A Shade of Vampire 26: A World of New (10 page)

R
eturning to Meadow Hospital
, Shayla took Josh to the X-ray room. A full-body X-ray, she said, would be the fastest way to determine where the tracker lay. She entered the room with him and closed the door behind her, leaving me to wait nervously outside. I hoped that the tracker wasn’t lodged someplace horribly intrusive.

I wasn’t left to wait long. Shayla emerged about a quarter of an hour later and allowed me inside. My heart lifted at the look of relief on her face.

“This should be an easy job,” she said. “They put it in his right heel. Just a minor surgery is required…” I read the rest of her thoughts. Since Josh couldn’t feel anything in his legs anyway, there shouldn’t be any pain.

We took Josh to the surgery room, helped him out of his chair and laid him flat on the operating table. Shayla decided to give him a mild anesthetic anyway, just in case. Beginning the procedure, she dug into the back of his heel and within a couple of minutes she had pulled out a long, thin, metal tracking device. It was so slim and small, it could have been mistaken for a needle.

Shayla destroyed it before healing his foot. Then she allowed Josh to slowly sit up.

“You feeling all right?” Shayla asked.

“Yes,” he murmured.

“You are now tracker-free,” I informed him.

The witch helped him back into his wheelchair and we returned him to his bedroom. He didn’t want to lie down, so instead we positioned his chair near the window, where he could look out at the sunflower meadow. Shayla drew up a chair opposite him, indicating that I do the same. Then, clearing her throat, she began, “Now that we’ve got the tracker out of the way, we really, really need to try to find out who you are. Why those hunters want you so much.” She paused, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve been thinking that, even though our first attempts failed, I, my fellow witches and the island’s jinn should keep trying. Different potions, different methods of magic, perhaps even the same ones repeatedly could get through to you. Would you be all right with that?”

He met her eyes, his expression dead serious. “I’ll drink any damn thing you feed me. Trust me when I say that I want to discover my identity more than you.”

“Good,” the witch said, rising to her feet and clasping her hands together. “So it’s back to the drawing board for me. I’m going to call a meeting with both witches and jinn. I think you can expect us to start with our various procedures within the day.” Shayla turned to address me. “I suspect that this will be a process that lasts several days. We should experiment with Josh as much as we possibly can, even though it may be overwhelming—we must get to the bottom of this.”

I couldn’t help but sense a deeper meaning to her words, a more chilling meaning. I sensed, more than burning curiosity to find out about his background, an underlying fear that I still had myself—that there could be something fatally wrong with him.

But whether that was or wasn’t the case, either way, we needed to unravel Josh’s mystery.

“So,” Shayla went on, “you will still have free periods together, of course, in between our calls. But I don’t want you to be gone too long at one time. Always take a phone with you and keep it switched on, because we could need him back at the hospital at a moment’s notice if one of us thought we were on to something.”

“Okay,” I said.

And so passed the next few days. Basically they became a constant bombardment of appointments with various jinn and witches—not just Shayla and Safi—and crazy numbers of potions swallowed, along with other magical procedures that were quite mystical to me. In between the appointments, I managed to take Josh to his new gym every morning, where his routines were gradually becoming more daring. After about a week, I noticed a pronounced difference in his arm muscles. Slowly, they were starting to take shape again. His appetite also remained steady, and he was able to continue eating solid foods.

In addition to his exercise routine, I took every opportunity that came my way to take him out for explorations around the island. We made it a habit to visit Sun Beach for at least half an hour in the mornings, and I showed him other parts of the island that he had not seen before. For some reason, he was particularly drawn to the lake, even more than Sun Beach. I didn’t offer to cook for him myself again after the omelets, but instead took him to my grandmother’s house for meals. She was delighted to meet Josh, and she was always happy to have guests for lunch.

I continued to take notes in my trusty polka-dot notebook, although the things that I picked up on were few and far between. He continued to be curious and ask questions about The Shade and the world around us, but I was able to learn very little more about him. Whenever I was around him, I found myself mostly answering questions, as well as broadening his knowledge on the supernatural dimension, until after the ninth day there really wasn’t much more I could tell him about the world that I hadn’t already. After all, my own knowledge of the outside world was fairly limited. I knew about it mostly from tales of my parents and other family members, because I had only recently joined the League and started going out on missions.

To my and Josh’s heavy disappointment, throughout these nine days, neither the witches nor the jinn had any luck with a cure. Though I couldn’t honestly say that this came as a surprise to me. I had been hoping against hope that if we just threw enough at him, we would reach a breakthrough. But it just wasn’t happening.

After Josh was in bed one evening, Shayla called me in for a joint meeting with the witches and the jinn, where they explained to me their failures.

“Nothing any of us have tried has worked, nor has shown even the slightest sign of working,” Shayla said, her round face glum.

“I think we just have to accept that the types of external cures we’ve been trying aren’t going to bring back his memory,” Safi said, looking hardly less disappointed than Shayla.

“It’s like his head is made of wood,” another Nasiri complained.

“So what?” I said, gazing around at each of their hopeless faces. “We’re going to admit defeat?”

Nobody responded except Shayla, who simply shrugged. “Unless one of us has a break through. But all of us have worked pretty much nonstop for the past nine days. Working for another nine days isn’t going to make a difference. We are no further than when we started.”

I blew out a sigh, slumping back in my chair. Safi’s words played over in my head.
An external cure.
Meaning a forced cure, induced by some sort of magic. It was endlessly frustrating. I
knew
that Josh held memories. More memories than he was revealing. He was not as far gone as I had initially thought—I’d seen for myself how some things were instinctive to him. Which meant that he remembered them. It was just a matter of figuring out how to bring them to the surface. I was sure of it.

In any case, everyone around me was clueless, and sitting here in this meeting any longer didn’t feel like it would bring us any closer to a solution. Since it was late anyway, I stood up and bade them good night. I went straight home and headed to my bedroom, where I pulled out my laptop. I stayed up for hours scouring the web for any mention of a missing Brit named Josh. My search proved fruitless. I found a man of the same name—a couple actually—but their pictures weren’t of our Josh.

I flopped into bed, but did not sleep. I lay awake, tossing and turning.

If only those two oracles were still alive…

Perhaps it was because I was younger and more naïve, possessing not even a fraction of the knowledge that those witches and jinn had. But one of the many things that my father had instilled in me was determination. Doggedness. Even in the face of the seemingly impossible.

I wished that he was here now. I distracted myself momentarily by wondering what was going on with the League. Although they had been gone a long time now, I was not really worried. They had a big task to complete, after all—scouring the entirety of The Woodlands to rid it of hunters.

Thoughts of Josh once again filled my mind. Since I was clearly not going to fall asleep anytime soon, I switched on my bedside lamp and dove my hand into the backpack I had hung at the end of my bed. I withdrew my notebook, lay back again, and began paging through my notes.

After scanning all of my comments, it was clear that we only had two strong pieces of information. Firstly, his accent, and secondly, his inbuilt instinct for physical training. From the moment I’d first seen his build, I’d thought that he must’ve been some kind of athlete or fighter. Coupling this with the fact that he had been caught by the hunters… I paused in my train of thought.

What if he wasn't actually caught, per se?

The idea hit me like a sock in the gut.

What if he had been a hunter himself?

That would certainly explain a lot of things. His build, for one, and also the fact that they were able to catch him in the first place. If he’d been one of the hunters, he would’ve been an easy target. What if he was originally from one of the IBSI’s UK bases?

So many
what-ifs
crowded my brain that I struggled to contain them all. And the idea that Josh could have been a hunter chilled me. I’d developed an inbuilt hatred for all members of the IBSI. Then again, even if he had been one, for them to have handled him like this, he couldn’t have gotten along with the rest of them. He must have been opposed to them in some way or other to have been treated the way he had been. I couldn’t imagine what person in their right mind would have been willing to go through such torture. And now that he had woken up from his stupor, he had an inbuilt desire to avoid them at all costs. If he truly had volunteered himself for whatever procedure they were performing on him, why would he be so averse to being taken back by them? No. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that he had cooperated with them. He must have been taken by force.

But how do I verify any of these ideas for a fact?

Am I not just back to square one, speculating and musing?

I recalled how his knowledge had come to the surface when faced with me using that exercise machine incorrectly. It had sparked some memory deep within him. A familiar situation. In his previous life, he had been around gym equipment… Just as he must have been around England for at least some period of his existence.

What if we took him to a familiar setting?

What if we took him to England? And more specifically, the IBSI’s headquarters?

I immediately saw a glaring problem with that. I did not know how many bases the IBSI had in the United Kingdom. How would we know which one he had been a part of? I supposed that the headquarters would be a good place to start… But that could lead us on a wild goose chase if it was not the right one.

Not to mention the risks taking him there would pose. Especially since we would need to get close enough in order for him to recognize the setting… How close exactly?

It was not so easy for us to enter IBSI’s headquarters. Fae were the only species we knew for certain could bypass their hyper-sensitive alarm systems—and only those who were fully fae, at that. I would not be able to get away with it, being half human and unable to transform into a subtle state like my father could.

Still, nobody seemed to have any other ideas regarding how we could move forward with Josh. There would be no harm in suggesting it to Shayla and seeing what she said. We could go to wherever the headquarters were—I believed they were in London, though I would need to verify that with the witch—and then play things by ear. Who knew? Maybe simply taking him to his home country would draw back a whole slew of memories, and we might not even need to approach IBSI’s territory.
That would really be best…

E
arly the next morning
, I found myself sitting in Shayla’s kitchen while she threw together a quick breakfast for herself.

“So is that where IBSI’s headquarters is in England?” I asked her. “London?”

“As far as I know,” she said. “At least, that’s where they used to be.”

“Then what do you think?” I asked, quirking a brow.

She took a seat at the table opposite me, a serious expression on her face as she munched on a bowl of granola.

“I think your logic is sound,” she said after a pause. “Taking him to his home country could very well be the trigger that we need, since it seems that whatever memories are buried within him have to surface naturally, rather than being forced by our artificial means… But—assuming that he really was a hunter, which is a rather big assumption—as you say, depending on how close we have to take him to hunter headquarters, this plan could come with a lot of risks.” She paused for a swig of orange juice. “That said, I don’t see any harm in taking him back to England and seeing what happens. We might not need to make it as far as their headquarters. We could check into a hotel somewhere, I suppose… But we would obviously need to keep a low profile. We can’t have anyone recognizing him.”

“You would need to forge some IDs for us, I guess?”

“Yes,” she replied, “if we’re to stay in a hotel… I’m assuming that you haven’t mentioned any of this to Josh yet?”

I shook my head.

“Right.” She stood up, downing the last of her orange juice. “Okay, we’ll do it. Just you, me and Josh.”

She dumped her bowl in the sink before grabbing her handbag and touching my arm. She transported us to the hospital kitchens, where we picked up some breakfast for Josh before heading upstairs.

As we entered his room and approached Josh’s bed, I immediately noticed something different about him. He looked terribly ill compared to yesterday. There was not even the slightest warmth to his cheeks—he was pale as a sheet.

“Josh?” Shayla said. “You feeling okay?” She placed an arm around him and propped him upright so that he leaned against the headboard.

“I’ve felt better,” he said dryly.

“Let’s give you some of this warm breakfast.” Shayla poured out a bowl of soup, but when she handed it to him, he shook his head.

“Really not hungry,” he muttered.

“Try to eat something anyway,” Shayla pressed.

He took the bowl from her reluctantly before gingerly raising a spoon to his lips. Then he retched, though thankfully, he didn’t vomit. He spat the soup in his mouth back into the bowl. He shook his head again, returning the bowl to the witch. “I can’t eat anything now.”

“I wonder why,” Shayla muttered. “Grace said that you were eating solids only yesterday.”

“I don’t know,” he replied, resting his head back. “I wasn’t feeling all that hot last night, but when I woke up this morning, I had an awful stomach pain—still have.” He grimaced.

Shayla and I exchanged worried glances.

His eyes turned to me, an almost apologetic look on his face. “Won’t be able to visit your gym this morning either,” he said.

I cleared my throat. “Josh,” I began, even as I considered that now was probably the worst time to be talking about a trip since he was feeling so unwell. “Shayla and I have been talking. Neither the witches nor jinn have made any headway in forcing your memories back so we were thinking that we ought to try taking you somewhere… To your home country, England. London, specifically, at least at first. That’s where the IBSI’s headquarters are located. We’re hoping that it might trigger something… you know?”

Wincing, he propped himself up higher in bed, so that he could look at the two of us better. “London,” he murmured. “How would we get there?”

“Shayla would transport us with her magic.”

He shrugged loosely. “For how long?”

“We don’t know,” Shayla replied. “The plan would be to check into a hotel and just… see how things go. How you react to your initial surroundings. Whether there’s any spark.”

“All right,” he said, wincing again as though experiencing a shot of pain. “When do we leave?”

“Today,” Shayla replied. “At least, that was my plan before we found you like this.”

He shook his head. “No, I-I’ll be okay. Hopefully this is just an off day and I’ll be feeling better tomorrow. We should leave today, just as you planned.”

Shayla examined his face a moment longer, gauging his response. Then she sighed. “Okay.” She reached for the phone to call Tom to assist Josh in getting ready, but before she could place her hand on the phone, Josh reached out and caught her arm.

“Wait,” he said. “I want to get ready myself this morning. Grace can wait outside the bathroom. I can always tell her if something goes pear-shaped.”

Pear-shaped. I’d never heard that expression before. But I guessed well enough what he meant.

I felt nervous about Shayla agreeing to this after his last attempt at doing something himself in the bathroom. She also looked reluctant. However, she agreed.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said. “I have some of my own preparations to do. I’ll be back once I’m ready.”

She left the room.

I couldn’t help but wonder why today of all days Josh was insisting on this particularly. I knew that he never liked getting assistance for taking a bath, but he had put up with it until now. Why today of all days when he was feeling particularly down?

He slowly inched toward the edge of his bed and reached for the back of his wheelchair. I watched anxiously as he grabbed the chair’s arms. He pushed himself off the bed and slid into it. He winced as his hip banged against the side, but he shook it off and began wheeling himself to the bathroom.

I followed him to the door, which, thankfully, he kept open for the time being as he approached the sink. His toothbrush and toothpaste had been set within reaching distance, so it wasn’t difficult for him to manage brushing his teeth alone. But what I was most worried about was how he would manage in the bathtub. When he finished cleaning his teeth and moved to close the door on me, I was so tempted to ask him if he was sure about this… but I didn’t. Instead I just remained waiting tensely outside, my ear against the door, listening. I heard the squeaking of his wheels against the shiny floor, and then the running of water.

I waited for the sounds of him gripping the side of the bathtub and hauling himself in… but they didn’t come. When there was still silence after a couple more minutes had passed, I dared call, “You okay?”

“Yep,” he replied, a little tensely.

“Okay,” I said. “Was just wondering what the holdup was…”

“I, uh…” He swore beneath his breath. “I’m just thinking that I probably should take some help now, actually. Getting into the tub… I’m wearing boxers, obviously,” he added quickly.

“Oh. Of course.” I’d thought he had been hinting for me to call for Tom, not that he was requesting my help. “So can I come in now then?”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

Grabbing the handle, I pushed open the door to find that he’d wheeled himself to the edge of the tub. He twisted in his chair to face me, looking almost ashamed. My eyes fell from his face to the rest of his pale, bare body. I was impressed that he’d managed to get his pants off by himself, as well as his nightshirt. Now he sat, wearing a pair of black boxer shorts. I couldn’t help but notice his physique. Even the short time that he’d been using those weights had made a difference. His chest, torso and arm muscles were significantly more pronounced—not exactly toned, but no longer shadows.

This was also the first time that I was seeing his legs uncovered. They were long and lanky, but I’d expected them to look more slack than they did. Rather, the muscles in his thighs and calves resembled the muscles in his chest and arms before he had started working out—once sculpted, since faded, but still distinguishable. If he could only move his legs, I guessed it would not take long for him to get those back in shape either.

When he cleared his throat, his eyes still fixed on my face, I realized that I had stopped to ogle him a little too long. My cheeks warmed. “Sorry,” I said, raising my gaze.

I had never helped a man of his size into a tub before. I wasn’t exactly short, but I guessed that he was at least six foot in height, if he’d been able to stand. I was strong, though. And he was slim. Rolling up the sleeves of my cardigan, I moved forward and lowered to him until my cheek was almost touching his.

“You can put your arms around me,” I said.

He raised his arms and placed them around my neck, while I wound mine around his waist. Slowly but surely, I eased him out of the chair and sat him on the edge of the tub. While he was perched there, I removed a hand from his midriff and trailed my fingers in the water to make sure that it was the right temperature. It felt pleasantly warm.

Now I had to be careful, as I lowered him the rest of the way into the tub, to make sure that I didn’t lose my balance and fall on top of him.
That would be so awkward…

When his backside touched the base of the tub, I let go of him, allowing him to sink into the water, before picking up his legs and easing them in too. I straightened and looked down at him with a sense of pride. “There. That wasn’t too difficult.”

“Thank you,” he said, before reaching for a sponge.

I considered leaving now, but since he wasn’t glaring at me or hinting that I did, I decided to stay. I drew up a stool and sat quietly at the edge of the tub while he began soaping himself.

“You must be incredibly bored with me by now,” he said, slanting me a glance.

I frowned at him.

“After you were introduced as my caregiver,” he clarified, “I didn’t think that you would remain with me all this time.”

I raised my brows. “Why would you presume that?”

He shrugged, wiping his face and looking away. “Well, you’re only seventeen, right?”

“Yes…”

“Is this really what seventeen-year-old girls want to do with their time?”

I paused, considering my response. I thought to reply that this was my work experience, but during the days we’d spent together, I had come to see this as a lot more than that. Plus, I didn’t want him to think that this was just an excuse for me to skip classes. Because it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Heck, I’d become so invested in his wellbeing that I’d lost sleep on several nights.

“I can’t speak for others,” I said tersely. “But I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that I have been anything but bored since you arrived on the island.”

He fell silent, looking not quite satisfied with my answer.

“What about you?” I countered. “Aren’t you bored with me yet?”

His eyes shot up to meet mine. “You are joking, aren’t you?”

“No,” I replied, my face deadpan.

A smile curved his lips. He shook his head. “I imagine it would be quite hard to get bored with you.”

Now it was my turn to smile. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, you’re… an interesting person, Grace. Leaving aside the fact that you’re half fae, you’re full of stories. You have strong opinions about things. You’ve lived a colorful life.”

“Okay,” I said, my smile broadening. “I can take a compliment. I find you to be interesting, too.”
Interesting enough for me to be a creeper and keep a constant diary about you.
“And I’m sure that you’ll be even more interesting once we get back your memories.”

“Hm.” His smile faded. “If.”

“I prefer ‘once,’” I said.

His grin returned. “Okay, Grace. Once.”

His mood seemed significantly lighter as he continued washing himself. I wondered if even his stomach pains were subsiding, because he wasn’t wincing quite so much. Perhaps he was just distracted by our conversation.

“Why did you insist on doing this yourself today?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“Well, I can’t fit my exercise in,” he replied, wiping his face with a washcloth. “The least I can do is try to shift my own weight… That, and I suppose… something of you has rubbed off on me.”

“What do you mean?”

He looked up. “I’m not sure if it’s been intentional on your part or not,” he replied, “but the message I’ve gleaned from you is to make the most of what I’ve got, while I’ve got it. When I feel beaten down, strive harder… or whatever.” He smirked self-deprecatingly. “Or maybe I’m just spewing crap.”

My eyes widened. It had not been a conscious decision on my part to try to impart any kind of message to Josh. But it was true that in setting up his gym and taking him there every day to work his upper body, I’d wanted him to make the best use of whatever he found himself with. Wasn’t that what we all ought to do in life, appreciate what we had and make the most of it, rather than hankering after what was out of reach? At least, that was what my parents had always told me.

“Well, that’s, uh… that’s good crap,” I said.

He chuckled. “It is.”

We both fell into silence for a while before he spoke again. “What do you plan to do with your life when you grow older?”

“Hm…” I fingered the edge of the tub. “More of the same, I suppose…” Not that there really was anything “of the same” here in The Shade. There was always something different or unexpected going on. “I’m a member of the island’s League and I intend to remain so for as long as I live… at least, that’s what I think.”

I wished that I could have returned his question and received his answer. Though if my speculation that he was once a hunter was correct, he would have already decided what he’d wanted to be.

Neither Shayla nor I had mentioned this to him yet—this wild guess. I didn’t see any reason not to mention it to him now.

“You know,” I began tentatively, “I have a theory about you.”

He laid down his sponge and cocked his head to one side. “What’s that?

“I have a feeling that you used to be a member of the IBSI.”

His brows practically touched his hairline. “Seriously? Why would you think that?”

I explained my reasoning, however shaky it might be. By the time I was done he didn’t have much to say to counter it.

“I suppose anything’s possible,” he said.

He fell silent for a while as he mulled over the idea.