The Medium's Possession Read online

  It took Cecily a second to respond, and in that moment, he worried he’d upset her.

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” she said, her voice quiet, her eyes on the sidewalk just ahead of her.

  He went to put a hand on her arm, to ask if she was okay, but she spoke again before he could do it.

  “Callum thinks something is wrong with her.”

  “Like, depression or something?” The thought had crossed his mind...

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “She’s been under a lot of stress,” Scott said. “Sometimes that can really mess with a person.” Not that he really believed that was all that was going on here... He had to admit, talking to Cecily was making that sliver of him that was worried for Zander grow. Still, while he wasn’t actively pissed anymore, he wasn’t ready to go into caretaker-mode on her either. She was an adult; she was responsible for her actions—including what came out of her mouth.

  And what had come out of her mouth this morning would take some days to heal.

  “If they break-up...” Cecily sighed and stopped walking when she looked up at him. “Look, what I was saying to Trey this morning—it was like leftovers. Like leftover shit I hadn’t worked through yet. I just got, I don’t know, overwhelmed or something—”

  “I know.”

  She stopped and her green eyes peered up into his, questioning. “You do?”

  He was so relieved to be having this conversation that he found himself smiling despite the heaviness of the moment. “Completely. There is nothing to feel bad about. Understand?”

  She just stared at him for a moment. Her expression was full of so much hope his throat ached to tell her how much he cared about her and his arms itched to wrap around her—but he kept it all to himself. The move was hers to make. She was in control of whatever happened next.

  She nodded, turned and started walking again. “Thank you.”

  “Always.” The word was out of his mouth before he’d thought it through—and that made it all the more true.

  A couple of minutes later, they were walking up the stairs to the front door of the house. The car was parked in the side alley, so either Callum was out searching on foot, or he was home.

  “Cal? Zander? You here?” he called as he pushed open the front door, Cecily on his heels.

  “I’m here.” Callum appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “No Zander, though.”

  He looked like hell. His tee was wrinkled, his bleak stare underlined in shadows.

  “I don’t know where else to look,” he said as he turned back into the kitchen.

  Scott felt the frustration from this morning flare as he followed Callum into the kitchen, the wedge of anger on his worried-mad pie chart gaining back a degree or two. “Look, Cal, I’m sorry this is happening, and I’m not trying to be a dick, but... maybe you gotta let her stew,” he said. “She’ll come back when she’s good and ready.”

  Rhia was in the kitchen, her white fur backlit by the sunlight streaming in thought the window above the sink. Callum shook his head as he took a dog leash from the top of one of the boxes stacked beside him and bent to affix it to Rhia’s collar.

  Her feet stepped in place like she was so ready for a walk, but too aware of the anxiety-thick air to act more excited than that.

  “No. She stood by me after the Shadow,” Callum said as he clipped the leash into place on Rhia’s collar. “She saved me, and made sure I stayed saved. I’m not giving up on her, or leaving her to figure whatever-this-is out on her own.”

  “You think this is the Shadow?” Scott’s stomach dropped as Callum stood and put a hand on Rhia’s flank. If Callum thought the Shadow was at work here, this whole thing had just gone from awful to seriously fucked up. Scott hadn’t been there when Callum, Zander, and Cecily had destroyed the Shadow in Seattle last fall, but he could still remember Cecily’s scared voice when he’d answered the phone that night. He hadn’t known her then—but the fear had been impossible to miss. He’d never forget it.

  Callum handed Scott the leash. “I gotta grab something from the bedroom—hold this.” Then he headed down the hall, talking as he went. “No, it’s not the Shadow, but—”

  “How do you know?” Cecily asked, coming up to stand beside Scott so the two of them filled the width of the hallway. Her arm was warm against his.

  “How can you know it’s not the Shadow?” she asked. “We wouldn’t be able to see it because of the cloak.”

  There it was, Scott thought. The fear he could remember in her voice, the barely audible tremble—it was there again. Just a sliver of the way it had been that night, but there.

  This was bad.

  “I just...” Callum appeared in his bedroom doorway, one of Zander’s tees in his hand. “She asked me to look for it,” he said simply.

  Scott felt Cecily stiffen beside him. “She what?”

  Callum’s sigh was sharp as he strode down the hallway toward them.

  Cecily turned around to walk in front of him into the living room while Scott brought up the rear.

  “She thinks she’s possessed, and you didn’t tell anybody?” Cecily challenged, turning on Callum the minute she reached the sofa. “When you said you thought something was going on with her, I thought you meant anxiety—not a fucking possession.”

  “She told me something was wrong—she thought it might be the Shadow,” Callum explained, his tone clipped. “But I looked—there was nothing there.”

  “So you just left it at that?” Cecily replied.

  “You think I don’t know how shitty that sounds?” Callum shot back. “I was pissed, okay? I...” He barked a groan. Then he drew a breath like he was getting ready to yell, but when he went on, his tone was much lower, much more even—and full of self-loathing. “This morning, after everything went down, I drove around for a while. I drove all the way to Miriam’s hospital... but I couldn’t go in.” His sigh was heavy this time, exhausted. He shook his head and reached for the leash Scott had forgotten he was holding.

  “I shouldn’t have left,” he said, winding the leash around his wrist. “But I did. And so now I have to find her. Rhia’s always been good at finding Zander so—”

  The sound of a cell phone ringing could be heard from down the hall.

  Callum slapped his back pocket, then cursed under his breath, dropped the leash and went darting down the hall.

  Good, Scott thought to himself. That had to be Zander calling. Now the two of them would talk, maybe Callum would go meet her somewhere, and they’d work this shit out.

  Whatever the outcome.

  He looked to Cecily. She had her arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against the back of the sofa. Her eyes were downcast, brow furrowed.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” Scott said, stepping toward her. He put a hand on her arm and she brought her eyes up to meet his.

  “You can’t know that.”

  He started to say she was right, he couldn’t, but he stopped—because, in a way, he sort of could.

  Because when Callum put his mind to something, he got it. End of story.

  Scott could remember when Callum had decided to find his mom after ten years apart. Could remember the lengths he had gone to—methodically working the system, making phone call after phone call, which led to paperwork, which led to more phone calls—until, finally, he found her.

  And this would be just the same, Callum wouldn’t give up. Not just in finding Zander, but in making sure she was okay when he did. No matter how long it took or what he had to do to make it happen.

  “It will be okay, because Callum won’t let it be any other way,” Scott said to Cecily. “None of us will.”

  She looked up at him, her green eyes searching and full of so much concern. She didn’t say anything, but, eventually, she nodded.

  Just as Callum came barreling out of his room. “I’ll be there in ten.”

  Scott turned in time to see him end a call and shove his phone into the back pocket of his teal deck shorts.r />
  Then he pinned the two of them with a hard stare. “She’s at the University Hospital.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Callum was mere steps into the building when he regretted the decision to come to the hospital alone. Not that he would have brought Scott with him. And there was no way he was going to put Cecily through this.

  No, the hospital had called him. So he was here. Alone.

  He probably should have brought Rhia, but that had sounded like more trouble than it was worth at the time, when he’d been beating feet out of the house.

  God, he hated hospitals.

  With a breath, he shored up his resolve, put on blinders against the various intangible people who were around him, and walked up to the Emergency Room check-in desk. A woman with a badge that read “Triage Nurse” was sitting behind the desk, going over paperwork with a look of professional determination on her face.

  She looked up when he drew near.

  “I’m Callum Ambrose.” He was surprised by how much effort it took to get the words up this throat. “I got a call that my girlfriend was brought in earlier today, Zander—” he caught himself, “Lysander Greyson.”

  The nurse’s professional-kind expression didn’t change, but something in the way she carried herself did, the hurry dissipating by a fraction so it was with deliberateness that she motioned to a set of double doors behind her. “I’ll buzz you in. Go to the nurses’ station down the hall—they’ll take you to her room.”

  Callum thanked the nurse and made his way over to the doors she’d nodded at. A moment later, a buzz issued from them, followed by a heavy click. It was a familiar sound—the same as the doors at the hospital where Miriam lived—but this wasn’t a familiar place.

  The doors opened onto a short, narrow hallway. The hall was dim, but the nurses’ station at the end was brightly lit. As he made his way down the milk-white hall, a young man stepped from one of the rooms. Callum kept his focus on the pale blue nurses’ station counters, but watched from his peripheral vision as the man walked alongside him.

  “Don’t go that way,” the man said. “It’s dark—”

  Then he disappeared.

  Callum’s general hospital-anxiety recast into something more pointed and specific.

  The nurse who’d called hadn’t told him why Zander was here, and he hadn’t thought to ask at the time. But now he had no idea what he was about to walk in to. Maybe she’d been hit by a car. Or mugged. Or...

  A nurse looked up as soon as he made it to the counter.

  “Can I help you?” Her brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, revealing a stripe of blue along the temple.

  “Yeah, my girlfriend—” but he was cut off.

  “No, I have to go.” It was Zander speaking.

  “I think I found her,” he said.

  “Bay nine,” the nurse replied. “Right behind you.”

  “You don’t understand,” he heard her say as he turned to find the curtain pulled but the sliding door cracked open. “I need to leave.”

  “We called your boyfriend, like you asked. He’s on his way—”

  “He’ll pick me up out front.”

  “We really need to speak with him—”

  “No, he can’t come here,” Callum heard her spit. “I won’t make him come here—”

  “Zander, calm down—”

  “NO, you calm down!”

  “This will help you feel better,” the nurse was saying as Callum pushed the curtain aside.

  Zander’s hazel eyes locked on his as he stepped into the room. They were laced with wild anger and a thread of panic that cut him in two.

  “No, you can’t be here,” she said to him, frantic.

  His feet carried him to her, propped up in the hospital bed.

  “I’m fine,” he said, reaching for her hand, but she pulled away. “All I’m worried about is you.”

  Zander rubbed her hands over her short, dark hair with a heavy, shaking exhale, revealing white, gauze bandages wrapped around her forearms.

  Callum’s breath caught in his chest. His focus suddenly broadened to see more than her alone, to include the small, windowless room around them—the white walls, lined with equipment, the IV running into her arm, the blue blanket twisted around her legs and the hospital gown draped over her chest, untied.

  And the bandages again. One around each wrist.

  Terror narrowed his vision to tunnels as the calculation came together.

  She’d slit her wrists.

  “You must be Callum.”

  Numb, Callum’s gaze landed on a nurse. A few feet away, she looked at him over her shoulder with a pleasant expression that didn’t match the moment as she worked the computer in the corner just behind Zander’s bed.

  “Yeah, I’m Callum.” At least that’s what he meant to say. His body felt weightless, his heartbeat so loud in his head he wasn’t sure if he’d really gotten the words out at all.

  Zander had cut her wrists.

  She’d tried to kill herself.

  He looked back at Zander. The circles under her eyes were so dark she looked like she hadn’t slept in days as her lids began to flutter.

  “Damn sedatives,” she whispered bitterly.

  “Why? What did you do?” he heard himself ask as though he was far away from his body.

  Her eyes fluttered open, even while her head lulled back onto the pillows. “I don’t want to hurt you anymore.” Her voice was no louder than a whisper.

  “We’ll figure it out.” Thrown back into his body, he pushed the terror down and locked his hand behind her neck as he pressed his forehead against hers. She didn’t need to hurt herself. He could take it. He would endure anything she said to him, anything she did to him until they figured out how to help her.

  “We’ll figure it out,” he said through a clenched jaw, eyes burning.

  “But I can’t stop...” she trailed off, her eyes falling closed.

  ⫷⫸⫷⫸⫷⫸

  The bedroom was dark, but Callum had been awake in the darkness long enough that he could watch Zander while she slept, making out the steady rise and fall of her shoulders as she lay curled onto her side.

  It was late. He ought to get some sleep, but his mind was spinning and it wouldn’t stop.

  Plus, they had told him she shouldn’t be left alone. So... if he slept, wouldn’t that be the same as leaving the room?

  God, the memory of those bandages, one on each arm, like some sort of cliché from a bad movie, sliced through his chest. Cutting his bones to the marrow every time he thought of them.

  She hadn’t been trying to kill herself. She swore to it, and he believed her. And he was grateful for that. Still, the hospital wasn’t so sure about that story, and it had taken hours to get her discharged as a result. Callum had had to sign so much paperwork he thought he probably should have owned the damn hospital by the end of it. First was the trip to the hospital pharmacy to pick up a bottle of sedatives, packages of gauze, and antibiotic ointment. Next had been the visit from the on-call psychiatrist, and the social worker, who had asked Callum as many questions as they’d asked Zander. They’d even spoken to them both separately and Callum had realized, about ten minutes in, that they were trying to make sure he wasn’t the reason she’d cut her wrists. Which had riled him at first, but when he’d stopped and thought about it, he was glad they were making sure she was safe. They’d seemed to realize fairly quickly that this wasn’t a domestic violence situation.

  Nope, just your run-of-the-mill mental illness. At least as far as the doctors were concerned. Not like they were going to diagnose her with anything related to the supernatural.

  Hell, he wasn’t even sure this was anything supernatural.

  Finally, with Zander lucid and dressed, they’d left the hospital and it had taken more effort than Callum wished to examine to clamp down on the emotion roiling in his gut while they did it. Fear that he wouldn’t be able to handle this; anxiety over telling Cecily and Scott; uncer
tainty about what to do next, if he should call Zander’s mom; overwhelming sadness that he couldn’t simply ask Zander and know that he could trust her answer.

  Cecily had seen the bandages almost the moment they walked into the house and while she hadn’t said a damn thing, the look on her face was glued to the backs of Callum’s eyelids—another scar of the day.

  All of that sucked. But it wasn’t the reason he couldn’t sleep, wasn’t the reason staying up through the night to watch Zander sleep was no BFD.

  No, he couldn’t have slept if he’d wanted to.

  Because it was him, wasn’t it?

  Nobody was this unlucky, to have first a mother and then a girlfriend end up with psychotic breaks.

  Zander hadn’t had a psychotic break, he reminded himself, hearing the psychiatrist at the hospital in his memory.

  Still, it was close enough. Maybe this was just the precursor.

  He could remember his mom acting strangely, especially as he got older, right before they’d been separated and he’d gone into foster care. He could remember her mood swings, the comments she would make sometimes that were out of the blue and brutal: that she would kill herself if she didn’t have him to take care of. That there was nobody in the world he should trust—not even her. He could remember listening to her cry in the front seat of the car while she thought he was sleeping in the back. He could remember conversations she had with herself—and ones she had with the people he, at that time, was just beginning to understand other people couldn’t see.

  It had all been so normal to him. It had taken years to figure out that his early childhood hadn’t been right. And as he’d done so, he’d always assumed some outside force had been the catalyst behind his mother’s oddity. That she had been intruded upon too often, or perhaps that her mental illness wasn’t the result of the supernatural at all. That maybe her life before him had been very hard. It must have been, he’d always told himself. After all, he didn’t know who his father was, and she’d never spoken about him. So either she didn’t know, or she knew he wasn’t worth mentioning. In either case, it was easy to draw the conclusion that life up until his arrival had not been about roses and romance.