And below that, the faint bump-bump of a heartbeat.
“Shit,” I said, stumbling backward. “Don’t cut. She’s not dead. She’s got a heartbeat.”
“What?” Alek and Dr. Lake asked at the same time.
“It’s magic. She’s not dead. She’s frozen somehow. Like stasis.” I shivered. Dead might have been better. I couldn’t imagine being frozen, unable to move or speak. Cut off from my human form.
“Can you do something about it?” Alek asked me. I didn’t like the speculative way he was looking at me.
“No,” I said. The truth, more or less. “This is way above my pay grade,” which was kind of a lie but I hoped not enough of one that his apparent lie detection abilities would notice. “It’s not a kind of magic I can use. Whoever cast the spell has to undo it. If that’s even possible.” All that was the truth. Great universe, I hoped it was possible. If it wasn’t, Rose would be trapped like this until the spell degraded enough to stop keeping her alive, and that could be years or even centuries depending on how exactly this magic worked.
“So I find who did this and make them undo it before I kill them. Good.” Alek turned toward the door.
“Hold up there, Rambo. I need a ride back to my store.” Not that I was looking forward to telling Harper what we’d found. I didn’t know if not-quite-dead was worse. We had no answers, just more questions.
“I will keep Rose here, if you want, and see if I can figure out a way to monitor her vitals,” Dr. Lake said, talking to Alek as much as to me. “If anything changes, I’ll call you, Jade.”
The light stayed green on the way back through town and this time we didn’t talk at all.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
Chapter 4
Ezee, Levi, and Harper were waiting for us in my apartment over the store. I led Alek up the back steps. Three red-eyed faces greeted us as we came into my small living room. The apartment is a long, narrow one bedroom unit, with a single bathroom. The living area is dominated by my purple velvet couch and a fifty-five inch LED TV with about every console you can name set up under it. I mostly use my Xbox360, but some days nothing will do but to kill my thumbs playing Armada on my Sega Dreamcast.
A girl needs options. To me, video games are like shoes. But with more pixels and a plot.
Ezee and Levi had Harper, still bundled in Ciaran’s red sweater, between them. As we came in, they each took one of her hands and all turned their faces to us, expectant.
“So,” I said with a weak smile. “You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Mom’s dead, there is no good news. Unless on the way to the vet you ran over the guy responsible.” Harper glared at me, her green eyes puffy and glittering with tears.
“Actually, she isn’t dead. That’s the good news. And kind of the bad news, too.” I grimaced. That hadn’t come out in the sympathetic, gentle way I’d rehearsed in my head.
“She’s not dead? But, I saw her. She was… how?” I could almost see the hope like will-o-the-wisp lights turning on in Harper’s eyes. I just prayed it wasn’t a false hope I was giving her. How much worse would this get if Alek couldn’t find the magic user who did this and make him or her undo it?
“Magic,” I said. “She’s under some kind of spell holding her in her animal form and keeping her frozen like that.”
“Why the hell would someone do that?” Levi said.
“Good fucking question.” I shook my head and looked at Alek. He had come to loom beside me, standing too damn close for my comfort, but I wasn’t about to inch away. It would have looked pretty obvious.
“I will ask when I find him,” Alek said with a tiny smile that made me think about screaming rabbits and blood spraying on white walls. Not a nice smile, really.
“I don’t care why,” Harper yelled. “Just find him and make him undo it.”
Ciaran knocked at the back door before entering into the tense, now-quiet room. He was out of breath and excited. “I have the paperwork. Here.” He held out a manila folder.
I took it and spread it open on the narrow black coffee table after clearing away the remotes and controllers. The photocopy of the ID said the guy who sold Rose was named Caleb Greer, age thirty-two, with an address in Boise, Idaho. Brown hair, brown eyes, five-foot-eight, one hundred and fifty pounds.
“He was thinner than that photo. If his ID hadn’t put him at over thirty, I would have thought he was a college student,” Ciaran said.