Lives of Magic (Seven Wanderers Trilogy) (20 page)

The rest of the car ride was spent in silence until we pulled up to a square brownstone building. Were it not for all the signs and ambulances, I never would have guessed it was a hospital. It had all the bland stoutness of an office block.

Kian had barely stopped the car when Garrison opened his door and ran out into the main administration area. I followed close behind.

“And what is the name of your brother?” the receptionist was asking Garrison.

“Seth Dougall,” he answered.

The receptionist checked her computer and was frowning for such a long time at the screen that I felt my breath catch in my throat again.

Tell me something good,
I willed her.

Finally, she looked up from her desk and said, “Is this your sister? Visitation is family only.” She eyed me.

“Yes,” Garrison said, nearly pleading.

“And them too?” she asked as Moira and Kian came in.

“Yes!”

She let her gaze float over us, sizing us up.

“He is in room 32A, on the fourth floor.”

When I tried to follow with Kian and Moira, the receptionist opened her mouth to protest.

“They’re all family!” Garrison yelled, already down the hall.

The place had the same linoleum floors, same white curtains and grey walls, and same sterile smell as any hospital would. The thought of being held here, injured and vulnerable, sent a chill through my already shaking body.

Garrison ran into the elevator, but I glanced back to see where Kian was and caught him leading Moira into an empty hospital room.

Good,
I thought
. Let her figure it out.

I followed Garrison upstairs, but we were stopped outside the room. A frazzled nurse hurried us away from window. Garrison was about to yell again when she shushed him.

“Your friend is in surgery. He should be out in a few hours. Until then, you can have a seat right there.” She pointed sternly to a line of orange chairs that looked like they had been unchanged since the sixties. When we didn’t move, she raised an eyebrow at us.

I took Garrison’s arm and led him over to the chairs, sitting him down.

“Nothing you can do,” I told him.

“Why would Kian take us somewhere people are trying to hurt us or use our magic?” he asked suddenly. “Twice?”

I considered it. “I don’t think he meant to,” I said.

Garrison shook his head. “No,” he said. “Obviously someone doesn’t want us to do what we’re doing.”

I was about to say that we weren’t actually doing anything when I realized I didn’t know exactly what was going on. Just then, Moira and Kian appeared from the elevators. She looked like she had just seen a ghost, or something nearly as impossible. Her eyes were wide and her face was pale. It matched ours. As Kian led her to sit down, the nurses gave her tattered appearance curious glances.

Kian placed her in the chair next to me then asked Garrison about Seth. The two walked away and talked in hushed tones, but it seemed more like dual pacing to me.

“When did you find out?” Moira asked me.

I really didn’t want to have this conversation. Memories and thoughts of Seth in his past life floated to the surface of my mind. The thought that he might never get to grow into that man sent my stomach plummeting to my feet.

“September,” I said.

“Oh,” Moira replied. Then, “It’s all crazy, isn’t it?”

Her voice was hopeful. My pity for her swelled as I sensed the same tone in her voice as had been in mine. She was wishing more than anything that someone would jump out from behind a desk and yell,
Surprise
! Thus ending her terrible day. But it wasn’t going to happen.

“Did you see it?” I asked. Only Kian could unlock those visions. That’s what made him so convincing.

She nodded. “I just … can’t believe it’s real.” She was shaking her head and it looked like tears were soon going to spill out again. “There’s all these things I feel and I don’t know why I feel them. Kian said I would remember soon.”

“Like what?” I asked. Mild curiosity.

“Well,” Moira fidgeted in her chair, “don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t like you.”

I nodded. “That’s okay. Can’t win them all.”

“In fact,” she added, “I want to kill you.”

“O
h.”

It was the only response that came to mind. I tried to think back on everything from the last few hours to see if I had done anything to deserve it, but I doubted it. I figured it was something else my past life had to answer for.

“Kian said —” Moira began, but I finished for her.

“You’d remember,” I answered. Great. “Well until that happens, can I assume you won’t try to push me down a flight of stairs or something?” I stood and immediately regretted my sarcasm when I saw Moira’s face. Her mouth was open and she looked horrified. She hadn’t yet come to terms with her new reality. In this new world, everything was possible to her. She didn’t know I was joking.

I rushed to reassure her, and when she looked slightly better, I went to join Kian and Garrison in front of a few hospital television sets.

The news played on various channels. Two stories dominated all the networks. On a few screens, images of cars being swept through towns by mudslides and people scrambling to collect items onto boats were seen under a headline about flooding in the eastern states. Kian watched intently with his arms folded over his chest.

Garrison went to join Moira and left Kian and I watching the news. It was depressing, but something caught my eye. One network changed to a computer-generated map of an island and proclaimed the biggest natural disaster in history.

“What’s that?” I asked and pointed at the screen.

“Have you ever heard of Atlantis?” Kian asked me.

“Yeah.”

Where was he going with this? Was he going to tell me we were going there next?

“In a single day and night of destruction,” Kian turned to look at me while reciting, “the continent of Atlantis fell into the sea.” He pointed to the screen. “The Canary Islands are off the coast of Africa. They sit on a dangerous fault line. Scientists are predicting that there will be a volcanic eruption that splits one of the islands in half. It will fall into the Atlantic Ocean and create a tsunami wave that will destroy the entire east coast of North America.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being figurative or not.

“And is that what the magicians will try next?” I asked, fearing the answer.

Kian shrugged. “It’s what I would do,” he replied. “But they need more power for something that big.” He eyed me, seeming calmer now, and I considered his mood carefully as I dared ask the question on everyone’s minds.

“Kian, what happened?”

The silence that stretched between us grew uncomfortable as I toyed with the idea that he hadn’t heard me. Finally, he sighed.

“This is all my fault,” he said. He turned, his brown eyes burning a hole through me. Of all the possible answers I had thought he would give, that wasn’t one of them. I stood, stunned into silence, and waited for more.

“If you regain your memories and your powers, no one will be able to hurt you so easily.” His voice was imploring as if he willed me to hurry the process up, but his answer still made no sense.

“Okay,” I said slowly, “so why is this your fault?” As I looked at him, the answers appeared in my mind and I reached out to touch his arm. “You think it’s your fault we haven’t regained our full strength yet.”

Kian nodded but his expression did not reassure me. I glanced at the nurses busily filing paperwork and typing on computers, realizing it would be hours until we heard anything about Seth. I was filled with a sudden frantic worry.

“Kian,” I said in the sternest voice I could muster, “is there anything else we should know?” I willed the secrets to spill from his lips, but he pressed them firmly together.

“No.”

The next hours were spent in silence as we alternated between pacing, watching the news, and wallowing in dark thoughts. My mind drifted between the televisions and feeling responsible for all the world’s disasters, to Seth and the older man who he had once been, to Kian’s secrets and back to the vision I had had in the church office. Battle. Blood. Death. It turned my stomach.

At one point I saw a man being wheeled by on a gurney. He’d most likely been in a car accident, and he was covered in blood. It nearly sent me over the edge and I reeled in my seat.

As soon as I closed my eyes to steady myself I was taken to yet another battle. I tried to open my eyes to leave the scene, but I couldn’t. Instead, I noticed my hands were covered in slivers. I opened my palm to look at all the small pieces of wood embedded into my skin. My past self shrugged it off and wrapped my hand in a piece of bloody cloth that I pulled out of my sleeve. I got back to what I had been doing.

Leaning down on a battlefield, I pulled arrows out of bodies. The metal ends were hard to make, so it was important to collect what you could. The lifeless faces still held open eyes, and I was glad they were looking somewhere else, usually up and above me. I consoled myself knowing that they weren’t looking.

Sometimes, the arrows stuck in the bodies and I had to keep the body down with a foot while I yanked on the wooden shaft of the feathered arrows: the origin of my splinters. Since the wood of the shaft was smooth, I wondered how many arrows I had recovered. The pack I carried on my back felt heavy with them.

“Gwen.”

Kian shook me. I had been sitting with my head resting in my hands. Funny, I didn’t remember doing so. When he saw my pale face, his eyebrows furrowed.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“War,” I replied.

Kian looked as if he was about to say something, but then motioned his head towards Seth’s room. They had wheeled in a prone form on a gurney, and a doctor stood noting something down at the foot of the bed.

I hadn’t known my heart felt like it was in a vice grip, but upon seeing him in bed and alive, I felt the pressure in my chest ease.

We came into the room single file and stood on either side of the bed. Under all the tubes, bandages, and blankets, there was hardly a person visible. We were only allowed to stay for a few minutes before a doctor shooed us out and told us we could come back tomorrow.

Before we left, the doctor came out of the room to speak to us.

“Can I ask what you were doing when this accident happened?” The doctor looked us over, each in turn, over his narrow eyeglasses. His gaze lingered on Moira, who looked as if she had been hit by a car.

The silence became awkward and I realized I would have to speak.

“We were attacked. We don’t know who did it,” I said. I realized the police weren’t here, and we weren’t being investigated. A theory formed in my mind, and I figured I had nothing to lose.

“We actually didn’t see our friend get hurt,” I told the doctor. “He was alone at the time. Could you tell us what happened to him?”

He eyed us suspiciously, but only for a moment. “I was hoping you might be able to tell me,” he said. “We performed a surgery assuming this was a bullet wound, but there was no bullet and no exit wound.”

We thanked the doctor and he left to see other patients. So that’s why there were no police, and no questions. Seth’s condition was a mystery. Only we knew the truth. Someone was aiming to kill us,

Outside the room, Garrison ran a hand through his curls and turned expectantly to Kian.

“What now?” he asked.

It struck me that Kian did not know. I hadn’t seen him pick up the phone once. His magician wasn’t giving him the directions anymore. He glanced back at Seth and reluctance pulled at his face as if he would much rather stay.

“We go back to the hotel,” Kian said slowly, “and Moira comes with us. I will show you how to defend yourselves, and you will increase your magic.”

“What if we don’t?” Garrison asked.

“That’s not an option.”

It was night now and I wanted more than anything to lie down and try to cast the dark thoughts of the day out of my mind. But we needed to explain Moira’s disappearance first. Talking Moira’s parents around was easier than any of us had hoped.

It turned out she attended a private boarding school and had only been in town for the wedding of her cousin. A few forged letters later, Moira had her bags packed and said goodbye to her parents. Her cool surprised me. She was composed and smiled as she waved goodbye. Until she got into the car.

Once she sat down next to me and the door closed, the click of the car’s locks must have unhinged her. She sobbed and shook and I placed an apprehensive arm around her shoulders. She looked better now that she had washed the dirt off and changed into jeans and a plain sweater, but her emotional breakdown was unnerving.

Garrison cast wary glances at us every now and then, but Kian ignored her completely. The way he glared at the road suggested that he was in a different place altogether. I felt like I was beginning to come apart when we pulled into a motel at the side of the road. Moira’s feelings resonated with me. She acted like I felt.

I cast a questioning look to Kian, who grumbled something about the hotel being close to the hospital. I picked up Big Green, my old suitcase that was still miraculously intact, and followed Kian and Garrison into the lobby.

It was a stout building made from brown bricks — like the rest of England — and the wide sign out front indicated there was a pub attached to the other side.

We silently let Kian get our rooms. He distributed keys and we proceeded down the poorly lit hallways until we reached the right doors. I shoved my suitcase in ahead of me as Moira came in and closed the door to the small room.

The yellow lighting of the hotel blended in with the yellow beds and yellow walls. It was not a particularly nice hotel, but it smelled relatively clean and it was a place to lie down. I sighed.

Moira placed her red suitcase near one of the double beds and sat on the bedspread. Her posture was rigid but she gripped the edge of the mattress with fierce determination. I lay down in exhaustion. The day’s events as well as the memories had taken an emotional toll and I could only hope sleep would put a stop to it.

“What does it feel like to remember?” Moira asked me.

Ugh.

“I think it’s different for everybody,” I answered, not wanting to go into it. Unfortunately, the questions didn’t stop there.

“What has it been like for you?” Moira prodded.

I sat up, trying not to get too annoyed. “It’s confusing and gut-wrenching and sometimes painful,” I told her frankly. “Your magic can come out and hurt you. Mine’s nearly burned me alive on a few occasions.”

Her eyes widened with fear and again I felt immediately guilty for my lack of understanding. How could I be so cruel? This used to be me just a little while ago. Kian had been patient with me and I could do my part by doing the same with Moira.

I tried to invoke some pleasant memory to share with Moira and only came up with those about Seth. I smiled despite myself. Things were different now and we were different people. But my past self had been truly happy with him on the riverbank, Roman or not, husband or no husband.

“Other times,” I continued, “you can get a look into some really nice moments. Kian wants us to remember it all, though. He says that way we will be strongest.”

Moira nodded but still hadn’t moved from her rigid position on the bed.