Nieve (15 page)

The elevators were crammed, but none were going up anyway, so they took the stairs, two and three at a time. It was work trying to keep up with Frances. Nieve couldn't tell if the source of her urgency was eagerness or fear, but she herself felt a queasy mix of both as they arrived at the fourth floor and hurried to Malcolm's room. On the way an orderly swished by, rapidly wheeling a gurney down the hall, its passenger stretched out and covered head to toe with a white sheet. Lias paled when they passed and touched the pewter amulet on his cloak.

If his gesture was meant to bring them luck, it didn't.

Arriving at the opened door of his room, they heard two people arguing. The voices had a snarling intensity, but were too low for them to catch the gist. Frances didn't pause to eavesdrop in any event. She stepped smartly into the room, Nieve and Lias directly behind, and the two people stopped arguing at once. One was a young, red-faced nurse and the other a tall man in a black suit, black shirt, black tie. His face was gaunt and bony. He had thin purplish lips, a beaky nose, deep-set dark eyes, and a jutting brow that was decorated with outlandishly bushy eyebrows combed up into barbs (“the devil's own eyebrows,” Frances observed later). Both stared at the intruders, the man with keen irritation.

“But it's
criminal
to–” The nurse's words still hung in the air, as if etched there by the sharpness of her voice.

“Criminal to what?” Frances might have asked if in a different mood. Or she might have teasingly dressed
them
down for fighting –
tsk, tsk
. Instead, she said, “Where's Malcolm?” When neither responded, she repeated her question, upping the volume, “Where is my son?”

Malcolm's bed was empty, the rumpled sheets pulled back, his frayed plaid bathrobe tossed over a chair. The three other beds in the room were also empty, although tidily and tightly made up.

“If you'll excuse me.” The man haughtily waved them aside as he strode out.

Nieve was only too glad to get out of his way. He smelled peculiar, like the jars in science class that contained frogs preserved in formaldehyde.

“Creep.” Frances said under her breath. Then, “Julie, what's going on? Where
is
Malcolm?”

The nurse sank down onto the end of the bed, her anger subsiding into frustration. “I don't know, Frances. I don't even know who that guy is, some sort of administrator, supposedly. Told me he was a specialist from Down Under when I challenged him, but he sure didn't sound like an Aussie to me.” She ran a hand distractedly over the blanket that was heaped-up beside her. “I was called to another room to help with a patient, and when I got back . . . Malcolm was gone. I went to the nurse's station to find out what was going on and the head nurse told me that we needed the bed and he was moved to another ward.”

Nieve glanced at the three other empty beds and exchanged a look with Lias.

“Okay, what ward? Where?” Frances said.

Julie shook her head. “There's no record of it, which . . . I thought had to be an oversight, somebody forgot, we've been so busy. Anyway, I went to look for him. Frances, I searched everywhere. I promised you I'd keep an eye on him, and I . . . I'm so sorry. I kept searching, poking around, asking questions. You wouldn't believe how many sick people have been ‘moved to another ward.' That's why they sent that guy to threaten me.”

“Threaten you how?”

“Said if I didn't watch it, I'd be moved, too. Moved right out the door. Then he said something really weird and sexist. He said that was fine by him because nurses make such good doormats.”

“A creep
galore
. Julie, you did everything you could.” Frances touched the young woman's shoulder. “I appreciate it. Honestly I do.” Her grip tightened. “And now I'm going to find Malcolm. I'm going to find him if it's the
last
thing I do.”

Frances was true to her word. The “last thing” part anyway, because they searched the hospital room after room, floor after floor, and she was still going strong, although growing more frantic and wild-eyed. Nieve was afraid that she was going to flip out. She felt like flipping out herself, but was determined to keep her head (unlike that brag guy). If she was to find her friend, and she
was
, she knew she'd need every nanogram of cool and logic she could muster.

After looking everywhere, including storage cabinets and supply rooms, Frances had become convinced that Malcolm was in the operating theatre, hauled off there by mistake. It was a plausible theory, since they'd seen an inordinate number of gurneys rattle through the double doors to the OR, one after another after another. More patients than the largest team of surgeons could handle. They'd been sitting in the OR waiting room for about ten minutes, in which time Frances had bugged the medical staff non-stop, peppering them with endless questions about Malcolm's whereabouts. While promising to investigate, it seemed more likely that the increasingly unsympathetic nurses at the desk might send Frances through those double doors to have her mouth sutured shut.

No danger of that at present, though, for she'd taken a pestering-break and was sitting with her lips clamped tight, a pervasive condition here, Nieve had noticed. Frances was obviously scheming, figuring out her next move.

“Are you two hungry?” she finally blurted. “Bet you are and you're too polite to say anything.” She was making an effort to sound casual, despite the quaver in her voice. “Cafeteria's closed, but there are those machines on the first floor. Drinks, snacks. Why don't you go get something?”

Before they could respond, she began to dig in the pockets of her jacket (Frances was the only non-purse carrying mother Nieve knew) and pulling out loose change and crumpled bills. Along with this, she also pulled out the arrowhead that she'd brought for Malcolm . . . the
very
thing that had caused her to be absent when he had needed her the most. She stared at it with distaste, then flung it onto the floor. The arrowhead landed on the tile with a flinty
clack
amid a shower of bills and coins.

Lias pounced on it. On second thought, he scooped up the money, too, including a couple of quarters that were still rolling away. When he had it all collected, he offered it back to Frances, who said, “Shame on me, I'm acting like a spoiled adult, aren't I? A coffee will set me straight, even ghastly machine coffee. Geez, I
really
could use one, now that I think of it. Be sure to get yourselves whatever you want. Go wild.” She paused to consider something. “Look Lias, why don't you hang onto Malcolm's good luck charm for me? Until I start behaving myself, eh. I wouldn't want anything to happen to it.”

He nodded, handed the money to Nieve, and slipped the arrowhead into the pouch that was tied to his belt.

Nieve didn't like the idea of leaving Frances alone, but she thought a coffee might do her some good, calm her down. Admittedly, the idea of the snacks also appealed – lots of snacks! – too many for her to carry on her own.

When she and Lias set off on their errand, she whispered to him, “Let's hurry, before she starts bugging the nurses again.”

The elevators were all stalled at the lowest level, so they decided to take the stairs.

“Why do these elevators only go
down
?” she said.

“Everything does,” he responded, which she didn't consider much of an answer.

Before they got to the door of the stairwell, they both stopped and looked at one another. The machines on the first floor weren't working. They knew that, and Frances knew it, too. They had all glanced at the “out-of-order” signs in passing when scouring that part of the hospital for Malcolm.

“Does she mean the ones on a different floor?” Lias said.

“No!”

They raced back to the waiting room, just in time to see Frances sneaking past the nurses. They didn't notice because they were preoccupied with a new arrival. A distraught man, who was being wheeled toward the OR on a gurney, had jumped off. The nurses, along with the orderly who brought him, were struggling to force him back onto it, but he was scrappy and fought hard, swinging at them left and right. He
did not
want to go in there, nor, given his robust state of health, did he appear to have any need.

Frances, however, did
.
She pushed eagerly through the double doors and was gone. Seems she wasn't behaving herself quite yet.

–Eighteen–
Strange Operations

N
ieve fully expected Frances to be expelled from the OR, but that hadn't happened. Neither she nor Lias knew what to do. They had considered sneaking in themselves to look for her, except that an orderly who more resembled a bouncer – all muscle and tattoos – had arrived to stand guard at the double doors. Nieve hoped he wasn't there because Frances had been caught. More likely he was the heavy sent to prevent other patients from escaping. Secretly, she had cheered on the man who had jumped off the gurney, keeping her fingers crossed while he struggled with the nurses and thinking
go go go!
And he did! They had him pinned down and were about to haul him back onto the gurney, when he wrenched himself free and tore off down the hall, his blue, open-backed hospital gown flapping and revealing peeks of his hairy bum as he ran.

She couldn't help but laugh. Just a little. Funny things still happened even when you were surrounded by nothing but bad ones. Like flickers of light in the dark, she thought. Like good luck charms, only more effective.

Turning to Lias she said, “So what's the big deal with the arrowhead?”

“Elfshot.” He kept his voice lowered, although the guard was more interested in the nurses than in them. “Might come in handy.”

Nieve sighed. “Whatever you say.” She studied him for a minute, “Why do you sound like a normal kid sometimes, and other times like a . . . I don't know what?”

“A freak?”

He
did
have only eight toes, hair that looked like the hair version of fire, and clothes that were several centuries out of date. “No. I mean that sometimes you sound old, really old. The way you say things.”

He shrugged. “Old Country ways.”

“Where Gran's from, you mean?”

“Listen, Nieve,” he said, dodging the question. “Frances isn't coming back out. We've got to find her,
and
all your other friends, before we disappear ourselves. That's one of the things cunning folk do, find what's missing.”

“Agreed, but I'm not one of them. And I'm not a hag, either, thanks. Or that other thing, what was it?”

“Megrim. Doesn't mean you've got warts and ride a broomstick. Only means you can do some things that other people can't. It's a
talent.
Like being good at music. So
do
them. You know, the way you sent that silver car spinning into the ditch, and the way you helped that man escape just now.”

“Don't be silly. That had nothing to do with me.”

He only smiled at her and shook his head.

“Look,” she said, “you're the one who got the fire going at Gran's, and you're the one who can see in the dark, and
you're
the one who totally vanished in the car. Remember?
You
do something.”

Lias gave her such a vexed look that she thought he was going to smack her (if he
dared
). Instead, he smacked his own knee, and said, “I've the brains of a nit. Here, hold out your hand.” He reached into the pouch on his belt and fished out the silver cannister that Gran had given him. Turning his back to shield what he was doing, he twisted off the lid, and tipping it over, very gently tapped the bottom so that whatever was inside – fern seeds Gran had said – fell onto Nieve's palm. She had to assume that's what was going on because fern seeds – spores, aren't they? – are so tiny as to be almost invisible. “There!”

“What?” she said, a little grumpily.

“You've gone.”

“Gone? What d'you mean?”

“Close your hand, hold it tight, and don't lose it. See, like this?” Lias tapped a fern seed onto his own palm, closed his fingers over it, and immediately vanished.

Nieve stared at the space where he'd been, then stared at herself, her arms, her legs. She wiggled the fingers on her other hand, the one that wasn't holding the seed. She didn't feel the least bit different, but she was definitely
gone.
The seat was visible, but she wasn't. So
that's
how Lias had done it in the car. She reached out and touched his sleeve to make sure he was still there. “Holy smokes,” was all she could say.