Elixir (14 page)

Obadiah sighed. “We could try,” he said again. “But I don’t know if it will work. I’ve never used Elixir to try heal an injury this serious before.”

I rubbed my forehead, thinking. This wasn’t going to be easy. We could try—but what if we didn’t make her better? What if we somehow made her worse? I’d never done magic as a human before. I wasn’t made of Elixir anymore; it no longer flowed through my veins. I was as clueless as any mortal when it came to magic now. That made me feel helpless, and angry that I felt so helpless.

“If we gave her some, is there any way it could backfire?” I asked Obadiah.

He was silent, and I thought of poor Charley, a broken body in a morgue, thousands of miles from home.

“I use magic; I don’t claim to understand how it works,” he said at last.

I sighed.

Obadiah didn’t have any better solutions to offer than what I’d already thought of on my own. Had this meeting been all for naught? There was no guarantee either of us could fix the mess Eva was in, or the mess we were in ourselves, for that matter. I rubbed my eyes. The mounting anxiety and fatigue of the last few days was like a weight pressing down on me. I couldn’t even think clearly anymore.

I rose from my chair.

“Listen, Obadiah, it’s late,” I said, glancing up at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Thanks for coming by. I need to think about all of this. I’ll keep you informed if I get any more news from the hospital. But right now, I have to go to bed. It’s been a hell of a day . . . a hell of a last few days . . .” I grabbed the two mugs and dumped them in the sink.

“Mab, wait.” Obadiah stood up, facing me. His eyes sparkled in the dim light—and I could see there was something he wanted to tell me.

“What I wanted to say . . .” He paused, as if carefully choosing his words before they came out. I waited, barely breathing. “What I wanted to say is . . . is that I think what you did in there with the detective was really brave. And I never thought I’d say that about a changeling.”

“I . . . well . . .” I stammered, blushed and was silent. It was such an intimate thing to say, and I almost couldn’t bear to accept a compliment like that.

“Um . . . thanks, I guess,” I said, studying my shoes.

“Thank
you,
Mab.”

I turned to face him. I could see in his eyes that something had changed. He trusted me now. I had earned Obadiah’s trust, even though I was once a fairy. We were standing quite close to each other, over the tiny table, so close I could feel the heat of his body. My head was swimming—it was so late, and I was tired to my bones—but something in his gaze transfixed me. As I looked into those dark eyes that seemed to see me—really see me—for the first time, not as an imposter, but as someone who genuinely cared—something inside me started to melt. I wanted to reach out to him, to be close to him, to touch him . . .

What the hell was I thinking? It was late, my best friend was in the hospital, and I barely even knew this man.

“Um . . . yeah . . . I should go to bed. It’s late . . . you should be getting home . . . I should . . .”

Obadiah’s eyebrows rose.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asked.

No,
I thought. To be alone in this apartment, with memories of Eva everywhere around me, with all the pent-up worry inside of me and nothing I could do about any of it sounded like hell. I looked up into Obadiah’s eyes. They were warm and concerned. A moment of silence passed between us. I guess he heard an answer in the silence, and interpreted it as a no, because he picked up his coat off the rack and started towards the door.

“Please keep me informed if you hear any further word from the hospital on your friend’s condition,” he said, putting on his jacket and turning up the coat collar, the old formality back in his voice. “I know you’ve said your friend’s fall wasn’t my fault. But it happened at my establishment and I still feel terribly responsible . . .”

“Obadiah, you don’t need to blame yourself,” I said. “I told you, I was there for a job. Eva came because she was worried about me. None of it was your doing.”

“Still, it shouldn’t have happened. I sincerely hope your friend recovers quickly,” he said, and even though his voice was clipped and formal, I could tell he was sincere.

He reached for the handle of the door.

“Good night, Mab,” he said, opening it.

“Wait.”

He turned around and our eyes met. His hand moved away from the door, and as it did, it brushed against mine.

For a second I couldn’t breathe. The brush of his skin on mine was like a tingle of electricity. Was it the lingering Elixir? Or was it just him?

“Could . . . could you stay?” I asked. “I mean, if you have to go, I understand. I know it’s very late, it’s just, so much has happened today, and everywhere I turn in this apartment I see Eva and I . . . I just really don’t want to be alone right now.”

I blushed to the roots of my hair, unable to believe I had just said all that. What the hell was I thinking? I’d known this guy less than three days.

But if he thought I was crazy, it didn’t register on his face. Instead, his eyes were full of empathy.

He reached out and took my hand. I felt almost like crying—touch, just simple human touch felt so right when everything else felt so wrong. We were standing so close together that I could hear his breath coming in and out.

Suddenly, my eyes were closed, my lips tilted towards him. He hesitated a moment, as if to make certain this was what I really wanted, and then his hands pressed firmly against my back, drawing me close. I was enveloped in the smell of him—the cold, clean scent of winter that still clung to his coat, mixed with the spicy fragrance of his cologne, and underneath that, something dark and masculine and earthy. His mouth brushed against mine, gentle at first, but then rougher as his civilized manners slipped away and something deep and primal took over. My lips parted instinctively, letting him in, feeling the sweet scratch of his stubble on my cheek. All the worries that had been simmering in my mind stilled as his tongue circled mine.

When we pulled back at last, my whole face was flushing, hot and red. What the hell was I doing? I needed to help Eva; I needed to find a way out of this mess with the cops—I did not need to be kissing Obadiah. I did not need any distractions. What would Eva say if she could see me right now? I thought, embarrassed.
Eva would probably be cheering, you fool.

“Um . . . I should go . . .” I mumbled. “You should go . . .”

Obadiah’s manner abruptly cooled, and inwardly I kicked myself. He had taken that all wrong.

The impenetrable expression was back on his face, the same look he’d been wearing in the club, and I realized what that look was. It was loneliness. The profound loneliness that maybe only someone two hundred years old could have. And yet, I understood that loneliness too. It was the loneliness of changelings. For a moment, I’d made it better. And now I’d made it so much worse.

He turned away from me and opened the door, while I held my breath, not knowing what to say.

The cold air from the hall rushed in, but we both stood there awkwardly.

“Good night, Mab,” said Obadiah, stepping outside, his coat brushing me as he passed. “I’ll send another bird in the morning; please reply if you have any news.”

I stood in the doorway, watching him as he descended the stairs.

Can I trust him?
the little voice in my head asked. I could hear Reggie’s words in my head—but I thought Reggie was wrong. He hadn’t seen the Obadiah I’d seen tonight. I stood still, listening to the heavy clomp of Obadiah’s boots as he made his way down the three flights of stairs. I could still feel the burn of his stubble on my lips and feel the ghosts of his hands around my waist, and I knew, despite all the exhaustion of the past few days, I wasn’t going to sleep tonight.

CHAPTER 11

T
rue to his word, Obadiah’s messenger pigeon tapped on my window in the morning. I was already awake. The hospital had called. They’d moved Eva out of the ICU into a regular room, which meant she could have visitors.

“I’m going over there to see her,” I wrote, scribbling down the room number on the little scrap of paper. “You can come too, if you want.” I was touched that he cared. I mean, who was Eva to him? The cynical part of my brain said he was just trying to protect himself. The cops could arrest him any day now for attempted murder—and even if not, he could still be sued for her accident happening at his club. But I didn’t believe it. His concern for her seemed genuine, and it touched me deeply.

“If there’s anything you need, Mab,” he had written, “anything at all . . .”

I blushed as I read the words. I was still feeling awkward about our kiss last night. What had I been thinking? I hadn’t been thinking; that was the problem. Anyway, I didn’t have time for any distractions right now. Eva needed me, and I was going to be there for her. I bustled on my hat and coat.

I waited on the subway platform, clutching the little pot of African violets I’d bought her from the corner bodega, as the express train hurtled past. African violets were Eva’s favorite. She used to grow them on her windowsill next to her altar stuff. I just hoped they didn’t freeze before I got to the hospital. The wind whipping around the subway platform could cut glass. I cupped the fragile purple blooms with my hands, trying to protect them from the gusting air, and breathing my warm breath on them. It didn’t do much good—the petals still shook as if they were in a hurricane. I didn’t feel like I could do anything right these days.

Exiting the subway, I could see the redbrick-and-glass monolith of Woodhull Medical Center looming ahead. The little patch of grass outside was a pretty sorry excuse for a park—a couple of trees with iron fences around them breaking out of the frozen ground on either side of the walkway. The trees were all bare now, making them seem even scrawnier. One or two had a solitary dry brown leaf clinging tenaciously to the branch, but otherwise they were barren as skeletons, twigs rattling in the wind.

I entered through the sliding glass doors and approached the information kiosk. The woman sitting behind the desk regarded me with a bored expression.

“I’m here to see Eva Morales, room 817,” I said.

The woman didn’t respond; she just typed something into a computer with her long, gold-tipped fake fingernails.

“May I go see her?” I asked tentatively.

She nodded.

“Thanks.” I smiled, but she didn’t smile back. At first I felt affronted, but these people saw death and injury every day walking in and out of these doors. To me it was all new—to her, it was so commonplace as to be boring.

I walked towards the bank of elevators, aware of my boots squeaking on the shiny linoleum floor.

The hospital atrium was crowded with visitors. It was close to Christmas and everyone was here to see their loved ones. People were holding flowers and balloons. A few held stuffed animals and children’s toys, which just made me even sadder.

We all crowded into the elevator together.

From the other side, wedged deep into the crowd, I heard a woman crying softly.

No one said anything. Everyone kept their eyes fixed on the dinging lights over the door, letting us know what floor we were passing.

None of us knew what to do.

I wanted to say something—but what could you say? Unless someone was going to the maternity ward, no one was ever in a hospital for good news. Still, her soft crying made my chest ache.

I tried to give her a smile as the woman exited at her floor, but she shuffled out of the doors, wrapped in her own solitary world of grief.

At last the elevator dinged for the eighth floor. The doors opened and I walked out.

The hallway of the hospital wing smelled sterile, like hand sanitizer. Everything was clean and white. Nurses in blue scrubs bustled to and fro. Something about that sterile smell made me even more nervous than I already was.

I finally reached room 817.

The door was propped open.

I could see a figure inside.

Taking a deep breath, I knocked softly.

An old woman stepped out.

She was short, even shorter than I was, with weathered brown skin and black, haunted eyes. I could tell by the rumpled sweats she had on she wasn’t one of the nurses. She was wearing a gold chain around her wrinkled neck, strung with charms—a cross and two medals, one with a Virgin of Guadalupe on it, and the other a depiction of Saint Anthony. Something about the structure of her round face seemed so familiar, and then it hit me. This was Eva’s grandmother.

“Mrs. Morales?” I said.

I had heard Eva tell all sorts of stories about her grandma, the woman who had raised her, but I had never met her before. She lived in the Dominican Republic. The old woman fixed her eyes on me but she didn’t smile. With that haunted, serious expression on her face, she looked nothing like Eva—Eva was always smiling.

“I’m so sorry about your granddaughter,” I said.

Again, the woman said nothing.

Maybe Eva’s grandma didn’t speak English. I’d always assumed that she was bilingual like Eva was. Or perhaps she was just so grief-stricken she was past communicating?