Sir Thursday(25)

Leaf shook her head, wincing as pain shot down into her neck. She didn’t know what she would do if she got the pocket, but it was the first step. One step at a time, she told herself. One step at a time.

She took that step, slowly walking down the corridor to the linen room, her hand trailing along the wall for support. She passed the door that she had thought the Skinless Boy had been about to enter, but it had no sign, so she kept going. The next door said it led to a stationery storage area, so she kept going to the next. It said it was the electronic parts storeroom. Leaf was about to keep going to the next door, till she suddenly wondered why the first door had no sign. Every door in the hospital had a sign. Why not that one?

She turned around and went back. Sure enough, there were faint marks of glue where the sign had been ripped off the front of the door. But why would the Skinless Boy bother to do that?

Leaf put her head to the door, holding back a gasp as she misjudged slightly and sent yet another stab of pain through her neck. That also triggered a moment of panic as she wondered if she had a cracked vertebra or something. But her head moved well enough, and the pain felt like it was in the muscles that ran up the side of her neck to the chin. She ignored it and listened again.

She could hear something, but it didn’t sound like the Skinless Boy. It sounded like a woman talking quietly. Leaf kept listening and didn’t hear anyone answer. It sounded like the woman was talking to herself.

Leaf turned the handle and pushed the door open just a crack. Looking in, she saw shelves and shelves of folded sheets, pillowcases, and other linens. There was also a trolley and, leaning back on it, a nurse who was holding a long, whippy piece of plastic that Leaf recognised as the sign from the door.

‘You can’t come in here,’ said the nurse.

‘Why not?’ asked Leaf. She made no move to open the door wider, or to shut it. The woman didn’t look entirely normal. There was something about the way she was slouched against the trolley. As if some of the muscles in her arms and legs weren’t working together.

‘He told me not to let anyone in,’ said the nurse. ‘And to find a sword. Only I couldn’t find a sword. Just this.’

She brandished the sign.

‘I just want –’ Leaf started to say, but the nurse held up her hand.

‘Wait, he’s telling me something … ’

The nurse’s head went back, and Leaf saw something else that wasn’t right at all. The woman’s eyes didn’t have any white in them anymore, or any colour in her irises. The white had become a pale-grey, and her irises were entirely black.

Leaf didn’t wait. She threw the door open, charged the nurse, and pushed her back onto the trolley. It crashed back into a shelf, which partly toppled over, burying the nurse under a cascade of blue-striped towels.

As the woman struggled to get out from under the avalanche of linens, Leaf dragged more things off the shelves and threw them on top of her. Pillows, blankets, towels – everything that came to hand. At the same time, she was desperately looking around. How could she find a small square of cloth in a room full of linens?

She would only have a minute, or perhaps seconds. The nurse was bigger and stronger than her, particularly with Leaf in her injured state. Since the Skinless Boy knew what the nurse knew and could see what she saw and heard, there would probably be more of its mental slaves coming. Or the Skinless Boy itself.

The glasses. I could use Dr Scamandros’s glasses.

Leaf frantically checked her pockets. For a terrible second she thought she’d lost the glasses case, but it was just the unfamiliar arrangement of the pockets in her alien jeans that confused her. The case was in a narrow pocket almost behind her thigh and not much above her knee. She got it out, snapped it open, and flung on the glasses.

The linen room looked quite different through the crazed lenses, but not because the view was all blurry and cracked. In fact, to Leaf the glasses were perfectly clear, but she could see strange fuzzy colours in things that hadn’t had them before. Sorcerous auras, she supposed, or something like that.

Quickly she scanned the shelves and was immediately rewarded. Most of the colours overlaid on the various items of linen were cool greens and blues. But one shelf stood out like a beacon. It was lit inside by a deep, fierce red.

Leaf sprang at it, pulling away a rampart of pillowcases. There, behind this linen wall, was a clear plastic box the size of her palm that had formerly been used to store sterile bandages. Now it had a single square of white cloth in it, but with the aid of the glasses, Leaf could see rows and rows of tiny letters across the cloth, each letter burning with an internal fire.