Split at the Seams (8 page)

“Thanks, Oren.” I straightened and his hand fell away. As I turned and met his eyes, I wondered how many times I was going to find myself thanking him today.

“What happened?”

“I just saw…” My voice trailed off when I noticed where I was standing. “This is Mara’s room?”

“Yes, how did you know?” His eyes were concerned, but also questioning. “I got rid of the security guard for a while.”

“How?”

“He developed an unquenchable hunger for a greasy hamburger, which he’ll find several blocks from here.” A small grin twisted his thin lips. “He should be gone for a bit, but you better do whatever it is you need to in order to get some fast answers.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. I could’ve ruined this—”

“No, I was on my way to tell you I’d gotten rid of the guard when I found you just standing there in the middle of the corridor, rigid. I didn’t want to interfere and instead watched you head right for this room, reaching for something.” His brow furrowed. “What happened, Sierra?”

I shivered at the recollection of what I’d seen. “I saw a ghost. She wanted my help, so I tried to encourage her to follow the light. But she wouldn’t. She said something else was calling her and led me here.” I figured the edited version of events was better suited for now. The last thing I wanted to do was mention the similarities between Mrs. Wicker and the sick dead girl. It seemed more important to focus on the fact that I was pretty sure the spook hadn’t been called into this room, but dragged.

“A ghost led you to Mara’s room?”

I nodded, slowly. My eyes focused on Mara, lying in the only occupied bed inside the hospital room. There were actually four beds but when I’d followed the spook, this was the only one I’d seen.

“Something strange is definitely going on in this room. I can’t feel the dead like you, but I can certainly feel the unnatural nature of whatever is haunting her.” Oren actually looked uneasy. I’d never seen him this way. He was usually cool, calm and collected—in control of everything, and full of cryptic answers.

I took another step and my skin crawled. I struggled to suck in a shallow breath and exhaled, trying to focus on my surroundings. The room was painted off-white, the same color as the curtains separating each bed. The dividing curtains were all pulled open, displaying the neatly made beds with no charts hanging from the ends. Mara seemed to be the only patient and her bed was situated near the sole window. Her chart looked thick, the pages curling because they’d been handled so much.

The blinds over the window were slightly open and I could see day was already blending into night, which in summer meant it had to be past eight. So much for my day off! I hadn’t had a chance to do anything remotely relaxing.

We were high up, so the only things I could see in the distance were the winking lights of the city below and the clear indigo sky. No moon to look at yet.

When there was nowhere else for my gaze to stray, because I was standing at the end of Mara’s bed, I glanced down at her motionless body. I had so many questions but doubted she could answer any.

She was connected to a bunch of machines I couldn’t even begin to name. One made a continuous beeping sound, the rise and fall of a vertical line marking her steady heartbeat. There were other things connected to her arms, including an IV unit. A thick tube was pressed into her mouth and her eyes were closed, both arms at her sides as if she were already dead.

“It’s not pretty, is it?”

For the second time while inside this hospital, I jumped. I turned enough to find Mara standing beside me. Her long, straight, black hair hung down to her waist, shiny and silky, not limp and dirty like it really looked. She was also wearing low-ride jeans and a clingy T-shirt that stopped high enough to expose her trim abdomen.

“You’re not dead, though,” I said.

She shook her head and the curtain of dark hair swayed around her. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Then why can I see you?” To be honest, I’d never gone near a person in a coma before, so I didn’t know how close someone in this condition was to death. This was a first for me. The implications of a spook catcher being able to communicate with coma patients made my body chill. Which also begged the question—could we all do it? Or was this a result of my other magical side?

Mara shrugged. “I guess I’m in limbo or something. You know, not quite dead yet barely living. Those machines are keeping me alive.”

“It sounds cruel.”

“Trust me, it is. I’ve begged for release so many times. I’m not even sure how long I’ve been stuck in limbo. I’d rather move on than linger in this state. If only the doctors would listen to me.”

I didn’t want to ponder what she was saying. The fact her family hadn’t given the okay to shut down the machines after all these weeks made me wonder if they even knew about her condition. The Council did its best to minimize contact.

Some parents and guardians didn’t like to deal with their spooky offspring and gladly sent their girls off to the Council, while others were proud and kept in contact. I didn’t know if Mara still kept in touch with hers.

I sighed, turning to face her. I stared into her lovely, light brown eyes. She looked sad, but seemed to be trying to hide it behind her usual cheerful façade. I’d known her for a while. She started with the Council about six months before I left. I trained her in a few things and we’d stayed in touch—an email here, a phone call there, but nothing overly social. Still, I liked her. She was powerful and a very genuine person. Mara was the epitome of
what you see is what you get
. I hated to see her in such a helpless position.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, but it’s still happening…”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t remember everything, just snippets. Things that don’t make any sense to me, but might mean something to you…”

Before I could respond, she wrapped both of her cold hands around mine and a jolt of pain rushed into my head. I couldn’t look away, glaring into her eyes as I tumbled into a scene that made my skin crawl.

There was Mace, all toothy smiles and come-on attitude. He was rubbing a strand of Mara’s hair between his fingers as he said,
“Don’t worry about it, babe. This won’t take long. It’s a new way to test your power, see how strong you really are.”

“Isn’t the output we produce enough?”

Mace stepped closer.
“It is for me, but you know how the bosses are. Nothing’s good enough until it’s on paper or screen. We’ve already tested a few of the other girls, and while their results are good…I’m sure yours will be impressive.”

“I don’t know.”
Mara couldn’t stop stealing glances at some kind of ugly chair resembling something you’d find in a dentist’s office.
“Will it hurt, is it invasive?”

Mace closed the distance between them, enough to lean near her ear.
“It won’t hurt at all. And after you’re done, I’ll take you somewhere special. Where you’ll forget any of this ever happened. I promise to make it worth your while.”

Mara nibbled on her bottom lip. While she wasn’t one of the girls who were infatuated with Mace, she did enjoy having sex with him. So the idea excited her. It had been a few months since they’d been together.

She finally nodded.
“Okay, sure.”

The scene switched and my head felt like it was going to crack in two.

Mara was lying down in the horrible-looking chair, guttural screams pouring from her mouth. Her eyes bulged as she pulled against the restraints around her wrists. Her body convulsed, and then she fell back hard against the backrest, causing the helmet on top of her head to shift sideway. She was unconscious.

Everything turned black, but I could hear a voice I recognized.

“Did it work?”
Mace asked.

“She’s passed out, but I think that if we keep her in this state, we can use her as a conduit.”
I didn’t know who the second voice was, but it sounded older and male.

“Good, put her into an induced coma and she’ll do just that.”

My eyes flicked open and I found myself back in the hospital room with Mara standing in front of me. She dropped my hands.

“Did you see any of it?”

I nodded, swallowing the lump lodged inside my throat. They’d strapped her to some sort of machine and then kept her in a coma so she could be used as a conduit…for what?

“See what I mean, I’m in limbo.” Mara glanced at herself still lying on the bed, unmoving. “That’s not really me. It’s just my shell, and they’ve somehow managed to sever my spirit from my corporeal body. You have to help me get back in there. Otherwise, I’ll be stuck outside of myself forever.”

“Mara, did you see a young girl walk in here a few minutes ago?” I whispered, hoping a change of subject would somehow help my subconscious figure this out.

Mara turned back to stare at me. “Yeah, sure, she’s just one of many. There are many women, men, children, and even babies. They continue to come to me. It’s like I’m calling them somehow, drawing them in, and when they touch me, they disappear. I don’t know what they’ve turned me into, but I’m constantly sucking in spooks.”

Like some sort of conduit.

She gripped my shoulders, digging her fingers into me with bruising force even though she shouldn’t be able to. “Please, Sierra, you have to help me figure this out. I know I’m not the only one they’re doing this to. Some of the other girls have been missing for months. Well, we thought they were missing… I’ve spent enough time lying here to realize they probably didn’t survive this torture.”

“I’m so sorry.” I felt tears collect in my eyes. This was so much worse than anything I could’ve imagined. It also explained why Mace had seemed so eager to draw me back into the Council’s fold. He spoke about using my power and how he’d take it if I didn’t willingly offer it. Was this how he was going to do it, what he wanted to use me for? And to think I’d unintentionally almost given myself willingly to them only an hour ago. Whatever Oren and I had been chasing inside the building, it had to be connected to all of this. Was Mace waiting for me inside the Tower? He’d been attacked in the cemetery, Papan had bitten him, but he’d run like a coward before we had a chance to catch him.

“Don’t be sorry. Just promise me you’ll try to find out what’s going on. They’re going to kill all of us if
we
don’t do something about it first. Please, Sierra.”

I found myself nodding as I wiped away several teardrops. How could an organization that was meant to help and nurture gifted girls be trying to hurt us so badly?

“I’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise. I won’t let them force any more of us into this—”

“Hell. This is hell, because being caught in between is no place to be.” Mara dropped her hands from my shoulders and took a step back. She sat down on the side of the bed, looking down at her motionless body. “You better get going. They know you’re here.”

A hand on my arm brought me out of wherever it was I had tumbled into when Mara touched me.

“Sierra, we’re out of time,” Oren said behind me.

I managed a curt nod, because I couldn’t take my eyes off Mara’s unconscious body. The poor thing was trapped inside this room, fully aware she couldn’t do a single thing to change her condition, while for some reason her shell was being used as…as what exactly? What did the Council need with a conduit, or more than one? If girls were going missing for this, they were probably dying as well.

And if dead people were ignoring the light and no longer even considering staying here, was all this connected to the fading ghosts? A sense of foreboding washed through me.

Oren took my hand and led me toward the door. “Come on, Sierra. Stay with me, we need to leave the hospital.”

“Yeah, let’s go.” At the doorway, I looked back at Mara for as long as I could, silently telling her I would be back and hopefully have some answers. I wasn’t focusing on her motionless shell but on her spirit.

As soon as we ducked out the door, I heard multiple footsteps heading our way from the opposite direction.

We rushed forward, turning the corner before I released the breath I’d been holding, until we reached relative safety. There could be other guards waiting up ahead or even near the exit, but we took the stairs down to the ground level and ran out of the hospital, reaching my car in record time and without incident.

I didn’t say a word, didn’t even look at Oren until we’d left the underground parking garage and were driving away from yet another place where I felt I had a target placed firmly on the back of my head.

I still didn’t know where Oren lived, so when he told me to drop him off near a train station on my way home, I didn’t hesitate. After everything he’d done today to keep us out of harm’s way, I was pretty confident of his ability to look after himself and get home safely. I wasn’t ready to visit his abode just yet. It was enough that he’d known where I lived before I told him.

“Here we are,” I said with a smile.

“Thank you.” He jumped out of the car.

Besides, he wasn’t the one who was at risk of becoming some sort of conduit for whatever new—and insane—scheme the Spook Catcher Council had hatched.