Spellbound (38 page)

“The roof.” Adam walked over and reached for the empty chair.

I waved him to another spot before he sat on my father's lap.

“Right,” Adam said. “Sorry.”

“He's used to it,” Jaime said. “There's no personal space cushion when you're a ghost.”

“So the roof?” I said.

Adam explained what he'd found from the outside, and my father added—through Jaime—some details of the inside layout. Together we devised a plan.

“Your dad says we should probably break up this coffee club,” Jaime said. “Before someone connected to these people wanders past and thinks one of us looks familiar.”

“Call Jeremy then,” I said. “Tell him you'll meet him on the roof.” She lifted her leg, showing off three-inch heels.

“Haven't you learned your lesson about wearing those on a mission?”

“Yes. And the lesson is that I should
always
wear these, so no one asks me to do anything crazy like climb onto a roof.”

“But you have to play interpreter between us and my father.”

“Which I can do using the wonderful technology of text messaging.”

“It'd be easier to talk to him if you were on the roof. You'd be less conspicuous.”

“It's New Orleans. The one city in the world where I can talk to ghosts and no one looks twice. Go on. Jeremy will meet you there.”

J
eremy didn't complain about climbing on roofs. He may be sixty-one—or was it sixty-two?—but being a werewolf means he's in excellent shape, and looks about forty-five. And being werewolf Alpha means he doesn't get to do a lot of roof-climbing so he's happy for the chance.

We started on the neighboring roof, which Adam had scouted. It came with a convenient fire escape, meaning we could clamber up and across without being seen. From there it was only a two-foot jump across to the roof we needed.

While an access door would have been very sweet, they're a lot less common than I'd like. Instead, there was an ancient balcony off the top floor. The construction was first-rate, though, and it didn't so much as tremor as we proceeded, one at a time, onto it and through the balcony door.

That door had needed a lock-pick. There was also an electronic security system, but my father assured us that only the lower level doors were protected.

Other than the fake workman, my father hadn't seen anyone else while he'd walked the perimeter of the warded area. Whatever this place was, it didn't seem to be a major hub of activity for the group. Definitely not the compound where they'd been holding me, though I'd known that—I hadn't gone from Louisiana to Indiana on the relatively short van ride before I'd escaped.

We'd come through into a bedroom on the third floor. It was unbearably stuffy, and peeling layers of wallpaper said it hadn't been used in decades. The one piece of furniture—a filing cabinet—had only been left behind because it was so old and heavy that it had sunk into the floor.

We made our way into the hall, Jeremy in the lead, using his werewolf sense of hearing and smell to check for occupants. I cast sensing spells. I wasn't sure they worked, but it helped me clear my head and focus.

After one quick sniff around the top floor—and several stifled sneezes from the dust—Jeremy said no one had been up there in a while. So we proceeded down the stairs. Normally I'd lead there, knockback spell prepped, but Adam took it instead, his flaming fingers a quicker weapon than Jeremy's brute strength.

My father had said this was where the warding spell kicked in, so it made sense that we'd start seeing signs of occupation here. That's exactly what it looked like—occupation. Two rooms had beds with dressers stuffed with clothing and nothing personal. One even had a suitcase still on the floor.

“Temporary lodgings,” Jeremy murmured. “There are layers of scent.”

We checked out the other rooms. There was no one around, but Jeremy could detect faint voices from the lower level. He found a floor-level grate and crouched beside it, head tilted to listen.

He lifted three fingers. Three voices. He bent lower, then stood and waved us back away from the vent.

“Someone was talking about a fever,” he whispered. “I smell antiseptic.”

“A hospital, then. Or a makeshift one.”

Jeremy paused, and I knew he was working on a strategy. I didn't offer any suggestions. Maybe I'd spent so many summers with the werewolves that I automatically fell into the role of Pack wolf, waiting for the Alpha to make the plans. Or maybe I just knew that any idea Jeremy came up with would be better than mine. You don't lead a Pack for thirty years unless you're a damned fine strategist.

“Distraction,” he said finally. “There's only a single point of entry for us—the stairs. I heard three voices, but there may be more than three people so trying to sneak up on them individually is risky.” He turned to Adam. “How well do you know Bryce?”

“We've met a couple of times.”

“So he may not recognize you. There won't be time for introductions, and we can't risk him raising an alarm. You and I will clear the way and let Savannah search for Bryce once it's safe.”

I agreed and we ironed out the details, then found the stairs down.

 

 

While the building's origins as a house were evident from the top two floors, the main level had been gutted and redesigned. There were actually two sets of stairs going down. A narrow rear set must have been for servants at one time. The door at the top was heavily locked—with the locks on our side luckily. When Jeremy and Adam descended, I got a message from my father through Jaime saying we were going the wrong way.

“The steps lead to a few rooms at the back, including the rear door,” Jeremy said as they returned. “There's no other point of access. Except here.”

“In other words,” Adam said, “to get to where we want to go, you need to come in the rear door, up these stairs, and down the front ones.”

“Huh?” I said.

“It's a false back,” Jeremy explained. “Come in the front door, where the workman is, and I suspect you can't get any farther. Come in the back, and you'll get a small area of access, plus these stairs.”

“And the hospital rooms are hidden between the two.”

“The central part also seems to be heavily soundproofed,” Jeremy said. “I can hear better from the upper level than I can down there.”

“Someone's gone to a lot of work to hide something,” I said.

“Fortunately, it's in a relatively small area, if my calculations of the house are correct. I'm going to take another listen at the grates and see if I can't figure out the layout.”

 

 

Jeremy determined that the warded area was one narrow section across the center of the house. My father checked the exterior, and reported that there were two main-floor windows on each end of that section, both covered with plywood. Under those panels the windows had been bricked up. A fortified and soundproofed section within an otherwise normal-looking building. For someone accustomed to finding the bad guys in remote warehouses and subterranean lairs, I had to admit this was clever.

Voices came from an eastern room—maybe an office or lab. To the west, Jeremy caught the sound of coughing and the occasional moan. More than one patient? He couldn't tell. He hoped so, though, because he was catching at least eight distinct human scents, and we really didn't want to be dealing with seven people guarding Bryce.

The main stairs opened into the upper hall. From there, we could see into the lower hall, meaning it wasn't the easiest place to sneak down. Or the easiest place for me to lurk while Jeremy and Adam snuck down. I followed them at a distance, then crouched behind the massive banister and listened.

I could see a closed door to the west, leading into the hospital area. Adam checked the door, then gave me a thumbs-up, letting me know it was unlocked.

To the east, I could make out a desk through the open doorway. Then, with a squeak, a chair wheeled back from the desk and I caught sight of a man in a lab coat . . . at the same time he caught sight of Adam.

A shout. Then a thump. A woman yelled, “The door. Get the door!” Another thump, this one from the direction of the hospital. Then a metallic clang. I leaned out to see a mechanical steel door sliding closed over the door into the west wing. Sealing off the hospital.

I raced down the stairs. I grabbed the steel door and wrenched, but it was like a solid elevator door, and it wasn't stopping. I managed to squeeze through.

I swung around, my back slapping against the now closed steel door. A knockback spell flew to my lips. And just as fast, I flipped open the switchblade I'd grabbed at headquarters.

I was in a small area cut off from the rest of the room by a hospital curtain. To my right was a sink and medical supplies. A handwritten sign hanging off the curtain warned FULL PROTECTION REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT. Disposable gloves and masks were piled on a trolley, with a bin for discards.

I tugged back the curtain and found three hospital beds, a sleeping form in each of them. The lights were dimmed. Monitors bleeped and blipped beside each patient.

Across the way was a closed door. There was no sign of anyone except the patients. I was about to step out when my phone vibrated. I quickly texted Adam to say I was searching and couldn't talk yet.

I slid from the curtained area and crept over to the sleeping forms. The first was a woman, lying on her back, rasping as she breathed, deep in sleep. The last in the row was dark-haired—male or female, I couldn't tell, especially since there was something draped over the patient's face. The dark hair told me it wasn't Bryce, though.

The middle patient was a young, light-haired man. The dim lights meant I couldn't see more than that, so I tiptoed over to the beds. I started slipping between the two and knocked into a bucket on the floor. The stink of vomit wafted up. I covered my nose, retreated, and circled to the other side of the bed.

I was all the way up near the top before I was sure it wasn't Bryce. I started to back out, then stopped. Something was wrong with the patient. He looked better than the sickly pale woman on his other side. No wheezing or rasping or coughing . . . No sounds at all. That was the problem—the patient lay perfectly still, sheets tucked around his body with hospital precision, as if he hadn't even twitched since he'd been put there.

Yet there were machines hooked up to him. I couldn't tell what they were—I can only recognize heart monitors and there didn't seem to be one with the familiar mountain-range display. But lines on the machines were moving and numbers were changing.

Comatose? I looked back at the woman in the first bed. Was this an infirmary for sick group members? That made sense—when you're planning a huge movement, you're going to need facilities for illness, especially if they're supernatural and can't be shipped off to the nearest hospital.

It seemed like a lot of secrecy for an infirmary, though. I remembered what the man in the alley said.

A war is coming.

Was the hospital a preparation for war? For the casualties of war?

The bigger question right now was: Where's Bryce? I looked at the door across the room and took a step toward it.

Something touched my arm.

“Help me,” a voice rasped.

I stumbled back as the dark-haired figure in the last bed sat up. It was a woman. Gauze covered the top of her face, and what I'd thought was a white shirt or gown was more gauze, crisscrossing her body like a half-wrapped mummy.

She pawed at the bandage on her face with hands so thickly bandaged they were like clubs. She managed to catch the bandage and yanked it down enough for me to see one eye, swollen and leaking, surrounded by scrapes and cuts.

As if she had tried to scratch her eyes out.

I shivered and tried to yank my gaze away, but instead saw the other scratches now, the ones radiating out from the hastily wrapped gauze on her body. Scratches and gouges everywhere.

“It burns,” she rasped. “It always burns. Please help me. Make it stop.”

She started pawing at her body, her thickly wrapped hands desperately trying to scratch, to rip, to tear. I glanced toward the closed door as she mewled in frustration. I pushed her back down on the bed and assured her I'd get the nurse, that we'd get something for her, just relax. But she shoved me, flailing and grunting until a liquidfilled tube overhead clicked and beeped and discharged a dose of something and, after a moment, she went still again.

I waited until I was sure she wasn't moving again, then I headed for the closed door to the next room to continue my search for Bryce. I paused at the door. If there was a nurse in here, that's where he or she would be. I readied my switchblade and eased the door open. From within, I could hear the sigh and whir of machines, and the steady
beep-beep-beep
of a heart monitor.

It looked like a mirror image of the room I was in. Three beds against the far wall. Only one patient, though. Bryce lay in the first bed, eyes closed.

I
walked to Bryce and leaned over, whispering, “Wake up. It's—”

He leapt up so fast I knew he hadn't been asleep at all, and when his hands flew up in a spell, I realized I'd walked into a trap.

As his eyes widened though, I saw that his gaze wasn't fixed on me . . . and his outstretched hands weren't aimed at me either.

I spun as Anita Barrington lunged, hypodermic raised. I hit her with everything I had—in a knockback that barely made her stumble. But that stumble gave Bryce time to cast an energy bolt. Anita convulsed and dropped the needle.