focused on my reflection, my eyes dark in the overhead lights. Like it or not, this was who and what I was. I said, “Shit,” under my breath, very quietly, and the black-haired woman in the window looked about as unhappy as I felt.
Conviction, a grim dark feeling of knowing I could pull this off, was right there, waiting for me to sink into it again. I’d done it before, more than once, pulling belief around me like a cloak to be shed when the crisis had passed. I didn’t exactly feel guilty about dropping it when the moment was gone, but I was getting tired of it. I just didn’t know how to stop. I closed my eyes, prickles of weariness stinging the inside of my nose like a warning of tears. The power behind my sternum waited, so calm and patient it felt like mockery. For the first time I could remember I just stood there, paying attention to what it felt like. It was cool and still, mostly centered in my diaphragm, but if I concentrated I felt it welling up higher, running through my veins like blood, as if it was a part of me. If I called up the second sight and looked at my skin, I thought I’d be able to see it, silver and blue and flowing inside me. It wasn’t conscious, but I could be subsumed by it, giving myself over to its strange and scary potential.
The idea terrified me. I wanted to be in control, rational and intelligent and logical, not at the mercy of a healing magic sufficiently greater than myself that I couldn’t even recognize what to do with it half the time.
I also wanted to go in and visit Billy. I opened my eyes again and whispered, “Okay. I’m trying this your way,” to my reflection. “You can do it. It’s who you are. You taught Coyote, remember? Just let yourself…go.”
Feather-soft warmth enveloped me. For an instant I thought I saw a white ghost of wings in the reflection, making a shelter that fell around my shoulders. Inside that hollow place of safety, I felt as though I slid inside myself, a cool drink of water sliding down my insides. It brought the Sight with it, the world visible in two realities for a few seconds, one ordinary and night-dark, the other neon brilliant and vibrating with life. Then the second one settled out, leaving me with whispers of encouragement reverberating through my mind and echoing in the power centered within me. I did my best to formulate a
It burgeoned out of me, pushing out in bubbles and bursts of pleasure at being used, and slithered over my skin like a coat of thick paint. It started with my chest and ran downward, distorting even my own vision so that light bent and I seemed to be looking through myself. It ran over my fingertips and touched the glass, then splashed back up my arm to my throat and face. The last thing I saw was my eyes, oddly gold in the darkness, and then my reflection wasn’t there at all.
Absolute sheer panic erupted in my stomach, cramping it and making cold sweat stand out all over my body as I stared at where I ought to be reflected. I clenched my teeth and breathed in and out like a Lamaze mother, half convinced that if I couldn’t see my reflection, I wasn’t there. I wondered if vampires felt that way, then had to remind myself severely that there was no such thing.
God on high, how I hoped there was no such thing.
The thought seemed to be a source of amusement to the power hiding me from myself. I ground my teeth and willed myself to take a few steps backward, seeing if the magic would hold. To my complete fascination, moving made me visible, but only just: if I didn’t know where to look, I wouldn’t see me. I’d seen news stories about technology that did what I seemed to be doing, projecting images of what was around me over where I was. The tech I’d read about only worked from one direction, but as I peered over my own shoulder, it appeared that magic was a more effective invisibility cloak than technology. A very tiny pop of glee burst through me. There was no actual crisis and I’d talked myself into doing something pretty dramatic with my power. I actually whispered “Thank you” to myself, and headed for the hospital doors.
It was then that it occurred to me to wonder if the hospital’s sliding glass doors were triggered by weight or motion. The question kept me paralyzed for several long seconds as I stared at the doors a few yards ahead. Then someone exited and I made a mad dash inside, never knowing which it might’ve been.
A noseful of sharp sweet hospital smell made me sneeze so explosively I staggered to the lobby chairs, leaning on one while tears ran down my face and I sneezed again. More people than I’d hoped were about at that hour. Every single one of them stared around in confusion at the sneezes evidently coming out of nowhere. I got myself under control and snuffled my way to the elevators, still wiping at my eyes and nose. I couldn’t remember Harry Potter ever having this sort of problem while he was running around in his invisibility cloak. I was going to have to speak to the management.
The elevators and halls upstairs were bustling with exhausted-looking doctors and nurses and the buzz of worried confusion. More and more people were being admitted with the sleeping sickness, and nobody’d woken up yet. I flinched my way around gurneys and frustrated medical personnel, whispering promises to make it better as I slipped into Billy’s room and sank against the door, eyes closed for a few seconds as I muttered another internal thanks to my gifts and let the bubble of invisibility slide off me. Then I shoved away from the door and took two steps before jolting to a halt in complete dismay.
Bradley Holliday was conked out in a chair by Billy’s bed.
CHAPTER 24
My first thought was,
Mel was in the bed closer to the door, now that I was noticing things. She, like Billy, looked well, except for the unbroken sleep. Brad Holliday looked uncomfortable as hell. I thought about waking him up to save him the crick in his neck, but he probably wouldn’t appreciate it. Besides, I didn’t want to explain how I’d gotten in there.
Which led me to the good news. Nothing had come out of the dark to attack me through my use of power.
The bad news was I could feel the feathery heaviness of sleep in the room, as if it gathered there and waited for something. Even’d get you odds it was waiting for me.
And I didn’t know what to do about it.
I tiptoed to the middle of the room, seeing if I could touch both Billy and Melinda at once. I couldn’t, and edged back to Mel’s bed to see if it could be moved a few inches without noise or pulling any important-looking tubes loose. I didn’t want to try moving Billy. For one thing, he had almost a hundred pounds on me, and for another, it was his bed Brad was next to.
Mel’s bed was actually surprisingly easy to move. I lifted the foot and swung it over eight or ten inches, then snuck forward to move the head as far as I dared. Air stirred around me, thick and slow, and seemed to stick to my skin as I moved. Like tar. I thought of Coyote, and thought,
As best I could tell, Billy and Mel had been the first two to go to sleep. I’d spent more time psychically linked with Billy than anybody, and I figured the events of a few weeks past had bound Melinda and me together in some fashion as well. If there was a place to start ending this plague of sleep, it was probably with them.
But I was on my own. Coyote was gone and my forays into other realms were stung left and right with darkness and encroaching sleep. There was a real possibility I wouldn’t be able to snap out of it if I went to do battle with this thing.
I also didn’t see that I had much choice in the matter. I wasn’t going to let my friends die. I wasn’t going to let Coyote have died for nothing.
Besides. A ghost of humor passed through me. At least if I got myself caught by this thing I wouldn’t have to face the embarrassment of seeing Morrison again. That made the prospect of getting stuck in dreamworlds almost appealing. The extra chair in the room was on the far side of Billy’s bed. I didn’t want to move it and risk waking Brad up, so I took a deep breath and knelt down between the two beds, reaching out to touch the sleepers,
