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Here I am again, sitting in a truck, trying to convince another guy that I’m dead, I thought. It sounded like a country song gone bad. My death was so messed up. Sighing, I said, “Good. Don’t believe it. Just go along with it for a few more hours. You’ve got the patch?”
He touched his pocket and nodded.
“They’re going to want to know who I am,” I said, taking my wallet out of my pocket and putting it in the glove box, having to wedge aside another handful of music discs. My phone went next to it, and I hesitated. It was my only link to my dad. Putting it aside felt wrong.
“I so don’t want my dad getting a call that I’m in a morgue half a state away,” I said. “Can you tell them my name is Wendy?” Wendy wouldn’t mind. She’d think it was hilarious. “Tell them you met me at the mall and we were going to a movie or something, and I just fell over?”
Shoe didn’t look good. Actually, he was almost green in the dim security lights. “I don’t know…” he started.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” I exclaimed, feeling the pinch of time. “You’re going to be blamed for three deaths, and you’re worried about lying to the receptionist about where we met? Take me in, and when they tell you I’ve died, get upset and ask if you can go to the bathroom to throw up. Meet me at the elevators at the lowest floor. You’ve got an access key.”
He touched his pocket where Ace’s mother’s ID was, and, looking pained, he nodded. “Why don’t you just take the patch and upload it?” he asked as he brought it out.
The sight of the dripping black wing shivered through me. “Me?” I said. “I don’t know anything about computers. You have to do it.”
Reluctantly he slid it away. “What about after?” he asked. “You dead? Me bringing you in? The cops?” Then he paused. “You said Barnabas could change memories.”
I nodded, and, looking even more uncomfortable, Shoe licked his lips. “Don’t change mine, okay?” he asked. “I want to remember this.”
“Okay,” I said quickly, just wanting to get on with it. I didn’t know how long they would let me lie there before moving me downstairs. “When this is over, I can always simply go back to the morgue and get off the table,” I said. “They’ll think their instruments were off and I wasn’t really dead. It’s a freaking miracle.”
“I mean it,” Shoe said, his voice loud, and I looked at him. “Don’t make me forget. If you take that from me…what’s the point?”
My heart gave a thump and stilled. “Okay,” I said, meaning it this time.
He looked at me for a long moment, then put the truck back into drive. “This had better work,” he muttered.
“It’ll work,” I said, but it was kind of scary. I’d have to make sure my heart didn’t start up, and it usually did when I was stressed. And I’d have to make sure I didn’t smile and ruin it. If they put me in a drawer, I was going to be stuck until Shoe found me. But there weren’t many choices here. If the patch wasn’t in place by six, people were going to die. It would be my fault.
Nervous, I slumped in the seat against the door and concentrated on listening to the emptiness of no heartbeat. Slowly it settled and stopped. Identity hidden—check. Pulse stopped—check. My amulet, I thought, worried that someone might try to take it off me.
“Wait!” I said loudly, and the truck jerked to a stop. “I have to hide my amulet,” I said sheepishly.
Shoe’s eyebrows went up in question, and I settled myself to concentrate, glad that I’d been working on this. Taking my amulet in my hand, I thought about it, how it felt in my grip, smooth, warm, and how it was a violet so deep that it was really black. I looked at it with my mind’s eye, seeing how it touched the divine, filtered it so I wouldn’t destroy myself when time echoed in my thoughts. It resonated with the sound of my soul, of the universe. It felt alive. And if I twisted the weight of it just so…light would bend around it.
A warm sensation filled me. Knowing it had worked, I opened my eyes and let go of my amulet. It thumped back against me, but it was gone. Damn, I loved it when I could do something.
“Oh, my God, it went invisible,” Shoe said, sounding scared. “Shit. You really are dead,” he said, white-faced.
I smiled, trying to reassure him. “Now you look like you’ve got a dead girl in your truck. Let’s go.”
Taking a deep breath, he turned to the hospital entrance. “I’m going to get in so much trouble for this,” he whispered, hands shaking as he put the truck in drive and revved the engine.
I closed my eyes again, forcing myself to go limp. I’d made my amulet invisible before, but never when it mattered like it did now. I’d have three balls in the air, and I didn’t know if I could do it. I had to keep the memory of my heart quiet, keep myself from twitching when they tried to bring me to life, and I had to keep my amulet hidden. I didn’t know if I could do this.
But I had to.
Twelve
The double doors shut with a hush of sound when the orderly who had wheeled me down to the morgue went to get a soda. In an explosion of motion, I sat up, shoving the sheet off me as if it were a snake. Angry, I looked down at my shirt, trying to get the ragged edges to cover me. It was my favorite shirt, the one I’d bought for the first day of school, and they ripped it as if it were a discount special. My tights, too, had suffered, but my shirt was the worst where they had poked, prodded, and arced electricity through me.
“Son of a puppy,” I muttered as I swung my feet over the edge and let them dangle. There were new holes in my arms, too, and I pulled out the needles they had left in me and tossed them on the gurney. No less than four lab techs had tried to get blood from me, failing because there was none to get. I was never going to play dead again. Never!
Holding my torn shirt closed, I slid from the table. My bare feet slapped the cold tile, and, looking down, I swore again. For crying out loud—I had a toe tag. When had they put that on?
“Where are my shoes?” I muttered, looking under the gurney to find nothing there. Fortunately, my amulet was still around my neck. If they had tried to take that, I would have flipped. It was visible now. I’d quit hiding it the moment the sheet had been pulled over me. When they had given up on me…It hadn’t been a nice feeling at all.
Mood sour, I strode across the dimly lit room, snatching a lab coat from a coathook behind the desk. I shoved my arms in and buttoned it up to cover my torn shirt and my ripped tights. My heart had given a blip once while I’d been on the table, and they’d gone all out trying to get it started again. I’d never felt so violated, but at least they hadn’t cut off my bra.
“Hey, those are mine!” I said when I found my earrings on the orderly’s desk. Mad, I shoved one, then the other into my ears. Still barefoot, I headed for the double doors. I had to find Shoe. Angry at the world, I pushed the doors open and looked out. The hall was empty. One of the fluorescent lights was out, and farther down the low-ceilinged corridor, another flickered. It smelled like bleach. The other direction appeared about the same, but at the end of it was a set of silver elevator doors. I was so out of there.
The toe tag rasped on the tile, and, not slowing, I leaned down, yanked it off, and let it hit the floor. I hadn’t been “dead” very long, and I was betting Shoe was still upstairs.
From behind me came a masculine voice calling, “Ma’am? You dropped something.”
My teeth clenched, and I spun around, eyes narrowing when I found it was the orderly who had wheeled me down here to the mangled tune of “Satisfaction.” The same one who had swiped my earrings, I’d bet. “What!” I snapped, very conscious of my bare feet and my purple-tinted hair. Not to mention my ripped shirt and tattered tights. Posing as a doctor was out, but maybe I could be a lab tech having a bad day.