The Isis Collar (7 page)

“I got some road rash, and the bite from a child I was carrying out of the building. But while the scrapes and bruises went away almost immediately, the bite site is still really tender and bruised and then there’s this spot on my calf that hurts like fire. It’s weird. The vampire part of me heals really quick. Why are these injuries still lingering?”

“Ah…”

I perked up at the tone of his voice. It said something had occurred to him. “Yes?”

He stopped typing and raised an index finger to point at me. “So it’s not so much
that
you hurt, but that you
still
hurt. Before this event, had you ever had a headache? Ever thrown out your knee?”

Thinking back, I had to shrug and shake my head. “Other than one Sunday morning in college when I vowed never again to drink tequila, no headaches at all.” He smiled ruefully, like he’d made a similar vow in his youth. But I had to add, “Unless you count concussions. I’ve had a few of those. Hard to avoid in my field. But my legs have always been good. All the doctors say there’s nothing wrong. MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, and full blood workups. Nothing. I’ve been to a traditional witch doctor already, but nothing. I’m hoping you’ve got something new up your sleeve.”

There was a long pause while he thought. His pen tapped against the white lab coat, printing tiny dots of blue that he probably wouldn’t discover until he put it in the laundry. The chicken feet bounced in time with the pen. “My specialty is blood illnesses and I sense sickness in you.” He motioned to the stick at my feet. “Could you pick that up, please?”

I picked it up and handed it out to him. He didn’t take it. “Tell me a lie, Ms. Graves.”

My eyebrows touched my lashes. “Excuse me?”

“Please,” he asked politely, with a sweeping, courtly gesture. “Humor me. Lie to me about something while holding that.”

I shrugged and tried to think of something that was such an obvious lie that it would tell him whatever he needed to know. “Um … my mother and I have a close and loving relationship.” I had to school my face to stay blank after that whopper. Fortunately, I’m very good at blank.

The stick in my hand felt suddenly warm and the eyes of the carved monkey started to glow blue. “Is glowing good or bad?”

He just smiled. “Now, once again … have you recently ingested sick blood?”

God, were we back to
that
? “No. I’ve never tasted human blood and I only have animal broth. No blood at all.” The stick didn’t glow. I didn’t expect it to.

Dr. Jean-Batiste let out a slow breath that seemed … weary and worried. “We will do some testing, of course. But I had you come here now, when the vampire part of you is at its strongest, so that I could test a theory. You see, what I fear might be happening if none of the other doctors are finding anything, is that your pain might be related to
not
drinking blood.”

A buzzing formed in my ears and I felt my pulse speed up. A vampire I knew had once said the same thing and I wanted to hit him. Just like now. “Why would you say that?”

He shrugged. “You’re part vampire. Vampires subsist on blood. If you’re only feeding the human part of you, I have no way of knowing whether you’re endangering the vampire part of you—or what result that might have.” He tipped his head back and forth. “Still, there’s little in the blood that can’t be replenished by a healthy diet. If we could determine what’s missing that is causing the pain, we might be able to create a supplement for you. But we will also check for bad mojo or curses. Do you have anyone who wishes you harm?”

I let out a small, sad chuckle. “Lately, it seems like nearly everyone. From the death curse to a greater demonic possession and a variety of magical stalkers. I’m sort of in the crosshairs of most of the underworld.”

His lips pursed and he took back his stick cautiously. “So I am quite likely to find bad mojo about you in the spirit world. We will be cautious, then. I’ll finish with the few other patients and we will begin. Let me show you to a waiting room where you’ll be more comfortable.”

And where I couldn’t influence his other patients with my
bad mojo
, I’d bet.

He stood and we started to walk back out to the reception room. As he held the door for me, he touched my arm, causing me to stop. “I normally wouldn’t reveal this, but it could be important and I want you to think about it. I have examined two others who were at the scene of the incident at the grade school. One adult and one child.”

I knew he couldn’t tell me the identities of the patients, but I was curious. Could it be Harris and Willow? Orvah was practiced in various parts of the world, but had a particularly strong roots in parts of Haiti.

The doctor continued. “The child is having similar complaints of non-specific pain in her legs and head. The adult is having serious memory problems. In fact, he has no memory of the day in question at all. It is a blank slate. I want you to think very carefully about that day and try to tell me as much as you can about what happened during the incident. I’ll give you a clipboard and some paper.”

*   *   *

By the time he came to get me, the back room was quiet except for the contented clucking of roosting hens. I’d written up a list of every detail I remembered. Dr. Jean-Baptiste read over the list quickly once and then more slowly while I stared at him from the comfort of the leather chair. He tapped the middle of the second page. “You don’t mention the man in the scary suit with the magic marks on it.”

Scary suit? I frowned and tried to think. I couldn’t remember. “Sorry. I don’t remember anything like that at all. Could she have made it up?”

He scratched his temple where the feathers were probably itching and began to shake his head, tiny movements that barely moved the chicken feet. “I don’t think so. She was pretty descriptive about that. She believed he was hurting her father. What I’m wondering is whether you share symptoms with both the child and the adult. I think something’s affecting your memory. And I am wondering if perhaps the memory problem and the headaches are related.”

I motioned around to the racks of spice bottles, the distinctive musk of goat, heavy in the air. “So do you think you can figure out what it is?”

He smiled brilliantly. “Have you not noticed anything different about the room since you came back?”

I flicked my eyes around the room again. “It’s … um,
quieter
?”

His chuckle was genuinely amused, but the intensity of his profession was still underneath. “Yes, that. But you’ve also been sitting in the middle of an active casting circle for the past ten minutes. You truly didn’t feel it when you walked in?”

No. I hadn’t, and I should have. What the hell?

Apparently, my shocked look was enough. “Well, that is certainly interesting.” He typed a few notes onto the laptop. “I can tell you this. You have been affected by powerful magic. It’s interfering with your memory and it seems to be both long- and short-term. I don’t know if it has anything to do with your leg pain. But when you walked back in the room, you had to struggle to get through the circle. That you don’t remember it is very interesting indeed. Unfortunately, I haven’t determined how to unravel the spell yet. I’m going to take the details to some experts I know and see what they can come up with. For the moment, I’d suggest caution, rest, good nutrition, and some memory enhancement and protection charms. Then, with some time…”

Eww. I wasn’t liking the sound of that. “You don’t sound particularly hopeful.”

He shrugged. “It is difficult. There are not many practitioners with the level of power to create such a spell. I should be able to determine a signature. But I cannot. Somehow the caster has tangled their magical signature with those of many, many, others. This is not a spell that can be worked by a group, but if I did not know better, I would swear it had been. Too, there aren’t many spells I don’t at least recognize the base of. It’s like figuring out a word from the Latin root. I haven’t found a base I know yet. That’s the best I can tell you right now. And I won’t lie to you. I can’t tell you when … or if … I will.”

Great. Just great.

6

Two nights
later I woke because my skin was burning and freezing water was lapping at my body. The sun was coming up. It was freaking cold, but the sunlight was burning every inch of exposed skin that wasn’t soaking wet. I was lying on the beach outside my house, in my pajamas with gulls calling a raucous good morning as they dipped and dived through the air above me.

What the hell?

The last thing I remembered was going to bed at 10:00
P.M.
I rose, hurrying across the beach to the house and into the bathroom.

How did I get outside? When had I left my bed? What had I done?

I didn’t know.

Worse, the dreams I’d had were so incredibly clear. I could remember those. The light scent of floral perfume, the sight of that couple hurrying from the opera house to the safety of their car. The sweet, coppery taste of blood laced with fear that filled my mouth and made me shiver. Desperate and terrified, I checked every inch of my clothing for bloodstains. Nothing. No hint on my teeth or gums. Knees weak with relief, I sank onto the toilet and cried until I was gulping huge mouthfuls of air and the floor was covered with soggy yellow tissues. My head hurt worse than ever, but I was afraid to take yet another aspirin because I couldn’t remember what I’d done last night.

What was happening to me? What was I going to do? I’d been following Jean-Baptiste’s advice. It wasn’t working. Nothing was working.

I might have stayed in the bathroom feeling sorry for myself, but the doorbell rang. It’s not a loud bell, but the sound sent a flash of searing pain through my skull. I winced and began limping my way to the door.

The bell rang again—and my temples pounded—again, so I grumbled out loud, “Hold your horses. Jeez, I’m coming.”

I opened my front door and there was Rizzoli. If he noticed my swollen red eyes, he didn’t mention it. Instead, he smiled at me and shook his head as though supremely amused. “You need to cut back on the sauce, Graves. You look like hell. And why are you limping?”

“Been this way since the bomb blast at the school.”

Disbelief was plain on his face. “Shouldn’t you be healed by now? I mean, vampire blood
and
siren blood notwithstanding, even a vanilla human shouldn’t be limping this much time after a failed attempt.”

I snuffled back what I couldn’t blow out. No tissues next to the couch. I’d have to fix that later. “It didn’t fail. There were two bombs. Neither of them was a dud.” I lowered myself carefully into my favorite recliner and rested my head back into the poofy pillow. He took a seat on the couch, which, while not terribly comfortable, was a pretty white print that matched the wallpaper. “I left you a message about that.”

“I know. I got your calls. And I’m sorry I haven’t come by sooner. The brass…” He paused, trying to come up with a polite way to end the sentence. Apparently there wasn’t one, so he changed tacks. “Why did you ask about other bombs in other places?”

I tried to remember. There’d been a reason. An important reason. Crap. “What day did I call?”

He sighed. “You don’t remember?”

“Just give me some background, okay? Sometimes if you give me some clues the memory resurfaces.”

“Your message said you’d been back to the school, and that you’d gone to see Heather Alexander. She told you she couldn’t talk to you.”

I sat up straight, and it made my head pound. “The guard. The guard at the school said something.”

“What? What did he say?”

I tried to remember, but it was useless. I barely remembered going to the school, let alone specifics of a conversation. I wouldn’t have been able to come up with as much as I had if Rizzoli hadn’t prompted me.

His dark eyes looked me over carefully from head to foot. “You really are in bad shape, aren’t you? What do the doctors say?”

I threw up my hands in frustration. “Nothing. They say nothing. Because they haven’t got a freaking clue.”

He winced. “That sucks.”

“Yeah. It does. But that’s not why you’re here, is it?”

His expression grew weary and I realized I wasn’t the only one who looked bad. Rizzoli’s normally a good-looking man if you’re into dark Italian-American types. Every time I’d seen him his suits were well cut, fit him perfectly, and no wrinkle dared appear. Not today. The charcoal suit was still good quality and well tailored, but it looked as though he’d been wearing it for a couple of days straight, only bothering to change into a fresh shirt.

“We’ve found evidence of devices having gone off at six different schools. I found out about the one near Denver, Colorado, by sheer accident. It was in the same school district where the high-school shootings happened a few years back, so when the
furnace malfunction
was discovered in the basement, it made the local six o’clock news and got splashed onto the Internet.”

“And you put two and two together.”

He rested his booted feet on the coffee table and I instinctively motioned for him to put them back on the floor. He did. “Well, actually, all I put together was one and one. But it did make me search the Internet for other weird news and I started calling around to ask whether any other similar reports of post-furnace-malfunction illnesses had come in at the local level. That’s when we found Chicago, Daytona Beach, and Dallas. Boston only got reported this morning, which is why we think there might be more out there.” He yawned wide. “I’m hoping you have coffee, because I’m going to need it for the trip.”

I stood up and started to limp toward the kitchen, saying over my shoulder, “I have coffee, but where are you off to? One of the schools?”

“Not me,” he replied. “Us. I need you to come down to our field office to help me with something.”

That stopped me cold. “The last time you showed up, it didn’t go so well.” That was an understatement, and he knew it. The last time he’d knocked on my door, I’d been living in a different house. He’d appeared in the middle of my Christmas Day party, claiming my going with him was a matter of life and death … not to mention national security.