“Emily Foster. You don’t remember any of that?”

I shook my head slightly then grimaced. “No. I don’t. I vaguely recall somebody saying something about bleeding, but I actually assumed I was here because I hit my head. I definitely remember that part.”

“That really wasn’t that bad,” she replied. “Just a bit of a bump. The doctor says you don’t even have a concussion.”

“Well, at least there’s that. So, are you saying you were actually able to communicate with Emily Foster’s spirit?”

She chuckled. “Of course I was. You aren’t the only Witch here, you know. So do you remember anything else?”

“Not much really,” I replied. “Not after hitting the floor anyway. I do feel like there’s something rolling around in there, but I just can’t nail it down.”

Felicity gathered herself up from the chair then lowered the railing on the side of the bed and perched herself next to me. As she softly brushed my hair away from my face she said, “Maybe if you just relax it will come to you.”

“You could be right,” I agreed then took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Relaxing wasn’t one of my more proficient skills, but I knew I desperately needed to remember what I had seen if I was going to help stop this killer and, more importantly, save Judith Albright’s life if at all possible.

Unfortunately, something new was cropping up in my brain that had me preoccupied. I puzzled over it for a long moment, concentrating between stabs of pain, then gave up and asked my wife, “What did you mean when you said you told Emily Foster’s spirit ‘it was yours’?”

“Oh, that. I can show you,” she replied.

I scrunched my forehead in confusion. “Show me?”

She shot me a broad, toothy smile, but by the time I realized what I was seeing it was too late. She had already buried her fangs into my neck, and I was trying to scream.

*****

I felt myself gasp as the scream caught in my throat and formed a hard lump. Light bloomed in my eyes and slowly settled to a contrasty blur that eventually became the tile wall of the autopsy suite filling my vision once again. I was still seeing it sideways and from floor level, but I didn’t care. It definitely beat what I had been seeing a split second before.

I heard Doctor Sanders calling out to someone. Her voice was calm but held a strong sense of urgency. “I can’t stop the bleeding. Get the paramedics now!”

A quickly moving wave of panic washed over me upon hearing the string of syllables, and a solid sense of deja vu informed me that I had been here before. This time, however, no darkness encroached upon my corner of the world. No hospital room, no Goth nurse wearing swan print clothing, and most especially, no vampire wife.

I still couldn’t move, or even speak. My heart hadn’t stopped thumping inside my head and neither had the noise of the blood rushing in my ears, but unlike before, I could hear everything going on around me as clear as crystal.

Ben’s businesslike but very dire voice was sounding nearby. “Yeah, this is Detective Benjamin Storm. We need paramedics at City Medical Examiner’s office on Clark. We have a male in his early forties hemorrhaging from his neck. Uh-huh… Yeah… Yeah, Doc Sanders is already on that…”

“Tell them to come in the back entrance,” Doctor Sanders instructed. “It will save time.”

“Yeah, the back entrance…” my friend repeated. “It’s closer.”

From somewhere behind and very near to my head I heard Felicity blurt, “The drawer!” Her voice was a rapid burst and just to the low side of a shout.

“What?” Ben barked in return.

My wife didn’t take time to answer. I could hear the soles of her tennis shoes squeak against the tile floor as she scrambled up and skirted around my prone body. Even though I couldn’t actually see it happening, I knew it was she who was attached to the noise.

A heartbeat later I heard her normally singsong voice now brimming with unbridled rage as she recited aloud, “Emily, it’s time to go, I want you gone as you well know. Goodbye now, and stay away, unless I call another day.”

As my wife’s words were still tumbling from her mouth, I heard the sound of the rollers on the drawer hissing and clattering as before, beginning with a slow ka-chunk then ramping up to a fast chatter. A heavy thump came a second later, and the clacking rollers stopped in the same instant. The dull noise was followed by the hollow clank of the insulated stainless steel door slamming shut.

Thick silence filled the room as the oddly final sound dissipated into the cold air. After a tense moment I heard Felicity growl with bitter calm, “And don’t make me stuff your eternal arse into a shoebox, saigh.”

CHAPTER 24:

“Do me a favor and smile really big,” I said to my wife.

I had just finished glancing at the IV tube running into the back of my left hand and the pulse oximeter probe attached to a finger on my right, so I was once again feeling an overwhelming and terribly unpleasant sense of deja vu. At least we weren’t in a hospital room; however, we were at a hospital, sitting in a treatment room in the emergency ward. Well, actually, she was sitting; I was laying on the table, albeit at an incline.

I knew the instant I opened my mouth and asked her to smile that I was letting irrational paranoia guide the odd request. But under the circumstances and at this particular moment, I wasn’t entirely certain I could reasonably distinguish reality from lifelike ethereal visions, and I needed to be sure.

Felicity’s brow pinched up as she cocked her head to the side and stared at me. “Why?”

“Just humor me,” I said, the tone of my voice adding an obvious if unspoken please.

She shook her head as if she thought I had lost my mind, but still curled her lips into a quick smile.

“Bigger,” I urged. “So I can see your teeth.”

“Is this about that vision?” she asked.

“Kind of…”

She sighed then repeated the smile, this time baring her clenched teeth and rolling her eyes. After turning her head side to side, she relaxed her mouth and asked, “There. Was that good enough for you?”

“Yeah, thanks. By the way, how is your arm?”

“It’s fine.”

“You’re sure you didn’t twist it or anything when we fell?”

“No. I already told you I’m not that fragile.”

“Okay, as long as you’re sure.”

She didn’t even try to mask the bother in her voice as she responded. “It was just an errant vision produced by your imagination, Rowan. That’s all. It was something put together by your subconscious because of everything that was happening on top of everything else that has happened in the last few days. You’ve been through this sort of thing before. You know that’s what it was.”

I reached up and felt my neck for what was probably the sixth time. There was still nothing there that shouldn’t be.

She watched me then shook her head and asked, “What do I have to do to convince you?”

“Don’t suddenly sprout fangs would be a good start.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

In a sharp huff she let out an exasperated breath. “I think the blood loss must have affected your brain.”

“Maybe so, but the whole thing felt pretty real, so I have to figure there’s something to it.”

“What, you actually think I’m a vampire?” she quipped. “Now I know something’s wrong with your head.”

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