming. Today." Ria made it sound as if Kayla was a combination of the Black Death, the Four Horsemen, and the IRS. "And I'm stuck in this damned meetingin fact, I'm supposed to be in there right nowand I can't get away. I don't know how long I'll be. Her plane's coming in at three; I've sent a car for her, but I don't want her coming back to an empty apartment. Could I have the driver drop her at your place? I swear I'll be there as soon as I can."
Eric had never heard Ria sound so rattled. It struck him that she owed Kayla and Elizabet a great deal. Taking care of Kayla properly on Kayla's arrival in New York was probably as important to Ria as being a good teacher to Hosea was to him, and she was probably just as uncertain of her ability to do it right.
His black mood vanished. "Hey, Ria. Don't worry about it. Have the guy drop her off here. We'll order pizza and watch DVDs until you get here. Promise."
"Thanks." He heard Ria breathe a deep sigh of relief. "I hate to ask, but could you possibly call Anita for me and tell her? She'll phone the car. I have got to get back in there!"
"Sure," Eric said. "Knock 'em dead." The phone went dead before he'd finished speaking.
Well, that takes care of the rest of the day. He looked up the number and made the call to Anita, then went to look over his DVD collection, wondering what sort of movie Kayla would like. "Hey, Greystone," he said aloud. "Company for dinner."
Hosea came in about half an hour after that, looking very much like someone who'd spent a hot August day cleaning out a non-air-conditioned basement.
"Better hit the shower," Eric advised him. "A friend of mine's going to be here pretty soon. Name's Kayla. She's a Healer. Going to be going to school up at Columbiabut not living here," he added, noting Hosea's faint look of alarm. "I'm just taking care of her until Ria can pick her up."
"Ayah, a shower sounds good. I feel like I've been juggling pianos," Hosea said ruefully. "But I got all that lumber moved out of there, and after I scrub it down with lye soap, I can paint it up spicker than span." He shot a curious look at Eric. "A Healer, say you?"
"That's right," Eric said. "But I'll let her tell you about it herself. Wait till you meet her."
Hosea headed for the shower.
:They're comin' 'round the far turn: Greystone told Eric about five minutes later.
"That was quick," Eric said. He thrust his feet into sandals and headed for the street.
The car was just pulling up as he reached the sidewalk, which felt very much like walking into an oven at this time of day, as the concrete gave back a day's worth of stored heat. Ria'd sent her personal car: a maroon vintage Rolls Royce limousine. The driverin matching livery, right down to the archaic jodhpurs and riding bootsclimbed out and walked back to open the passenger door.
Kayla wasn't waiting for him to get there. Eric saw the door swing open and a . . . vision . . . in glitter and Spandex stepped out of the car.
The last time Eric had seen Kayla, the sixteen-year-old had been heavy into punk, right down to the safety pins in place of earrings. But two years was an eternity in a teenager's life.
Things had changed.
She still had the black leather jacketand was wearing it, in defiance of the weatherbut now it seemed to glitter in places. She was wearing artistically-damaged fishnet stockings, and on her feet were spike-heeled pointed-toed ankle boots with more straps than a Bellevue special. Between the ankle boots and the leather jacket was a black lace tutu, the layers of black lace tulle glittering with purple and black sequins and standing almost straight out.
Kayla reached back into the car to grab her backpack, and blew the driver a kiss before striding across the street to Eric. As she approached, Eric could see that she'd carried out the glitter-Goth look in all aspects: her hair was dagged and shagged, dyed flat black with indigo and fuchsia streaks. Her face was powdered dead white, eyes heavily lined in kohl and mascara, and mouth painted a glistening red-black. Silver batwing earrings dangled from her ears. Under the jacket, she was wearing a very tight, cropped tank top with a black velvet rose pinned to the neckline.
"Hiya, Eric," Kayla said. She held out a hand. She was wearing fingerless lace mittsblack, of courseand her nails, still cut back almost to the quick, were painted black with a dull silver glitter overlay.
"This is a new look for you," Eric said. A lot more high-maintenance than the old one, but he guessed Kayla'd finally gotten used to the fact that she had a home and a family, and didn't have to scrabble on the streets just to survive. He waved to the driver, who'd followed Kayla across the street.
"Are you Eric Banyon?" the man asked.
"That's right," Eric said.
"I just wanted to make sure the little lady got where she was going," the driver said. "I've got a daughter about her age." He smiled and went back to his car.
"Sheesh," Kayla muttered, embarrassed.
"Hey, you know Ria'd have his head if he let anything happen to you," Eric said. "C'mon, let's get upstairs. It's hot out here, and you must be about to fry."
"Nice place," Kayla said, looking around the apartment. She set her backpack down on the floor and peeled off her black leather jacket. Her shoulders glittered with a mix of makeup and sweat. "Nice air conditioning," she added a moment later. "Gotta say, Eric, you do know how to land jelly-side-up."
Hearing voices, Hosea came out into the living room. He was wearing jeans and a new white T-shirt, his shaggy blond hair still damp from a hasty shower.
"Hey," Kayla said appreciatively, "you didn't tell me Chippendales was in town."
"This is a friend of mine," Eric said. "He's staying with me until his place is ready. Hosea Songmaker, meet Kayla Smith."
Hosea stepped forward and held out his hand. After a moment's hesitation, Kayla took it. If he noticed her outlandish costume, he didn't indicate it by so much as an eye blink. Eric could see the look of concentration on her face as she made sure her shields were in placeany touch was intimate if you were an Empathbut then he saw her relax and give Hosea a genuine smile.
"Any friend of Eric's is a friend of mine," Hosea said firmly in his slow pleasant drawl. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Healer Kayla."
"And yours . . . Bard," Kayla said after a short pause. "Hey, Eric, you didn't say you were collecting 'em."
"Just a happy accident," Eric said. "Hosea came to the city looking for someone to show him the ropes, and I guess I'm elected."
"I couldn't ask for a better teacher," Hosea said. "But you must be plumb tuckered out from all that traveling, Miss Kayla. Would you care for something cold to drink? There's lemonade, fresh-squeezed, and every kind of water you can imagine."
So that's why we've got all those lemons.
"Lemonade, please," Kayla said. She glanced toward the sound system. "Mind if I check out the tunes?"
"Mi casa es su casa," Eric answered in bad Spanish. "Feel free. I don't know how long Ria's going to beshe said she'd get here as soon as she could, but"
"But Ria's a busy girl, yadda," Kayla said. "Glad you kids are getting along," she added absently, drifting over to the wall of CDs.
"You know you look like Tinkerbell on drugs, don't you?" Eric said to her back.
Kayla turned and flashed him a smile. "Gotta blend in with the natives, right?"
Eric didn't really expect Ria any time soon, so after checking with Kayla about her preferenceshe already knew Hosea'sEric phoned down to the pizza place for three large pies with everything. The three of them sat and ate pizza while listening to Kayla's music selections. Her taste was more eclectic than Eric had anticipated, everything from salsa and classic rock to grand opera.
"I'll try anything oncetwice if I like it," she said, in answer to his quizzical look. "So, Hosea, how'd you find out you were a Bard?"
"Eric told me," Hosea said, swallowing a mouthful of pizza. "I just thought I had a little shine, but I guess there's a name for everything. And you?"
"Oh, I brought somebody back from the dead, and things went on from there."
As soon as the Portal closed, sanity returned. The geas that Aerune had placed upon him along with the silver antlers was gone; Elkanah's mind was clearer than it had been in weeks. He saw it all now. The Sidhe lord had used him as a Judas goatlet him think he'd escaped, let him think that searching out Campbell was his own idea, though it had been Aerune's magic that had led him to her and then led him back here, to a place Aerune could claim her easily.
He'd been a fool. A pawn.
And to top it all off, the bitch had poisoned him. Elkanah could feel the T-Stroke burning through his system. In a few hours, he'd be dead.
But there was something he had to do first. Not for Campbell's sake. But because there were innocents in the line of fire, and because those innocents had to be saved . . . or at least warned. He staggered toward the van, fighting the wave of drug-fuelled oblivion.
He did not reach it before he fell.
Another Monday night in Paradise, Jimmie Youngblood thought, piloting her blue-and-white through the traffic snarls of Lower Midtown. She felt better than she had in weekshell, monthsas if the wave of Impending Doom had finally broken, or at least as if some part of her mind had finally reached an accommodation with whatever unspoken warning had disturbed her for so long. She felt released, but unsettled. Maybe Eric had been right: some problems just went away, and you never knew afterward exactly what they'd been.
Her radio woke to life, spitting out a jumble of ten-codes: someone had set a van on fire near the Lincoln Tunnel, local units please assist. She checked and confirmed she was the closest unit, turning her vehicle in that direction. The dispatcher would alert the fire department, but she'd get there first.
As soon as Jimmie saw the smoke, she could feel something tangled up with it, like an astral riptide undercutting reality. Power. Someone down here was using magicbad magic. It brought all her uneasy feelings rushing backand worst of all, there was something oddly familiar about the source.
Bomb? Phosphorus grenade? Salamander? Someone isn't having a lucky night.
She barely remembered to give her 10-20 when she arrived. Traffic was already snarled behind the charred wreckageeven at ten o'clock at night the Lincoln Tunnel was busy. She pulled her unit around to block the tunnel completely, hearing the wail of other sirens in the distance. Fire Department and Traffic Control, right on schedule. But she was the first on the scene.
She climbed out of her unit, staring at what was left of the van. It wasn't just burning. It had been torchedthe tires were melted pools of rubber on the blacktop and the van itself was too charred for her to know what its original color had been. No need to worry about the gas tank explodingfrom the looks of things, it already had.
Or else whatever brought it here didn't need gas to make the engine run. . . .
Worst of all, she knew that something had gotten out of it alive. She could see puddled footsteps where the blacktop had melted in the street, as though something very hot had just . . . walked away. Something that reeked with Power like a spill of fresh blood.
No time to call the others in on this. She had to find that thing before it hurt anyone else. That there were no casualties already was a minor miracle. She grabbed her nightstick and her vest and followed.
The blocks around the Tunnel were a wasteland of urban decay spawned by the new Conference Center, which was a mixed blessing. With the Javits Center empty, there were few pedestrians around to get in her way, but a lot of empty lots, parking garages, and derelict cars to provide cover for her wandering perp. The tracks stopped at the edge of the concrete pavement, but she could still see signs of his handiwork.
Here, a charred stump that had been a living tree. There, a half-melted basket full of trash, still burning. A smear of cinder on the side of a building, just where a tall man might rest his hand. And all around, the reek of baneful magic like a choking cloudmagic born of pain and death and suffering.
She stopped long enough to shrug into her Kevlar vest, though she doubted that something that would stop a bullet would stop whatever she followed. She had the sense that what she followed was wounded and in pain, but no less a danger for all that. She reached down to shut off the radio on her beltno point in alerting her quarry, and no help she could summon in time would be able to face down what she followed. She'd made that mistake once. Never again.
Oh, Davey. You shouldn't have had to die for me to figure that out. She spared a brief thought for the other Guardians, but it would take too long to summon them as well. She had to contain what she followed before innocent civilians met the same fate as the charred van. She could smell the burning on the air.
Ahead of her was an alleyway, leading between two derelict buildings. Behind them was an empty lot, the building it had once contained gone to bricks and rubblea favorite hangout for junkies and rent-boys. The alley was the only exit. Whoever it waswhatever it was, she had it cornered now.
There were no lights on the street. The only illumination came from the last dregs of summer twilight, and the sky glow from the city itself. She hesitated. Stupid to go in without backup. That's why they call it Tombstone Courage. . . . She forced herself to stop, to use her radio, tell them her position, tell them she was in hot pursuit of the arson suspect. It didn't matter now. By the time her backup got here, it would be over, one way or another. The dispatcher told her to wait, of course, but even as she heard that rational, sensible counsel, Jemima Youngblood knew she couldn't wait. Lives depended on her. She could already smell smoke.
She drew her gun and stepped into the alley, letting out her breath in a long sigh as she saw it was empty. But the fire glow painting the far end told her she was right. The empty lot was burning.
She hesitated, thinking again of warning Toni and the others that magic was afoot once more. She was reaching for her cell phone when the scream came, a scream of primal agony, of someone being burned alive.
She ran toward it, cursing her luck.
The screamer pirouetted like a top in the middle of the empty lot, wrapped in a shroud of flame, howling out his fear and pain to the night. He was burned past savingshe knew that already, from the black and ruined skin she could see through the flames that covered himbut she had to try. She knocked the shrieking dervish to the ground, beating at the flames with her bare hands while his skin flaked away like charcoal from a half-burnt log. His blood boiled on the surface of his skin, and before the flames were gone, the screaming stopped. He was dead.
"Jimmie."
A familiar voice, filled with pain and sorrow. A voice she had never expected to hear again. She looked up slowly, not wanting to see. Her searching hand closed over empty airshe'd dropped her weapon trying to put out the fire. She had a backup strapped to her ankle. Still kneeling, she reached for it, slowly, burned palms stinging and tearing.
"Jimmie. Little sister. What are you doing here?"
Her fingers touched the metal of the gunbutt.
"I'm a cop, Elk. Like you were, once." She held her voice steady by a great effort.
Elkanah Youngblood stood a few feet away. He was naked, his bronze skin covered with soot and fresh burns. Power radiated from him like light from the noonday sun, but he wasn't another victim. He was the source. All around him, everything that could burn was burningweeds, garbage, wood.
Pyrokinesis. Without control, the fires that he set were burning him as well, eating him alive.
But that shows up early, in childhood, and Elk never
"I have to tell you" he said. "I have to tell" He staggered toward her. His eyes were white, blind with heat. "You have to stop" He moaned, a long sound of agony and despair.
"Don't come any closer!" She felt blisters break as her fingers closed over the gun. A .38 snubnoseuseless at a distance, but not against a naked man at nearly point-blank range.
"You have to stop him!" Elkanah howled. "Jimmieplease CampbellAeruneStop"
He fell to his knees, reaching out to her as he died. Her scream melded with his own as the fire consuming him from within burst forth from mouth, eyes, ears . . . from his outstretched hand, still reaching toward her.
Burning everything he touched.
Burning the world.
The phone had rung about fifteen minutes ago. Ria was finally out of her meeting and on her way to Eric's. When it rang again, Eric thought it was Ria calling back, saying something else had delayed her.
"Banyon."
"Eric." Toni's voice, so hoarse and distorted that at first he didn't recognize it. "Is Hosea there?"
"Toni?" Something was horribly wrongbut what? He'd had no warning. He could hear the ragged sobs around the edges of her voice every time she inhaled. "Yeah, he's here, but"
"Jimmie's . . . in Gotham General. It's bad. She's asking for him. How soon can he get here?"
"We're on our way."
The others were already on their feet, alerted by his face and voice.
"Jimmie's in the hospital. She's asking for you," Eric said to Hosea. Lady Day would get them there fastest. He sent a call to the elvensteed and felt her worried reply. "C'mon."
"I'm coming too," Kayla said. "I can help."
There was no time to argue. Eric headed for the door. Where was Greystone? Why hadn't he warned them that Jimmie had been hurt?
The three of them reached the front steps just as Ria was pulling up in the Rolls.
"What's wrong?" she demanded, seeing their faces. The elvensteed was waiting at the curb, quivering with urgency.
"Jimmie's hurt. We have to get to Gotham General as fast as we can," Eric told her. Lady Day was already sitting at the curb.
"We'll take the car," Ria said. "It'll be as fast as an elvensteed at this time of night."
"You go with Kayla. Hosea and I will meet you there," Eric said. The two men turned toward the bike. There was no time to bother with helmets, and Lady Day would keep them from harm if she had to jump through a Gate to do it. Hosea climbed on behind him without a word.
"Go fast," Eric whispered to his 'steed.
The world vanished in a gray blur of absolute speed. Eric felt Hosea clutch at him, but almost before he'd adjusted to the sensation of flying, the trip was over. Lady Day was standing at the front door of Gotham General, kickstand down.
"Hey! You can't park there!" someone said as Eric was climbing off. :Go home,: he Sent to the 'steed. :Wait there.: He turned to help Hosea off, steadying the big man as he staggered, ignoring the speaker.
"Hey . . . !" the voice trailed off weakly as the elvensteed drove off, eliminating the problem.
Eric turned to face the speakerit was a man in surgical scrubs, obviously out for a quick smoke. "How do I get to the"
:Burn Trauma Unit: Greystone's voice came in his head. :Paul will take you. Brace yourself, laddybuck. It's bad.:
Paul Kern was coming down the steps. He'd obviously been waiting for them. His face was haggard with grief.
"EricHosea. Come with me. Hurry. I don't think there's much time."
"But what happened?" Eric asked, as soon as they were in the elevator. Gotham General covered several city blocks; getting where they were going couldn't be done quickly.
"Someone . . . burned Jimmie," Paul said starkly. "Maybe gasoline. The officers who brought her in didn't know. Thank God she listed Toni as next of kinthey aren't letting anyone else in to see her, and we didn't want to push without more information."
"You said she's asking for Hosea," Eric said.
"When she's conscious," Paul said tightly.
"Burn Trauma" . . . he said something burned her.
Eric looked at Hosea. The tall man's face was grim.
And she asked for Hosea.
José was waiting at the elevator. An expression of relief crossed his features when he saw them. "Hosea! Hurry!" he turned back to the floor. "She's this way."
"Won't they stop us?" Hosea said, following the others. The Burn Trauma floor was quiet, without the usual noise and bustle of a big city hospital. There were signs on the walls reminding nursing staff to follow sterile procedure and restricting visitors, and several of the doors had signs on them prohibiting entry without Clean Room protocols.
"They won't know we're here," Paul said. "Greystone and I are making sure of that."
And in fact no one did stop them. There was a nurse in the room as they entered, but she didn't even look up.
There were bags of saline and whole bloodand a morphine driphung around the head of the bed like a flock of toy balloons. A sheet concealed the body in the bedJimmietented up on a framework to keep any part of it from touching her. All Eric could see was her head, swathed in dressings, even the eyes bandaged. It was warm in the roomburn victims lost the ability to regulate their own body temperature, and a chill could be fatal.
The room was filled with the smell of cooked meat, which puzzled him. Finally Eric realized that what he was smelling was Jimmie, and had to fight hard to keep from gagging. He heard a strangled gasp from Hosea as his companion realized this as well.
Toni looked up. She was sitting on a chair beside the bed, bent toward Jimmie. "She was asking for you, before," she said to Hosea. "We don't know why." She got to her feet and came over to the others. "Would you sit with her awhile, Hosea? She might wake up."
Hosea nodded. His face was very white. But his steps were steady as he crossed to the bed and took Toni's place in the chair.
Eric had known it was bad before, when Toni called, but at the back of his mind there'd been the certainty that Jimmie would be getting better. Now, looking at Toni's face and the still figure in the floatation bed, he no longer thought so.
Jimmie Youngblood was dying. His friend was dying. And there was nothing he could do about it.
Bardic magic could work wonders. It could summon the power to allow creatures of magicsuch as the Sidheto heal themselves. It could hasten the healing process for something that was going to heal anyway. But Jimmie wasn't going to heal. If he listened, Eric could hear the song of her life slowly slipping out of key, growing slower and more distorted by the minute, with nothing he could do to draw it back in tune. And if he could hear it, the Guardians certainly could, too.
But Kayla's a Healer! She can fix it! he thought desperately.
As if he'd summoned her with his thoughts, Eric heard a disturbance in the hall, and then felt a cold wash of Power soothing it ruthlessly away.
Ria.
The door opened, and Kayla walked in alone. Her black lace and glitter was even more jarringly out of place in the harsh dull light of the hospital room than it had been in his apartment.
"She's a Healer," Eric said, as the others turned toward this new intruder.
"Can you help her?" Toni asked Kayla. Eric heard the naked pleading in her voice, and knew what it cost Toni Hernandez to beg.
"I can try," Kayla said. Her face was pale and still beneath the mask of makeup, and the neon-bright streaks in her hair looked flat and unreal.
She walked over to the bedslowly, as if moving through deep water. No matter how good her shields were, a hospital was no place for an Empath. She hesitated at the side of the bed, looking from Hosea to Toni.
"I have to touch her."
"I reckon you'd best do what you can." It was Hosea who answered. "You can't hurt her any worse than she's been hurt."
"What's her name? Jimmie?" If Kayla had other questions, she didn't ask them. Ultimately, they weren't important.
Jimmie. Dumb name for a girl. Go on, stupid. You can do it. Kayla spoke loudly in her own head to cover her own fear and Jimmie's pain. She could feel it even without touching her, even through the morphine, agony radiating like waves of heat from the summer streets. Damage, slow and deep. Trauma that the body couldn't handle. Pain, whether emotional or physical, was a cry for helpalways. Elizabet had taught her that.
Her hand was shaking in anticipation of pain to come. Kayla forced herself to reach outslowly, gently, until her fingertips barely touched the bandages on Jimmie's forehead. Contact! Blue light crackled over her hand, like a spark jumping a gap. Like heatlightningfire.
Fire!
It filled Jimmie's body-memory: fire, its first chill wash, then pain, building on itself, melting Kevlar, searing her body as the metal she wore turned molten and sank into burning flesh, burning, burning . . .
Everywhere Kayla looked there was ruinfluids seeping into tissues, running over bared muscle where the skin was cooked away, veins and arteries ripped open by boiling blood, tendons heated and shriveled, nerves blackened and twisted, or screaming endlessly for help that never came. Every time she fixed something, something somewhere else broke. There was no way she could be everywhere at once, no way she could give this ruined body what it needed, no matter how much of herself she spent. She felt herself sinking, dissolving into the fire, but somehow she was cold, so cold . . .
Suddenly the link dissolved. Kayla felt someone grab her, wrenching her away. She fought for a few secondsdesperate to help, to heal
Hosea slapped her.
Not hard, but it made her open her eyes and draw a deep breath, safe behind her shields once more. She stared up at him, for a moment too stunned to realize what had just happened. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her face, though she had no sense that she was crying, and she was shuddering with cold. Worse than any of that was the knowledge that she'd failed. There was nothing she could do to heal Jimmieshe could spend her entire life-force, drain herself to death, and she could not save Jimmie Youngblood. She stood in Hosea's arms, panting as if she'd run for miles.
"Kayla . . . ?" Eric asked.
She shook her head, closing her eyes. "It will take weeks," she mumbled, barely aware of what she was saying. "Weeks of pain. And she'll die anyway."
Think, you stupid cow! There's always something you can do.
To comfort the dying . . .
"Then there's nothing you can do," Toni said, grief in her voice.
"No. There's something I can do." Kayla pushed herself away from Hosea and took a deep breath. She hesitated, as if to say what she would say next would make it more real than it already was, create a single defined future from a fan of other outcomes.
But there was no other outcome.
"There's something I can do," she repeated. "I can make it quick. I can block the pain. I can let her go now, while she's still Jimmie," Kayla said.
She was able to look at them now that the worst had been said. Eric looked shocked, still not quite able to believe that Jimmie was hurt. Hosea looked sad but determined. Of the other three, whose names she didn't even know, the woman looked angry, as if Death were something you could hit. The two men looked stunned, so closed off their auras were impossible for her to read.
"You can kill her, you mean," the woman said harshly.
"I can give her the choice. Hey, chica, it's more than you can do for her, isn't it?" Kayla snapped. She blinked, and felt more tears slide down her cheeks. Ruined my makeup, dammit, she thought distractedly.
The woman lunged for her, but Hosea stepped between them.
"No," was all he said.
"You said something about a choice, Kayla, is it? I'm Paul Kern, and these are my associates, Toni and José. I only wish we'd met under happier circumstances."
I wish we'd never met at all, Kayla thought mutinously. She gave Paul points for not offering to shake hands, though. He must have met people like her before.
"And I think Jimmie would like to have the choice you're offering her. What would you have to do?"
"I need to block what she's feeling, so that she can wake up. I can't do something like this without her consent. That'd be murder." Kayla ran her hands through her hair. "Can any of you tell me anything that will help?" she asked, her voice quivering slightly. "Jimmie . . . she's not normal, is she?"
Of the three of them, it was Paul who understood the question Kayla asked.
"If she can do anything to aid you, she will; Jimmie is no stranger to magic. She is a formidable magician in her own right, A Guardian, as we are, so perhaps in that sense she is not 'normal.' She, like us, is sworn to defend ordinary humanity from magical assaults."
"Only this wasn't magical. This was just a stupid, random, thingdone by one of those people we're supposed to serve and protect! And all her power couldn't save her from it," Toni said bitterly. "It isn't fair!"
Hosea retreated to sit at Jimmie's side again. Paul put an arm around Toni's shoulders and Toni leaned her face into his neck. Kayla made a conscious effort to shut them out, block their grief and pain so she could concentrate on Jimmie. For a moment it seemed almost impossible to do, then she felt a calming touch at the very edge of her shields, felt new strength and certainty flow into her. She looked up and met Hosea's eyes across the bed.
Of course. Stands to reason I'd land in the middle of a bunch of Gifted. Banyon said Hosea was a Bard, but he's not quite the same thing as Eric. . . .
"What can I do to help?" Eric asked quietly from behind her.
She tried to smile at him, to look more confident than she felt. Kayla hadn't expected anything like this to happen quite this fast. Just this morning she'd been in Los Angeles, and all of a sudden she was at St. Elsewhere, playing for all the marbles. Elizabet's gonna freak.
"Just make sure I get back, okay?"
"You got it," Eric said soberly.
Kayla rubbed her hands over her arms, the lace mitts scratchy against her bare skin. She took a deep breath and turned back to Jimmie. This wasn't going to get any easier, and she owed it to Jimmie to do it as fast as possible. She focused her energy and her will, and let her fingers drift down to touch Jimmie once more. This time there was no crackle, no spark, just a cold blue glow, almost invisible in the harsh fluorescence that lit the room.
She worked quickly, deftly, with a control and precision she couldn't even have imagined a few years before. All the body's nerves led to the spine; Kayla climbed that column slowly, closing off the neural nexuses, keeping their messages from reaching Jimmie's brain.
It was more than dangerous. Close off the wrong nerves and she would stop Jimmie's heart, keep her lungs from drawing breath. Close down the neural pathways on a healthy person, and they'd lose all touch with their bodies, becoming capable of doing shattering damage without pain to warn them.
But Jimmie no longer needed warning.
Jimmie? Jimmie Youngblood? Where are you? Kayla Sent urgently.
:Here.:
A power as great as her own but far different swept through Kayla, and suddenly she was somewhere else.
A living room, its walls painted a cool blue. Packing boxes were everywhere, as if someone were moving.
Yeah. Moving out.
She turned around and saw Jimmie. The uniform was a surprise. They'd told her Jimmie was a magician. They hadn't told her Jimmie was a cop.
"Hi. I'm Kayla."
Jimmie smiled. "Nice to meet you, but the circumstances suck. Pardon the mess. I wasn't expecting visitors. You're not the new tenant, are you?"
It was hard to remember that all of this was an illusion, a metaphor for dying constructed from both their memories, lent its reality by Jimmie's trained will. Kayla clung to that knowledgeif she believed in the reality of what she saw, she might die along with her hostess.
But Eric won't let that happen.
"Is Hosea here?" Jimmie asked suddenly. "He's the one I was expecting."
"Sort of. He's in the hospital room with you."
"Hospital?" Jimmie asked blankly. "Who's hurt?"
This was common enough; a sort of partial amnesia that made dying a little easier. It was a pity they couldn't afford to let her go on dreaming.
"You are," Kayla said bluntly. "Something bad happened to you tonight. You're dying."
"Oh, my God." Jimmie put a hand to her forehead trying to remember, and for a moment the light dimmed to red, and Kayla smelled smoke. Something was burning.
"I've got to talk to Hosea!" Jimmie's voice was frantic. "It's important. There's something I have to tell him."
"It's okay. You'll have time for that," Kayla said soothingly, willing Jimmie to trust her, to believe. "That's why I'm here. Are you ready to hear the rest?"
Jimmie composed herself with an effort. She wasn't wearing her uniform any more. Now she was wearing armor, armor the brilliant blue of the fire in the heart of a sapphire. There was a helmet on her head, and a sword belted at her side. She glanced past Kayla to the door, as if there was somewhere she had to go, and soon.
And there was, but it wasn't a journey Kayla wanted to accompany her on.
"Go on," Jimmie said steadily.
"You're going to die. I guess that's the door you see. I can help you get through it. Without my help, you'll still die, but it might take a week, maybe more, and you'll be in agony the whole time, I won't lie about that. But if you want, I can help you go now. Tonight. I'm a Healer, but that's all the help I can give you. You're too badly burned for anything more."
She watched as Jimmie accepted that, weighing it in her mind. This was beyond creepy, Kayla decided, like talking to a ghost . . . only Jimmie wasn't dead yet.
"Yes. That would be the best way. But can you wake me up first?" Jimmie asked, her voice crisp and decisive. "I have a few things to say to the living before I go." Her mouth quirked in an ironic smile, and Kayla felt a pang of grief. This was a woman she would never get the chance to know.
"Yes. But not for long, so if there's anything I can tell the others for you, you'd better pass it on now."
Jimmie hesitated. "I don't remember. I must have reported for shift and gone on patrol. But I don't remember what happened then."
"It doesn't matter," Kayla said soothingly. Whether it did or not, it would be pointless cruelty to say it did.
:Kayla.:
Eric's voice, a thin whisper of sound from her outward ears.
"I have to go."
"Sure," Jimmie said vaguely. "How did I ever get so much stuff? I'll never get it all packed in time."
"You will." They always do. Kayla closed her eyes
and opened them in the hospital room. She didn't know how long she'd been gone, or what happened while she was gone, but when she opened her eyes again Ria was there, standing close beside Eric, looking furious and worried.
Kayla felt cold and tired, and as if she was going to throw up. She had an absurd impulse to say, I saw Jimmie. Don't worry about her; she's fine, and stifled it. She wasn't finished yet.
"She's agreed to go. She wants to talk to you first, Hosea. She didn't say why. I think she thought she had. I've got to clean the morphine out of her system to wake her up, and it'd be nice if someone turned off that damned drip." Her voice came out in an angry rasp; she was stretched thinner than she thought.
"I've got it." Ria stepped forward and placed her fingers on the tubing. The plastic grew cloudy, and the morphine stopped running into Jimmie's veins. "Anything else?"
"This is going to have to be fast, so no long good-byes, okay? She'll say what she has to, and then I'll help her go through the door. Ria, will you be my anchor?" Between them, she and Elizabet had practically rebuilt Ria from the ground up: Kayla knew Ria better than anyone else in the room, and that familiarity would help her to find her way back.
"I will," Ria said formally.
Kayla reached beneath the sheet and took Jimmie's bandage-swathed hand. No harm in that, now that Jimmie could no longer feel it. She summoned up her power and let the glow spill through Jimmie's body, sweeping the drug from her blood. Almost at once Jimmie's breathing changed, becoming deep and hoarse.
"Elkanah?" she whispered.
The others looked at each other. Her brother, Toni mouthed silently, for Kayla's benefit. "We're here, Jimmie," she said. "Paul and José, and I. We've brought Hosea for you."
"Hosea." Jimmie's voice was slurred and seared, a damaged croak. "Hey, Toni, you didn't have to clean out the basement after all. He can have my place." She tried to laugh and started to cough, liquid and retching.
Kayla put a hand on her chest, and Jimmie's breathing calmed, but Eric could see the effort it cost the young Healer to ease Jimmie. "Hurry up," Kayla said tightly.
"Hosea?" Jimmie whispered.
"I'm here."
"Take my hand."
He glanced at Kayla, who nodded, then slipped his hand beneath the sheet to clasp, very gently, the bandage covering what was left of Jimmie's other hand.
"Would've liked to know you better. Liked to explain. Never any time for that. Eric knows. Sorry. Your problem now. Sorry."
As Jimmie spoke, something happened. Kayla ignored it, but Eric and Ria stared at each other, neither quite sure what it was. There was the sense of Power in the room, just out of their reach.
"Only four," José said in a broken voice. "Always four."
"We should have known!" Toni said in fierce despair. Paul put a hand on her arm, quieting her.
What just happened? Eric wanted to ask, but he was afraid he knew. There was a Power surrounding Hosea now, something Eric's Bardic magic barely acknowledged. The same power that touched Toni and the others. Guardian power.
:I didn't want to tell you,: Greystone said sorrowfully, mindspeaking to Eric alone. :It might have come out another way. But it never does. Your boy belongs to the House now. To the Guardians.:
"Good-bye," Jimmie whispered. "Thank you, all."
"Okay, that's it," Kayla said fiercely. "She can't take any more." Kayla closed her eyes, willing herself to touch Jimmie's spirit as she had before.
This time the apartment was white, as if freshly painted. All the boxes were gone. The curtainsgraywere drawn across the windows, and the bare wood floor was gray as salt-bleached driftwood. Jimmie's blue armor was the only color.
"I'm ready," Jimmie said.
Geez, did you have to just dump all that on him and leave? You couldn't have mentioned it while you were still walking around? "Okay," Kayla said aloud. She turned toward the door. It wasn't really a door. It was a symbol of what Kayla was about to do, severing Jimmie's spirit from her ruined body, setting her free.
Kayla opened the door.
And forgot. Forgot her life and everything that called her to it, forgot her responsibilities and her name, all for the sight of that Light which held within it everything that had ever been, and everything that might ever be. Jimmie walked past her, into the Light, and vanished. There was a moment of piercing brightness as her armor merged with the Light, and Kayla saw echoes of that brilliance, as if Jimmie had gone to join a great host of her kindred, welcomed by all who had gone before her.
Then she was gone, the body she had left behind starting to die, and Kayla was alone in the place that was a symbol of Jimmie's dying body. Kayla heard her mother's voice, calling for her from beyond the door, felt the love and the joy at their reunion. Her mother loved her, wanted hereverything else had all been a terrible mistake. She took a step toward the Light, following Jimmie
and felt Ria's fury, her implacable determination, dragging Kayla back into the world of the living.
Nono!
"No," Kayla whispered, but she was back now, and could not even remember what it was beyond the door, calling to her. She shook her head, took a deep breath, the images and memories fading from her mind.
"I'm okay."
One of the monitors started to keen. Ria silenced it with a chopping gesture, and all the equipment at Jimmie's bedside went dark.
"Good-bye, querida," José said softly. "We'll miss you."
Toni sobbed, a thick choked sound of fury and grief.
"We'd better leave," Paul said, his own voice far from steady. "I don't know how long Ria can hold her spell, but its better if the hospital doesn't have any unaccountable time lapses to explain. Come on, Toni. We have to leave. Jimmie's gone. She isn't here now."
The ride back to Guardian House in Ria's Rolls was a silent one. Eric was stunned, aching with grief and the abrupt senseless loss. Jimmie had been his friend. They'd been talking together, laughing together, only that morning.
Now she was gone. Dead. For nothingno great battle, no great victoryjust an accident of the kind that happened in New York a thousand times a day.
And she'd named Hosea her successor.
Eric glanced up at Hosea. The big man was withdrawn, contemplating something only he could see.
"Eric knows," Jimmie'd said back in the hospital room. The conversation they'd had a few weeks ago about the Guardians came back to him: "Once you get the Call, your life doesn't belong to you any more. You never know where you're going to be sent, or what you'll have to do. There's no way to train for this job. You can either handle it, or someone else comes along pretty quick to replace you. If we're lucky, we get to meet our successor and pass on the Call in person, but that's about it."
Does that make you one of the lucky ones, Jimmie? Eric wondered. Did you feel lucky? His eyes ached with unshed tears. Jimmie was gone. Everything they could have shared was gone. Over.