Page 36

Just Knew Something Was Wrong

“C ome on, Cin. Pick up,” Helena muttered as her phone kept ringing for the third time. She glanced at the clock. Having already called the hospital, she knew that her friend wasn’t working that day and had in fact taken the next week off suddenly with no explanation. All Helena could think was that something had happened to her, something involving the demon magic she accidentally fed to her friends.

“Dammit, Rafferty, what did we do?” she asked softly, but he couldn’t answer her. She hadn’t officially summoned him yet to confront him, and she knew she really wouldn’t until she got home. And honestly, she had no concrete reasons to worry about Cindy. The most likely answer for her not answering her phone was she was sleeping. But still Helena couldn’t shake her anxiety. She just needed her friend to pick up the phone and assure her that everything was okay, and she was just being paranoid.

Finally, she hung up the phone without leaving a message and checked her texts one more time. She had filled her screen with her blue colored bubbles, checking in on her friend, “Please call me as soon as you get this” messages.

Still, she made herself wait until the end of the day before deciding she would just head over to Cindy’s apartment and knock on the door obnoxiously until she answered.

Turning down the hall felt like she had entered a world of disquiet. Cindy lived in a fairly silent building, full of carpet and literal policies to keep all noises below a certain level. Helena knew several doctors who also lived there, attracted to that very aspect. Usually, Helena felt tranquil, but maybe it was just the anxiety in her heart; she just couldn’t shake that something was really ve ry wrong.

Cindy’s door was a nondescript dark brown, set in a sleepy blue-gray wall. Brass sconces lit up each doorway with a nice yellow light that was meant to mimic old-world gaslight and add to the ambience. The only thing on the outside that indicated to her that this was Cindy’s place were the numbers beside the door, right above the doorbell, where Cindy had attached a gag cover of a man with googly eyes reacting to his bell button nose bei ng pushed.

“Hey Cin?” she called through the door as she pressed the doorbell. Inside she heard the responding low-toned chime. After a count of twenty and nothing, she hit it again, then knocked. “Hey Cindy!” she called, daring to pitch her voice up over the allowable decibel.

She knew she had her set of Cindy’s emergency keys, and she was prepared to use them if she didn’t get an ans wer soon.

Still nothing.

That’s when Helena stepped up to the door to set her ear against it to see if she heard anything. Her foot squelched on the carpet closest to the door. Surprised, she stepped back and squatted to feel. It wa s soaked.

“Oh God,” Helena said. Whatever was wrong, it was very, ve ry wrong.

With shaking urgency, Helena dug out her keys and flipped them through her fingers for the right one. Jamming two wrong ones before she got the right one, Helena kept calling Cindy’s name with a growi ng alarm.

Down the hall, someone opened their door and hushed her, then slammed it before she could respond or ask for help. Finally the doo r opened.

Immediately, Helena stumbled into a pool of water. While the entryway was carpeted, just to her right opened into the tiled kitchen. Water stood there on the floor, but the sink tap wasn’t on; it wasn’t coming fr om there.

“Cindy!” Helena shouted, bolting into the apartment, past the kitchen to her larger main room which was al so empty.

She turned then to look into Cindy’s bedroom and office, both with doors open, the frames facing at a slight angle inward on the opposite sides of the start of the hall. And both we re empty.

“Cindy, answer me please!” Helena called, but there was only one place left in the apartment she could be, and Helena moved toward it now. Double skipping down the short hallway, she reached to push open the bathroom door at the end. Her feet slapped the standing water, deeper as she cam e closer.

She pushed the closed door open.

“Cindy!” Helena shouted as she saw her friend lying in an overfull bathtub. Cindy’s arms hung on either side of the freestanding tub, her head lolled to one side. Her eyes wer e closed.

Helena slid through the wet, the opening now allowing the pooling water on the floor to crest out the door. Heedless of how soaked she was becoming, Helena’s knees hit the ground beside the tub as she grabbed at her friend’s face, mere inches from the surface of t he water.

“Cindy! Wake up!” she shouted as her fingers moved to find her pulse in her neck. Holding her breath, she held still, struggling to feel for her friend’s heart over the sound of her own rapidly beating.

Thump.

Tha-thump.

Tha-thump.

Faint, but it was there. So weak, so hard to feel.

“Cindy, please open your eyes!” Helena shouted, but Cindy didn’t respond at all. “Oh God!”

Helena scrambled in her pockets for her mobile phone, but her hands were shaking so much it dropped into the wat er. “NO!”

Grabbing it up the screen on her phone remained on, but the wet on it wouldn’t let her fingers unlock it. She pressed at the buttons on the sides to try to trigger the emergency summon five times, all while snaking her arm around her friend’s head to help keep it up. Somehow it worked, and the phone made the call.

“911, what is your em ergency?”

“I need help. My friend—” And then the ph one died.

“No! No, no, no! Cindy! Please, open your eyes!” Helena’s voice cracked as her terror started to take over. Desperate, she threw her arms under Cindy’s, trying to lift her out of the tub, but she couldn’t get the leverage she needed. She was too heavy and the balance Cindy’s body had maintained on the tub edge was undone. She slipped under the still runni ng water.

“Help me! Somebody help me!” Helena screamed as she desperately plunged into the tub, grabbing at her friend’s naked flesh to pull her back up to the surface. “ Rafferty—”

She stopped. That wasn’t his name.

“Lares! Help me!”

The tiled floor erupted with steam as the summon circle burned its way through the water. Helena screeched but didn’t stop as she pulled Cindy’s head from the water as visions of grotesque creatures clawed from the walls with whispers and crie s of pain.

“Oh, just shut up!” she said to them.

Strong arms came past her, reaching underneath the doctor to lift her limp body from the water. Sheets of wet cascaded off her body as she rose while Helena continued to protect her head, trying to keep it from whipping back. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her demon shift to his human self, pulling back the eerie thrum of his presence behind his human facade. Otherwise he was as naked as he had always been when first summoned.

“Turn off the water. I’ve got her,” he said.

Immediately, Helena set Cindy’s head against his shoulder, then darted forward to do j ust that.

“What’s wrong with her?” Helena asked, then slipped only for his tail to catch her and steady her on her feet.

“She’s dying,” he said, his eyes roving over the form in his arms. “I can feel her life force bleeding away. She’s ingested something she should n’t have.”

“Can you save her?” Helena begged coming to the other side of Cindy, touching her friend before darting to grab up one of her overly large bath towels from the nearby shelf to cover her. “I’ll pay a ny price.”

Rafferty’s eyes widened with anger and fear. “Absolutely not. I won’t do that.”

“She’s my friend. I can’t let her die!” Helena cried, her face twisting into an ugly sob. “Cindy, please open y our eyes.”

“Hold on to me,” Rafferty ordered, sharply.

She didn’t question, only complied and wrapped her arms around h is waist.

The circle beneath them burned into existence again. She hadn’t noticed that it disappeared before, but now it ignited to burn away the water it touched in a rush of scalding steam. It stung for a moment, but then was gone as Helena became aware of a sensation of falling into an ocean…

Pain.

Fear.

Eternity.

…and then the sensation of sharp rising, like breaking through the surface.

Helena wanted to scream, but she couldn’t. She could barely draw breath. Beneath her shocked feet, the summoning circle disappeared into the damp pavement. Yet the marks remained indicated in the snow cover that blanketed the alley. Above her, snow fell in large clompin g flakes.

Beside her, Rafferty stood, still holding Cindy’s towel-covered body, but he was human and dressed in a rougher version of his black clothes and knee-high bla ck boots.

A siren chirped to her right and Helena snap-turned to see the entrance to an emergency room, an ambulance already parked in front with its lights spinning.

Despite his burden, Rafferty tried to kick the snow to cover the lines of t he circle.

“Just go! Take her in! I got this!” Helena cried. Quickly, she erased the melted lines with her feet and rushed t o follow.

A car came to a screeching halt as Rafferty marched across the street, his longer legs eating up the distance. He didn’t even turn his head, his eyes locked on the entrance. Helena held up her hands to the driver who was shouting despite the obvious emergency and then continued to follow once he w as clear.

Before they even reached the doors, two paramedics spotted them through the walls of glass and were rus hing out.

“What happened?” one barked as the other doubled back to grab an abandoned gurney. Two nurses were already bolting from the reception desk to their sides as Rafferty dropped her onto th e gurney.

“I don’t know,” Helena answered, coming around to grab Cindy’s towel to keep her friend covered. “I found her in the bathtub like this. She’s not responding. She’s got a pulse. He thinks she took something she shouldn’t,” she said, trying to relay all the information she could think of.

“What’s her name?” a woman in a long white coat asked as she pushed her way in, sticking stethoscope ends in her ears.

“Cindy. Dr. Cindy Hawthorn. She works at Mercy General,” Helena reported.

The doctor’s eyebrows shot up, but she nodded and focused on her patient. “Cindy, Cindy, can you hear me?” she asked, pressing the stethoscope into her friend’s chest, jumping around. Then she straightened and looked straight down at Cindy’s unconscious face. “Dr. Hawthorn, you’re needed in the ER,” she barked in an authoritative voice, slightly deeper than he r normal.

Cindy jerked. For a brief moment, her eyes popped open, then dropped ba ck again.

“Okay, she’s in there. Let’s go! I need a blood test immediately. Let’s figure out what she’s taken,” the doctor barked and Helena was grabbed back out of the way of those who knew what to do. A heartbeat later, she realized it was Rafferty who had pulled her back, his arm across h er chest.

She didn’t know what else to do, so she turned and buried her face into her love ’s chest.

“Thank you. Thank you,” she w hispered.