“For what?”
“I take care of crazy people. I mean, the way you see it. But most psychiatric patients are not that complicated when you get to the bottom of it. Some can be helped and some can’t. But each case is different. When it comes to something like this . . . mass psychosis or group irrationality—like the total abandonment of self-preservation required to stay in a burning building and keep fighting—doesn’t fall within the usual parameters of my work.”
His disappointment was obvious. It troubled Jenny that they were both looking to each other for answers and coming up with nothing. The only thing she could point to as potentially affecting the patients had been the weather. Bad storms were often disturbing to psychiatric patients, and for whatever reasons, she had always felt that the level of their agitation corresponded directly to how many of them were in the psych unit at any given time.
But weather couldn’t account for this. Not even freaky blue lightning striking the building and blowing in a wall. Yes, it might make the schizophrenics even wilder than usual, but to send half a dozen patients into seemingly homicidal, bestial rage, and doing the same to a member of the hospital staff . . . ridiculous. If it wasn’t the storm or the wrong medication, she couldn’t begin to imagine what could cause something like this. Jenny wished she could leave the investigation to the police, but it wasn’t just their problem. She and her colleagues would be studying the night from every angle, just as the cops would. But Jenny had a feeling they weren’t going to find any easy answers.
The most important thing was that the crisis had passed. The patients who had erupted in violent rages had been restrained and sedated, though not without injuries to themselves and to members of the staff. Alarms had sounded. People had bled. Bones were broken. Pinsky was dead, but no one was going to cry for a homicidal maniac with so much blood on his hands. They were very lucky no one else had been killed while the orderlies and the rest of the staff were getting the whole thing under control.
“If you think of anything . . .” the lieutenant said, all furrowed-brow business.
Jenny smiled, wishing that the left side of her face weren’t swollen and bruised. “You’ll be the first person I call.”
If the lieutenant had even the tiniest clue there might be some flirtation in her tone, he didn’t show it. Her timing was not ideal. The truth was, she couldn’t even really put her heart into flirting with the guy. The night’s events had gotten under her skin too much. But she did want to know his name, for future reference.
She was about to ask for his card when she saw Marlon coming out of the secure area. He spotted her and hurried over, a worried crease to his brow.
“Dr. O’Neil.”
“What’s up, Marlon?” she said. “I don’t like that look.”
“You’ve got to come and see Gregory Wheeler.”
Jenny frowned. “What is it? Don’t tell me he’s gone rabid all of a sudden?”
Marlon glanced from Jenny to the lieutenant and back again. “It’s probably better if you come talk to him.”
“
Talk
to him?”
“Can someone enlighten me?” the lieutenant asked. “My officers are still gathering information, but I don’t think there was a Wheeler on the list of patients who had outbursts.”
Jenny started walking. Marlon and the lieutenant caught up and the three of them hurried into the secure area, that propped-open door still troubling her. She paused a moment to release it from the magnetic catch and let it swing closed, hydraulics hissing.
“Greg Wheeler is a paranoid schizophrenic. Badly delusional,” she told the lieutenant. “He’s in the last room on the hall.”
“Where the window shattered,” the lieutenant said. “He’s a kid.”
Jenny almost corrected him, not about Greg being a kid—his parents were on the way down—but about the window. It hadn’t been Greg’s room where the wall had been so badly damaged, it had been Pinsky’s. But then she remembered that the window
had
shattered in Greg’s room. The frame was charred and the metal grate that covered the glass had been blackened. Lightning had hit the building in more than one place, but at least in Greg’s case, it hadn’t done more than break a little glass. If the wall had blown in, the boy might have been killed.
They passed police officers and security guards, nurses and orderlies. Many patients had been put in restraints in addition to being sedated. Some had been moved to other wards. Workmen were already in the damaged room boarding up the hole in the wall until more permanent repairs could begin. Pinsky’s charred remains had already been taken to the morgue. Several nurses tried to talk to her, but Jenny asked them to hold their questions for a few minutes. Police radios buzzed with static, and she thought she heard frantic voices.
“Seems like the police department is having a rough night,” she said.
“Chief Kramer has his hands full,” the lieutenant confirmed. “I’ve never seen a night like this. Crank calls. Heart attacks. People hallucinating all kinds of things.”
“How can you be so sure they’re hallucinating?” Marlon asked.
The lieutenant glanced at him. “If you heard the stuff they’re reporting, you’d know.” He glanced back at Jenny. “So, yes, we’re stretched pretty thin. Now that things are reined in here, I’m going to cut most of my guys loose. I’ll leave an officer here until morning, just in case anything else happens—”
“God forbid,” Marlon said.
“—and you can call me if you have any questions.”
The lieutenant produced a card and handed it to her. Pleased, she pocketed it, then turned all of her focus on the mystery of why Marlon had dragged her down here in the first place.
They arrived at Greg Wheeler’s room. A nurse stepped aside to let them through the door. Greg had been restrained earlier, so Jenny was surprised to find him sitting in a chair. His hair was combed and his clothes—a top and pants not unlike the scrubs the staff wore—seemed neatly arranged on him. When she walked into the room, he turned to look at her and a gladness filled Jenny, because she could see just from the look in his eyes that he
knew
her.
Greg smiled the disarming smile that she had come to recognize over the years. He only smiled like that when his paranoia had retreated, when he could like her and trust her. With that look on his face, he seemed like a completely different kid, sweet and intelligent and a little sad.
“Wow. Looks like there’s at least one person around here who’s having a good night,” Jenny said.
Greg nodded, smile broadening. When he spoke, he was animated and a little goofy, and he offered her a self-deprecating grin and a shrug, rolling his eyes. He spoke to her as he would a friend—and why not, they had known each other more than long enough to be friends.
Except he wasn’t speaking English.
Jenny stared at him. It wasn’t gibberish, either. The words had a cadence and rhythm and a repetition of certain sounds and even phrases that made her feel certain it was an actual language, but it wasn’t any language she had ever heard before.
“What the hell is this?” the lieutenant asked. “Where’s this kid from?”
Jenny glanced at Marlon.
“Greg’s from Salem,” the orderly replied. “Right down the street.”
“What’s he speaking?” the cop asked.
Jenny thought that was a damn good question.
CHAPTER 9
OCTAVIAN
wasn’t sure if the After Midnight Café had been designed to have a retro, fifties diner feel to it, or if it had just been that long since anyone had updated the décor. He and Keomany sat across the table from the vampire girl, Charlotte, in a red vinyl booth. In life, the vampire had been beautiful, with copper-red hair that hung in unkempt curls past her shoulders, and blue eyes that sometimes seemed to reflect back the colors around her. She had asked for his help, and Octavian would not turn her away, not even in the midst of this crisis. But she had him on guard. He read her fear and anxiety as genuine, but there was more to her than just that.
One look at her, and he knew she was hungry. Charlotte had an addict’s smile, twitchy and unsure, nervous energy making her fidget in her seat. Yet he could see the struggle going on within her as she tried to hide that hunger from him.
“When was the last time you ate?” Octavian asked.
Charlotte glanced at the menu in front of her, eyebrows knitting in frustration.
“I’m not talking about anything on that menu,” Octavian added, his voice lowered.
Beside him, Keomany sat up a bit straighter. He knew she had met vampires before, but despite that—and in spite of her intimacy with magic on an elemental level—she had no experience that would allow her to form an opinion about Charlotte. That would have to be Octavian’s job.
“Are you saying—” Keomany began.
“Too long,” Charlotte interrupted, glancing nervously at Octavian and then, almost demurely, down at her fingers. She alternated between drumming them on the table and scraping her nails against the plastic edging around the menu.
Octavian narrowed his eyes, growing very still. “You said you understood who I am.”
Charlotte gave a hollow laugh. “Who doesn’t? I mean, who of
us
?”
“I’m not one of you anymore,” Octavian replied.
She shrugged. “As if it’s that easy. I’ve heard about you. Read about you. Add in the time you spent in . . . well, in Hell . . . and you were a vampire longer than anyone. Long enough to evolve into whatever the hell you are now.”
Irritated, Octavian bared his teeth, just the way he had sometimes done in the days when they were sharper.
“This conversation isn’t about me, except to establish that you understand who you’re dealing with. I’ve never heard of you, never met you, never seen you before. You’ve admitted that you never signed the Covenant, and that makes you rogue. I could kill you right now and be well within my rights. International law is on my side. It practically demands that I end you.”
“Fine,” Charlotte said, leaning forward on her bench, red vinyl crumpling as she moved. She tugged down the front of her tank top, revealing an expanse of white cleavage and lacy black bra. “Go for it.
End
me. Or, y’know, let me answer the questions you brought me here to answer.”
Octavian bristled, but Keomany put a hand on his leg, under the table. He looked at her, saw the concern in her gaze, and he exhaled. What had gotten into him? Chaos? That made a certain amount of sense. The chaos that was quickly spreading through Hawthorne and saturating the community might well affect the people within its sphere of influence, even those connected to the supernatural. Perhaps, he thought, it would affect those individuals most of all.
The waitress arrived, cutting off whatever any of them might have said next. They ordered coffee all around, and Keomany asked for a slice of cheesecake. Somehow, that seemed to calm them all. There was something absurd about eating dessert in the middle of such chaos and hostility. Perhaps Keomany knew it, because she smiled and asked for three forks.
Octavian frowned as he noticed she was cradling one hand in her lap, and he realized she was still feeling the effects of her contact with the wraith earlier tonight. The trouble at the Troubadour, and now encountering Charlotte, had distracted him enough that he had nearly forgotten. Keomany had not complained, but watching her now, he knew that he would need to follow through on his earlier insistence that she rest tonight. He would cast a spell that would hopefully draw out whatever taint might be in her, or simply help her heal if it was only a matter of numbness and aching after the wraith had touched her. By morning, she ought to be fine. He needed her to be fine.
When the waitress departed, Charlotte opened her hands as though in supplication.
“Look, can we start again?” the vampire girl asked, her red hair falling across her face. Another day it might have made her sexy, but Octavian thought that tonight, the effect was altogether different. She seemed vulnerable, and very alone.
“Why don’t we start with what you’re doing here?” Keomany asked. “This whole town is falling apart. Peter and I are here to help, but the last thing we expected was an unregistered vampire.”
Charlotte sank back into her seat. For a moment she looked like a truculent teenager, but then she softened, making herself breathe when she didn’t need to—a cleansing breath, Octavian thought.
“None of this is my doing,” she said. “I mean, if that’s what you were thinking, you can unthink it. I’ve got nothing to do with this, except that I was in that club listening to the band when these people started trying to kill each other. It was that sudden, y’know? One second everyone’s just listening to the music, maybe chattering about the thunder because they could hear it over the band, and then—like someone fired a starter pistol—they’re going at each other, kicking and punching, grabbing anything they can use as a weapon, just tearing into each other. Fucking rabid animals.”
Octavian smiled, reaching up to scrape his palm thoughtfully across the stubble on his chin.
“Okay,” he said. “But that brings me back to my first question. It’s been a while since you ate. You’re as twitchy as a junkie looking to score. Were you at that club hunting?”