Spiral (Spiral Series) (29 page)

Maxie jumped up and put her arms around Olivia. Natalie’s stepmother weakly hugged her back. Natalie wasn’t far behind, offering her new family member comfort. I knew she wasn’t entirely at ease with Olivia, but since Olivia’s son was in the hospital fighting for his life she looked determined to fight through it.

“It’s going to be okay,” said Maxie. Natalie’s friend had a very soothing voice, and at the sound of her words Olivia smiled weakly.

“Yes,” said Natalie, “tonight it is.” Hearing the words I had said to her said in turn to Olivia, my heart was warmed that she remembered them.

“Thank you all so much for waiting. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it and how much Andrew will appreciate it when he wakes up,” said Olivia, her voice low and frail.

“Is he going to be alright?” Maxie asked, her eyes wide.

Olivia let out a gurgle. “I don’t know,” she nearly wailed, collapsing into one of the plastic chairs. “They can’t tell me anything. He’s out of surgery, but they won’t know for at least twenty-four hours if. . . .”

She sobbed and covered her face, then tried again. “If. . . .” she tried again, following by more pausing and wiping of the eyes. “They don’t know if he’s ever going to wake up.”

I watched as Natalie sucked air in through her teeth. Her face looked stricken. I moved without thinking and touched her shoulder, and she instantly turned around and buried her face in my chest. Quickly, because I was afraid she would pull away, I wrapped my arms around her, relieved that just as I instinctively sought to give her comfort, she sought to receive it from me. Even if she didn’t know she remembered, there was a part of her that would always recognize a mirror part of me.

Maxie and Jill stood staring at us, visibly surprised by the PDA.  If the situation hadn’t been so series, I was sure that Maxie would have been grinning from ear to ear.

Jill cleared her throat. “What can we do?”

Olivia shook her head, looking as hopeless and crumpled as a deflated balloon. “There’s nothing to be done,” she said sadly. “I wish there were, but there isn’t. We just have to wait now. Wait and hope.”

I didn’t like the sound of that at all and I felt Natalie tense under my hands. Worry flowed through me at the thought that she might do something dangerous without realizing it.

“I should get back,” said Olivia, biting hard into her lip. “Nat, your dad and I are going to grab dinner in the cafeteria. Quickly. I don’t want to leave Andrew, but the doctor says I have to eat. I would be even more of a useless mess otherwise.”

“That’s a very rude doctor,” said Maxie indignantly. Olivia gave a watery laugh. “He didn’t use those words. Besides, Natalie’s dad agrees. Natalie, would you mind waiting in the other waiting room in case the doctors bring word?”

“Of course,” said Natalie. Both Maxie and Jill moved to go with her, but Olivia stopped them. “Sorry, but it’s family only.”

A shot of fear lodged in my chest. I tried to keep my body relaxed, but Natalie looked up at me with those large silver eyes, clearly sensing that I was worried about something. When she gave me a soft smile my heart nearly melted. “It’s okay. I won’t be long,” she said.

Without another word she followed Olivia out, leaving the three of us standing there staring after her.

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” Maxie asked, ringing her hands.

“Yes,” said Jill, but she didn’t sound as confident as she looked. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

Maxie cast a fearful glance at her friend. “I guess. It’s just so bad. How could this have happened?”

Maxie was having a hard time with the idea that just that afternoon we had seen Andrew so happy and full of life, excited for the baseball game, and now he was lying in a hospital bed with only a small chance of surviving until the next day.

“We have to do something,” said Maxie. Tears were starting to well up in her eyes. “Where is Jackson?”

“He went away for the weekend,” said Jill bitterly. “Again.”

Feeling the need to move I said, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Without explaining where I was going, I left. It wasn’t hard for me to find where waiting room that Natalie was supposed to be in, but I knew she wouldn’t be there. I knew she would be with Andrew, trying to heal him. She was too good not to try, and she had been kept in the dark too long, so that now she didn’t understand the potential consequences of using her hele. Now I was going to have to break my promise to my aunt and the other unicorns and tell her.

I sighed inwardly. I had gotten into trouble in my life, obviously falling off the rails after my mother and sister’s death, but this might get me kicked out of the Silves. There were serious consequences to telling those who didn’t know about us, even if they were unicorns themselves, what we were. I had been warned repeatedly not to tell Natalie. And yet I was about to do it anyhow.

I had decided a long time ago whose side I was on. And she was somewhere in this hospital.

I found Andrew’s room easily. The shades were pulled over the window next to the door, so I couldn’t see inside. But I went in anyway, not bothering to knock.

Natalie was standing next to the bed, staring down at her stepbrother.

At least, I had to assume it was her stepbrother, because I couldn’t see his face. Every inch of him was covered in bandages except for his nose. On his forehead was a red patch that looked like blood seeping through. My stomach churned just looking at him.

The Visioners had done this, the Visioners and the Silves, the Dekers and all the other unicorns who had refused to acknowledge Natalie and how important she was.

Natalie spun around, surprise replacing guilt when she saw it was me.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded nervously. Her hands were lying on Andrew’s bed, but thankfully not touching him.

“I came to stop you,” I said as calmly as I could, stepping into the room.

“Stop me doing what?” she asked, eyeing me questioningly as I closed the door behind me.

“Stop you from healing him,” I said.

She let out a gasp of surprise and fear, then crumpled into a chair.

A stunned silence followed Pierce’s pronouncement.

I felt like I was somewhere else, not really standing inside this intensive care hospital wing, with only the linoleum floor, a small metal chair and a pathetic plastic table for company, and instead had entered a weird twilight zone where this guy knew all my secrets and was looking at me like he really saw me. People didn’t look at me like that - like they knew me, like they cared. Except for my friends, they mostly looked past me, or around me, anywhere so as not to be reminded that I was the freak one in a town of perfectly normal people.

Lots of emotions fought for dominance inside me at that moment, but the strongest was shock, followed closely by fear and indignation. Pierce knew what I could do! He knew about the craziness warring inside me that I had fought so hard to keep hidden.

And he was just now, after three weeks of being here, mentioning it? Jill’s standard “how rude” didn’t come close to cutting it.

“How could Jackson have told you?” I asked him in shock.

He stared at me, his surprise almost as strong as my own. “What does Jackson have to do with it? HE KNOWS?”

“I told him about the healing! No one else knew! He must have told you.”

I realized I was yelling, and Pierce was holding up his hands for calm. He took two steps towards me, like he really was going to attempt to hug me, but he stopped when he took another look at my face.

“Don’t touch me,” I warned, even though he had already stopped moving. “Explain.”

He halted, his hands still raised. “You told Jackson?”

“Everything,” I said, my voice trembling. “A long time ago.”

Pierce dropped his hands and turned away slightly, muttering something that sounded like, “We should have known that.”

“Should have known what?” I asked loudly. “I’m still standing here, you know.” I was glaring, because it was the only thing I could think to do. I was also trying to hide my fear, but I probably wasn’t doing a very good job. My dad said that I was an open book that sometimes shouldn’t be read without disclaimers.

“I know you can heal. I know that’s what you want to do to help Andrew, but I’m telling you, no, I’m begging you, not to.” I wasn’t so sure he was begging as much as ordering.

“How do you know?”

“That you can heal?” His voice was wonderfully steady. “I know you can heal because of this.”

He reached out his hand. Andrew’s arm lay exposed, the only real flesh we could see against the plain white blankets that covered his body.

I watched in awe as Pierce’s hand reached for one of the many exposed cuts covering Andrew’s skin. Before Pierce’s hand had been in contact with Andrew’s arm for a second, the cut was gone. The skin closed up and the puss that had surrounded the area disappeared. The color went from purple to Andrew’s usual pale. Pierce removed his hand. There wasn’t even a scar to show that Andrew had been injured.

 I could only see him in profile, but I thought his eyes might have started to spark silver. Instead of being angry I found myself wondering if my eyes did the same thing when I healed.

“So, it does have something to do with our eyes?” I asked. I didn’t know what I was talking about, but I kept going. “Like, would the same thing work if we were wearing sunglasses when we tried to do it?”

Pierce threw back his head and laughed. “That’s a new one,” he said, still chuckling after he fought to get himself under control. “I haven’t heard that one before.”

I put my hands on my hips, indignant that Pierce thought I should know what was happening, and that he laughed at me when I didn’t.

“Well excuse me, Mr. Know-It-All. I was just asking a question,” I huffed.

Pierce’s face sobered instantly. “I’m sorry. It’s just. . . .” He chuckled a little more. “No, it’s not our eyes. That’s not the power source.”

When he saw that I was going to press further he shook his head. “It’s complicated. Just know that you and I are the same in all the ways that matter. Any differences only make us closer.” His tone made the statement unbearably romantic, even though he didn’t look romantic in the least. I was having an impossible time taking it all in.

“Okay,” I said, looking down to hide my confusion. “So, you can heal too. You know that’s not much of an explanation, right?”

“We don’t really have a lot of time at present,” he said dryly.

 “Fine. Just answer me this: I’m not crazy?” I said in a small voice. I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t help it. My secret had been weighing me down for so long it was as if I had been existing every day in chains.

Pierce had his arms around me so fast I didn’t even have time to tell him to stop, or to yell. He wrapped me in a strong hold, and as much as I struggled he wouldn’t let me go. His touch comforted me like nothing else could, and I felt safer with him there, but I also felt panic and increasing frustration. Still, I finally stopped pushing against his chest and just let my hands rest there, too tired to do much else. Slowly, Pierce reached his hand up to cover mine, squeezing my splayed fingers together.

“No,” he said finally. “You’re not crazy. But you can’t heal him,” he said softly, looking down at me with the kindest eyes I had ever seen. It took my breath away and I just stared up at him.

“Why not?” I asked, my voice still trembling.

“It’s a long story,” he said, sighing but not letting go of my hand. I desperately wanted him to hang on to it. He must have seen some of the pleading in my face because he gave my hand a gentle squeeze.