Magic on the Line (14 page)

“No.”

“Then a piece of tape over his mouth would work.” He turned. “Maybe a surgical mask. Something to keep him from accidentally biting someone.”

“He’s barely conscious. He’s not going to go around biting people.”

His bright eyes flicked over my face as if he couldn’t decide which part of my features interested him most. He finally settled on my lips. “We don’t know how this magical infection spreads. It might be simply from touch, though I’m assuming many people have touched him and up to this point no one is feeling any ill effects?”

I nodded. I didn’t feel any crappier than I usually felt.

“It could be an airborne pathogen, fluid, blood, magic. We don’t know. Not yet. But if we want to stay safe, we must consider gagging Mr. Silvers.” He pressed his lips together with a short nod and turned back to his work.

I wasn’t going to gag my friend. I walked out of the room, leaving Jack behind to keep an eye on Collins, who was humming again. I was suddenly glad Jack kept a big knife on him.

I took the stairs down to the main room. Bea had pulled an easy chair over by the bunk where Davy was sleeping.

“Ready for him?” she asked without looking up. Hounds. Good ears.

“Has he moved?”

“No. He mumbled some, like he was having a dream, but otherwise he’s been pretty quiet. Still running a fever, though.”

“Let’s see if we can wake him,” I said. “If not, we’re going to have to figure out how to carry him upstairs.”

Bea hit the MUTE button on the TV remote and stood. “I can wake him.”

“No magic.”

“Really? Why not?”

I shrugged one shoulder. I could make up a lie, but I didn’t see why I should. “Mr. Collins thinks it might be some kind of infection from using magic. If we use more magic on him, I don’t know if it will make it worse.”

I walked over to the bottom bunk. Davy was pale, sticky green where the shadows lay across his face and just the lightest shade of blue around his lips and eyes. I wondered if the mark on his shoulder had gotten worse. Wondered if it had spread like the tentacle mark on Anthony. Didn’t bother looking now. I was sure Collins would do a thorough check once we got him upstairs.

“Davy,” I said in a moderate voice, “time to get up.” I put my hand on his forearm and shook him a little. Nothing.

“Davy,” I said louder. Then, “Silvers. Wake up.” I didn’t put Influence behind it, even though I wanted to. Instead I shook him. Hard.

He exhaled a low, drawn-out moan, his eyes flickering.

“Wake up, Davy. We gotta move you. Come on, you can do it.”

His eyelids pulled up, and then closed again, harder, as if he were trying to clear the dream from behind his eyes.

“Al?” he breathed.

“Gotta move, Davy. I’m going to help you up. Can you stand?”

He swallowed. It looked like it hurt. “Yes.”

That was my boy. Bea and I helped him sit, then both got our arms around him, his arms over our shoulders. It was a little awkward since Bea was almost a foot shorter than me, but we got him standing.

“Got your legs under you?” I asked him.

Davy was shaking and sweating. He worked on putting weight on his feet.

“Here,” Sid said as he came into the room. “Let me get on the other side of him.”

Bea and Sid switched places and Sid and I got Davy, who amazingly managed to put one foot in front of the other, into the elevator.

I think my heart was beating harder and I was sweating more than Davy by the time that damn door opened.

“Almost there,” Sid said calmly, to me, not Davy. Davy wasn’t doing anything but leaning on us. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d have guessed he had passed out.

“Come on, Silvers,” I said. “Let’s get you in bed.”

Davy mumbled something, but it was so slurred I couldn’t make it out. Sid and I got him across the hall to the room, and then Mr. Collins hurried over and helped us pick him up and carry him the rest of the way to the bed that we’d set up.

It didn’t take any time to get him settled.

“All right,” Collins said, as if he were looking over a grocery list. “Let’s see. I think we should get him out of his shirt and into more comfortable pants. Those sweats you brought up should work.”

He pulled Davy’s T-shirt carefully off over his head. And sucked in a breath. “Hello, what do we have here?” He folded Davy’s shirt and placed it on the chair next to the bed. Then he bent and peered at Davy’s chest.

Well, not just his chest. At the tentacle lines snaking across his shoulder and down his collarbone toward his sternum.

“Is this new?” he asked me.

“It’s not a tattoo,” I said. “I saw something like that on the person who bit him.”

He gave me a sidelong glance. “I’d like to meet this person who bit him. Take a look at his marks too.”

“He’s dead.”

Collins nodded. “Easier to set up a meeting, then, as I’m assuming his schedule will be clear.”

Ass.

“Was it identical?” he asked as I handed him the sweatpants and we pulled away the blanket. We both paused. Davy was wearing jeans. Collins looked at me, wondering if I was going to take part in this declothing operation.

Fine. I figured Davy would rather I undress him than some stranger. Let’s just hope he was wearing shorts.

I unbuttoned his jeans, slid the zipper down. Hallelujah, we had shorts!

Davy didn’t move at all but I could feel the heat coming off the skin of his flat stomach and chest. Boy was burning up.

“Are you going to put him on an IV?” I asked.

“I plan to. Careful.”

He didn’t have to tell me. I pulled Davy’s jeans off as quickly as I could, but tried not to pull too hard. His legs were just as hot as the rest of him. By the time I had his jeans off over his feet, he was shivering hard enough to shake the bed.

Collins tucked the sheet and my heavy quilt back over him, leaving only his head, shoulders, and left arm out of the covers.

He opened a new needle package, set it on the table, got out everything else, and set a shunt in his arm. He was quick with the needle, steady-handed and sure. He hummed quietly, nodding to himself every once in a while as if he were constantly going over a checklist in his head. He hooked the IV bag on a hat rack we’d brought up from downstairs.

Then he pulled out a thin steel plate about the size of his palm and broke the seal on its edge with his thumbnail.

He exhaled. As he inhaled, he drew a spell with his left hand, holding the round steel plate in his right. He finished the spell, and held it pinched between his thumb and pinky. He flipped open the top part of the steel plate, revealing a golden glyph nestled like lacework inside.

No, I shouldn’t have been able to see magic without using Sight. I blinked, and couldn’t see the golden spell—though I could’ve sworn I’d seen it.

With a deft twist of his wrist, Collins flicked the spell he’d cast across the plate. I knew the two spells would mingle, join, and become something very different and tricky to cast—Syphon, a spell that was usually used in medical care. He guided the spell as if it hovered like a helium balloon over the plate in his hand, and then gently placed the plate on Davy’s chest.

He waited a moment, then cast several quick spells in a row, pausing to touch his fingertip to Davy’s chest, to his shoulder where the bite and darkness spread, then to the IV line, and finally he flourished his fingers over the hat rack like he was getting rid of spiderweb strands.

The Syphon was set. It would slowly drain the magic from Davy.

“How’s it working?” I asked.

Collins studied his handiwork. “As well as to be expected, I think.” He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “A few seconds into it is a bit early to give a final determination, however. Are you staying?”

I thought about it. I’d gotten almost zero sleep. It was midmorning, and I hadn’t heard anything from Zayvion or the rest of them, so I could only assume they didn’t need me. That was fine. I was not up to seeing Bartholomew or his pet torturer, Melissa, right now.

Jack had found a chair and was texting on his cell. Sid was unloading some groceries in the kitchen area.

“For a while,” I said.

I’d only had a scone to eat today. I was starved. I gave Davy one last look. He appeared to be sleeping. “Did you give him painkillers?”

“A mild sedative in his IV to help him sleep. Nothing fancy.” He flashed me a smile. “Yet. I’m going to draw some blood first.”

I glanced over at the kitchen again, and my stomach rumbled.

He looked at me. “Go ahead. I’ll narrate.”

I didn’t like being told what to do by this man, but I was starving.

Since he was paying no more attention to me, but instead getting the vials and needle ready, I walked over to the kitchen. “Who’s paying for all the food?” I asked.

Sid shrugged. “Took it out of petty cash.”

“We have petty cash?”

“Yes. You. You’re our petty cash.”

“In that case, I want food.”

“What can I get you?” He opened a cupboard showing soups, cans, and boxed goods.

“Anything I don’t have to chew through tin to get at would work. Though I’ll eat tin, if that’s all we’ve got.”

Sid pursed his lips and shut the cupboard. He opened the refrigerator. “How about a deli sandwich or salad?”

“Yes.”

He pulled out a wrapped deli sandwich from the local market down the street and handed it to me. It weighed as much as a newborn baby.

“I think I love you, Sid.”

He chuckled. “Still want the salad?”

I leaned my elbows on the countertop, unwrapped the sandwich, and dug in. Sweet hells, I was hungry. “This should do,” I mumbled.

“So do you know what’s wrong with Davy?” He put a tall glass of orange juice in front of me and I swallowed down half of it. I’d taken out a third of the sandwich already, but my hands were still shaking from hunger.

From across the room, I heard Collins say, “I’m going to draw his blood now. Three vials.”

What did you know? He really was narrating.

“That’s what he’s supposed to tell us,” I said.

“And?”

“So far he thinks it’s an infection. A magical infection.”

“Any reason why we aren’t taking him to a hospital?”

I took another big bite and chewed. “I don’t think it’s something a regular doctor would know how to handle.”

“Think? Didn’t know you had a medical degree, Allie.”

Okay, I got it. He was worried about Davy. I was too. “This guy used to work with my dad on medical technology, Sid. He has all the equipment the hospitals would have. Probably more. We can take Davy in if you want to, but I don’t know how much moving him will help.”

Sid glanced over at Collins.

“There now,” Collins said. “That’s the last of the blood. I’m setting these aside and taking his vitals again.”

“He’s odd,” Sid said.

“Most people who are good at magic are,” I said.

“Mind if I look him up?” Sid finally asked.

“Shocked you haven’t already.”

“Give me a bit.”

I finished my sandwich, then wandered back over to check on Davy. Collins was still humming, making notes on his handheld.

“How’s he doing?” I asked.

Collins scratched at his eyebrow, then looked up from his notes and over at Davy as if just noticing he was there. “Stable. I think the Syphon might be helping.” He glanced at me. “This is going to take some time, Allison. More than an hour or two. More than a day or two.”

“How long?” I turned and stared out the window. Normal life was moving along out there, people going about their daily rituals, hurrying to get to normal jobs, normal lunches, normal meetings with normal people. Yes, death and disease happened out there on those sunny streets too. But from here, it all looked simpler, easier, nicer on the other side of the glass.

“If the Syphon continues to retard the spread of the infection, and the tests give me results of what exact kind of infection we’re dealing with, then I think we’ll be able to calibrate the medication and spells and see a change in the next three days.”

“Three days,” I repeated. Maybe we should take him to a hospital. “Would you be willing to see him at a hospital?” I asked.

He set the handheld down. “I could,” he began slowly. “Many of my . . . techniques would not be accepted there. He would receive care, I’m sure, but I don’t know that any of the hospitals in the area have the . . . technology to find an answer for him. He has been poisoned. By magic.”

“You make it sound like that’s never happened before,” I said distractedly.

“It hasn’t.”

I turned away from the window. “What?”

Collins was carefully lining up all the items on the table, things that looked like blood pressure cuffs and monitors and metal and glass sticks etched with spells and more of those flat plates that contained Syphon, and other medical spells.

“I don’t want to make assumptions until I see the results of the tests.”

“But?” I encouraged.

He turned to face me and folded his hands. “It might be a spell someone cast on him. It might be a spell he cast that went terribly wrong. Even so, those outcomes, to my knowledge, do not result in poisoning or infection.”

I just shook my head. I was tired, had been pretty sick myself just lately, and probably wasn’t thinking straight.

“Something has poisoned magic, Allison. Or at least, that is my assumption. The tests will prove or disprove my theories.”

“You can’t poison magic,” I said. “It’s not like you can just walk up to a lake of magic and pour poison in it.”

He gave me a look of droll tolerance. “No. I am sure,” he said with thinly veiled sarcasm, “that there is no conceivable way to poison a resource that can be funneled and directed through networks, streams, and collected in cisterns.”

And wells. That’s what he wasn’t saying. The magic in the wells could be affected—there had been a lot of fights around the wells, and whatever Leander and Isabelle had done at the Life well, sacrificing, killing people, fighting us with magic, could have also poisoned the magic in the well.

“Oh shit,” I whispered.

He smiled, watching my lips again, too much bright sunshine for such a horrendous realization. “I would like to run some tests on you, Allison. To make sure you aren’t suffering any effects from the marks you carry.”