Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (11 page)

Hannah held out her hands toward Mara’s face. “I can make you happy.”

Mara leaned away and said, “No, no, don’t do that. I don’t want you to prompt me.” Mara took Hannah’s wrists and guided her hands down to her lap. “Don’t your mom and dad have rules about when you should prompt people? You know, when it is good and when it is bad?”

“Well, I’m not supposed to do it without permission. That’s the rule.”

“You mean, you have to ask the person before you do it?”

“Nuh-uh. I’m s’posed to ask my dad first, before I prompt anybody.”

“That sounds like a good rule to follow. So, before you came here, he gave you permission to prompt me the night you arrived?”

Hannah shook her head. “Daddy didn’t know I was coming here. It’s a secret.”

How can Sam not know she was coming back in time if she was coming to his past?

Mara raised an eyebrow. “Who knows this secret?”

Hannah tapped her own chest and Mara’s arm. “Me and you.”

“Hannah, do you understand where you are, that you went backward in time?”

“Nuh-uh, that’s wrong. The merry-go-round doesn’t work like that. It only goes one way, not backward.”

“You’re saying that Time is like a merry-go-round, and it can only go in one direction?”

She nodded eagerly. “You sent me on an extra spin of the merry-go-round, and I stopped here, before it went all the way around again.”

“Aren’t you afraid your father will be angry when you get home? You’ve been gone a long time.”

Hannah giggled. “He knows I’m here now, silly. He’s downstairs. When I get back, he’ll remember I was here.”

Mara rubbed her temples. “You are saying, when you left, he didn’t know you were coming, but, when you get back, he will know that you came here?”

Hannah nodded.

“How do you know all this?”

“You told me.”

“Did I tell you why you needed to do this?”

“To bring you the book and make you shine. Remember? I told you that already.”

“But—”

Diana rapped her knuckles on the door frame behind them. In her other hand she held a thin colorful children’s book. “Time for reading and sleeping. Question time is over.” She looked at Mara with an expression of mild disapproval.

* * *

A half hour later, Mara stood at the stove, tapping her finger on the counter, impatiently staring at the teakettle. Diana, who was sitting at the table, pushed out a chair from under the table with a foot. “For heaven sakes, have a seat. The kettle will let you know when it’s ready. What are you so worked up about?”

Mara sat down and scooted up to the table. “Can you believe that I not only sent that poor little girl back in time but I did it without telling her parents? I practically kidnapped her. What in the world could I have been thinking?”

“From what I heard, it sounds like you might have actually sent her
forward
in time, not backward,” Diana said. “She just went forward so far, that she looped back around.”

“Is that even possible?”

Diana lifted a shoulder. “I’ve heard the concept of Time being a loop before. Who says it has to be a straight line? I’m sure Mr. Ping would have some insight into it. You should discuss it with him tomorrow.”

Mara shook her head. “I think it’s best to not lean too heavily on Ping right now. He’s got his hands full, dealing with that dragon of his.” The kettle whistled, and she absentmindedly got up and returned to the table to pour water in their cups. “Did you know that Sam calls her
jelly bean
?”

“Jelly bean, the bean. Yeah, so what? It’s a pet name,” Diana said.

“Don’t you remember what Melanie Proctor said to Sam when she did his reading? She said a jelly bean will break your heart. Right after she told him that he wouldn’t have a relationship with Dad until after Sam knew what it was to be a father.”

Diana shrugged dismissively. “Daughters break your heart. That’s what they do, even if it’s just by growing up. I wouldn’t read too much into it. Everything isn’t a metaphysical crisis, you know.”

“Has Sam made the connection? Does he remember what Melanie said?”

“He hasn’t said anything. Although he seems to take things in stride, so he probably wouldn’t get worked up about it, even if he remembered the reading. Unlike some people we know, he tends to accept life the way it comes.”

“I’m all for accepting life, when it makes sense. It’s when things start flying from the future or alternate realities that I start getting bent out of shape.”

“If you think about it, what’s happening makes a certain kind of sense. You know that you have the ability to alter the element of Time. And at some point you were going to master it. It follows that, when that happened, you were going to start messing with the past. It’s like Grandpa’s rototiller. You just couldn’t resist taking it apart, seeing how it ticks and then fixing it.”

The model train’s whistle blew three times as Mara pressed a button on top of the black box next to the circular tracks set up on the wood floor of the gadget shop. She sat on the floor with her legs crossed, showing Mr. Wannamaker how the controls on the new transformer worked. The train set was one he had gotten as a child from his grandfather, and he wanted to pass it on to his son now, but it would not operate when he assembled it. Mara quickly saw the old transformer had burned out.

However, shortly after she assessed the problem, the train worked again of its own accord. She still hadn’t gotten a handle on unintentionally repairing things with her touch, but, at least in this case, her practical experience would still be of use. Even though the old transformer now worked, its design was dated and not considered safe for children to use. Even the electric cord was considered below standard. She recommended a new modern transformer for the old train set and had ordered one.

“Once you’ve got the wires attached to the tracks and the transformer, just raise this orange handle here on the side, and it will send current to the train, and it will go,” she said. “Buttons along the top control the direction of the train, the bell and the horn.” She pointed to the side of the transformer. “You have an extra set of posts to attach accessories, like the light tower you’ve got in the box. I’ve put the instructions in there as well, but feel free to call, if you have any questions.”

“Thanks, you’ve been a big help. I guess I’m lucky the old transformer didn’t work, or I might have just given it to him not thinking about the safety issues,” Mr. Wannamaker said.

Mara leaned forward onto her hands and knees, disassembling the train set and packing it away. “I’m sure it would have been fine, but having the new transformer allows for more options and add-ons, and will probably have fewer problems.”

She slipped the lid onto the box, stood up and handed it to her customer. As she was ringing him up, her phone vibrated on the counter next to the register. Her mother was calling. Mara subtly shook her head. Diana’s default mode of communication was verbal, always placing a call, when a simple text would be faster and more efficient. Mara handed a receipt to Mr. Wannamaker and thanked him. She picked up the phone.

“Yes, Mother.”

“You and Sam need to pick up a pizza or something on the way home this evening. I’m running over to OHSU this afternoon to visit a friend. I’ll take Hannah with me,” she said.

“Who’s in the hospital?”

“Mrs. James. You remember her, right?”

“The aura reader. She okay?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll let you know this evening. I’ll tell her that you’re thinking about her.” Diana hung up.

Easily could have been texted.

Again the phone vibrated.
BOHANNON
popped up on the screen. Mara looked at the time. She still had more than an hour before he was supposed to pick her up for another afternoon of talking to passengers from Flight 559.

“Detective.”

“I told you to call me Bo. If you like, I can start calling you ‘mechanic’ or whatever it is that you do,” he said.

“Okay,
Bo
. How can I help you? You still coming by to pick me up at one o’clock to visit more strange people from strange places?”

“Actually I’m heading out to the hospital on Market Street in the southeast sector. I think it’s the Adventist one, but I’m not sure. My lieutenant called and said he wanted me take a look at a case out there. Can you meet me there?”

“Is it related to one of the passengers?” she asked.

“Don’t know. He said one of the administrators at the hospital wanted someone to come out and identify a body, but they refused to say anything more. They were acting weird about it, so, of course, he calls me. Might not be anything.”

“I’ll need to tie up a few loose ends here, then I’ll head over. Give me a call if it’s a false alarm.” She hung up.

She glanced around the shop, looked under the counter for her other pending jobs, and decided it would be okay to skip out a little early. Bruce had not even come in this morning. He had called, and said he didn’t have any pending bicycle repairs and didn’t want to just sit around with nothing to do. Mara felt the same. The holidays were very slow, except for the occasional antique train set. She walked over to the front door, flipped the Closed sign to face outward and engaged the dead bolt. Returning to the counter, she pecked the No Sale key on the register and lifted the cash tray from the drawer when it popped out. She would check in with Ping to see how he’s doing and then head over to the hospital.

* * *

Ping slouched and tried to straighten nonchalantly behind the bakery counter when Mara walked in to find him nearly asleep on his feet. It seemed to take him a few seconds to realize that Mara wasn’t a customer. He stopped brushing at his wrinkled apron when he realized who it was.

Without pausing in front of the glass case, Mara walked around the end of the counter and approached him. Reaching out to touch his cheek, she said, “You look like hell. And you’re burning up.”

“I think I’ve got a touch of the flu,” he said. He grabbed a small towel hanging from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“No coughing or sneezing. A touch of the dragon flu, looks like. If I had the Chronicle, I swear I would—”

Ping raised a hand. “Shush. No confrontations, remember? I just don’t have the energy to argue with you and suppress him at the same time. Please, let’s not make the situation worse.”

Mara pointed to the empty customer area. “Nobody will buy baked goods from some guy who looks like he’s dying from an infectious disease. Why don’t you just close up, go home and get some rest?”

“I’ve got a couple customers picking up custom orders and a delivery that I need to wait on. After that, Sam’s going to take over. He’s getting out of tutoring a little early, so I’ll go home then.”

Mara stared at him for several seconds.

Ping uncharacteristically felt the need to fill the silence. “What?”

“I’m worried about you.”

“I know, but keep following the book. Are you going out with Bohannon again today?”

“I’m meeting him at a hospital to look into something.”

Ping’s eyes widened. “Not another pathogen from another realm, I hope. I’m not sure any of us are up to dealing with something like the shedding again.”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure, but I think his boss would have given him a heads-up if it was something that serious.”

After passing through two sets of automatic glass doors, Mara found herself standing in the large open lobby of the hospital. No one sat behind or in front of the huge reception desk. Everyone seemed to be coming or going, passing to the left or right of the main desk, disappearing beyond the large wall behind it, speaking in whispers that did not carry far in the open atrium-style foyer. She could hear the
slip-slip
sound of footsteps on the tiled floor. Mara slowly turned, looking for Bohannon in one of the randomly placed clusters of institutional chairs and end tables that dotted the lobby. While facing toward the glass doors, she picked up his distinctive Southern drawl in the muffled drone coming from behind her. She turned back around.

Bohannon and a tall woman in blue scrubs cleared the wall and came into view on the left side of the reception desk. The detective nodded at Mara and guided the woman toward her. They didn’t stop talking for introductions immediately.

“Once they brought him, or it, in, we didn’t know what to do. I mean, we’re not a bunch of engineers. I’m surprised the EMTs even loaded him up and brought him here. Then once they unloaded the body, if that’s what you want to call it, I couldn’t get anyone to take it. The EMTs wouldn’t even take it back. My own morgue here in the hospital refused to store it, until we figured out what to do,” the woman said.

“I thought you said the ambulance crew reported that they were bringing you an accident victim, a pedestrian who had been struck by a taxi.”

“That’s what they said, but obviously we assumed it would be a
human
pedestrian.”

Bohannon nodded at Mara, acknowledging her, but still talking to the woman. “What do you mean,
he wasn’t human
? What was he?”

“Didn’t the administrator tell you guys what was going on when he reported it?” she asked.

Bohannon shook his head. “My lieutenant got the impression that your administrator wasn’t comfortable talking about it for some reason. He was vague, evasive and didn’t want to file an official police report.”

“Sounds like the weasels in the front office,” she said. She turned to Mara and extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Jazz. I’m the head nurse in the emergency room. You look a little young to be a cop.”

Mara took the proffered hand and shook it. “Just an intern helping out with the cases no one else wants to work on,” she said.

“You got that right. This one is not something that’s going to fit in any bureaucrat’s cubbyhole, that’s for sure,” Jazz said.

Bohannon interjected, “What did you mean,
not human
?”

“Come on. It’s probably better if I show you.” She pointed them back the way they came.