A Kiss Beneath the Veil (8 page)

Mark seemed
to snap out of it then, saying something about paperwork and statements that
he’d take from her in the morning. He left then, passing a nurse who’d come to
move Daphne to a private room.

Isaac stayed
with her till dawn. She dozed off and on and every time she opened her eyes he
was always there, watching her with an indescribable expression. It was a look
filled with love and hope and encouragement and protectiveness, all rolled into
a pair of eyes the exact shade of a baby blue crayon.

She finally woke
for good when a jovial nurse pulled the curtains open across her windows and
let the sun stream in. Isaac was gone, but a vase of peonies and gardenias had
been left in his place, along with a note that simply said, “
Until tonight.
All my love, Isaac”

####

The people
of Rockford found out about Daphne’s involvement in apprehending the killer and
bombarded her with well wishes. She had a constant stream of guests at her
bedside most of the day, and all of the murdered children’s parents stopped by to
thank her.

 Daphne said
goodbye in her rusty voice to the last of them as the nurse poked her head in
for the third time to say that visiting hours were over, but she’d barely laid
her head back with a sigh of relief when she felt another presence in the room.
Daphne cracked an eyelid in annoyance and found Emma and her mother standing at
the foot of her bed.

“Hey there,
what are you still doing here?” she asked, referring to Emma’s continued
existence, not their defiance of the posted visiting hours.

Mrs. Berkley
looked surprised and glanced around as though she’d be able to see her daughter
too. Then she shook her head at her own foolishness and focused on Daphne
again.

“I want to
thank you for your help,” she said smiling at Daphne uncertainly. Mrs. Berkley
looked better, as though she might have finally gotten a full night’s sleep.
Daphne smiled back, though Isaac’s description of their breed ran through her
head again. Mrs. Berkley didn’t look like she wanted to hurt Daphne, she’d
caught her daughter’s killer after all, so she tried to relax and give her the
benefit of the doubt. She couldn’t help looking at the woman’s daughter again.
Why hadn’t she moved on?

“It was Emma
who cracked the case. If she hadn’t been able to reach out to me, we might not
have caught him,” Daphne said. Emma’s ghost had been watching her solemnly, but
at her words something softened in her expression. She was aware of what Daphne
said.

“She was
always so brave, my sweet Emma,” Mrs. Berkley said. Then she cleared her throat
and seemed to make an effort to look at Daphne again. “I have something more to
ask of you. Emma needs your help crossing over.”

“I’m not
sure what you mean, that’s not something I’ve ever done before,” Daphne said,
confused by the woman’s odd behavior. In the past, whenever Daphne solved the
snag that was keeping a ghost around, it just moved on automatically. She’d
never had to tell a ghost that the problem was solved, they just sort of knew
and crossed over on their own.

“Our kind,
we don’t usually...die. Emma’s the first in centuries. I’ve tried to find
others who could help her, but there’s no one. Please, she deserves a second
chance. Send her over so that she can find her way back to me,” the woman
begged, finally stepping closer and reaching for Daphne’s hand.

Fear that
Mrs. Berkley’s touch could give her nightmares for the rest of her life made
Daphne tuck her hands under the blankets before she could touch her.

The woman
immediately stepped back with a flinch, making Daphne feel like a jerk. She
glanced hopefully at the open windows, but it was still at least an hour till
dark, Isaac wouldn’t be showing up to advise her any time soon.

“Could you
come back tomorrow? I need to think about this-” Daphne began, but the woman
cut her off.

“If you do
this for me, I’ll swear protection to you for as long as you live,” Mrs.
Berkley said looking angry and desperate, and knotting her hands together above
the ivory cardigan she wore.

That sounded
like it was probably a really good deal. Having a living nightmare as a
bodyguard would definitely dissuade most people from messing with you. But
still, what if Emma’s ghost wasn’t supposed to go to the other side? The soul
of a living nightmare probably didn’t belong there, and if Daphne helped it on
over she could be causing irreparable harm to a place she didn’t fully
understand. She
really
needed Isaac’s advice on this one.

“I’m not
saying no, I just have no idea how to do what you’re asking.”
Or whether I
even should
. But that thought went unvoiced. “I really appreciate your
offer, but I need a day to figure this out,” Daphne finished strongly, hoping
the woman and her daughter would leave without harassing her any further. No
such luck.

Mrs.
Berkley’s eyes darkened like ink filling a cup. The inky darkness spilled over
and her eyes sank to black pits in her face.

William
Congreve wrote that “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, but he was
slightly off the mark. The truth was that Hell hath no fury like a mother in
defense of her child. And at that moment Daphne was the only thing standing
between Mrs. Berkley and Emma’s rebirth.

Terror
seeped from the woman in smoky black tendrils. It dribbled from her mouth and
from those bottomless eyes. It brought with it all the fears that you forget
when you grow up. It whispered horror to her in a terrible doll’s voice, like
the doll that lurked beneath the bed and could open its mouth
wide...wider...wide enough to bite your foot and drag you down-

“Help my
daughter,” Mrs. Berkley commanded. Her voice broke the spell that she’d been
weaving over Daphne. It made the nightmare snap from Daphne’s eyes like a
painted lens to reveal the bright hospital room again. Daphne’s constricted
throat ached with a scream she couldn’t unleash. Not even the scarecrow had
made her feel as helpless and terrified as Mrs. Berkley, who now looked serene
and mom-like again in her ivory sweater and carefully styled hair. The smoke
and eye pits were gone. Daphne’s breath finally released in a whooshing cry.
She wanted to yell for help, but what would anyone be able to do for her? How
could you fight your own dark thoughts?

“I told you!
I don’t know what to do!” Daphne said, kicking herself higher on the bed and
tucking the blankets under her feet.
Isaac! If you can hear me, get your ass
out of the coffin and come rescue me!
She thought, hoping that Isaac
actually could hear her and that he actually would venture out of his luxurious
bed to get her away from the Garmorlgan.

“You don’t
need a spell, or instructions. There isn’t a right or wrong way of doing this.
You’re a medium, just
help
her,” Mrs. Berkley said, smoothing down her
slacks and throwing a glance around the room again, searching for her daughter.

Emma drifted
closer to Daphne’s bed. Her dark eyes hadn’t shifted to pits like her mother’s.
She just looked like a paler version of a child. Daphne closed her eyes trying
to think. Could she hold out till Isaac got there if more terrors were released
against her? She hoped if they forced her that she didn’t actually have the
power to send Emma to a place that she didn’t belong. As Daphne continued to
deliberate she felt something odd. It was similar to the feeling she got when a
ghost was near, a sort of knowledge that someone else was close to her.

Something
was listening to her now.

“Hello?”
she thought, wondering if it was
just Emma trying to talk to her again. Nothing responded, but she felt as
though whatever was listening cared about what she had to say.

“There’s
a spirit here that wants to cross over, but she doesn’t know how. Can you help
her?”
she asked,
waiting with her eyes tightly shut. She’d never talked to God, or whatever it
was that ran the other side, and she hoped that this wasn’t some test, seeing
whether she caved under a little torture and tried to sneak a demon over. Of
course, demons might actually be welcome, what did she know?

In answer to
her question something began pulling at her, like a wind blowing through her
soul, sucking her toward the presence. Daphne’s eyes snapped open and she saw
Emma bathed in light for the briefest moment before she disintegrated, passing
from the space between to whatever waited for them beyond.

The sterile
white room with its slightly grungy guest seats and bright fluorescent lighting
still surrounded her. Mrs. Berkley, dressed in her modern June Cleaver
disguise, was the only other person in the room. Daphne had felt for the
briefest moment that she wasn’t in the hospital anymore, she’d been somewhere
else. Somewhere...different.

The sense of
both the listening presence and that of Emma’s ghost had disappeared leaving
Daphne staring wide-eyed back at Mrs. Berkley, stunned at how easy it all had
been. It was like she had an open line to the other side and all she’d had to
do was pick it up.

Mrs. Berkley
gasped and clutched her hands above her heart. “Did she- Is she- Was that her
leaving?” she finally stuttered out.

Daphne
nodded uncertainly, not knowing what to think about any of it. A monster born
of nightmares was standing at her bedside, wringing her hands in worry over the
fate of her daughter’s soul, and Daphne had very-probably just felt a God’s
hand reach through her to pluck that soul away. How did one top that?

Isaac
appeared at her bedside, hissing at the Garmorlgan and slashing the tubes still
stuck in Daphne’s arms before teleporting her away from the hospital room in a
cloud of smoke.

A literal
cloud of smoke.

As they
reappeared in the grand bedchamber he’d brought her to the other night, Isaac
set her gently on his bed and quickly stepped back to drop the smoldering robe
he was wearing on the marble floor. His skin was red and blistered from the sun
that had been shining into her hospital room.

“Are you all
right?! Did she hurt you?” he questioned her through cracked and bleeding lips.

“Isaac! Oh
my god, are you okay?!” Daphne wheezed at the same time, clutching her bruised
throat in shock as she stared at the smoking burns that covered his body.

“I’m fine,”
he said, brushing away her concern. “I came to you as quickly as I could. I
thought that you were calling to me, but it is so hard to tell with our tenuous
connection.” His frustration and regret were palpable, his accent thickening
with his emotions.

“It’s okay,
she didn’t hurt me,” Daphne said, still frowning at the terrible wounds he’d
suffered. She’d tell him about the scary doll thoughts once he’d healed. And
only after he’d stopped blaming himself for all the times she’d been hurt. “Oh,
Isaac, your skin...” she whispered.

He’d come
into the light for her, not even sure that she was actually calling for him,
and was burned horrifically because of it. Could she really continue
questioning his feelings for her? Isaac didn’t see her as a possession. He
wasn’t shallow and star-struck by her looks.

Isaac loved
her.

Daphne had
always thought love was an indescribable emotion. Something almost magical that
she’d just
know
when she actually felt it. But for the first time she
saw with clarity what love really was. It was a connection whose force was so
strong, so irresistible, that you were compelled to move heaven and earth to
protect it. It was self-sacrifice and compromise. It was hope and forgiveness. As
she looked at Isaac, she knew for certain that he loved her. And when she
looked deep, deep inside herself, to the very center of her heart, she realized
how she truly felt about him as well.

“Isaac, I
love you,” she blurted out. He froze in the act of dusting at the skin
sloughing off of his arm and stared at her.

Most people
throw that phrase around thoughtlessly. They say it to their mailman when he
brings good news, to the stranger who lets them cut in line at the check out,
to the aunt they’ve only met twice in their life. Not Daphne though. She used
the word “love” very sparingly, and Isaac knew that.

“Are you
sure?” he asked. Not exactly the response she’d expected, but she answered
nonetheless.

“Yes. I love
you,” she said thickly, and not only because her throat was still raw and
bruised from being strangled. She was ready to cry all of a sudden, as though
every cell in her body had just realized how much Isaac meant to her and was
flooding her with love for him.

Isaac either
leapt faster than she could track, or teleported into her arms, because she was
suddenly engulfed in his embrace. She was terrified of hurting him though, and
was squeaking in protest. “Your skin! Careful!”

“To hell
with my skin! You love me?! I’ve waited so long to hear you say that,” Isaac
said, laughing down at her. His bright white smile was still the same, even in
the charred ruins of his face. And in that moment as she looked at him and felt
her heart swell with love, she realized that beauty really had no part in how
she felt about him. And, considering how battered and horrid she looked, it obviously
didn’t matter to him either.