The Medium

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

The temperature gradually returned to normal. Lenny held still, head tilted, listening.

Kim listened too, but heard nothing. “Did she go?” she asked, breaking the silence.

He nodded, but his face was tight.

“Did you make her?”

“Can’t. I just let her.”

“Well.” Kim stepped to where the ghost had been and put out a hand. The air was chilly, and the cold went deeper than her skin. “That was… Was that easy?”

He looked at her with polite disbelief.

“Yeah, okay, not easy. But at least you know you still can. You didn’t lose it, after all.”

He nodded and passed his hand over his eyes, sinking down slowly to sit on the carpet. “It’s okay. I’m… I’m still me.”

“You’re still you, honey. He can do a lot of crap to people, but I don’t think even he can take that away.” She touched his head lightly and felt him sag.

“T-tired,” he muttered.

“Yeah, ditto. You should try to get some sleep. You’re not going to, ah, wig out on me again, are you?”

“I’ll t-try not to.”

She sighed. That was hardly a guarantee, and with Ainslie gone and Bernice out of contact, she didn’t dare leave him alone while she slept herself. There was no telling where he might wander off to.

“You take over the bed for a bit,” she told him. “I’m going to watch some T.V.” And drink more tea, and a lot of coffee.

She helped him up, got him into the bed, and threw the electric blanket over the top of him. As the heat built, his face relaxed, and his breathing slowed. But when she tried to tiptoe away, he sat up, wild-eyed.

“Please,” he begged, “please, I d-don’t want to dream. C-can’t you… Isn’t there some k-kind of magic…?”

Kim bit her lip and shook her head. “I don’t know, honey. That’s not my area. And if there was, I really, really wouldn’t want to mess with your head. I’m so sorry.”

She slipped out, leaving the door ajar, and turned the television on. It was only for background noise; she intended to read. Ainslie’s index was vast, but so was the tiny fraction of it residing in Kim’s apartment. She dug through her pile of note cards and sorted out the ones that interested her: spirits, vampires, other worlds, and the things that connected them.

Spirits.

Vickie hadn’t been a friend, but she’d been a fixture, a constant. The apartment felt strange without her. Kim doubted she would miss the sarcasm or the early-morning ghostly noises, but she knew she would notice their absence. She had never really thought of herself living alone.

The card on top of the pile led her to the writings of a modern mystic. She paged through the volume absently, letting her eyes scan the pages for useful tidbits while her mind was otherwise engaged.

Vampires.

Leonard Hugo had claimed not to know anything about the Broken, the Uszkodzone, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t one. Ainslie was right about some things not mixing well. There was no telling what effect vampirism could have on a medium. There was no telling what effect ten years dry could have on a vampire, either. He might never recover. She wondered what kind of man he’d been before.

The mystic was a dud, so she pulled out the next book in the stack.

Other worlds.

That topic skewed theological, and Kim had to admit her theology was rusty. And more than a little haphazard, as the child of a Hindu and an Anglican who had grown up in Catholic San Antonio. She had to separate what she believed from what she could observe, and that was difficult. She’d observed the watery effect Lenny had brought down in her bedroom when he touched on the Veil, the barrier between this world and the strange limbo where some spirits got stuck on their way to Wherever they were ultimately going. She believed there was a heaven and a hell somewhere on the other side, but she couldn’t offer tangible proof of that. Vickie had been stuck, but now she was gone. Leonard Hugo had done that.

A spirit, a vampire, and the Veil between worlds.

At almost ten o’clock, she either heard a noise or simply felt her guest panic, and it didn’t seem important which, so she shut her book and intercepted him before he made it out of the bedroom.

“You said you’d try not to flip out,” she reminded him, taking him carefully by the arm and sitting him back on the bed.

He nodded.

“You okay?”

He nodded again.

“Bad dream?”

His frown was visible in the light from the other room. “Dunno. I didn’t know where I was. Thought I… Thought I was somewhere else.”

“Where did you think you were?”

“Home. B-but then I wasn’t.”

She gave his arm a gentle squeeze. The electric blanket had left him warm, but he was cooling fast. “Soon,” she promised. “You think you can get back to sleep?”

He nodded, but when she tried to get up to return to her reading, he held her back.

“C-could… could you stay? Just… just here? In the room?”

She hesitated, but he wanted her to stay, and she felt it, and separating his wants from hers was nearly impossible. It was in her blood, not so much a command as a plea, and fighting it off seemed cruel, under the circumstances.

“If you don’t mind having the light on. I’m going to go get my book. Be right back.” She peeled his fingers back from around her wrist, clicked the lamp on, and retreated to the living room. He sat still and silent until she returned, staring tensely into the shadows of the closet. Even when she piled pillows against the headboard and settled back with her book, he stared. Nothing moved, and she left him alone, and eventually he wadded himself up under the electric blanket.

Around eleven o’clock, she got up to make more intensiTEA and realized he was still staring out from beneath the folds of the blanket. She shut the closet.

“He’s not in there,” she told him. “He’s far away, and there’s a huge team making damn sure he doesn’t get anywhere near you or me. Right now, right here, you are safe. A hundred percent, okay? That’s my oath or whatever. Please try to get some rest. Is there anything I can do to help?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and drew the blanket up over his face.

Kim squeezed her eyes shut too out of pure frustration. It wasn’t his fault. None of it was his fault. But she was deeply ill-equipped to deal with shattered men. She abandoned her quest for tea, slid back into the bed, and switched off the light.

“Okay, look,” she told him. “I don’t need you to be okay right now. I understand that will take time. But you have to understand that you’re safe. I’ve got you, sweetheart, and I won’t let anything get you, not ever. You don’t need to hide. You don’t need to brace yourself. Maybe you’re not okay now, but I believe you’re going to be, and I want to help get you there. Okay?”

She waited until the ticking of the clock became deafening before the reply came, soft and muffled.

“Okay.”

“Okay. I’m going to stay here beside you, all right?” She lifted up the edge of the blanket and felt out his hand, giving it a squeeze. “Now. Lights are out. It’s time to sleep.”

He said nothing. She waited. Minutes ticked past, then half an hour, and she’d just decided he had dozed off when there was movement. At first, it was a twitch, then a shuffle. Kim lay perfectly still as he inched closer. There was no use being nervous; she knew exactly what he wanted. He curled up against her side, and she held him tight.

He rested his head against her chest, and both of them fell asleep to the steady drumming of her heart.

*

When Kim rolled over at dawn, the electric blanket was turned off, and he was gone. Again.

Cursing felt like the appropriate response, but she swallowed the urge and leapt out of bed, hurriedly jamming her pistol into her waistband and smoothing her shirt over it. She stuck her feet into a pair of sandals and flapped to the door, and she’d just grabbed the knob when there was a knock from the other side. Two hard, dull thuds. Kim swallowed hard to dislodge her stomach from her throat and pressed her eye to the peep hole. Ainslie. She let out a breath and opened the door.

“Were you waiting by the door or something?” Ainslie demanded. She stumped inside and dropped her huge canvas bag on the floor. “I got you a phone book. Took me all damn night. You’d be surprised how many people in Austin don’t keep Abilene phone books lying around. Imagine that. Name’s there, anyway. Only the one, though, so I’m just hazarding a guess that it’s—”

“He took off,” Kim interrupted. “I fell asleep, and then I woke up, and he was gone. Come on, I need some extra eyes.”

Ainslie leaned to one side and squinted over Kim’s shoulder. “And left a startlingly convincing facsimile in his place. Damn, that boy is devious.”

Kim blinked and turned, sheepish, to see Lenny crouched on one end of the couch, a book balanced on his knees. “Oh.”

“Didn’t g-go,” he corrected. He closed the book and set it aside. “Don’t have anywhere t-to go.” Then he looked at Ainslie. “You found Mara?”

“I found a listing for her, yeah. Not a whole lot of Demarcos in Abilene. It’s last year’s phone book, though.”

Kim shut the door and locked it and dug the phone book out of Ainslie’s bag. “It’s still way too early to call. We’ll wait a few hours. Do you want to try to talk to her, or should I?”

He blanched. “You,” he whispered. “She’ll b-be at school in a few hours. Have to wait for evening.”

“At school?”

“She’s a t-teacher. Was.”

Kim smiled. “Then we’ll wait until this evening. I’m not in any hurry to get rid of you, honey.”

Ainslie made a face. “You need anything else? I gotta be at work in a few hours, myself. I was thinking I’d crash in the back office for a little while.”

“Nah,” Kim said. “I seriously owe you one, though.”

Ainslie nodded emphatic agreement and departed.

“She doesn’t actually dislike you, I don’t think,” Kim told him. “She likes anyone who likes books. It’s just, you know, people get used to thinking in certain ways, and…”

He shook his head. “I know. It doesn’t bother me.” He uncurled slowly and set his feet down. “I was reading your b-book.”

“Ainslie’s book. She’s building a sort of super-encyclopedia of magic. I’m helping. That’s my thing, finding information. I can dig up references in a few hours that would take someone else months of reading to find. Not very useful, as far as magical talents go, but perfect for a research assistant.”

He nodded patiently, but Kim could see he hadn’t been finished yet, and she let him continue.

“About c-contagious magic,” he said softly. “Didn’t find anything to g-get rid of it, but it said you can make a… make a st-standoff.” He swallowed hard and pulled his knees up again, not meeting Kim’s eyes.

She understood he was trying to tell her something he found extremely important, but couldn’t understand what, and he didn’t go on.

“Okay?”

“You can… You c-can take something b-b-back from the p-person who took something from you.”

It took her another moment to work that out. “Okay. Once he’s dead, that shouldn’t be a problem, but I can tell Zeb to try to grab something off him first…”

“No. No, not… not him and me. I mean you. You t-take something. I d-don’t want to be like him, not even a little. I don’t know how this works. I don’t want to d-do something to you by accident, or him g-going through me to get to you. You need to g-get out of this.”

Kim sat slowly on the other end of the couch. “Take something like what?” she managed.

“He said… He t-told me once what works best is b-blood.”

“I wouldn’t want to have something like that sitting around. Just one little screw-up, a burglary or something, and suddenly some random person has your blood? That’s a bad idea.”

“Not sitting around. I mean you’d… you… you know.”

Kim blinked. That was what she’d been afraid of. She fought to keep her nose from wrinkling. “Ew. No. Besides, you already have mine, and I’m not interested in being a vampire, thanks.”

“It’s been too long. Has to b-be during the same day. You wouldn’t change.”

“Doesn’t make it any less gross, sorry. We’ll think of something else. I’ve got books. Miz Ainslie’s got books. If worse comes to worst, I can start asking around with other people I know. There will be something out there, somewhere. Something that doesn’t involve hematophagy.”

She got up to brew coffee. He picked up the book and got back to reading.

Milk, sugar, and two mugs went on the counter. The coffee maker growled and sputtered. Kim cursed at it, which naturally had no effect. While she contemplated acquiring a new one, her stomach growled even louder than the machine, so she extracted a plastic baggie of congealed pizza from the refrigerator.

When she turned around to stick it in the microwave, Lenny was there, well inside her personal space. She dropped the bag, which hit the floor with a splut.

“Humans exchange b-bodily fluids. That’s not gross, is it?”

She stared. It took the words several seconds to click with her, but when they did, she felt her ears heat up. She pinched the bridge of her nose hard between thumb and forefinger and squeezed her eyes tight shut.

“Oh, God. Oh… Oh, my God. Are… Are you propositioning me?”

He twisted the hem of his shirt and mumbled something incomprehensible. To Kim, it didn’t sound like English. It didn’t sound like a denial, either.

“Holy crap, sweetie. Where the hell did this come from? Am I missing something, here? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like you plenty, but… No. Okay? No Florence Nightingale effect going on here. This doesn’t need to get any messier than it already is.”

She bent to pick up the bag of pizza and skirted around him to pop it in the microwave. But the conversation wasn’t over.

“I’m not… I… I am, but not b-because…”

“No, please don’t try to explain. Just leave it alone, okay?”

“I… I stole from you…”

“And apparently, that means something completely different to me than it does to you. Listen, I know what you think you did to me, but I’m not a vampire. Blood doesn’t equal s*x, for me. Believe me, if I felt violated, you would have known about it immediately. Your standoff idea doesn’t fix anything, just puts both of us in the same bad place. I don’t want to be able to pull your strings any more than you want to be able to pull mine.”

The microwave beeped, and Kim pulled out the steam-inflated bag and dropped it onto the counter. Try though she might, she couldn’t tune out the guilt radiating from somewhere behind her, or the ever-present fear. Beneath those was a tiny twinge of hurt. She supposed that was justified; she’d called an intimate offer disgusting, which was probably a blow to whatever ego he had left. She tore open the bag and slid the pizza onto a plate.

“I thought…”

“Don’t.”

“… if he t-tries to make me hurt you, you c-could… you could make me stop.”

“Oh.”

She paused and mulled that over, chewing a mouthful of pizza. She refused to let him guilt her into anything and couldn’t believe he was capable of manipulation, but it made her terribly sad when she began to understand.

It wasn’t something he wanted. She got the impression the idea terrified him, and given what Duran had done to him, that was understandable. It was something he was willing to endure in exchange for some iota of security. Kim wasn’t so much an object of desire as a potentially less malicious puppeteer.

“You trust me that much?” She looked over and saw immediately that he didn’t, no more than circumstances forced him to. She was only the better alternative. He opened his mouth to speak, but turned away instead. “You don’t think they’ll be able to catch him, do you?”

“They… You already t-tried. It didn’t work, then.”

“And if there was any chance at all of this screwing me up, you wouldn’t even have mentioned it, right?”

The flickering glance he gave her was one of tightly reined… hope? Dread? He knew she was crumbling.

“I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t.”

“And you really think it might keep him from messing with both of us? If he does get away again?”

His forehead wrinkled, and he chewed his thumbnail in fierce concentration. “I think.”

“And reassure anyone worried about you messing with me?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

Kim took her time finishing her piece of pizza while she weighed her options, and Lenny watched closely for a decision. Wondering whether she should be feeling stupid, she pursed her lips. “How exactly would this work, if I agreed? Do I have to… bite you, or something?”

He immediately took a step back, arms folded tight around his ribs, chin tucked to his chest, protecting the pulse points. Apparently, that was a no.

“It was just a question. Bear in mind that I have no idea how you plan to get this done.”

He thought, then crossed the kitchen to the mugs on the counter. His hand tightened, fingertips twisting into black claws, and he curled his hand into a fist, like juicing a lemon. A few dark, viscous drops oozed between his fingers and pattered into the mug. When he unclenched his hand, four deep gouges marred his palm. They closed slowly.

Kim peered over his shoulder at the tablespoon or so of fluid in the bottom of the cup. It was about the color and consistency of used motor oil, and it gave off a bizarre sensation. Like feeling a vibration just below the range of hearing, Kim was half-aware of a musty, sour almost-smell. Her gag reflex did its best to kick in, and she knew there wasn’t going to be any way she could possibly swallow that by itself.

“I won’t hurt you,” she told him. “I promise. And I’ll do my best to not let you get used. And if there are any freaky side effects I should know about, now would be the time to bring that up.”

He said nothing, so she poured coffee on top of the goop, dumped in half of the sugar bowl, stirred it quickly, and chugged the scalding mixture in three massive gulps. Her eyes watered, and her stomach churned, though whether that was from the blood or the sudden influx of hot coffee, she couldn’t tell. No freaky side effects manifested immediately.

“Did that do it?”

“I d-don’t know. Did it?”

“I don’t know, either. What am I waiting for?”

“Can you feel me?”

She thought about that. She’d been feeling him in a few different ways since he’d attacked her and couldn’t be sure whether she was looking for one of those ways to intensify, or a new one to crop up. She had felt what he was feeling several times, had felt his desires once or twice. Now, though… There was something new. It took her a few moments to realize it was spatial, an awareness of their relative positions. Even if she closed her eyes, she would know exactly where he was, or at least in what direction and about how far.

“Okay, yeah. I think I’ve got it. You? You feeling any better about all this?”

He forced a smile and nodded, and she knew he was lying. He’d expected to feel better, knew logically that he stood a better chance now, and remained afraid.

“You’re really brave,” she told him, “and it’s gonna be okay.” She fixed him coffee and finished the other slice of pizza. They sat together in silence, alternating between dozing and hunting through Kim’s books for a more solid solution. While he slept, she practiced ignoring the snippets of dream she caught.

And at six o’clock, she picked up the Abilene phone book and dialed Mara Demarco’s number.

The phone rang. Beside her, she was aware of Lenny holding his breath as he listened, the tension in his body, the pressure in his lungs.

There was a click.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Ms. Demarco?”

“Yes, speaking.”

“My name is Kim Reed. I understand you know someone called Leonard Hugo?”

There was a brief pause. “I knew him, yeah. What is this about?”

Kim felt the tension go out of the man beside her. He slumped forward over his knees, letting out a whistling breath, and dug his knuckles into his eyes. Kim could feel the lump rising in his throat and fought to keep an identical one from choking her.

“Ms. Demarco, we found him.”

“You… Oh, Christ…”

“And he wants to come home.”

A strangled noise came through the line. “You found him alive?”

Kim glanced at Lenny’s back and bit her lip. “More or less. He’s on the mend, anyway. We were wondering if we could stop by sometime soon. I think he’d like to stay with you until he can get back on his feet, but there are issues that might make that difficult, and it would be much easier to discuss them in person than over the phone.”

“Yes, yes absolutely! Any time! Can you come now?”

“It’s a long drive. Tomorrow afternoon?”

“Okay. Okay, sure. Yes. I’ll be out of work at four, home by maybe four-fifteen. Is that okay? Can I talk to him?”

Kim handed the phone over. Lenny took it gingerly and held it to his ear. He tried to speak, but nothing happened.

“Lenny?”

He tried again. He strained, tears welling, but nothing would come out.

“Len?”

He handed the phone back to Kim and curled into a miserable ball.

“He’s resting,” Kim said tactfully. “It’s okay, though. He’ll see you tomorrow.”