sorry… What?”
“Ben needs to know what you want him to do,” I explained.
“Oh…” She creased her brow then looked at him and asked, “Did you already put the broom in the corner?”
“Yeah,” he replied, a bit of confusion in his voice. “A coupl’a minutes ago.”
“With the bristles up?”
“Yeah,” he said again, pointing toward the upended implement several feet away. “Right over there where ya’ told me, and exactly like ya’ said. Ya’ just stood right here and watched me do it.”
“Oh…” she mumbled. “Right.”
“So is there anything else ya’ want me ta’ do?” he pressed.
He kept his eyes locked on her as she appeared to concentrate hard on the question, but both of them remained mute. After a quiet moment he asked, “Are you okay, Firehair?”
She looked at him blankly, and then as his words appeared to register, she nodded.
“You sure? You ain’t already goin’ all Twilight Zone on us are ya’?”
“Aye…” She nodded again. “I mean, no… I… Yes, I’m fine… I’m not… I don’t… I’m not sure what you can…” she stammered through unfinished sentences as she glanced around. Finally, she shook her head and said, “Well…I guess if you just want to stay out of the way, that would probably be best then.”
“Yeah, that part’s kinda a given,” he grunted. “I’m just offerin’ ta’ help if ya’ need somethin’ else is all.”
“I know,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. This is a little…”
He nodded slowly as her voice trailed off. When she had fallen mute once again, he said, “Yeah, I’m kinda startin’ ta’ get that… Don’t worry about it. S’all good, as long as you’re okay.”
“What? Oh…I’ll be fine,” she returned.
I hoped she was correct, but her rapidly deteriorating state wasn’t filling me with confidence. Inside my head, every objection imaginable was screaming at me, presenting themselves with explicit detail and backup arguments tailored to overcome any opposition. However, I left every last one of them unspoken. Felicity was obviously edgy enough as it was, and I couldn’t afford to add fragility to that mix. Me casting any further aspersion upon this undertaking wouldn’t help her at all if we intended to continue. In fact, it might well be dangerous if I piled my misgivings on top of the latent doubts that were now peaking through her slack expression.
My friend turned a questioning glance in my direction and then jerked his head to the side indicating that I should follow him as he began to wander away from Felicity. I looked at my wife, who was once again staring off into space, then stepped over to where he was waiting.
“The little woman seems pretty out of it there, white man,” he whispered. “I’m sorta used to it outta you. Her, not so much.”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied in a hushed tone.
“She was fine a little bit ago, so what’s goin’ on?”
“She’s just starting to get nervous, Ben,” I told him, as much to reassure myself as anyone. “This isn’t her normal role. And, she has a lot to worry about on the periphery as well.”
“Yeah…” he breathed, nodding. “The psychobitch.”
“Exactly.”
“So…she gonna be able ta’ do it?”
“Maybe. She definitely wants to try.”
“How ‘bout you?” he pressed quietly, thrusting his chin toward me. “You seem to have calmed down quite a bit.”
I shook my head. “Only on the outside.”
“Not feelin’ any better about this?”
“Not really,” I replied and then glanced back at Felicity for a moment. She hadn’t moved and seemed almost catatonic. I turned back to my friend and added, “Maybe a little worse, actually.”
Ben reached up and smoothed back his hair. “So, I hate ta’ ask, but what if somethin’ with this goes south? You gonna be able ta’ hold it together?”
“I don’t have any choice, Ben. I’m all she’s got on this side.”
“Yeah, Row. That’s pretty much ‘zactly why I’m askin’. Can you handle it, or should we just stop right now?”
“Aren’t you doing a bit of an…”
Across the room from us a pair of doors swung inward and interrupted me mid-sentence. We both turned toward the sound and saw the end of a gurney appear as it nosed its way through the opening. The elongated cart was swiftly followed by the rest of its length and brought up on the opposite end by Doctor Kingston who was providing both the propulsion and steering. She finished pushing it toward Felicity then brought it to a halt and locked the wheels in place. Although we certainly weren’t finished, Ben and I broke from our whispered conversation and joined them.
Resting atop the stainless steel surface of the gurney was a rubberized body bag. Given its current bulk and shape, it was definitely engaged in doing exactly what it was designed to do. I kept my eyes on my wife as I slipped around the end and came up next to her. I could see that she had moved, but not much. She was now staring at the bag in front of her, unblinking, with a faint look of dread now twisting itself into her features.
“Sorry I was gone so long,” the doctor announced. “I wanted to make sure everyone knew this suite was off limits for the time being. So…are we ready?”
I remained quiet, watching and waiting to see if Felicity was going to respond. She was still squarely focused on the black zippered sheath, seemingly transfixed in a moment only she could see.
After several seconds passed, I gave her arm a gentle nudge and called softly, “Felicity?”
“Aye…” she muttered, her voice even thinner and more distracted than before. “I’m okay.”
I didn’t believe her. The arrival of this newest member to the party was obviously pushing her apprehension beyond the next level. Of course, I had already been hovering up against the red line for hours, so I knew exactly how she felt. Unfortunately, that knowledge wasn’t comforting to me in the least.
No matter how hard Felicity had tried to reassure me otherwise, we both knew that channeling the dead wasn’t exactly her long suit. Other than her body being hijacked by Miranda, she had only done this once before, and it had been strictly involuntary.
She was as skilled a magickal practitioner as I’d ever met. In fact, I would even readily admit that she was more advanced than me in that arena. But, this wasn’t magick. It was something completely different. Still, in reality, we had no way of knowing whether or not this would even work. Under the present circumstances, I found myself hoping that it wouldn’t.
The tone of Ben’s next exchange with my wife told me that his second thoughts about this were starting to bother him even more.
“You think you’re gonna be able ta’ do this, Felicity?” he asked.
She gave her head a slight shake. “I don’t know.”
“Fair enough. You still good with tryin’?”
“Aye,” she replied, her voice soft and distant. “I think so.”
He waited a moment, still watching her carefully. Eventually he told her, “You can back out, if you don’t want ta’ go through with it. It’s not a problem. I’ll understand.”
“No…” she mumbled. “We need to do this.”
My friend looked over at me, more concern in his eyes than I’d seen for quite some time. “Row…I’m leavin’ it up ta’ you. Wanna pull the plug?”
The litany of objections presented themselves once again, ricocheting around the inside of my skull as they looked for an exit. However, I simply gave my head a barely perceptible shake and said, “No. She’s probably right. We should try.”
“Is everything okay?” Doctor Kingston asked.
“Just makin’ sure everyone’s still on the same page, Doc,” Ben replied. “It’s a Witch thing.”
Had the situation been different, I likely would have guffawed at Ben’s use of that phrase.
“All right then,” she began, addressing me directly. “Mister Gant, earlier you said you may need physical contact with the deceased?”
“It helps,” I replied and dipped my head toward my wife. “But it will only be Felicity, not me.”
