Chapter 52

Chapter 52 of 56 · 6-minute read

I grab my car keys and jam them into my jeans pocket on my way out the front door, then remember the house key on the coffee table and rush back to get it. I don’t bother to look for my shoes as I head back outside.

The air around me sizzles.

As I fumble with the key in the lock, I glance over my shoulder at the deputy’s car, still parked on the roadside just off of the property. The parking lights are off now.

For a split second, I waffle over whether to ask Everett for help—assuming it’s Everett in the car. He’s engaged to my cousin, Fallon, and if it’s her brother, Ranger, that Virgil has been running from in these visions, then how willing will Everett be to help?

Before I can make up my mind, the headlights of the deputy’s car flash on. The engine roars to life. The car lurches forward, then fishtails on the thick roadside grass as it makes a U-turn and speeds away.

By the time I’m in my own car, Everett’s is long out of sight.

“Protect yourself, Virgil!”

I will my mental message to reach him, pushing it out of my head and beyond my aura with all the strength I have. I don’t know if I can get through to him, though. He’s likely already doing trance work with Mama, and in his own little bubble to block out distractions.

Bare foot squashing the accelerator, I’m flying now, 65 mph, down this lonely country road. I barely notice a familiar car parked under the low-hanging branches of an oak just off my path. The only thing that matters now is saving Virgil.

“Morrigan,” I pray. “You brought me all this way and gave me a best friend. Don’t let me lose Virgil now!”

I don’t feel anything that tells me Virgil’s received my message. I can be at the nursing home in less than five minutes. Or, I could try to astral there to warn him. I know better than to try both.

Friends don’t let friends astral and drive.

A calmness descends around me. The Old Gods are here with me. I don’t see The Morrigan, but I feel Her, just as I did in the swamp long ago when I was desperate for help.

White-knuckled fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, I stomp the accelerator and watch the front of my car swallow the painted centerline as I speed down the empty country highway. The speedometer climbs beyond the 85 mph line.

The two visions inside the nursing home keep popping up in front of my eyes like a heads-up display. I decelerate each vision to a full stop.

The one where I am—no, the one where Virgil is stumbling in the corridor becomes a single frame of a video playing in my mind’s eye. Finally, I can focus on the wearer’s long-sleeved light-blue shirt, jersey and comfortable, but nothing I’ve seen Virgil wear before. And the hands emerging from the sleeves. Hands at his sides as he stumbles forward: a man’s hands. Virgil’s.

For as many times as I’ve seen this vision from his point of view, it’s always moved too fast for me to catch the little details.

The other vision, the one where my mom opens her eyes and mouths her warning, replays unbidden. I’ve analyzed this vision a million times since I first saw it last spring, but it wasn’t what I thought.

All this time, every time it flashed before my mind’s eye, I thought I was sitting in a room at a nursing home, holding Mama’s hand and watching her open her eyes and her lips move with her last words. When the vision comes to a full stop, I see that her eyes have not opened at all, but that her spiritual eyes have opened, like an overlay atop her physical eyes that remain closed.

Previously in the vision, I could feel the bones in the back of her hands as I rubbed my thumb across her thin skin and prominent veins. But now, in this still frame from the video of the vision, the hands that hold hers aren’t mine.

The same long-sleeved blue shirt. A masculine thumb stroking the back of Mama’s hand. Large hands. Manly hands. Virgil’s.

All this time, all these visions haven’t been about me but about Virgil, from his point of view, and neither he nor I ever knew who was really in danger.

I could force the visions to stop now, but I choose not to. I know enough about them now to know that they’ve vanished when their moment has passed. As long as the visions keep coming, I know that Virgil is still in danger, but it’s not too late.

When the last vision ends, I’ll be too late to save my best friend.

Although it seems like I’ve been driving for hours, the clock on the dashboard shows that only three minutes have passed since I fled Virgil’s house. The lights of the sprawling hospital complex come into view.

I race around one last curve, my front right tire singing on the painted line and eating rocks at the highway’s edge before I can pull it back to the asphalt.

In my rearview mirror, a blue light spirals in the distance, and only now do I fully realize that I passed the deputy’s car two miles back.

I plow through a hedge at the corner of the nursing home as I brake. My car bounces across a small garden of roses, and I feel a back tire blow out before I hear it. I skid to a stop in the rear parking lot where Virgil parks just outside his office. Gravel spews in my wake.

Somehow, I manage to throw the car into park but don’t bother to turn it off or take my keys. No time for that.

The rocks of the parking lot bite into my bare feet as I run for the back door that serves as an exit to the corridor that connects Virgil’s office and the hospice rooms. The back door rattles in my grip but won’t open. It’s exit-only, apparently, unless you have a key as Virgil does.

Hoping someone will hear me and come, I pound on the door with my fists, but no one responds.

The visions are still coming—the corridor, the room. I’m not too late. Not yet.

I run for the front door of the building that houses the nursing home, assisted living facility, and the hospice unit. I cut across the lawn, directly through the sprinklers, my palms out in front of me like a shield to keep the water from hitting my eyes as I press forward. My feet sting as I navigate another gravel parking area.

I hit the intercom at the security door. No one answers instantly, so I bang on the glass door with both fists. The intercom crackles to life.

“Stop that!” a female voice admonishes. “Visiting hours are over. You can come back tomorrow at nine o’clock.”

I squash the intercom button with my whole hand. “I’m here to see my mom in the hospice unit! Virgil said I could come by anytime.”

“Laurie Hartford? Is that you? Aw, honey. You can go on back. Stay as long as you need to, sweetie. The only people back there right now are either patients or family.”

The lock on the door clicks loudly.

I burst through, yelling “Thank you!” over my shoulder at the disembodied voice. I have no idea how she knows it’s me, but small towns are like that, especially with prodigal daughters.

Patients or family. The security measures give me hope that Ranger isn’t here already. He doesn’t have family here, and he doesn’t work here—or anywhere. As long as the locks on the doors and disembodied voice at the front desk don’t let Ranger in, Virgil’s safe.

A couple of octogenarians in recliners wave as I run past, feet slapping the white tile floor. “You’re barefoot,” one calls after me as if I didn’t know. He sounds both judgmental and shocked.

Somewhere up ahead, a wail stops me in my tracks.

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