A Bone to Pick, page 15
Then I broke from my simple step-by-step retelling to add, “You can see why we had to come back for that man. Ian hoped that...” No, any argument that Ian’s tricks might add something that a whole hospital full of doctors couldn’t do would only turn them against him. Instead I tried “He needed to see him.”
Not just Ian. Once I said it, my own guilt hung in the air too.
Poe said nothing now. Not while I described Tell and Beltram and the rest of the men, and said they’d taken me to Mrs. Weems’s and then the flower shop—there was no way I’d mention the back approach Little Street and what they’d guessed about that whole cursed neighborhood. I left out them making Ian cut us too, certain Ian would never reveal that shame himself either.
Then for the Duvals’ attack, I stuck to the bare facts about the firebombers I’d seen, and that broke Poe’s silence again:
“So was it the Duval cousins or not? They just broke out of jail last night, and now ‘someone’ burns up your enemy, but you don’t know it’s them?”
“I’m just saying... Have you ever seen a face through a fire suit’s mask? They looked big enough to be the Duvals, but... Well, I can just tell you what I saw.” If Maya still thought she could keep the Duvals in line, I didn’t have to specifically accuse them.
“I see.” Then Poe’s expression sharpened. “So if we looked up this Mrs. Weems that ‘Tell’ almost touched off a riot over, we wouldn’t find some association with the Duvals, would we? She’s simply a nurse with some access they wanted?”
“I don’t know what you’d find.” I’d been fooling myself—Poe already knew who was connected to the Duvals, whether I made it easy for him or not.
But that thoroughness was what I counted on, that and all the traces that our being chased around had left. Crazy as our story was, the facts did fit with it again and again—and taking Ian for a valuable medical genius would still be easier than assuming magic. I told Poe about each attack, each escape, and how they all led up to Ian and Lucy and me needing to see Lawrence Neal. After our escape I didn’t mention Jason at all.
Then he had me go through it again, and again. I watched his round face take it all in, and felt my stomach shift and growl after such a long day. The Pulse said he was more frustrated and grinding along, not tensed on the edge of springing some trap... but I’d been blindsided before, and this conversation only needed one slip to blow up on us all.
All I had was the weight of evidence about what had happened, that it still made more sense than any other answer, to someone not aware of magic. And I went through it again and again.
Until finally when I reached the end and asked to see the victim again, Poe tapped at his phone. Then he stood up.
Getting to my feet was a stiff, stumbling joy after so long in the chair. I followed him out to the corridor, and saw police leading Ian and Lucy back to join us.
Poe held up his phone screen to them. “So you’re sure. It was this person, Maya Grant, that Corbin was talking to just before the attack on your clinic?”
“Of course.” Lucy looked surprised, to have it asked at all.
Poe fixed me with a glare. “Interesting thing to leave out.”
He’s got me—
No. I met Poe’s gaze, and let my resentment bubble up in me. “Yes she came to warn us. Remember, she first came to me for help after you refused to help her stop the Duvals, and since then they set fire to her home and dragged us both around for, I don’t know why—and you still treat her like the suspect.” I pointed a finger at him. “What now, do you lock me up for not accusing her—”
A gunshot cut me off.
The open corridor had no cover and I could only drop to the floor. Screams burst on all sides of us. Cops moved around me, some near Lucy and Ian. I pressed low and tried the Pulse—storms of cold fear crashed around me, sweeping anything else away.
Forcing my aching head up, I tried to see through the forest of uniformed legs and shoes. Ian was there, Lucy behind him, both sheltered by police.
Down the corridor more police dashed after a retreating figure. A discarded gun spun along the floor.
I jumped to my feet and twisted after them. And Poe grabbed my arm, shoved me back, toward Ian and Lucy.
Too many cops, already chasing him... I groaned and settled back to lean against the wall. Footsteps and shouts faded down the corridor, and Poe and other cops shifted position around us. Two covered Lawrence Neal’s door.
Why didn’t I warn Poe, when didn’t I insist that the man I’d seen here meant they could strike here any time? I’d written them off, I’d assumed Broken-Nose was keeping so far clear of the police that they’d never dare come closer.
Nobody looked hit, anywhere around us. Instead, Ian and Lucy had the dazed look of being plunged back into a nightmare they thought they’d left behind.
The shooter hadn’t looked like him.
I clung to the glimpse I’d had, of a figure with a hat hiding his face... if it was a him, it had looked thinner than most of Broken-Nose’s people, but certainly tall enough. Sybil Duval could fit that build, but would she really want me dead, or anyone here?
And... a single shot, from that far down the corridor? That was a reckless move, why would anyone expose themselves for a gamble like that?
Unless it was no risk.
I stood waiting, watching Ian’s and Lucy’s confusion and Poe still eyeing me, until the police came back into view. They held one figure between them, the broken-nosed thug himself. And his coat, his clothes, had about the same color as what I’d glimpsed on the shooter.
“Familiar face, isn’t he?” one of the cops said. “We caught him running, and he had this on him.” Holding it in a bit of cloth, he held out a pistol.
“Backup weapon?” Poe looked at me. “Someone you know?”
“He’s—”
I stopped, realized I could give Poe something better than one person’s story. I motioned him a few steps away from the others, and then I murmured to him:
“He’s one of the ones that kidnapped us. But ask Ian, he’ll tell you the same thing, and that won’t be because he heard me say it.”
Poe looked at me a moment, and he smiled.
Then he walked over and whispered with Ian, before he went to face the thug.
“We’ve got you linked to a conspiracy that left a man on life support. Bringing a gun here might as well be a confession.”
The Pulse showed me Broken-Nose clenched with sullen stubbornness, but more than anything his mind wobbled in confusion.
He glared back at Poe. “Don’t know what you’re talking about. I...” He stopped, and we could all see him fumbling for an excuse. “I wanted to scare that bastard fake of a doctor, after all his lies at the clinic. You see anything bigger here, you’re out of your mind.”
“Nice try. You think your bosses will cover for you the same way?”
Poe and a couple of uniforms led him off.
Poe had to be right, Broken-Nose was taking the blame for his people. But he didn’t read like he even knew about the shot.
So why was anyone shooting? If it was a distraction to get at the patient, the cops had kept that covered. All this did was put them on alert.
Unless that was the motive. If Sybil fired a warning shot, and Maya pulled her to safety... as they led the cops toward Broken-Nose... It was a stretch, but would be a reason.
Lucy was pulling Ian toward me. While the cops milled around, looking outward and at each other, not at us—they didn’t know the private, intense look on these two faces.
Ian whispered “This’s our chance to try waking our patient. Both of us.”
He said that straight to me. And he slid another ring onto his hand—what was that, a backup for the one Jason had altered?
“Right now? How?” I breathed. “How are we supposed to combine three, four, kinds of...” They were diving straight into this, and all I felt was out of my depth.
Something flickered on Ian’s face that might have been the same kind of doubt. Then he whispered “So monitor me. That’s what your way sounds best for.”
Far up the corridor, I saw Poe glance over at us. Then he turned back to the cops around him.
And we were moving, the three of us, quietly and smoothly walking past the police and on into Lawrence Neal’s room.
The room was the same, with enough machines and wires around the patient’s bed to feel more cramped than it was. Some of that space was filled with a tall older man in a uniform much simpler than the cops’—bus driver or janitor or something. His hair was the same dirty brown as the patient’s, and his washed-out face looked almost as empty.
“Who are... thank you for coming...”
He stopped, peered harder at us.
Then that face hardened. “You, you don’t know my son. You leave him alone.” His voice started to rise, to reach outside the room.
“We’re sorry,” Lucy said. “We didn’t know him well, but we wanted to say—”
“You... they told me, the killers were chasing someone else.” His gaze raked over us, and I couldn’t keep from flinching back. “It’s your fault—”
“I’m sorry!” I said before he got any louder. “I only know, what matters now is your son, just that he gets better.”
The plea felt like mush in my mouth. The father clenched his eyes shut, for what looked like building up another outburst. Footsteps around us had to be cops near the door.
Ian and Lucy backed up a step, together.
And Ian whispered to her “I can’t ask you to... but...” A look of pain crossed his face. “But, I’m still the only one with experience using this.”
“And we have to talk about that too,” she said. “Later. Do it.”
They backed up another step, near the doorway. I saw Ian brush Lucy’s hand, and the moment the spasm of shock went through her and she began to topple.
I was there to help Ian ease her to the floor. She thrashed once, went limp, shook again.
“That’s right!” the father’s voice cracked out. “You should feel something, just a taste of what you did.”
With a grunt of reassurance, a uniformed cop pushed in beside where she lay trembling. I squeezed back to the wall—if that officer weren’t so thin, the four of us might not even fit around where Lucy lay.
But while the others clustered around her, Ian had sidestepped and slipped around to reach the patient’s bed.
I hung on to the one instruction I had, Ian calling my magic best for monitoring him. But the cop’s voice, the father’s, Lucy’s gasps, all battered around me—I brought the Pulse up as Ian laid a hand down on the silent shape.
Lucy squirmed beside where I crouched. Sweat was thickening in the air, sweat that even smelled different from simple crowding. The father growled “Come on, girl, just get up—” And the emotions that boomed and whirled within them—
Focus. I fought to reach through the storm, for any change in the one small spark of the patient’s mind as Ian worked. The noise broke for a moment and I could hear one of the monitors beeping—unchanged—before that sound was swallowed again too.
“Give her room,” the cop said, the last thing we wanted.
Ian switched hands, now touching the patient with the same ring that had shocked Lucy. I crouched back against the wall and hung on to what steadiness I could feel, waiting for some twitch in the man’s single mote of feeling—anything that said Ian’s nerve magic had reached it.
Nothing stirred, all I felt was that elusive spark. I looked over for a comparison at Lucy’s jangled mind, and turned back to find the patient’s was lost, drowned out by the room until I somehow picked it out again. The strongest emotion here was the paling, flailing scrabble that Ian made for some kind of hope. And he looked up, over the others’ heads, right at me.
What do I do?
We could have had this room to ourselves, if we’d let Maya jump us in here tonight...
Lawrence’s spark quivered, once.
And I slid upward against the wall, rising a few inches and lifting my hands a fraction, the only signal I could think to tell Ian there, that, raise that.
He nodded. His face tightened in concentration.
The spark went still. Whatever thread Ian had found, he’d lost—I slid back downward to cue him to start again.
Lucy’s foot caught my shin, tipped me back, and my head thumped against the wall.
Nothing worked. All we had were frozen moments trying to hold on in the middle of sweat and tangled emotion.
Ian switched to his other hand again—going back to his first, healing, ring, or was that Jason’s sleep magic that even he didn’t understand? Whatever it was, Lawrence didn’t stir. I crouched back tighter against the wall, straining for some sign of hope.
Jason stepped into the doorway.
Lucy shook again, helpless. What the hell are we doing here?
“What is this?” Detective Poe dragged Jason back and away, waved the officer to step back, started calling for help.
The patient’s father stepped back—
“You! Take your hands off my boy!”
Fear and shame burst open inside Ian. He pulled back, let his grip break—
“Leave him alone!” I said. “Don’t you get it, he cares more than any of us!” No magic, but I poured all the struggle’s heat and hope into my voice as I flung it out to him, to Ian.
Ian’s eyes flicked toward me. His mind steadied.
Then he reached backward and clamped that hand on the silent form behind him, for one long tensed moment, and then yanked his grip away.
His will surged as he did—with that flinging-away motion, he was using the ring’s sleep magic to shove the coma back—
The spark jumped, one slippery spurt already shrinking back, and I reached the Pulse out to catch at it with the one thing it had responded to before, fear, one scrabbling stretch of my mind fighting to reach across the room’s chaos and snatch the chance as it dwindled away—
Lucy’s foot kicked at me again—
The father shoved Ian back, howling something and pushing him back to block off the monitors—
I seized it, my thin ripple of magic swelled out to reach the tumbling spark and fan it with cold, demanding fear: danger, doom, wake up and run...
Then I heard the father’s voice. “What? What is... son?” and a bloom of warmth let my sight focus again, to see Lawrence Neal’s eyes open. Then the father’s back cut off my view, and he shook with sobs of joy.
Ian stepped around to beside me. Not wasting a moment, he crouched down beside Lucy and touched her shoulder.
Her eyes didn’t clear. Her body still shook.
No, no, he has to heal her, we just brought our patient back—
“Got you!”
That voice blasted out from the doorway, from just beyond it. Where a cop grabbed Jason—the same cop he’d tricked away from this door last time—and slammed him around to the wall.
By his injured arm. Jason’s moan rang all down the corridor.
Voices stirred around them—one shout of outrage that could have been a doctor, and several cops warning people back. Poe stood nearby, watching.
The officer stepped back from Jason, but only one guarded step. His face, the same face that had been quick to smile at me when I’d come by alone, glowered in frustrated rage at him.
“Alright, I did it,” Jason gasped. Pain had sunk deep into his face, but he forced the words out. He was back in his own clothes instead of the stolen uniform. “Yes, I faked those papers and sent you away. I just... I had to see the man they shot. He got shot over us—I had to!”
The cop looked at him, eyes hooded.
“Let... him... lettim go...” Lucy’s voice was slurred and thick, as she fought to raise her head from the floor. “Got a b-bad arm...”
Beside her, Ian tightened his grip on her, trying to mend what he’d broken.
The cop eyed Jason, hands still held back but fingers clenching like they wanted to grab at him again. “You wanted? Like you think you can just walk in—”
“He wanted to help,” I cut in.
And I stood up and started slowly toward him on wobbling legs, tugging at his emotions with soft warm sympathy. Magic wasn’t enough, he had to have enough reason to believe what he felt was real.
I went on “He wanted to see if someone was okay. Is that so hard to understand? Have you ever lost something you’d be desperate to fix, and you’d do anything...”
The cop’s widening, soul-filled eyes froze me, and I let the magic fall away. What was I doing, jumping from saving one life to twisting another up—like bending emotions was ever right or safe or anything but desperate? My stomach twisted.
All I could add was the awkward “Just... just give him a break, can’t you?”
The cop looked at me, and I could see his eyes refocus, and sharpen. He glared over at Jason.
Jason edged over to look in the doorway. “Is he alright? It sounds like he is.”
The cop reached a hand up for a grab at Jason’s shoulder.
But that motion halted in mid-reach, and drew back. “You, you mean that, don’t you.”
“What? Well, sure I do.”
The cop looked past him, at me and the room behind me. His gaze shifted around to the patient and his father, both still oblivious to us, and at me, Ian and Lucy, back at Jason... I refused to read the cop again, but something about how his gaze never settled on one thing told me he was trying to take in the whole picture.
“Detective?”
He turned slowly to the still-silent Poe.
“It, it looks like none of this did our witness any harm, not a bit of it. And this guy already got—” He motioned to Jason’s arm. “I mean, he made me a sucker for a minute. But do we really have any charges to file here?”
“We’ll... see.” Poe shot a glance of his own at Jason’s arm, no doubt wondering whether the injured imposter or the cop would catch more blame out of this.
The look he gave the rest of us was longer.
* * *
We weren’t suspects. And in the end, Poe and the rest decided not to hold us for more questioning, and the four of us were able to trudge away, Ian helping Lucy along and all of us feeling the relief of being away from them again.
