The Shaktra (8 page)

Rose hesitated. “She’s more a businesswoman, rather than a creative type. She works long hours and she makes everyone around her work hard. Understand, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. To be in her position you have to know how to get the most out of your people.” Rose lowered her voice, leaned closer. “But—between you and me—I wish she took more time for her daughter.”

“Toule is sort of out of the way,” Steve said. “I’m surprised she decided to locate her company here. Why didn’t she set up shop in Silicon Valley? Or in a big city like L.A. or San Francisco? Or Portland or Seattle?”

“It’s a pretty town. Anyone would want to live here. Where are you two from?”

“Bale,” Steve said. Ali had told them not to speak of Breakwater. She had also told them not to give out their real names to anyone in town, although Cindy had already broken that rule.

Steve was about to ask more about Ms. Smith when something horrible happened fifty feet in front of them. A blond teenage boy—he was a year or two older than them—was casually walking across the street, in the crosswalk, with headphones on, a skateboard in his hands, when a red SUV came around the block and raced toward him. Even with the music in his ears, the guy heard the vehicle and looked up. That was it—he didn’t have time to react, or if he did, the sight of the onrushing monster froze him in place.

The SUV hit him smack on, doing at least forty-five miles an hour. The force of the impact tossed the guy into the air for a second, then he hit the windshield and flew even higher. Before
he landed, the vehicle was already accelerating, tearing down the main street.

The rest of the day Steve kept remembering the noise the guy’s body made when he finally crashed onto the asphalt—a sick mushy sound, as if half his bones had shattered on impact, and then
sliced
into his muscles. Steve doubted that anybody could take such a hit and survive. They all jumped to their feet.

Rose screamed. “That’s Freddy! Freddy Degear!”

“Oh no! You know him?” Cindy cried.

Obviously, Rose knew him well. She had let go of Nira, and put a trembling hand to her mouth. “He’s the son of our next-door neighbor. This is horrible.” She drew in a breath. “Is he alive?”

A pool of blood had begun to form around Freddy, but he was moving, making noises. Steve did not run to his side. Already a policeman kneeled beside the guy, and other help was on the way.

“He’s alive. I’m sure an ambulance will be here soon,” Steve said to Rose.

Rose trembled. “Oh God. I have to tell his mother.”

“I have a cell phone you can use,” Cindy offered, reaching for her back pocket, clearly upset by the accident.

Rose shook her head. “I can’t tell her this on the phone! Freddy’s her only son! I have to see her!” Rose paused, glanced down at Nira, then up at the sky. It was almost as if in the midst of her misery, she was praying to be told what to do next. Cindy, who had yet to regain her color, took a step toward the woman.

“We could watch Nira for a few minutes, if it would help,” she said.

Rose hesitated. “I don’t know. Poor Freddy. What should I do?”

“You have to tell his mother what’s happened,” Steve said.

Rose came to a sudden decision, nodded her head. “All right then, I’ll go, I have to go. Just keep Nira beside you at all times. I won’t be gone long, I promise.”

Cindy nodded. “We’ll keep an eye on her. Take as much time as you need.”

Rose hesitated once more, just for a second, then hurried off down the street.

An ambulance arrived a few minutes later. By then a sizable crowd had gathered around the fallen boy, and it was difficult to tell if he was still moving. Steve could see the blood all over the ground, and people got it on their shoes—that did not look good.

“It was like that SUV hit him on purpose,” Steve said.

“It didn’t look like an accident,” Cindy agreed, sitting with her back to the scene of the accident, trying to shield Nira from the gruesome sight. For her part the girl appeared unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened. Nira played with Cindy’s blond curls, which seemed to relax her.

The ambulance loaded up Freddy and turned on its siren and raced off. From talking to people in the crowd, Steve discovered the hospital was only two blocks away.

As the sound of the ambulance’s sirens faded, the gathering began to disperse. However, two policemen remained and roped off the area, and took pictures of the puddle of blood from a dozen different angles. Eventually they asked around for witnesses. Steve and Cindy were, of course, prime material. They had been standing only a few feet away. But Steve was reluctant to get involved. He said as much to Cindy.

“But we have to tell the police what we saw,” Cindy said.

Steve nodded in the direction of Omega’s headquarters.

“I see Ali coming, let’s ask her,” he said.

__________

Walking back to her friends, Ali had heard the ambulance but had no idea what had happened. Yet that was not entirely true. Just before she had said goodbye to Mike Havor, she had felt a wave of dizziness, and had known from experience that there was a good chance that someone in the immediate environment had just been hurt. The empathic response was just another one of her fairy gifts, and it was a hard one to live with because it was a hard world and people were always getting hurt.

Then she had seen the dark puddle of blood in the middle of the crosswalk, her friends waiting nearby, and policemen scouring the area. Steve gestured for her to talk to them away from the cops, on the other side of the small park. For some reason Cindy was holding on to a little girl with a listless face and bright red hair. None of them spoke until they were some distance from what had clearly been an ugly accident.

“You won’t believe what we just saw,” Steve began. He told her the whole story about Freddy and the SUV, before Cindy backed up in time and explained how they had managed to inherit Nira.

“Does this Rose expect you guys to stay here?” Ali asked.

“Yes,” Cindy said, but she gave Steve a quick glance.

“I think she’ll go to the hospital first, with the guy’s mom, to see how he’s doing,” Steve said. “That’s what I would do.”

“We could go there and meet her,” Cindy suggested, and there was an odd note in her voice.

“If Rose comes back here looking for Nira and you’re gone, she’ll report you as kidnappers,” Ali said.

“We still think we should go to the hospital,” Steve said.

“Why?” she said.

Steve and Cindy exchanged looks.

“We were wondering, you know, if you could help the guy,” Cindy said.

“The way you helped Ted Wilson,” Steve added.

Ali frowned. “He was just taken in. I doubt I could get close enough to help him. I certainly couldn’t get him alone.”

“The SUV smashed him real bad,” Cindy said, wiping away a tear. “He was a nice-looking guy. I was just thinking it would be a pity, with you so close and everything, if we didn’t at least try to help him.”

Ali turned to Steve. “You say he was run down on purpose?”

“It looked that way.” He added, “If we go to the hospital now, you might be able to act like you’re his sister. They might let you in to see him.”

“It sounds like his mom is going to be there,” Ali said.

“We could beat her there,” Steve said.

“Don’t you want to try to heal him, Ali?” Cindy asked, pain in her voice.

“Sure I want to help him. But I cannot afford to call attention to myself, not when I’m just about to go back up the mountain.” Ali glanced toward the blood, added, “Odd that guy should get run down the minute we show up.”

“I thought the same thing,” Steve said.

Cindy was not buying it. “It had nothing to do with us!”

Ali studied Nira, the little girl’s red hair and the mark between her eyebrows. At first the mark looked like dirt to Ali, but when she knelt in front of the child and examined it closer, she saw that it was more a scar or a tattoo. Gray in color, with flaky red edges, it bore the distinct impression of a human thumb print.

Ali stared deep into Nira’s eyes. The girl’s blank expression did not change.

Yet Ali felt something in those eyes. Something vast and inexplicable, and it made her shiver. Looking at the girl’s face was like reaching the edge of a cliff that overlooked an ocean without
waves. She probably was autistic, but what did the word really mean? A soul without a personality attached? Ali sensed that Nira was cut off from the world, for whatever reason, but that there was still a world of life inside her.

“Rose hardly knows you guys. Why did she leave Nira with you?” Ali asked.

“She was in a panic. She could see we were good people,” Cindy said.

“We
were the ones who offered to watch her,” Steve said, adding, “Seriously, Ali, if you’re going to try to help the guy, we have to go now.”

Still, Ali had her doubts. “Rose works for Ms. Smith?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “She seems like a nice lady.”

“So Nira is Ms. Smith’s daughter?” Ali asked.

“That’s what we were told,” Steve said.

“Is there a Mr. Smith?” Ali asked.

“We don’t know their whole family situation!” Cindy cried impatiently.

Ali ignored her for a moment. “Did Rose give you a phone number where you could call her?” she asked.

“No,” Steve said. “But if you’d like, I can stay here until Rose returns.”

“Someone should stay here,” Ali agreed.

Cindy acted exasperated. “That guy could be dying this very second! Are we going to the hospital or not?”

Ali continued to study Nira. Their hair could have been cut from the same cloth.

“Let’s go to the hospital,” Ali said.

As they walked down the main street, leaving Steve behind, Nira reached up and took Ali’s hand. She took it and would not let go.

__________

They were too late. There was a small crowd gathered in the lobby of the clinic and they quickly heard that the teenager who had been hit by the SUV was dead. Ali was surprised to see Cindy burst out in tears, but felt too distracted to comfort her. The death of Freddy continued to strike her as an extraordinary coincidence, although for the life of her she could not imagine how he could be connected to them.

Even if he was dead, she still wanted to see him.

She told Cindy as much, and her friend stared at her like she was a ghoul.

“Leave him alone,” Cindy whispered, obviously drawing a line between healing and resurrection.

“You brought me here,” Ali said. She tried to give the little girl back to Cindy. “Here, take Nira, and look around for Rose.”

But Nira would not let go of her hand, and she was surprisingly strong. Ali was not sure what to do. Autism or not, she did not want to expose the girl to a dead body, particularly a bloody one. On the other hand, she was not even sure if she could get to Freddy. Steve’s idea of acting like Freddy’s sister was good in theory, as long as there was no family around, but in practice it might get her arrested. Again, she hated to take unnecessary risks with Pete’s Peak looming in her immediate future.

Ali knelt in front of Nira, in a corner of the lobby, spoke in a firm voice. “Nira, I have to go. You have to let me go. Cindy will take care of you until Rose comes back.”

In response Nira reached out and put her hand on Ali’s chest.

Exactly
where Ali had the Yanti hidden beneath her shirt.

Again, Ali felt a vastness, as if the little girl was not an empty shell, but a window into a place where there were no boundaries. Yet not a flicker of light shone in Nira’s dull eyes. She could have been the one who was dead.

The Yanti suddenly felt
hot
. As it had when she had healed Ted Wilson.

Another coincidence. Ali wondered what it meant.

But how could they heal Freddy? He was already dead. . . .

Ali stood. “I’ll take Nira with me,” she said.

“You’re not taking her into the morgue!” Cindy snapped.

Ali hesitated, not sure if she was trying to further her investigation of Omega and Ms. Smith, or if she was just indulging in careless behavior. She spoke to Cindy, “I’ll try to keep her from seeing anything gross.”

Cindy shook her head, angry now. Ali ignored her.

Hand in hand, Ali and Nira walked deeper into the hospital’s ER.

They never did run into Freddy’s family—which in itself was odd, Ali thought—but they bumped into plenty of nurses and doctors, and when Ali said that she was there to say goodbye to her brother, she was led to an isolated cubicle, whose windows had been curtained off. Freddy was inside, she was told by an elderly nurse, who withdrew out of sight.

Ali tried to keep Nira outside, yet the little girl refused to give up her hand. Ali could have broken the grip by force, of course, but it was as if Nira was trying to tell her that she liked her. Under Ali’s shirt, the Yanti continued to throb with waves of heat. It had never been so hot before. . . .

Together, they stepped inside the tiny room.

A weak corner lamp was the only source of light. As a result, there were more shadows than details, which Ali found particularly distressing with a dead body lying in the center of the room. He was covered, largely, but his blond hair stuck out of the top of a green sheet that was stained red, and the sight of it depressed Ali. As did the idea that their arrival in town might have caused the guy’s death. She had to fight to remind herself
that she had not been driving the SUV, and that there was still a good chance it had been nothing but a horrible accident.

Hoping Nira could not see up on the bed, Ali stepped to Freddy’s side and, with her free hand, gently pulled back the sheet. The nurses had done their best to wipe away the blood, but the right side of his face was badly swollen, and a sad blue color. His eyes were closed, thankfully. He did not look at peace but he was not suffering anymore, either—and for that she was grateful.

It was as Ali had anticipated. She did not recognize him.

Nira had finally let go of her hand, but she was trying to climb up on the bed.

“Stop, you have to leave him alone,” Ali scolded, trying to get her back on the floor. But once more the girl was tough, and she was beside Freddy, and staring at his wounded face, before Ali could get a grip on her.