Sing Sweet Nightingale (40 page)

K.T. nods. “But, to start with, we look for anomalies and outliers. That’s how I found Dr. Carroll.”

“She’s right,” Carroll says as he comes in with a fresh IV bag. “Doesn’t hurt to look. At the worst, you end up in the same place you are now.”

I stare at them all, one eyebrow arched. “Why do all of you seem to think I’d say no to this plan? Hell, I’ll help if you tell me what I’m looking for.”

Dawn grins and wraps her arms around my waist, resting her cheek against my stomach. The hug lasts for less than a second, and then she’s grabbing K.T.’s shirt and pulling her out the door, pausing to warn me to watch out for an email with detailed research instructions.

Carroll smiles as he switches the IV bags. “It’ll be good for them to have something to do. Especially K.T.”

“No change with Emily?”

The smile drops. “No. Not that I expected there would be.”

Carroll is slightly shorter than me and thin. Almost reedy. His movements, though, are swift and certain. I watch him carefully, comparing every move to the way the nurses at the hospital would perform the same task. He seems to know what he’s doing.

I step back a little when Carroll moves toward one of the monitors, checking the reading on Mariella’s brain waves.

“You don’t trust me, do you?” Carroll asks.

Running my thumb along the piece of tiger iron in my hand, I wonder how the hell I’m supposed to answer that.

“Don’t feel too bad,” I say after a moment. “I don’t trust most people.”

He nods, pressing a button on the monitor, and then turns toward me. “It’s all right. I want to make sure you know I’m going to do everything I can to get you the answers you need.”

“Why?”

When he looks down at Mari, it’s like he’s not seeing her. It’s like he’s seeing someone else entirely.

“Because I’ve been looking for the same answers for the last twelve years, but nothing made sense until K.T. found me.” Carroll stares at me, his brown eyes intense. “You don’t have to trust me.
I
trust
you
.”

The house has been quiet since K.T. and Dawn left a couple hours ago, so the sound of approaching footsteps pulls my attention to the door.

“I think I found a location,” Carroll says as he comes into the room with a new IV bag.

“Location for what?” I keep holding Mari’s hand but shift slightly for Carroll to get past.

“The clinic Horace is helping me set up.”

I blink. “You’re setting up a clinic?”

Carroll looks down at me, his nose wrinkled. “Well, I had to, or they would have asked a lot of questions when we bought the fMRI machine.”

“We
bought
an fMRI?”

“Horace didn’t tell you about this whole—” His mouth closes, and the confusion on his face clears. Shaking his head, he moves to sit on the end of Mari’s bed. “Sorry. He was going to explain, but then he heard about Nadette…” Carroll trails off and shrugs.

“All right.
You
tell me.”

“Ultimately, our goal is to figure out exactly how what has happened to you has affected your brain, and unlock the frequencies connecting people in comas to the dreamworld.”

His eyes are bright, but it’s not a happy brightness. More like the passion of a fanatic overtaking all reason. Carroll’s hands fly as he talks about brain waves and electrical frequencies and research plans.

“Plus, if Dawn and K.T. are able to find other survivors and bring my study sample higher? I might actually be able to—”

“
What
?!”

Frank’s shout stops Carroll midsentence. Dana comes running down the stairs as I head for Frank’s office. Carroll follows.

“A
week
, Jacquelyn? A goddamn
week
?”

Frank stands behind his desk, his face bright red and his eyes bulging.

“What do you mean you
don’t know
? How the hell do you not know how long your
only child
has been missing, Jacquelyn?”

Oh, hell. Foreboding crawls up my body, digging its claws in no matter how hard I try to shove it away and ignore it. Frank’s mouth snaps shut as he listens to something. Whatever Jacquelyn says makes his face turn a deep red tinged with purple.

“I don’t give a shit!” Frank screams. I’ve never seen him like this. He’s so chill I never would’ve guessed he had this in him. “You waited a
week
to call the police. If something happens to Julian, you’re fucking right it’s your fault!”

Frank chucks his phone against the wall, and it falls to the floor in pieces. Dana and I stand in the doorway, not sure what to do.

“What happened to Julian?” Dana finally asks, her voice hesitant.

Frank laughs, but it’s a desperate, hollow laugh. “I don’t even know. Either he ran away or he’s been abducted. My screw-up of a little sister
isn’t sure
.”

“Abducted!” Dana sways on her feet, and I reach out to steady her. Tears stream down her face, and her voice is thick and hoarse when she talks again. “Oh God, Frank. I knew we should have offered to take him the last time they were here.”

Dana runs into Frank’s arms, and I back off, letting them have some privacy.

Carroll’s lips are pressed together, his head tilted toward Frank’s office.

“Two missing kids connected to this family in a week.” He takes a breath and shakes his head. “What are the chances this is a coincidence?”

I meet his eyes for a second before I pass him. “Honestly? Zilch.”

Even knowing that, I also know there’s nothing I can do to help them with something like this. I hope the kid is okay, but it’s taking all my energy to help Carroll take care of Mariella, help Dawn and K.T. with their research, and, apparently, set up a clinic.

I can only face one fight at a time, and Mariella comes first.

Forty

Hudson

Monday, October 13 – 3:49 AM

I’m sitting in the armchair in Mariella’s room when her eyes flutter open.

My heart stops as she raises her head and looks around, a smile growing on her face.

“Oh, good,” she says. “I didn’t miss it.”

I bolt out of the chair, heart pounding and hands shaking.

It’s almost four in the morning. All the light in the room is coming from the monitors Mariella is hooked to. Stepping closer, I hold my breath and watch her face for the slightest sign of life. She’s perfectly still.

That wasn’t a dream or wishful thinking. It felt real. It felt like the future.

I stand next to her bed for an hour. Nothing happens.

Slumping back into the armchair, I try to breathe in fours. Calm myself down.

My dreams aren’t usually immediate, but they’ve always come true. So far.

Waiting has never been my strong suit, but I’ve been getting a crash course this month. Waiting for Mariella to wake up, waiting for Carroll to start his research, waiting for Dawn and K.T. to find information I can actually
use
. Even though they have a lead—some website called
The Mystical Demystified
—they have to figure out how to get in touch with whoever runs it. Until they find a way to contact them, I can’t
do
anything.

Pulling the chair closer to the bed, I take her hand and gently kiss her fingers.

“Come on, you’re stronger than whatever is happening, Mari,” I whisper to her. “Wake up. You have to wake up.”

It’s been almost a month, though. How much longer can she last like this?

How much longer can I?

Forty-One

Mariella

Wednesday, October 15 – 9:30 AM

Even with my eyes closed, I can sense everything in the room, including the furniture. The energy of the stones is like a symphony of distant wind chimes, and I sense the emotional energy of everyone in the house. Information seeps into my brain like water soaking into a dry sponge. Thoughts, emotions, memories, predictions of things that haven’t happened yet. I sort through it all, trying to adjust to consciousness before anyone realizes I’m awake.

Doctor Carroll is humming show tunes as he adjusts the drip on my IV. Hudson is sitting in an armchair by the side of my bed, and my parents are both home, Mom cleaning the kitchen and Dad outside hacking apart a perfectly healthy shrub. I search their minds, looking for a date.

October 15.

It’s been more than four weeks since my birthday. I have been asleep for
four
weeks.

Carroll leaves, on his way to find breakfast.

“I think she’s up. Maybe?”
Hudson’s thoughts ring in my head as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud. Underneath the more conscious thoughts, I see the memory of a dream, one of his prophetic dreams. He’s been jumping at false alarms ever since he dreamt I woke up. When he leans closer, I see my own face inside his head. Before I can open my eyes, he sighs and sits back.
“Guess not.”

New abilities weren’t the only thing I stole from Orane. I ended up with more languages, memories, and information than I knew how to handle. It took time to sort through it all in my head, but I learned a lot about the dreamworld, a place the creatures who live there call Abivapna. Among other things, I learned that anyone who’s had prolonged contact with Abivapna can hear projected thoughts. It’s how the demons, the Balasura, talk to us across the dimensions.

I project my thoughts, hoping Hudson will hear me.

“You should have more faith in your instincts.”

He nearly falls out of his chair, and I can’t keep the smile off my face. I open my eyes as he lunges closer to the bed.

“Mari?” he whispers. His face is etched with lines that weren’t there a month ago, but otherwise he looks exactly like I remember him. It felt like I spent years locked inside my own head, so long that I’d come back and everything and everyone would be different, but he’s exactly like he was when I fell asleep.
I’m
the one who’s different.

As much as I want to see my parents and K.T., as much as I want to reclaim my life, the draw of seeing Hudson is even stronger. The guy who went on a mission for answers and stumbled into a fight he hadn’t signed up for. The guy who stepped up to help a stranger who didn’t give him a single reason to stay. He stayed anyway, and I have a chance to
live
because of him.

His gaze searches my face but doesn’t stray from my eyes for long. “Are you okay?”

“Be okay,”
he pleads in his head.
“Talk to me, Mari. Be okay, please.”

I picked up the ability to heal. It may feel odd to move after a month of near-stillness, like I can’t quite remember what it’s like to be in charge of my own arm, but I
can
move. My muscles haven’t atrophied at all.

I smile, slowly reaching for him. He grips my hand tight when I slide my palm into his. There are bumps and rough patches on his skin—all his scars and callouses. Each mark on his skin is one more reason it’s a miracle Hudson became the person he is now. A miracle that’s staring at me with love in his dark eyes. The most wonderful part of seeing that is finally realizing what I should have known all along.

I love him, too.

“I’m fine, Hudson.” My voice is low, almost a whisper, but he jumps as soon as I speak. I squeeze his hand tighter, rubbing my thumb along the back of his fingers. His eyes widen, and so does my grin. “Really. I’m okay.”

Relief flows through his body, a wave of warmth that almost makes him collapse and leaves me smiling even wider. I feel his emotional shifts and hear his thoughts, my telepathic and empathic powers linking us together.

Glancing at the door to check for my parents, he whispers, “Did you—I mean, when you first woke up, did I hear you talking in my head?”

I grin.
“Yes.”

“Oh.” He swallows. “If you can—well, can you
read
thoughts, too?”

“Please say no,”
he adds in his head, a subconscious thought, quieter than others but definitely there.

My smile fades a little. I nod, and he looks down at my hand in his. Face flushing in a flash, Hudson’s thoughts spin into a knot.

“Shit. She can hear—but what has she heard? What did I think? Could she hear me while she was asleep? How the hell can I stop thinking? Can she hear this?”

“Hudson, I’m sorry.” Closing my eyes for a second, I imagine the power as a ball of white light. Taking that light, I shove it into a box and lock the stupid thing shut. Orane used these abilities to manipulate his victims, the thousands of children he’s destroyed over the centuries. The last thing I want is to fall into the habit of using them the same way. Swallowing, I look up at Hudson and try to smile. “I’m sorry. I can stop. I stopped.”

“It’s okay.” He smiles, and it looks a little forced, but only a little. “You already know my darkest, craziest secrets. What do I have to hide?”

All the things you don’t know how to say out loud to me yet
, I want to tell him.

Before I can open my mouth, there are footsteps on the stairs. I can sense Mom getting closer, walking down the steps and through the hall, hoping that what she’ll find when she reaches my room will somehow be different.

Hudson pulls away, standing up and striding toward the doorway. When he appears, Mom stops moving. He smiles, and her pace nearly becomes a sprint as she screams for my dad.