Never (25 page)

“You have no idea how glad I am to see you two,” Eddie said as he peered around Wendy's doorway into the hall. “I felt like I was gonna go crazy here by myself.”

Piotr was resting a moment, hand pressed to his chest as Wendy stood over her still body, amazed at how emaciated she looked. Her skin was paper-pale and dehydrated, showing the thin blue veins snaking just beneath the skin. Four fans were blowing full-blast at her, and someone had piled up gel-packs all around her entire body.

“I'm dying,” Wendy said, reaching out and touching the big toe on her right foot. Her flesh felt dull and distant, not like something she should feel at home crawling back into. “I don't know how to feel about that.”

“Don't feel anything about it for now. So far you're safe,” Eddie said, frowning. “That's all that matters for the moment. So you're not looking your best, true, and you're still burning up but I'm sure…” he drifted off and then frowned, looking quickly between Piotr and Wendy. “Hey…wait a second. Where are the others?”

“Chel and Jon both were in that car accident we came in on,” Wendy said flatly, examining how fast the saline was dripping into her veins. They had it turned all the way up but her body seemed to be sucking up the moisture like a desert. It wasn't making a difference. “The crash…it was terrible, Eds. Neither of them might survive. They can't help us right now. They can't even help themselves.”

“Oh no,” Eddie whispered. “Like my dad?”

“Yeah,” Wendy said, turning away from her body and taking his hand. Eddie drew her close and they hugged a brief moment, his chin resting on her shoulder as Wendy trembled in his arms. “Are you okay?” he asked. “It still freaking you out?”

“I'll be fine,” Wendy sighed, taking Eddie's hand in her left hand and Piotr's in her right as he stood and joined them in the doorway of her room. “I'll be better once I know how they're doing. On the way to your weirdo thing, let's go see if there's any word on Chel or Jo— wait…hang on a minute…”

Dr. Kensington, the pushy doctor from before, slipped past them, rushing silently down the empty hallway of the Neurology floor. In one hand he held a pair of faded bunny slippers. In the other, he had a pair of glasses.

“Oh look,” Eddie said. “Hey, question, kind of important actually: that's the guy from before, right? The guy that wanted to call CPS on your dad?”

“Oh me, oh my, yes,” Wendy said, “it's Dr. Asshole. Going off duty, Dr. Asshole? I never expected you to be the type to wear bunny slip—” Wendy broke off as the memory came to her.

The EMT team pushed through the emergency doors, shoving a stretcher between them as a crying robe-clad woman in bunny slippers and glasses hurried behind.

The injured woman gasping on the gurney lifted her arm and pointed to Wendy as she passed, twisting her head to keep Wendy in sight as the EMTs passed. Dr. Kensington was going to be the doctor on this case; Wendy shuddered. The whites of her eyes were red, the pupils blacked out her irises and her mouth was bright red, dripping down her chin and neck. Her malformed face stretched oddly, angularly, out of place and the bones in her forearms punched through the skin, spiky and white and pulsing.

Despite all that, it was obvious that the two women could see them. The robed woman dodged around Eddie as she hurried through the swinging doors, dropping her left bunny slipper in the process. Wendy attempted to pick it
up to return it to the robed woman. Wendy'd forgotten she was a spirit; her hand went right through it.

“Wait. Wait a second. I know that slipper,” Wendy muttered and raced out the door, hot on Dr. Kensington's heels. Eddie and Piotr followed. The doctor sped through the Neurology wing and down a narrow hallway, stopping at last at the Psychiatry ward. There he tapped on the glass and a bored-looking orderly pushed a buzzer.

Dr. Kensington and his three ghostly tails stepped into a tiny room where the orderly examined the doctor “Is this strictly necessary?” the doctor demanded. “I'm not going to smuggle her any weapons.”

“Who?” Wendy asked, wishing the doctor could hear her. “The bunny slipper lady didn't look crazy to
me
. Frazzled, yes, crazy, no. She could see us, though…they both could.” Thinking about the woman on the gurney, the one who'd pointed at her, Wendy mused, “Maybe it's her friend?”

“Orders, sir,” the orderly said casually, lifting up the gigantic doctor's lab coat and patting down his hips. “Are those glasses yours, sir?”

Dr. Kensington, startled, flushed. “No. These belong to my nurse. She handed them to me and—”

Ignoring Dr. Kensington's flustered excuse, the orderly reached over to his station and grabbed a plastic basket. “In the basket, sir. You'd be surprised what some of these folks can do with a little bit of wire like that. And those lenses don't look like no safety glass, neither. In the basket.”

Dr. Kensington, gritting his teeth, dropped the glasses in the basket, his sleeves shifting enough that Wendy could see the edge of the tattoo circling his wrist. “Will that be all, son?”

“Go ahead. I'll buzz you in.” The orderly waved him on.

“Why are we on the psych ward, do you wonder?” Eddie asked and Piotr shrugged. Wendy, however, had an idea. It was a disturbing, impossible idea, but one that wouldn't let go.

“Piotr,” she said slowly as they followed Dr. Kensington
through two more buzzing doors and into a great, empty tiled room with folding chairs and tables lining the far wall, “what do you think would happen if one of those creatures tried inhabiting a human? A living human, not just a spirit?”

“I…I don't know.” Piotr paused, blinking in surprise. “Living flesh is not malleable the way essence is. If I want, I can change my clothing at will. I could, with enough energy and time, could even change my face itself. But the living are not loosely put together the ways souls are. Would that not kill a living person?”

“It probably would,” Eddie agreed uneasily. “I mean, what that crazy thing did to Ada was just—”

“What if it didn't?” Wendy demanded, moving quickly to keep up with Dr. Kensington. He left the vast tiled room and took a left, gesturing for the nurse at the desk to buzz him into a room across from their station. “What if it found a way to—oh, holy shit!” Wendy backpedaled and slammed into Piotr, sending him skidding to the floor.

The room was covered in shit and vomit and blood. The woman who had pointed at Wendy was no more; her discarded flesh lay on the floor of the room like a snakeskin.

What remained of the woman clung to the ceiling by her teeth and her nails—muscles glistening, tendons hardening in the air, veins pulsing, desperately trying to bring blood to an envelope of skin that was simply no longer there.

“
A chorbn
,” Eddie cursed behind her, dismay and disgust coloring the Yiddish.

“Dawn's coming,” the creature crowed happily. “I can taste it!”

Dr. Kensington, snarling a warning, slammed the door behind him—closing it,
locking
it—and flung the slipper to the ground beneath the creature. The thing turned its head 180 to examine it but, thankfully, didn't stretch its neck the way Elle had to get a closer look.

“Your girlfriend—pardon me, ex-girlfriend—was so desperate to have you back to normal that she would have tried to
swim
to Alcatraz if I'd asked her to,” he said proudly. “I had her take a rowboat. But here's the proof. She's dead.”

The creature chuckled and dropped to the ground in front of the doctor with a wet, meaty thump. Blood sprayed him in the face but Dr. Kensington didn't flinch. He smiled.

“Never her mind. Gone. Good. Now you brought some friends with you,” growled the creature. “Tasty meat in you, soft life-in-death from them. Dessert!”

“Friends? Do you mean ghosts?” The doctor looked around the room, then slapped himself in the forehead. “Silly me. You've got me thinking
I
can see them, too. There are some in the room, you say?” He laughed and shook his head. “No worries, Kara. Shades are always wandering these halls. Pay them no mind.”

The Kara-creature tilted its head at the doctor like an owl, nearly upside down, but then shrugged and rose to its feet. “I tire of this room. Let me out. I want to eat!”

“No,” Dr. Kensington snarled. “We've punched another couple holes in the Never, but it's not enough yet. I wish you'd kept the skin on…you are a mess! It will have to be sheer chaos out there before I dare let you go free. You'll be noticed like this for sure.” He prodded the bunny slipper with his foot. Wendy could see the blood speckling the top and suddenly, as if a switch flipped in her head, she sensed where the owner of the slipper had gone and knew without question what had happened to her.

“Less than a day,” the creature moaned, clicking its teeth at Dr. Kensington. “The hole is opening…opening so wide!”

“Be patient,” the doctor urged it. “Now. Are you sure you don't know where Laurie kept the spare keys? I must—
must
—get into the vault under Russian Hill. There are other methods, but your house is the most direct. We
need
that vault.”

“Reapers had a key,” the creature hummed. “Had a key and lost-lost-lost it.”

“Not to the front door, they didn't,” Dr. Kensington growled, unamused. “Think! Probe that meaty brain you're sucking dry and come up with the answer!”

The creature paused in its swaying, puddles of clear saliva dripping down its grisly chin and then, after a long, drooling moment, shook its head. “She blocks me, what little there is of her left. She blocks me.”

“Keep trying,” Dr. Kensington urged but without passion or force. “Just…keep trying. Every memory. She has to know where another key is. She has to.” He gestured for the creature to ascend to the ceiling once more, and waited until it hung like a bat before he turned his back on the creature and tapped on the slit in the door. A loud buzz made the handle vibrate; Dr. Kensington eased out of the room.

“Oh doctor!” the nurse cried. “You've got blood all over your face!”

“She bit her tongue and spat at me,” he said, the lie flowing so smoothly off his lips that Wendy actually believed him for a split second.

“Do I need to call—”

“It's already healing, she'd saved some in her cheek for me,” he insisted, waving a hand at the nurse. “She's on lockdown in there, though. No one is to go in under any circumstances until I can get her regular doctor in on Monday. She knows her food is coming in under the door. Keep it that way. No. Contact. She's too dangerous. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” the nurse said, flustered. “You've got…” she made a circling motion around her face. “A little…um…everywhere.”

“I'll see to it,” he said dryly and headed for the men's room, leaving Piotr, Eddie, and Wendy staring at one another, dumbfounded.

Slowly Wendy dug in her pocket, pulling out the knife and the necklace Clyde gave her. The key still gleamed at the end of the chain.

“I think,” she said softly, “we're going to have to brave the forest
again to get to Russian Hill. Because if that dude wants something there so desperately that he fed those chicks to the creatures…well…we'd better get to it first. Clyde gave us this key. Everyone's looking for it. We should go soon.”

“Well,” Eddie said, “we could start by—”

“No,” Wendy snapped. “No, no, no. I need you here.”

“Excuse me? I'm not some baggage that you can just—”

“Eddie!” Wendy said, grabbing her best friend by the shoulders and shaking him. “I know you're freaked out. I get that! But did you just see what I saw? I. Need. You. Here. I need you here to make sure that asshole doesn't try to shove a creature down my throat—literally.”

“I just—”

“Edward,” Piotr said sharply. “Tonight I have lost my two oldest friends. Lily and Elle are gone. They are in the Light. Please do not make Wendy suffer the same as I suffer.
Puzhalsta
.”

Eddie swallowed and looked around, realizing for the first time that Lily and Elle were not tagging along. “They're…dead? Lily's dead? Like dead-dead? Really?”

“Yeah,” Wendy said dully, reaching forward and drawing Eddie into a tight hug. Eddie smelled like his leather motorcycle jacket and wood smoke and the coconut oil he used to keep his silvery-dyed hair smooth. She inhaled his scent deeply and stood on tiptoes to kiss the corner of his mouth. “I'm sorry. It…it was Jane. She got Lily. And one of the creatures got Elle. I…I couldn't stop it, Eds. I tried but I couldn't.”

Eddie began to cry and Wendy pulled him closer.

“I can see that this…this is personal. I will go,” Piotr said abruptly. “Please excuse me.” He turned and strode down the hall, his shoes clicking loudly in the silence.

Wendy clung to Eddie like a drowning swimmer cast upon a buoy. Eddie just held Wendy and stroked her hair as she shivered with rage and sorrow in the circle of his arms.

“Come on,” Eddie said, roughly clearing his throat after a few
minutes. “Before you go there's someone you'll want to see.” He led the way down the hall. Wendy realized they were heading to his room.

“Did you get a roomie?” she asked, wiping her eyes and feeling the need to lighten the mood with a little teasing.

“In a matter of speaking,” Eddie said. He stepped aside and let Wendy be the first to enter.