Unless… had she really pulled that lightning bolt toward her?
Why? To protect him?
That definitely made him feel better.
What had happened out there? What had he crashed into up in the storm? For that matter, where had the storm come from? And where had it gone?
As he reached the hospital, he scanned the sky. The clouds were already scattering. Blue peeked around their ragged corners.
Inside the crowded waiting area at the front, people packed the few chairs along the walls. More stood, supporting friends and relatives. There was crying and shouting. A harried nurse in a white cap manned the front desk. She seemed to be spending most of her time scribbling and shaking her head.
The place didn’t look set up to hold more than a couple dozen patients, and judging by the glimpse through the door into the open ward beyond, three times that many already jammed the ground floor. Nebraskans were used to summer storms. But this one had upset everybody more than usual.
He leaned over two people to catch the nurse’s eye. “Jael!” he raised his voice above the hubbub. “I’m looking for a girl named Jael! She was hit by lightning.” Or close to it, at any rate.
The nurse gave him a harassed shake of her head.
He filled his lungs to try again.
To his left, a dog barked.
He turned.
On the far side of the ward, in the open doorway of what looked to be a single-patient room, Taos sat beside the dark-haired kid who’d come by yesterday for a ride. Nan and Aurelia loomed behind him. And behind them, sitting on the edge of a bed, was Jael.
She gave him the tiniest crook of a smile.
Thank the Lord for miracles. The breath he’d gathered left his lungs in a whoof.
He pushed through the crowd and weaved his way through the ward to her room. “You’re alive… Shoot, kiddo, give me a heart attack next time, why don’t you?”
She slumped, both hands braced against the mattress edge. Dark circles deepened her eyes. Her bobbed hair, light brown before, was streaked with silver.
Other than that, she looked downright scenic.
“You all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “Now am fine.” She jutted her chin at something in the big room. “I have acquainted your brother. They are saying he brought me to this place.”
Hitch glanced back.
Griff, his deputy’s badge glinting against his shoulder, was working the crowd, trying to calm the folks down. He caught Hitch’s eye, held it for five full seconds, then turned away. He looked beat. Who could blame him? He’d probably been up all night with the murder. And now here he was again, hard at it.
“And then I once more acquainted your friends from store.” Jael nodded to Nan and Aurelia. She lowered her gaze and smiled. “And Volltair.”
The little boy—he was about eight or so, with wide ears and a nose full of freckles—looked back and forth between Jael and Hitch. His eyes were big and excited. He kept one hand on Taos’s head.
Nan reached for Walter’s shoulder. She stared at Hitch, practically dragging his gaze back up to hers. “This is unbelievable. It’s amazing she survived.”
Hitch shifted his weight and pushed his hands into his pockets. “Yeah, well, thanks for looking out for her.”
“I do what needs doing, Hitch Hitchcock.”
“I know you do,” he said. “You always did.”
Her cheeks flushed, and for that one second, she looked, inexplicably, like she might burst into tears. She pushed Walter forward. “Come along.” She beckoned for Aurelia. “We need to go check what’s happened to the farm.”
Aurelia patted Jael’s cheek. She sighed. “I’m so sorry you don’t have to stay in the hospital. I was going to buy you a violet nightgown.” She looked at Hitch and tilted her head from one side to the other, considering. “I know something. But of course you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I might.”
“Another storm is coming. I know. I was told. And if there is one storm, there will be two.” She inclined her head, like a queen after a pronouncement.
He touched her shoulder. “That’s true as true. I believe you, Aurelia.”
She blinked benevolently, then wafted out after Nan and the boy.
Hitch closed the door and turned back to Jael. “This is nuts. You know that, right?” He felt like he was going to explode right out of his skin. His forehead pounded where he’d hit it against the cockpit rim. The whirl of his thoughts, most of them ending in question marks, didn’t help one bit. “Everything that’s gone on today—everything that’s gone on since you about fell on my plane the other night—that stuff does not happen. All right?”
She pointed to his forehead and opened her mouth in what might have been concern.
“This guy Zlo,” he said. “Who is he? How’s he doing that stuff with the storm and the wind and the lightning? Did he do that? Did he send the lightning deliberately?”
She eased up off the bed and stepped toward him. “Your head. You have blood.”
“What you did with the pendant, you did that on purpose. Didn’t you? You took the hit on purpose?”
“It did not hit me. It just… was surrounding me.”
Which explained why she wasn’t all crispy.
“And how exactly does that work?”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Lightning is giving much danger to… Schturming, just as much as Groundsworld. So Nestor is letting me make changes to _yakor_—to direct lightning—and maybe to give protection.” She tilted a sheepish smile. “It is only half working.”
“I noticed.”
Heck, why not? After everything that had happened today, a lightning puller/protector thing seemed almost the most believable.
“Well,” he said, “if it attracts lightning, then do me a favor and don’t take it in a plane ever again.”
She picked up a rolled-up bandage from the table beside the bed and reached to dab it against his forehead. It came away streaked with red, and she dabbed again. She raised her other hand to prod his forehead with a fingertip.
“Ow!” He grabbed her hand reflexively. What she was doing caught up with his brain. “You’re doctoring me? You’re the one who got hit—or surrounded—or whatever by lightning.”
She positively blushed. Embarrassed she’d been caught fussing? Or embarrassed she was still alive when her insides should be scorched?
She pulled free and lowered herself to the bed’s edge once more.
He backed up to lean against the door and watched her, arms crossed. He made himself take in a deep breath.
Okay, so there was something up there that could command lightning. Probably not the best thing to have happening just before an airshow.
He dug around for the right words to frame this crazy question he had to ask. “I went straight up into that storm. Ran smack into something.” He pointed to his head. “That’s when this happened. And then I was in a long room full of supplies, and Zlo and a bunch of other people were there.” He eyed her. “That was Schturming, wasn’t it?”
She gave one tight nod, then busied herself straightening the tray of instruments on the side table.
“Well, what is Schturming?” It sure as Moses wasn’t the big bomber he’d been halfway expecting.
More fiddling. Then she looked him in the eye. Her pupils were tiny, the silver of her irises practically engulfing them. “If Zlo has control, he will use power wrongly—against my people. He will make more days like today. Worse days, even.” She stood back up. “I am going to go home. I must find way home on any plane, and I will give stop to him.”