A Witch In Time (8 page)

But just in case, I grabbed two bags of chips (healthy, I know) and juggled with my purse as I tried to pay the lady. She looked around over her shoulder, then leaned over the counter and whispered to me, “I’d have to reopen the cash register, and it’s already been counted. Just take it, hon, with my blessings.”

She held out the cups of soup. Her gaze dropped to where I already held a cell phone and the cup of coffee I had carried with me throughout my search for Grandpa G.

“Oh, that won’t do. Hold on a sec,” she said, and disappeared back to the kitchen, reappearing moments later with a big paper bag, into which she deposited all three foam containers, the chips, several napkins, the ubiquitous plastic cutlery, and a huge handful of shrink-wrapped soda crackers for the soup. Folding the top over neatly, she slid it across the counter to me. “At least this way you’ll get to where you’re going without mishap,” she said with a wink.

I was starting to see her as my very own Earth Angel of the evening... hairnet and all.

“You know my niece, don’t you?”

I looked at her more closely. Suddenly the round, shiny, freckled face that had seemed familiar made more sense. “Oh my goodness. You don’t mean Annie, do you?”

She giggled, delighted that I’d caught the resemblance. “Yup, my favorite niece. I thought I recognized you. I was there at the café helping out in the kitchen one day when you popped in. I sure am proud of her and what she’s done with the place.” She glanced down suddenly, as though embarrassed. “Well, good luck with that new baby. Hope everything goes okay for your sister.” She waved at me as she disappeared back into the kitchen.

Fumbling with the lot of it, I started to follow Marcus and Grandpa. But then I remembered that there was another smaller set of elevators just behind the cafeteria that was used most often by hospital staff. If I hurried, I might be able to head the two of them off at the pass. I switched directions and walked that way instead.

Goodness, it was quiet now. At this time of the evening, activity in the hospital really started to wind down. Patients were medded up and tucked into their beds, their doors closed and TVs turned on to their visual anesthesia of choice. The various delivery carts and patient gurneys were fewer and farther between. Nurses huddled around the center stations on every floor, catching up on paperwork and trading both gossip and information about potential patient issues. The low drone of relative inactivity should have been restful... but I disliked hospitals. I don’t know how Steff handled working here, day after day. I had actually tried a stint as an after-hours candy striper way back in my high school days. “Tried” being the operative word. I lasted a whole two days, the second only because my mother and grandmother made me go back... although after the second day, which I spent hiding out in the ladies’ bathroom in full meltdown mode, even they agreed that perhaps the medical field wasn’t going to be my calling. The relief I felt when they gave up on the idea so quickly was monumental. I never, ever told them the real reason for my anxiety attack. Funny—I’d almost forgotten it myself. Had I stuffed it that far back into the little-used corners of my memory banks? I’d been to the hospital since then, of course, with the births of my nieces, with Grandpa’s health issues, my mother’s hysterectomy... but never alone.

Never alone, at night, in the darkened corridors, with all those... well, at the time, I didn’t know what to call it. What to think. I only know what I felt as I walked the long halls that looked empty... but somehow, weren’t. I knew they weren’t. I knew, even though I couldn’t see anything... and somehow that made everything worse. Hence the bathroom as hideout. For some reason it was the only place that felt safe. Strange, but true.

It did make me wonder: How much do we experience as children and teenagers that we conveniently “forget”?

Standing there with my hands full, waiting for an elevator to arrive at my level, I realized with a shock just then how very alone I was at that moment.
Crap-a-doodle-doo.
I looked back over my shoulder. The main part of the cafeteria looked very far away now, farther than it was in actuality, and the few lights left on here and there for security’s sake didn’t do much to dispel the pooling shadows. Beyond the windows, darkness pressed in against the glass. Everyone had gone back to their workstations, leaving me pretty much on my own here. And the elevators were not cooperating.

Come on,
I thought impatiently and not a little nervously as I watched the arrival light above the closed metal doors, waiting for the
ding.

At least this time Grandma C’s observation came as a thought in my head, the way it usually did, rather than a voice in my ear. Maybe that was a sign that the problem was only temporary.

And no, I didn’t see anything. I probably was scaring myself, without reason. Whatever I used to feel here in the hospital, it didn’t mean that the presences that had scared me back then were still there. Er, here.

Still, I wished I hadn’t sent Marcus off ahead of me with Grandpa G. At least with Marcus I felt like I could handle whatever spirit-y stuff came my way.

It was a good point, to be fair. But how did a girl truly come to terms with something that she has gone through her whole life believing was either (a) her imagination run amok, (b) nerves, (c) hormones, or (d) sheer coincidence? It required a major shift in thinking. In even existing, because suddenly, all the rules changed.

Hey, wait a minute. While there was still time for what? How was I supposed to come to terms with anything with threats like that hanging over my head?

Finally, the elevator doors whisked open in front of me, exposing the utilitarian carpeting, faux wood paneling, fluorescent lighting, and the usual assortment of previously cleaned stains, spills, and smudges typical of a service elevator. I stepped inside, then as the doors closed behind me, I shifted my purse and carefully adjusted the goodie-filled paper bag until I could press the correct button with my knuckle. A hum of machinery preceded the usual shift of equilibrium, and the elevator began to rise,
sloooooowly .
I closed my eyes. Elevators had never been my favorite ride of choice, but it sure beat having to take an endless number of stairs. Even with all of the stray energies hanging around. If I didn’t have my hands full, I’d reach into my purse for the mini atomizer of sage-rosemary-lemongrass infusion I kept around for quickie energy-clearing purposes. Liss had turned me on to the protective infusion sprays just last week when I told her that burning sage messed with my allergies as much as stray cigarette smoke... and I loved the sprays. They were easy to use, they smelled great, and most important, they worked just as well as a smoldering bundle of white sage in banishing the negative energies loitering around a domicile. Not to mention, the addition of lemongrass helped to refill the empty space with more positive vibes. Loved. It.

Unfortunately, there was no way I could reach it, much as I’d love to freshen up the space. I was just going to have to try to keep the yuck—both physical, by the looks of this elevator, and astral—from getting to me.
Shields uhhhh—

The elevator... it wasn’t moving.

Um, why wasn’t the elevator moving?

I frowned, nervously looking around me. Nope, I wasn’t imagining things. It wasn’t just that the elevator was moving so slowly that I couldn’t feel its progress. It had stopped altogether. I glanced up at the digital number display. The screen where the floor number should show was blank. Well, that wasn’t good. Murphy’s Law strikes again? Or maybe Mercury Retrograde. I seemed to remember Liss mentioning something about Mercury being retrograde in its orbit within the last few weeks. That was bound to wreak havoc with electrical systems, and elevators certainly qualified. Why hadn’t I paid more attention? It couldn’t be a power outage—the lights were still on. Something mechanical? Oh, but wouldn’t there have been a clunk or something, indicating a problem?

What’s a girl to do when she’s stuck in an elevator that’s not moving? I tried to remember everything about elevators from all the movies I had ever seen. Not a good idea—most of the scenes I remembered involved something bad happening to the person inside said little box suspended ever so precariously from wires and pulleys. Still, as someone who didn’t make a habit of riding elevators, I had little real-life experience to call upon; the movies were my only hope.

Step One: Call for help. And when it came to a knight in shining armor, only one person came to mind.

I put the bag of goodies down on the floor between my feet and dug through my purse for my cell phone, trying not to let the closed-in feeling of the elevator get to me. It was at that precise moment that the unthinkable happened.

The lights...

They flickered.

Once.

Twice.

And then blinked out entirely.

There was nothing like being alone in a small, confined space completely devoid of even the faintest glimmer of light to make a girl realize how isolated and vulnerable she really was. The reality of my situation hit home. If it wasn’t for my cell phone and the comforting glow it gave off, I might just have become a slobbering, raving puddle of goo, right then and there. Thankfully, I had just charged it at the store that afternoon.

With shaking fingers and eyes partially blinded by the brightness of the screen, the one thing standing between me and temporary insanity, I found Marcus in my list and clicked Send.

“Hey, you,” he said through the phone speaker. “I thought we’d lost you.”

I could have sagged with relief at the wonderfully reassuring sound of his voice... or, I could have if I didn’t already question the number of germs I would be exposed to on the worn carpet. “Marcus, what’s going on out there?”

He must have heard the uncertainty in my voice, because his energy shifted and became still, the change discernible even over the airwaves. “What do you mean, out there? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” I couldn’t hold back a shaky laugh; it just shuddered out of me. “Well, I thought being stuck in an elevator was bad enough, but I have to admit, the power failure really topped it.”

“Stuck in a ... Wait, what power failure?”

Was it my imagination, or were the shadows shifting around me?

Distracted but hoping for the best, I threw up my shields and contracted them into a tight, tight mesh. “What do you mean, ‘what power failure’?” I answered with an echo of my own, a little low on the patience meter. “Are you telling me you have lights out there?”

“They haven’t even blinked. Where are you?”

“In an elevator. Didn’t I just say that?”
Steady, girl, No need to panic.

“Okay, okay. No worries, you hear me?” He paused, and I could hear a note of humor creep into his voice. “I, uh, would say don’t move, but I don’t guess that’s going to be a problem.”

I laughed in spite of myself, covering my mouth with my hand before the laugh could turn into a gibber of fear. Before I thought to clarify that I was using the rear set of elevators and not the main bank out front, Marcus had clicked off. I redialed his number, but instead of Marcus I received that singularly infuriating canned message that my call could not be completed at this time. Ah, well. There couldn’t be that many elevators malfunctioning. It should be fairly obvious. Just a matter of time.

Right?

What I needed was a distraction.

Marshall,
I thought. My handsome big brother was a happy resident of the Big Apple, having moved out there years ago—I suspected it had just as much to do with living his life away from my mother’s watchful eye as it did leaving sleepy Stony Mill for the hustle and bustle of life in the fast lane. As such, Marshall was now an elevator expert in my book.

I clicked his number in my contact list and waited while the phone rang. Hurray, cell phone reception intact.

“Hey, sis. What’s up?”

I could have melted with relief that he’d actually picked up the phone. “Well, me actually. I’m stuck in an elevator.”

His laughed burst into the phone. “You’re what?”

“Stuck in an elevator.”

“In Stony Mill?” He laughed again, even harder. “I mean, what are the odds? Do you know the last time I got stuck in an elevator?”

“Yeah, yeah, very funny. This is serious, Marshall. What do I do?”

“Well, hell, I don’t know. Is it a power outage?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know exactly.”

“Hm. All right, so I give. Where
are
you, Mags?”

“At the hospital, where else?” He should have known that. Was there another elevator in Stony Mill? I didn’t think so. And no, the grain elevator didn’t count.

There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the airwaves. “The hospital? Are Mom and Dad all right? Grandpa G? What are you doing at the hospital?”

“Marsh—it’s Mel. She’s having the baby.”

“Oh. Well, that’s a relief.” A pause. “Again?”

If that was an example of how far removed he was from our exciting little lives out here in farm country, then I would say it was a pretty good bet that he never intended to come back. “You’re just lucky it’s me calling you,” I told him. “It could be Mom giving you the news. And you know what subject would come up straight after that.”

“Yeah.
‘And when are you going to get around to finding a nice girl to settle down with?”’
he falsetto’ed in an eerie representation of our mother’s voice. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll be sure not to pick up the phone until she gets it out of her system. Again.”