I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to the punch.
He cleared his throat. “There’s one other thing I wanted to say to you, Harley.”
“What did you want to say?” My eyes went wide with anticipation. Is this it? Is this where he admits he likes me? Is this the start of Merlin and Crowley? Sheesh, that sounds like a bad law firm. Still, I’m all for it.
“Your hair is dripping all over the place. You should probably get upstairs and get changed before someone slips and cracks their head open.”
Wow… way to pop my thirsty little balloon. You, Wade Crowley, are a colossal asshat.
“Didn’t realize you’d been promoted to head of custodial services,” I muttered, blushing furiously. Snatching my towel from under my arm, I bent over and mopped up the puddle of pool water from the slick marble. I didn’t care that my stupid robe had come undone again. I just wanted to clean the mess up and get out of there before I could suffer any more blows to my ego.
“Happy now?” I asked, standing up. His eyes snapped straight to my black swimsuit, with all its complex cut-outs and slinky gaps and strings. A rush of unrestrained emotions barreled into me, filled with an intense longing. Well, a couple of those boys back there at the pool did whistle and call me a snack. I yelled a couple of curse words at them. But looks like they aren’t the only ones who appreciate Tatyana’s ridiculous swimwear on me. The sight of his bugged-out eyes amused me.
Wade coughed loudly, finding a spot on the ceiling to look at. “I need to get back to… um… Alton asked me to gather some… um… yeah, I need to get back to the investigation. There are a couple of potential places that Marjorie saw in her visions, and I promised Alton I’d go over them before the morning. Correlate them with a map of California, you know, that kind of thing.”
I smiled. “Happy hunting. I should probably get to my room before I get thrown out of here for indecent exposure.”
“I… goodnight, Harley.” He dipped his head in a quirky half-bow and skirted past me, hurrying off down the hallway beyond.
As I made my way up to the living quarters, with a huge smile on my face, I thought back to what Wade had said about summoning the Children of Chaos. I’d deliberately kept the whole debacle with the Grimoire from Wade, since it had involved breaking the rules and he’d definitely have given me more than a slap on the wrist for it. Plus, I was gripped with a crippling fear that the Mage Council might somehow find out about what I could do and lock me away for their own purposes. Isadora had mentioned something about being a pawn. What if they did that with me? Or, what if they locked me away because I was too dangerous?
I trusted Wade, but I had no way of knowing whether the information about me might somehow get leaked. They might not even be able to keep my secret, given the implications. If I could do something that dangerous, they might have to tell someone—for my own sake as well as everyone else’s. The thought left me jangling with terror.
However, as I walked, I vowed to submit a formal request to view the book again so I could read more on the sections about the Children of Chaos. Especially Erebus.
I’d have to come up with a way of viewing the Grimoire without getting utterly consumed by it every time I touched its pages. I wondered if removing the Dempsey Suppressor might give me the strength I needed to overcome the power of the Grimoire and control it, rather than be controlled by it.
A previous thought flashed like a firework in my head. I felt surer of it now. If I can get rid of the Suppressor and harness my full strength, maybe I’ll be able to find a clear way to get to these kids. My Empath abilities had seen things in the past, using photographs as a medium—they’d seen and felt Marjorie’s fear, after she’d run from the Ryder twins. If I was stronger, maybe I could follow that scent to wherever Katherine was hiding these children. It might be enough to break through her barriers. It was just the Suppressor that was holding me back.
There was only one man who could help me.
I hurried to my room and threw some clothes on. I twisted my wet, red hair into a bun, then darted straight back out. It was late, but I needed to see Dr. Krieger immediately, to discuss the surgery again. With all these dead ends and false steps, we’d reached an impasse in our investigation. Right now, he was my only hope… Scratch that, our only hope.
Twenty-Four
Harley
I arrived at the infirmary ten minutes later, cold water dripping down my neck from my hastily tied bun. Krieger had been sick for days now, but I figured he had to be well enough to talk about the surgery. He hadn’t been sent to the hospital or been quarantined or anything—at least, not that I knew of. There hadn’t been a lot of news on him at all, the whole situation being kept on the down-low. With everything else going on, and the coven in turmoil, I guessed Alton hadn’t wanted to make a fuss about it.
Walking into the triage room, I glanced around for a nurse, but there was nobody around. Puzzled, I pressed on to the long-term injuries wing, knowing there had to be someone in there who could help me find Krieger. The infirmary was staffed twenty-four-seven, at least in this part.
I pushed open the heavy double doors and froze on the threshold. The space beyond was eerily empty and quiet, the beds vacant and neatly made. I let the doors fall closed behind me and made my way through to the ward at the far end. It was our equivalent of an ICU, and I’d been here a couple of times before. After the gargoyle incident, this place had been teeming with victims of the attack, myself included. Still, hospitals freaked me out.
Slipping into the smaller room, I peered through the dimly lit gloom. There were no harsh strip lights here, only the soft glow of bedside lamps, illuminating the empty beds. A scuff of bare feet on linoleum made me pause. Someone stood in the middle of the room, their shadow barely visible.
A shiver of fear ran up my spine as a zombie-like groan wheezed through the air toward me. I flipped the light switch, and the main lights blinked into life.
Krieger stood in the central aisle. He gazed at the walls and the beds, but nothing seemed to register. It was as though he couldn’t quite focus on his surroundings and didn’t know how he’d managed to get there in the first place.
What the…
“Dr. Krieger, are you okay?” I asked. My eyes darted toward the mottled, warped skin of his bare arms. He was wearing a hospital gown, though the back had mercifully been tied shut. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from his arms. The flesh had been severely burned, raw patches glistening in the cold light. By the looks of it, he’d tugged away his bandages, exposing the tender wounds beneath.
He turned around with a weird, fixed smile on his face. “Everything is just fine,” he replied, in his Germanic lilt. I was instantly reminded of clowns at kids’ birthday parties, with their fake smiles and too-bright voices.
I approached him slowly. “Are you sure, Doc? You don’t look too good.” I glanced at his arms again. “What happened to you?”
“Nonsense, I am perfectly well,” he said cheerfully.
“I’m going to go and get someone. Don’t go anywhere, okay? I think your meds might be messing with you.” Something was clearly off about him, and I wasn’t about to wrangle him back to whichever room he’d come from. Not on my own.
I turned to leave, only to hear the rustling shift of his body as he lunged toward me and wrapped his clammy hand across my forehead. His fingers and thumb dug into both my temples. Every cell in my body screamed to break free, but my limbs wouldn’t listen. It was like a blockade had been put up between my muscles and my mind, stopping them from communicating. I couldn’t move at all, everything frozen in one position.
“What do you plan to do about Katherine Shipton?” he asked, in an icy voice that didn’t seem to belong to Krieger at all.
“We plan to find the powerful children and stop her from using them in her attempt to become a Child of Chaos,” I replied, the words tumbling out of my mouth unbidden. He might as well have cracked my skull wide open with a can opener and scooped out the intel he wanted.
“Stop!” a female voice shouted. Someone burst into the room through a door at the far end of the ICU. With my body half twisted, I couldn’t see who it was. A moment later, I heard boots pounding on the linoleum, Preceptor Bellmore’s face coming into view shortly after. It didn’t feel like Krieger had any intention of stopping or letting me go.
Preceptor Bellmore scanned the room, settling on a pitcher of water that stood by one of the beds. Her Esprit glowed as a twisting pillar of liquid rose out of the glass jug, mixed with a healthy dose of ice cubes, and swirled toward Krieger. It careened in a tumbling orb into the side of his face, splashing down with a spray of ice-cold water that hit me in the back of the head. I wanted to cry out in shock at the freezing cold pellets biting into my skin, but Krieger had yet to relinquish his hold on me.
As Preceptor Bellmore brought another orb of icy water down over his head, soaking him completely, his hand loosened on my forehead. Regaining my senses, I ducked away from him and staggered forward, clawing breath into my lungs. He blinked rapidly and stared at his palms as though they belonged to someone else. Slowly, he raised his gaze to me, a bemused look glinting in his eyes.
“Are you kidding me, Krieger? I was gone for five minutes!” Bellmore chided. “You promised me you could stay awake for five damn minutes, if I left you alone. I guess it’s my fault for believing you, huh?”
Krieger dropped his gaze, looking ashamed. “I thought I had control. I was reading a rather interesting book to help with the magical detector project—I was right in the middle of a fascinating chapter, and then… well, I suppose I ended up here. I don’t remember leaving my bed. I don’t know how this could have happened.” He glanced at me again. “Oh, Harley, please accept my humblest apologies. I hope I didn’t scare you too much. I was not in control of my faculties.”
I shook my head, blinking in confusion. A few seconds ago, I was sure he’d done something to me, but now… I couldn’t remember anything from the last couple of minutes. There was a slight throbbing in my temples, but that was it. Did I hit my head? I had a couple of hazy memories of walking into the ICU and seeing him in the central aisle, but after that—well, that was anyone’s guess. And hey, why is the back of my shirt soaking wet?