Before I could finish the thought, a light rap of knuckles sounded against the door, and it slowly swung inward. Ben followed it and came cautiously through the opening.
“Hey, Kemosabe,” he said.
“Yo, Tonto,” I replied, teeth chattering slightly.
He strode over and gave Constance a light squeeze on her shoulder, but that was as far as he took the semi-public display of affection.
“We’re takin’ a break upstairs,” he said. “So just thought I’d come down and check on ya’.” He looked me up and down then said, “No offense, Row, but you ain’t lookin’ so good.”
I was certain he had a valid point. The solid eight had very quickly advanced to a twelve with little ceremony or warning, and it was still on the move. I grimaced but brushed off his comment and went straight for a question of my own. “How’s the interview going?”
He shook his head. “Right now, it ain’t.”
“I thought the victim was stable and alert?” Constance said.
“Yeah, he’s stable, I guess,” he replied. “And he’s awake, but I’m not so sure about alert. They got ‘im pretty drugged up, not that I can fault ‘em for that. He’s pretty tore up. But that ain’t the real problem.”
“Then what is?” Constance asked.
Ben hadn’t closed the door, so it was now hanging wide open. It wouldn’t have mattered except that someone had again turned up the volume on the radio out at the nurse’s station, and the frenetic talk show was now blaring through the opening. However, I still couldn’t make out what was being said because it seemed the host and all of the guests were stuck in a free-for-all with no regard for any type of order.
Ben shook his head in disgust and then proceeded to explain, “Fuckin’ bitch did somethin’ to his eyes, which is prob’ly why he was wanderin’ in the middle of a street when they found ‘im. Doc says he might regain part of his vision, but right now they’re all bandaged up.” He shrugged and then added, “And, of course, on toppa that she cut off all ‘is damn fingers.”
“What’s that…” I started then shook my head and changed course mid-sentence while nodding at the door. “Ben, could you please shut that?”
He gave me an odd glance then stepped over and pushed the door closed as he said, “Yeah, sure.”
The blare of the talk show didn’t stop. If anything, it became a little louder still.
“Is something wrong, Rowan?” Constance asked.
“That damn radio,” I said. “I wish they’d turn it down.”
“What radio?” she asked.
“You can’t hear that?” I replied, giving my head a shake.
Ben backed her up. “There ain’t a radio playin’, white man, trust me. This is the quietest floor in the whole damn place.”
The twelve had now become an eighteen, and a sharp stab of pain lanced from the base of my skull and directly into my frontal lobes. I winced and closed my eyes as my whole body tensed, which in turn set off the pain in my abdomen once again. Even under the warmth of the multiple blankets I became ice cold, and I felt the intense prickling of every hair on my body standing to rapt attention.
“Jeezus, Row, you definitely ain’t lookin’ good now,” Ben observed. “I think we need ta’ call the nurse.”
“Why the fingers?” I asked, pushing the question out through clenched teeth.
I didn’t quite understand why I so desperately felt the need to know the answer, but it was more than a mere curiosity. It had literally taken on an unearthly urgency. For some reason, in my mind, it seemed as if my very life depended upon hearing it.
“‘Cause she’s a goddamn sadistic bitch, I guess,” Ben answered from the hip with a healthy shot of sarcasm chasing the words. “Who the fuck knows? Hang on, I’m gettin’…”
“No,” I pressed, cutting him off while squinting my eyes together as the eighteen ramped up to a twenty-two. I literally growled the demand, “I mean why do the fingers matter now?”
Constance’s urgent voice barked, “I just hit the call button.”
A high-pitched peal suddenly began issuing from the vitals monitor as an alarm started to sound. For some reason, even though only a portion of the telemetry was actually connected to me, the tone was swiftly followed by another, and then another, until it cascaded into an unscored symphony of electronic noise. Through my watering eyes, I could see frantic movement on the other side of the glass.
The door to the room flew open and bodies dressed in scrubs piled in through the opening, barking orders as they shoved Constance and Ben out of the way.
“Dammit Ben,” I groaned.
“Jeezus Row…” he huffed as he backpedaled out of the way.
“Why? Why the fingers?” I demanded once more, forcing the words out with everything I could muster.
“The guy’s a deaf-mute,” my friend called to me as he was being pushed out the door. His confusion about my curiosity was evident in his voice as he added, “He can’t communicate with us, and we can’t communicate with him.”
Twenty-two jumped straight to fifty, light bloomed in a harsh explosion of contrast, and the radio blared as thousands of dead, screaming voices poured directly into my skull.
When simple magick works, it works well. When simple magick fails, it fails big. However, this sudden collapse of SpellCraft wasn’t just a catastrophic failure; it was flat out epic, and I was at the center of it all.
CHAPTER 31
“You had some of us worried for a little while, Rowan,” Constance said.
“Yeah, I kind of got that impression,” I replied.
Ben snorted and then quipped, “Not me. It was all them. I knew you were fine.”
“Liar,” I sighed.
“Yeah, okay. So maybe I was worried just a little.”
“Uh-huh. Just a little. Sure.” I answered him with a sarcastic grunt and then said, “Thanks though. I appreciate the concern.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s all good.”
I let out another labored sigh then closed my eyes and attempted to will myself to relax. I hadn’t been having much luck with that exercise so far, and I wasn’t expecting to now, but that didn’t keep me from trying.
The somewhat overestimated crisis itself had ended almost as quickly as it began, probably even quicker, in fact. Even so, it was nearly an hour before Ben and Constance were allowed back into the room with me; and that only happened once it had been decided that my shivering had somehow caused abnormal readings to feed back through the monitors, thereby falsely setting off the alarms. Since various and repeated checks of my vitals showed they were as normal as they could possibly be given my current physical condition, that was the only explanation that seemed to fit the minds of the medical professionals tending to me.
Of course, I knew better. There was definitely something else going on. While I certainly wasn’t an expert, I doubted that it was my shaking or that there were system anomalies causing the alarms. My money was on the fact that a door between the worlds of the living and dead was once again propped wide open. I even had the familiar pounding headache and background drone in my ears to prove it, both of which were ailments I had never imagined I would be glad to have back.
Until now, that is.
Still, I just let the doctors and nurses believe their faulty conclusion. It would be better for everyone concerned if I left it that way.
“Are you still feeling okay, Rowan?” Constance asked.
“Okay as can be expected, I guess.”
“Do you want to try sleeping now? I can make Storm shut up if you want me to.”
“Hey!” Ben exclaimed. “I’m not the one yammerin’, you are.”
“Don’t worry… You’re both fine…” I said.
At the moment I was reclined farther back in the bed than I had been earlier. The intensity of the spasms I’d
