Living with Your Past Selves (Spell Weaver) (16 page)

Abruptly the kelpie jumped off me, howling in pain. Stan had jumped out from his hiding place, grabbed White Hilt, and stabbed the creature in the back. White Hilt wouldn’t flame for him, but at the end of the day, it was still a sword, and the kelpie was not invulnerable.

With an unearthly scream, it tore itself free and turned to face him. The seductive female form shuddered and vanished. The kelpie was still vaguely human, but now it was a tall, muscular man, a form such as it might have used to seduce women, except that it didn’t really bother with niceties like a face, being content instead with a kind of twitching darkness broken only by reddish eyes and now enormous fangs. Normally, kelpies worked by stealth, tricking people instead of overcoming them in physical combat—but apparently they could more than hold their own in a fight.

Poor Stan now had a bad dilemma. He had one sword, but the kelpie had two sets of claws and one of fangs. An expert swordsman might have kept the creature back, but Stan was no expert, and the kelpie’s arms were getting longer. Once those arms were long enough, the kelpie could attack from two sides while keeping all of its body except for its fast-moving arms too far away for Stan to strike. If nothing else it could keep feinting until it wore Stan down, and then it would dig its claws into him. His only other alternative was to try to toss the sword to me, a move he had no idea how to do, and one that would in any case leave him totally vulnerable.

“Stan, don’t!” I yelled, realizing that he was in fact contemplating trying to throw me the sword. Ignoring me, he started to lift the sword for the throw. I threw myself on the creature’s back to distract it from Stan—and then my grip was weaker than it should have been. I could feel blood oozing from both my left arm and right hand. Well, so much for stamina. With much more exertion, I would be lucky if I didn’t pass out.

Trying to tighten my grip on the flailing creature beneath me, I glanced over at the lagoon, then stared. The algae-green water near the shore was bubbling. In seconds a figure emerged from it. In horror I contemplated having to fight two kelpies at the same time, but, no, the newcomer emerging from the lagoon was…Nurse Florence.

Neat trick, that. I would have to ask her how she did it some time—if I lived long enough.

Distracted by what was happening lagoon-side, I didn’t immediately realize that a Santa Barbara PD cruiser had pulled up nearby. I did become aware of them when their lights illuminated the scene. I glanced over and realized they had their guns aimed at the kelpie. From where they were standing, they could see a fair amount of blood on the ground, so they knew the situation was not good, but from a distance, the kelpie just looked like a really big dude wreaking havoc, and they figured they could take him down if they had to. Well, except that I was in the way of their getting a good shot. With an effort I managed to drop off the kelpie and roll out of the way. The kelpie’s attention now focused on the two officers. Nurse Florence had grabbed Stan from behind and pulled him out of the way. The police shouted a warning, and the kelpie, seeing the tide had turned decisively against it, made a run for the lagoon. One of the officers fired, but missed because of the kelpie’s unexpected speed. Beyond the range of the lights, the kelpie slid into the lagoon, but from the officers’ point of view, it probably looked as if it had just disappeared into the night. One ran after it, while the other called for backup. Of course, they wouldn’t find the kelpie…but they had us, and I didn’t know how we were going to explain even the little that they had seen.

Thank God for Nurse Florence. Oh, I know, I know. I still couldn’t be sure she wasn’t the enemy, but she saved us hours of questioning. By the time the officers had their backup and had men combing the area, leaving someone time enough to take a statement, Nurse Florence had both Stan and me on the same page. She had also used enough magic to keep me from bleeding out or feeling the full extent of my pain while the police questioned us.

“I can heal you, Tal, so unless you want to spend hours in the trauma center over at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital, let’s pretend you just got some superficial cuts. Besides, if anyone saw how extensive your injuries really were, there’d be some risk of panic, and we don’t want that.”

According to Nurse Florence’s carefully crafted fiction, Stan had gone missing around four o’clock, and we were looking for him. Well, that part was true, but it was almost the only thing in her story that was. She, Stan, and I took turns telling her revisionist version, depending on whose perspective was relevant. As the story went, Stan had gotten an SOS from friends at UCSB who needed his help on a project, so he had taken the bus down. But the friends who called him weren’t in the dorm right then, so Stan had taken a walk down to the lagoon. By that time it was dark, and Stan had encountered someone who, based on the description Stan provided, the detective taking the statement decided was clearly a sexual predator. Anyway, Stan became suspicious and tried to run away, but he got turned around, ran in the wrong direction, toward the ocean, lost his cell phone, couldn’t call for help, ended up hiding under a bench on the path (ooh, another small truth), hoping the guy would go away, but he kept walking around that area, around and around, as if he knew Stan was still around somewhere, and Stan was afraid to run, so he ended up trapped for hours. He occasionally heard people, but always too far away for it to be safe to call out to them. In this version, when Nurse Florence and I hit the lagoon path, Stan came out, but the pervert, who was closer than Stan thought, tried to attack Stan, then got in a fight with me. Nurse Florence produced a blood covered knife from somewhere to explain the blood on the ground, but she was careful to magic the ground to make the blood seem much less and to magic my injuries to make them look more superficial.

The story had a few rough spots, but for improvisation it was pretty good. And with Nurse Florence right there to sell it, the detective was more than satisfied. As the old saying goes, that woman could sell ice to Eskimos.

By the time the detective had finished taking our statements, some of our searchers, drawn by the commotion, had found us. Nurse Florence fed them the Readers’ Digest condensed version of the story we had given the detective and then handed off Stan to them, telling them we had to clear up a little police business but that they should gather people at the bus, and we would join them in a few minutes.

The place was crawling with police, so it took Nurse Florence a while to find a quiet spot. Once she had one, she wrapped us in mist, had me take off my shirt and jacket, and examined my wounds.

“Just flesh wounds, at least,” I said.

“Deep ones, almost to the bone in some spots. If I hadn’t stopped your bleeding, you would have collapsed minutes after the officers got there.” She removed a small green bottle from her purse and then quickly and efficiently poured the contents carefully into each wound. I was expecting stinging or something, but I felt a gentle warmth instead.

“There’s quite a bit of nerve and muscle damage, more than I thought. This is going to take longer to heal than I would like, but I can’t very well leave you like this. We just have to hope no one comes looking for us for a while. Even if they don’t, that salve by itself is too slow, though it would heal you eventually. I’ll give it a little help.” She put one hand on my left arm and one on my right hand. She closed her eyes and whispered in Welsh. Suddenly the purest white light I had ever seen flowed from her, making her look like an angel, and then it engulfed me. Every part of my body tingled, and I could literally feel wounds closing, muscles and nerves knitting themselves together beneath. Held in the light, I lost all track of time. When at last I noted, regretfully, that the light was fading, I was shocked to look at my watch and discover that forty five minutes had passed.

Nurse Florence added a few bandages. “I left some small cuts to account for the superficial wounds you were supposed to have gotten, just in case the police do any follow-up with you. Now,” she added a little shakily, “I’m feeling pretty drained, and someone is bound to come looking for us soon, so get your shirt on quickly.” Almost before I finished dressing, the mist faded, and Nurse Florence and I headed for the bus as fast as she could go, which wasn’t very fast by that point. Nonetheless, the students had kept themselves entertained in our absence. True, Coach Miller looked pretty irritated, I suspected because he had hardly seen Nurse Florence since we arrived on the campus. Dan was still sitting up front, face unreadable, trying not to socialize with anyone. Stan was equally quiet, sitting alone near the middle of the bus. Whether because nobody wanted to tick Dan off or because Stan made it seem like he wanted to be alone, no one was sitting next to him or on either side of him. When I sat down next to him, he looked out the window. I tried to talk, but he just shook his head. He clearly didn’t want to talk.

Shortly after the bus got underway, Nurse Florence tapped me on the shoulder and leaned over to whisper to me. “I know what I said about erasing people’s memories of betrayal, but a little mood music is different. You can cut the tension on this bus with a knife. Let’s do something about that.” I looked around, and she was right. People should have felt at least a little exhilarated by having helped save Stan, but somehow Stan and Dan between them were radiating gloom, and almost everyone seemed vaguely out of sorts. So I started singing a capella, gradually working more and more magic into the music, spreading contentment throughout the bus like a warm wind on a quiet summer night. Even Dan and Stan showed some signs of relaxing, but Stan still didn’t speak.

“Tal!” said an urgent voice behind me, even sexier for its urgency.

“What?” I asked Eva. She had sat down in an empty seat right behind me.

“Tell me what happened on Founders’ Day!”

“What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean! If I’m going to lose Dan over all this, I at least need to know what ‘this’ is.”

I leaned as close to her as I could. “This isn’t the time, but Eva, I promise, I’ll tell you tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything.” Stan looked in my direction, the obvious question written on his face, but he still didn’t speak.

“And Eva,” I added, “when you know everything, you’ll realize Dan wasn’t lying to you, not to be cruel, not to make you feel crazy, not lying at all.” She started to answer, then suddenly realized Stan was sitting next to me. She must have been so focused on getting her questions answered she had just looked right through him. She turned bright red, and lowered her eyes, too nervous to make eye contact.

“Stan?” she said, very timidly. “Stan, can we talk?”

“I won’t tell anyone, don’t worry,” whispered Stan.

“I’ve already told everyone who would listen.” Stan’s face betrayed a little surprise at that. “All the cheerleaders. They were impressed you were such a gentleman. And the football players who wouldn’t listen, well, the cheerleaders will see that they know what really happened. In a day or so, everyone will know it wasn’t your fault.

“Stan,” she continued, putting her hand on his shoulder. “I wasn’t thinking about you, and I should have been. I wasn’t thinking at all. Now all of us are miserable, and it’s my fault. I can’t ask you to forgive me.” She finally made eye contact with Stan, and, much to my surprise, grabbed his hands in hers. I hoped Dan wasn’t watching—this was definitely a moment that could be misinterpreted.

“I just want to make you feel better.”

“I’ll get over it,” whispered Stan. “And you aren’t exactly the only one who has been acting on impulse and making it tough for everyone else.”

“Gee,” I said, “just because you got the whole town out searching for you, I wouldn’t say that was making it too tough.”

Stan looked at me as if the thought had never occurred to him. “You mean you guys aren’t the only ones who looked for me?”

“Buddy, I don’t know of anyone who wasn’t looking for you.” Eva nodded in agreement.

“It may not seem much like it right now, but everyone likes you, Stan. The thought of something happening to you…” Eva shuddered. “It would be more than anyone could stand.” I had been trying the whole bus ride back from Isla Vista to get even a word, any sign of conscious life, from Stan, and then along came Eva, and not only got him to talk, but cheered him up—and she’s the one who got him into this mess in the first place! That’s a life lesson, folks—if you want to cheer up a guy, just find a volcanically hot girl to treat him like he is the center of the universe, and all will be well.

Stan was actually smiling by this point. “Well, I didn’t mean to have everyone make all this fuss.” Then the smile faded. “What am I going to tell my parents? I’ll be grounded until Armageddon!”

“Remember how your cell phone got lost,” I prompted. “You were going to call and tell them you were at UCSB and would be late for dinner. Then you lost your phone and got trapped on the lagoon path. It wasn’t really your fault.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Stan in amazement, realizing for the first time that Nurse Florence’s story had been designed in part to cover him with his parents.

After a few minutes Eva moved away. Stan’s eyes followed her, not a good sign under the circumstances.

He realized I was looking at him intently. “Don’t worry, Tal. I’m not making that mistake again.” I leaned as close to him as I could. Suddenly, despite how often I had spilled my guts tonight, I wasn’t eager to have anyone overhear.

“Stan, I feel like garbage. I wasn’t there when you needed me. Well,
I’m
not making that mistake again.”

“Tal, I didn’t run away because of what you did or didn’t do,” said Stan gently. “I ran away because I realized I had let you down. Dan isn’t just a friend. He’s like your…bodyguard, or something. Straining that relationship might put your life at risk. And I didn’t think about it until it was too late.”

“Listen, it might have been easier if things had worked out differently, but Stan, I have never, never been more proud of you than I am right this minute.” Stan’s mouth fell open.