“I get the message,” he said.
Elder smiled. “I hope so.”
“By the way, how’s the patient?”
How indeed. Earlier today Elder had traveled to the hospital in Leeds. Witch was on a life-support system, her brain activity still sluggish. Without the machines... The doctor had shrugged. He couldn’t see the point of keeping a killer alive.
Elder could... well, sometimes he could. He sat by her bed for half an hour, alternately staring at her face, at the tubes running from nose to mouth, and at the machinery itself with its constant bleep and the slow hiss of pumped air.
“You never did answer me,” he said quietly. He turned from her, the better to examine the workings of the machines around them. He followed the snaking line the cables took to the electrical sockets at the bottom of the cream-painted wall. He glanced now and then at the plugs, at the machinery’s several on/off switches, so clearly marked.
So, so clearly marked.
And finally, he rose to his feet, quietly, softly, so as not to disturb. There was a flutter from her eyelashes, movement behind the eyelids themselves: REM, they called it, rapid eye movement. She was dreaming. He wondered what she was dreaming of. He touched her bare arm, feeling its delicate warmth. Her face was ghostly pale, her lips almost colorless. Elder leaned down over her and planted a kiss on her forehead. The machine gave a sudden double blip, as though somewhere inside her the kiss had registered. Elder smiled and stepped away from the bed, placing the chair back against the wall, and finally standing in front of the machines themselves, his fingertips just touching the cool painted metal.