The Awakening

Page 63

"We'll be fine," Megan said. She wished she believed it.
Finn came back to the door for her. "Ready? Martha, you know, you've been wonderful. To both of us.
Thank you so much for everything."
"I'll see you two sometime tomorrow," she said stubbornly.
Finn gave her a kiss on the cheek. "Sure. Megan, ready?"
She hugged her aunt tightly again. "I love you," she said. Arm in arm with Finn, she walked out to the car.
As they drove, she looked over at him. "We've got one small problem, you know."
"Hm?"
"What about the equipment?"
He stared ahead for a moment, then turned to her with a rueful smile. "Nothing is worth our lives, or our marriage," he told her. His fingers curled around hers where they lay on the seat.
Megan smiled. The world around them was dark out here by Martha's, yet she suddenly felt she could see the light at the end of a very long tunnel.
The shift was changing at the hospital. There were three shifts of nurses each day, but it didn't matter who came on, when Dorcas considered herself to be the authority on her ICU patients.
Janice Mayerling, twenty-eight, attractive—and with an actual life outside the hospital, thank you very much—listened to Dorcas, trying to control her temper as the other nurse gave her a long list of commonsense instructions having to do with Andy Markham.
Janice didn't really know Andy—she had recently moved to the area, having heard that the hospital was in need of registered nurses and that they paid well. She hailed from Connecticut, not so terribly far, but far enough, and close to New York, where the world might be somewhat insane, but constantly so busy that there could be no silly fixation with one period of history, as there was here in Salem. She didn't mind working tonight because she was off the next night, which meant that she had Halloween to party.
If you were going to live in Salem, you had to take advantage of a good party night.
"A lot of people around here think that they can say they're next of kin to old Andy, and they'll try to get in. You don't let them. I already let Martha see him for a minute, hold his hand, talk to him. There was no change. A flu bug can kill Andy in seconds flat. Quite frankly, I doubt that he'll make it anyway, but he always was a good old codger, despite his flights of fancy, so we're going to do our best to see that he lives. Understand?" Dorcas demanded.
That was it.
Janice did lose her temper. "Dorcas, I don't know about you, but I do my best to see that every patient in my care lives!"
Dorcas stiffened down to the soles of her nurses' shoes. "There's no call to get uppity, Janice. None at all. I'm stressing that this patient needs extra attention."
"Martha, it's an intensive care unit! Our patients are here because they need extra care."
She wasn't going to back down. Neither was Dorcas.
"I had best come in tomorrow and find out that Andy is alive and still holding his own!" she warned.
Janice bit her lip. The third floor nursing supervisor was coming down the hallway. She wasn't going to stoop to a brawl in front of the woman.
"Good night, Dorcas," she said firmly, and turned away.
She waited until Dorcas had finally departed and went in to check on old Andy Markham. IV running, vital signs weak, but steady. He would still be termed critical, but stable.
It was going to be a long night, Janice thought.
She went to read the rest of the doctor's notations at the nurses' station. "Trust me, Dorcas, the old bugger will still be kicking when you come in tomorrow," she muttered.
She frowned, suddenly, a shiver ripping through her as the lights seemed to dim, as if giant bat wings had swept through a corner of the hospital.
"They've got to fix that air-conditioning!" said Toby Wyatt, hugging herself where she sat at the phone station.
"And the lights," Janice agreed. She hesitated, then set down her notes and walked back down the hall to look at her patient, Andrew Markham.
No change.
She was still… cold.
And little shivers still seemed to trickle down her spine, one after the other.
Finn showered and changed at Huntington House.
Megan had been sitting on the bed, waiting for him, but when he came out of the bathroom, she wasn't there.
He dressed quickly, and went into the dining area and then the parlor, looking for her. Sally, the pretty young blonde, was sipping tea, minus her husband. She smiled at Finn. "Hi, how's it going?"
"Good, thanks. Have you seen my wife?"
"Actually, yes. She was in here getting a cup of tea. Strange, too! Susanna walked in and saw her, and nearly dropped the tray she was carrying, she was so startled to see her, though why she should be startled to see a guest, I don't know. Anyway, Megan, your wife, helped her pick up the mess she made, got her tea in a to-go cup, and headed outside. I think she wanted to talk to Mr. Fallon, because he had come through the parlor before going out to water some of the plants by the house."
"Thanks," Finn said, and turned quickly.
"Hey, we'll be there tonight!" she called to him.
"Thanks, we appreciate the business," he told her, calling over his shoulder. He didn't know why, but he didn't want Megan alone anywhere near Fallon.
When he came out the front entry, though Megan was on the walk, Fallon was nowhere to be seen. He hurried to Megan. "Hey! You scared me. And I'm not so sure you should go looking for Fallon on your own. The old fart is creepy."
Megan smiled. "I think he's all right. Just a Wiccan."
"Oh?"
She kept smiling.
"So… ?" he queried.
She lifted a tiny velvet bag.
"And what's that?"
"It's a little satchel of some stuff called burdock," she said, and went on to explain, "It brings luck—and wards off evil spirits."
"You really think a little bag of stuff can help?"
"It can't hurt."
"You got it from Fallon?"
"Yes."
"Are you certain that it is the stuff called bird-whatever?"
She laughed. "Pretty certain. I've seen it at Morwenna's."
He nodded. "Okay, if it makes you feel better."
"Actually," she said, "it does." She stroked his cheek. "I'm wearing a pretty little medieval cross I picked up at a shop today, too. One or the other might just kick in."
"Sure," he said.
But he wondered unhappily just how many vulnerable young murder victims had been found clad either in their gold crosses or Jewish stars.
"We'd better get going," he said.
From the window of Huntington House, Susanna watched Megan and Finn go around to the parking lot.
When they were gone, she hurried outside.
At first, she saw no sign of Fallon.
Then he came ambling around the house, the garden hose in his hands.
She marched over to him furiously.
"What the hell were you doing?"
"Taking care of business," he snapped back at her.
"You stay clear of those two," she warned.
"You mind your own business, woman, and let me tend to mine," Fallon said.
"You steer clear of them!" Susanna persisted.
"I know what I'm about," he told her angrily, and turned on the hose. He didn't spray her, but made it darned obvious that he would, if she got in the way of his watering.
"I'm warning you!" she said, turning to walk away.
"Don't you warn me, woman," he said.
She swore at him then, but she was certain he didn't hear her. The old fool—always determined to have the last word.
The hell with him.
She marched back into the house.
Fallon could dig his own grave, if he so chose.
It was a full house.
The dance floor was packed.
Every table in the place was taken.
Costumes had grown more bizarre. A giant spider with twinkling colored lights at the end of each foot roamed the room, every spider leg issuing from the shoulders of the man beneath batting everyone he walked by. Black cats abounded among the women, but then, the black costumes were mostly very good, and very sexy.
There were witches galore. If Morwenna was out in the audience, she was surely about to have apoplexy by now. There were many stereotypical costumes, hag noses, broomsticks, tall pointed hats, striped hose beneath jagged hemmed skirts.
One woman had done an incredible job with face putty, creating huge warts and a nose that dipped to her chin.
There were also fairies, princesses, harem girls, and a number of women in far more beautiful costumes.
Wings were plentiful that night, and, like the legs of the spiders, they brushed those in the crowd. A number of wings were bent already.
There were monks, lots of them. Grim reapers, and more—brown capes and cowls worn with masks were easy costumes, and they, too, littered the dance floor.
Theo Martin had kept his word as well. Finn didn't know if Sam Tartan had put some money into it or not, but there were a number of police officers, in uniform, just outside the doors, as well.
At their first break, Megan told him that she was going to take a look around and see if Morwenna and Joseph were there. He set about changing a guitar string, looking out at the crowd as he did so.
There was a grim reaper standing about fifty feet from the stage, talking with a Barbie doll. He didn't know the man, didn't think that he did, at least, and yet something about him was vaguely familiar. A sense of unease filled him, but then, he realized, that didn't mean a damn thing because he was always uneasy these days.
Still, there was something. Maybe it was in the way he was standing. He took a longer look at the Barbie doll, but she appeared to be college age, and he was certain that he had never met her.
Tonight, he didn't see anyone he knew—or at least, anyone that he knew that he knew. In all the nights they had been working, he hadn't begun to see so many fantastic costumes.