heal her injuries. I glanced down at her hands. It was a slow process.
“It should be,” she said. “It had better be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never… this should have been enough already. My hands should have been back to normal by now. Hell, a couple of years ago I only needed eight pounds to regrow an entirely new left foot. But we’re past that now and I can still barely use them. Something’s wrong.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. I kept cutting. “That was the same kind of fire that burned the little boy. I’m sure of it.”
“I know what kind of fire it was,” she snapped. “And we should have been protected. That spirit fire should not have been able to get past our iron gates.”
“That’s right,” she said. “I put an iron gate in the tattoos on your chest. It’s supposed to protect against certain kinds of spirit attacks.”
“Like the pressure waves that make people forget the dead kids?”
“Yes,” she said. “Or fires channeled from the Empty Spaces.”
“So why didn’t it work?” I speared a piece of meat on a fork and offered it to her. She glared at me, then accepted the food without answering my question.
I kept cutting meat and offering it to her. I didn’t ask any more questions. Eventually, she was able to flex her hands into claws, then into fists. I could see that they still hurt, but she could move them. After I’d fed her eighteen pounds of beef, her skin looked healthy but still pale. That’s when she took the fork from me and began to feed herself. She didn’t ask me to stop cutting the meat, and I didn’t.
She ate all of it. It was a little more than twenty pounds of beef, and she’d eaten it in a little less than three hours. She sat on the edge of the bed and flexed her hands. Her face was stoic, but I knew something was wrong. She kept testing them, moving them, staring at them. I suspected they still hurt her, and that she had expected them to be fully healed by now.
“I need to sleep now. And I need time to figure out what’s happened to me.”
She looked like she was about to say more, but she hesitated. I didn’t care. “No problem,” I told her, and started toward the door.
“Thank you,” she said.
I knew it wasn’t easy for her to say, and that it didn’t mean she was ready to trust me. I didn’t care. “You’re welcome.”
“Before you go,” she said, “there’s something I want you to leave behind.”
I stopped and turned around. “Is that right?”
“Leave it, Ray. Give it to me.”
“It’s the only weapon I have.”
“Do you think I can’t take it? Right here and now?”
“I know you can,” I said. “I just don’t understand-“
“Give it to me,” she said. She lifted the corner of her pillow.
I took my ghost knife from my pocket, crossed the room, and slid it under her pillow. Annalise watched me closely, her whole body tense. I got the message. I should have left her in the parking lot.
I went to my own room. There was next to nothing there that I had bought myself, except the jacket in the trash can. This wasn’t my room; it was hers.
I took a shower, then changed into clean clothes. I kept expecting the local cops to kick down the door, but it didn’t happen. They must have had their memories wiped, too. Neat trick. I opened my wallet and saw Annalise’s debit card inside. Good. I was hungry again. At least I wouldn’t have to sit in this room and starve.
I had the keys to the van, too. I considered driving it to a secluded spot and thoroughly searching all of Annalise’s gear. She hadn’t worn her ribbon-covered vest to the toy plant this morning, so she must have stashed it somewhere.
And there was the matter of her spell book. I knew she had one, but I didn’t know where she kept it. Would it be nearby, so she could create more ribbons as needed? Or would it be hidden away somewhere back in Seattle, in a safe-deposit box, or buried beneath a concrete floor, or sealed in a crate and sunk in Elliott Bay?
Or it could be stashed in the back of the van.
I didn’t believe it. Annalise wasn’t careless enough to leave it lying around.
And while I didn’t know much about this society of hers, I knew they had rules about their books: reading another peer’s book was a killing offense. If I did find the book in the van, it would be because Annalise had left it there to tempt me. It would be the perfect excuse for her to break my neck.
Inside the night table was a phone book. Hammer Bay was small enough that the white and yellow pages were combined into one book, but no one with the last name of Hammer was listed. Figured. That would have been too easy.
I left the motel and walked past the van without peeking inside. I was too hungry for games. I went to the office and asked the nervous manager where I could get a bite to eat. He recommended a place.
It was only a couple of blocks down the road. I strolled over to it. The misty drizzle had lessened, but the heavy clouds still obscured the sun and dimmed the town. It was only about six in the evening, which meant I had another two hours of sunlight, at least. The thought lifted my spirits.
