Kendall’s head jerked upright as she heard voices in the corridor. Not normal nurse voices talking about ccs of fluid or whatever—people shouting. People who were afraid.
She went to the door of the hospital room to see half the staff hurrying down the hallway. Everyone was yelling stuff like multiple incoming and everyone to the ER stat and so obviously something very, very bad was going down. It was like a cliffhanger on Grey’s Anatomy. Kendall wondered whether a plane had crashed outside of town or a gunman had shot up a store or something. That was the kind of thing it always was on Grey’s.
Elizabeth Pike was hanging around, too, but that wasn’t so weird. Kendall had seen her around before. Maybe she volunteered here or something.
Then as two nurses went past her, one of them stopped in her tracks. The other one looked back in confusion. “Diana? Diana, are you okay?”
The first nurse staggered against the wall, then slumped to the floor—and that black stuff was all over her, the same stuff that had choked Riley, the exact same thing happening again.
“Somebody help!” said the nurse now leaning over the fallen Diana. “We’ve got another one right here!”
Another one. She said another one. That meant the people coming into the ER—
Kendall looked back at the hospital room where her sister lay, between the other two patients, and realized they were only the first three. Only the beginning.
Faye Walsh was technically supposed to be in her office from eight thirty to three thirty every single day, but in reality, if she didn’t have a student appointment, a fifteen-minute coffee run was okay with the principal, particularly if Faye brought a latte back for her.
The barista held up a cardboard cup and called, “I have a macchiato here for Larissa.”
While the woman in front of her went to get her coffee, Faye pulled out her smartphone, just to double-check her schedule. If she could clear a half hour this afternoon, she’d try again to meet with Nadia Caldani. That conversation was overdue.
Someone near her gasped, and Faye glanced up to see the woman who’d just collected her coffee swooning to the ground, spilling coffee in every direction. But another puddle began to spread outward—the black, burning fluid she’d seen in her office a few days before.
The barista called 9-1-1; a few people bent down to try and help. Faye took a couple of steps backward and, unobtrusively as possible, used her phone to snap a picture.
It was important to document this, to get proof.
She had to be on the lookout for any evidence of witchcraft.
17
WHEN VERLAINE HAD LEFT THE HOSPITAL THE DAY before, it had been a place too quiet and mournful for her to bear.
Now it was bedlam.
At least a hundred people, maybe more, had crowded into the ER waiting room; everyone was demanding answers about their loved ones or this “mystery illness,” and nobody had any answers to give.
Well, not any answers the crowd was going to get, anyway. The people who knew the truth could be counted on one hand, and included two witches and a demon. Verlaine figured that wasn’t what anybody out there wanted to hear.
She and Nadia had managed to find a slightly less crowded corridor where they could at least hear each other talk. “Elizabeth can’t have been everywhere in town at once,” Verlaine said while they huddled near the vending machines. “Could she? Is there some kind of . . . time-turner spell?”
“Like I wouldn’t be using that every single day if there were. And enough with the Harry Potter stuff, okay?” Nadia leaned against the wall, weary as though she were the one who hadn’t slept. “I doubt Elizabeth made it to every single scene. But she would have made it to a lot of them.”
“Has she completed that disgusting symbol thing she’s burning into her flesh?” Verlaine supported tattoos, piercings, and other body modifications on general artistic principles, but actually using them to summon the forces of darkness was going too far.
“Yeah, but I don’t think completing the symbol is a big deal. I think it’s more about . . . strengthening the symbol. Calling on it. Reinforcing it. Every time Elizabeth burns it deeper into her shoulder, the symbol gets stronger. And so does her spell.”
“Which means what? The One Beneath gets to enter our world?”
Nadia gave her a look like it was bad luck to even say that out loud. Maybe it was. Verlaine decided she’d be a little more careful with her words from now on, just in case. “No,” Nadia explained. “This is just step two of her plan. What she’s doing right now is building a bridge for Him. What she’s building the bridge out of is pain itself.”
“You mean all these people in this hospital—including Uncle Gary—they’re suffering because Elizabeth can use that?” Verlaine hadn’t known it was possible to feel so angry that her head ached and her hands clenched into fists so tight her fingers hurt. But if Elizabeth had been there at that moment, she swore she’d have been able to swing her fists right into Elizabeth’s face, and no dark magic on Earth could have stopped her. “The pain these sick people feel is like . . . bricks, or stones. What she uses to create.”
“Exactly. Her pain mirrors theirs. Makes it stronger.”
“That’s sick.”
“That’s dark magic.” Nadia shoved the sleeves of her sweater farther up her arms, a restless, anxious move.
Verlaine realized there weren’t going to be enough doctors and nurses to go around in this hospital. Who was going to take care of her dad? Fear cut into her deeper and deeper, a scratch turning into a cut turning into a wound.
Nadia lifted her head, and Verlaine turned to see Mateo coming toward them.
“Hey,” he said, attaching himself to Nadia in his usual remoralike fashion. She cuddled into his embrace, and Verlaine wondered what it would be like to know you could be sheltered. Comforted. Cared about. “Okay, I tried asking around, but nobody would talk to me, so I just eavesdropped. Worked way better. They brought in almost forty new patients today. They’re all in the same condition as Verlaine’s dad—comatose, no explanation. The black junk burned their throats and did something to their lungs, but that’s nothing people shouldn’t be able to heal from. None of the doctors understand why the patients don’t wake up again.”
Nadia nodded. “Have they been able to analyze the black liquid?”
“They tried,” Mateo said. “Apparently it destroyed the lab equipment. Somebody’s calling the CDC.”
“The what?” Nadia said.
Verlaine knew this; she’d watched Contagion on Netflix. “The Centers for Disease Control. They have hazmat suits and specialists and stuff, but still, they’re not going to figure out what’s really happening here.”
“We know what’s happening here,” Mateo said. “And we know how to stop it.”
At that moment, both he and Nadia got this weird look on their faces: stubborn and unsure, even though they never let go of each other. Apparently a plan was afoot, and once again, she’d been shut out of it. How incredibly not surprising.
At that point Mateo said he had to go back to La Catrina to help his dad, even though there was no way people in town would so much as leave their houses tonight for anyplace but the hospital. That meant it was up to Verlaine to give Nadia a ride home in the land yacht. Darkness had fallen, and though the lot was crowded with haphazardly parked cars, nobody else seemed to be around. Their footsteps sounded unnaturally loud, as did her car when she cranked it.