Time and again, p.16
Time & Again, page 16
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"You said there was shooting?"
Dr. Hao was a diminutive woman, petite in every dimension, with graying black hair she wore in a short bob and an unassuming demeanor that made her imminently approachable. And yet, when she spoke, everyone sat up and paid attention.
She had gotten to the Tower in under ten minutes. Even with the Stardust tech in her car, Jaccob had to figure she couldn't have been all the way at her house in Morriston when Friday called her. Friday, Yumi, and Lisa had met her in the lobby and shown her to Ruby's room, briefing her as best they could on the situation during the elevator ride.
She immediately ran Jaccob out of the room, closing the door behind her while she looked over Ruby. He'd spent the intervening minutes mostly pacing the hallway, trying not to imagine the worst.
Mike had arrived just after the doctor, and Katy wasn't far behind him, carrying with her Jaccob's phone and a change of clothes Mike must have directed her to from his closet.
Kara and Yumi took turns recounting the events of the afternoon to Jaccob while Friday and Lisa followed Katy back up to the sitting room to bring down water for everyone. Mike excused himself to make a few calls, and a pair of valets with snack trays showed up in the hallway suspiciously close to the moment of his return.
Jaccob knew he should eat. He'd been going nonstop since before dawn, and it was well past lunchtime, but he didn't have an appetite. It was all he could do to gag down a bottle of water in an attempt to stay hydrated enough to remain functional.
A change of clothes and a drink of water weren't enough to make him okay, but Jaccob was grateful for feeling a little more like himself by the time Dr. Hao emerged.
"Yeah," Lisa answered the doctor's question. "That guy fired six times."
"Well," Dr. Hao said, "there's no evidence of any gunshot wounds."
"She stopped it with magic," Yumi said. "I saw it. It was--"
"That makes sense," Dr. Hao said, as though magic was just as ordinary a tool as a bulletproof vest. She turned her attention to Jaccob, who was fidgeting.
"How is she?" he asked.
"Her pulse was a little thready when I got here. But it's improved now. Her breathing's normal and her blood pressure's back up. She's not responding to stimuli, though, so I ran an EEG." Dr. Hao gestured to the leather case she carried that Jaccob knew contained some of the most advanced portable medical equipment in the world. "And even though she's unresponsive, her brain activity looks more like deep sleep than coma. Your reports of magic use, especially using magic to stop bullets, lead me to believe the magic just overwhelmed her body. Everything from the systemic dysregulation to the capillary damage points to extreme thaumaturgic shock."
"That's what--" Jaccob began. But then he caught himself. He didn't need to bring up Loki in front of people who weren't already in the know. "That was our best guess."
"In my experience," Dr. Hao said, "the best thing to do is to let her sleep. She might wake up tomorrow morning good as new, like nothing ever happened. But I have to admit this is the worst case I've ever seen. We're just going to have to watch and wait."
"How long 'til we worry?" Katy asked.
Jaccob shook his head. He'd almost forgotten Katy was here. He wasn't sure how he felt about getting his son's unsuspecting girlfriend mixed up in all this. And he wasn't sure how to express the degree to which he was already worried.
"Give it a day," Dr. Hao replied. "If she's not awake by this time tomorrow, call me. I'll come back, run a repeat EEG and maybe give her some fluids."
"Okay," Jaccob said.
"Have someone look in on her every few hours," the doctor instructed them.
"We can do that," Lisa replied.
"I can help, too," Katy said. "I know y'all are in the middle of something."
"We can figure it out," Jaccob said to all of them.
"Let me know if anything changes," Dr. Hao said.
"What--?" Jaccob started, stumbling over his words as he shook his head. "What might change? What should we be looking for?"
"Fever," Dr. Hao responded, "cold sweats, anything that looks like a seizure. I'm leaving you with a scan thermometer and a pulse oximeter. Her temperature should stay between ninety-seven and ninety-nine and her O2 sat above ninety. Anything out of that range, call me immediately. Otherwise, just let her rest. Keep her comfortable. And I'll be back tomorrow."
"Yeah," Jaccob said back. "Okay."
~
"Fuck." Cassidy knocked back her second shot of whiskey, eyes wide at the revelations Kara and the others were sharing.
"I know, right?" Friday said, sipping her fruity cocktail through its straw. Normally she didn't like to drink on the job, but tonight she figured it was okay to make an exception. "That's pretty much what I said."
"It was wild," Yumi added. "This wacky-ass machine landed on the helipad, and we ran outside, and one of the dudes who got out of it got spooked and started shooting, and then she threw up some sort of magical forcefield thing that stopped the bullets and freaked out the shooters and so they got back into whatever that machine was that brought them there and just ... fucking vanished."
"Yeah," Lisa said.
"Had to be a time machine, right?" Cassidy asked. "Any other tech you can think of that can vanish like that?"
"Not that I can think of," Kara said.
"And it couldn't be magic," Cassidy said.
"It couldn't?" Yumi asked.
"No way," Cassidy replied. "The wicked witch is liable to have that place warded tighter than a nun's asshole. Anybody trying to use magic in that building without her literal blessing would be in for a whole world of hurt. Since you say they were conscious, and upright, and not writhing in pain or bleeding out of their eye sockets, I'd say they weren't using magic."
"Well, okay then," Friday said.
"I was able to summon my sword, though?" Yumi looked to Friday. "And your vines--?"
"Your sword didn't show up until after she was unconscious," Lisa reminded her.
"And what I do isn't really magic," Friday said. "At least it's not my magic. It's Freya's. I just channel it, and the rules for gods are different. Even so, the vines didn't take their full form until she was out cold, either."
"Shit," Lisa interrupted them, holding her hands out in front of all of them to stop the conversation.
"What is it?" Friday asked her.
"Are we violating our NDA?" she asked. "Speaking of ... bleeding out of the eyeballs and stuff--"
"I don't think so," Kara replied, sipping casually at her beer as she shook her head. "As long as we're just talking about what we went through, about what happened to us, then we should be okay. We saw the strange men and their machine. We got shot at. We got protected. That's our story, not her secret."
"And if you were worried about accidentally revealing she's a magic user," Cassidy added, "don't. In case you couldn't tell from my earlier comment, I knew that already. I've known it for half my life."
"Really?" Kara asked her.
Cassidy nodded. "The first time I worked with her she was ... what ... seventeen maybe? Way too young to be put in charge the way she was."
"Story time?" Yumi asked.
"Sure, yeah," Cassidy said. "I was touring. It was ... I want to say '97, '98 maybe. I had a string of shows in shopping malls. And Ruby wound up working for the tour. Then, suddenly one day, everyone--the stage manager, the tour manager--the whole damn crew just started deferring to her. Like, out of nowhere. One day she was a really broody intern with a completely ambiguous job description who seemed thoroughly allergic to work, and the next day she was running the show: changing the choreography, adjusting the sound mix, and bossing around the roadies. And nobody questioned it. It had to be magic. There's no other explanation."
"Did you question it?" Lisa asked.
"Nah," Cassidy admitted, shaking her head. "The fact is, as annoying as she could be, she made the show better. A better show has better attendance, sells more tickets, makes more money. So, since she didn't seem to want to use her powers on me, I decided not to say anything. I just did my job, did my best to avoid her, and took a bigger paycheck home at the end of the tour than I probably would have otherwise."
"Then she went on the be the boss?" Friday asked.
"Not right away," Cassidy replied. "But I'd say she charmed her way up the corporate ladder pretty quickly."
"She is really good at her job, though," Lisa said.
"Yeah, I'll admit to that," Cassidy said. "The company's done great with her in charge--gone from Goblin Records to Goblin Media to Goblin Entertainment Worldwide. That doesn't change the fact she used magic to get where she is. And who knows how much magic she uses to run the place. She's evil. She's a self-centered, wicked, narcissistic capitalist. The fact she's also made other people money while she's built her empire doesn't mean she isn't evil."
"Yeah." Friday sipped her cocktail and nodded. "I feel you."
"She used magic to save our lives," Yumi said. "And put herself in a coma doing it. I don't know how you can still think she's evil after that."
"She saved her own life," Friday said. "We just happened to be standing behind her."
"I guess that's true," Lisa said.
"And we haven't even told you the wildest part yet!" Yumi exclaimed.
"Excuse me?" Cassidy asked. "A time machine lands on the roof, the dragon lady uses magic to stop six bullets, knocks herself into a coma, and runs off the bad guys, and that's not the wildest part?"
"It actually does get weirder," Kara agreed. She waved at their server, gesturing her request for another round of drinks.
"So," Yumi began, "Stardust showed up, like, right after this. And he freaked all the way the fuck out. And he told Friday to call Dr. Hao, and then he picked up Miss Killingsworth like he was in some kind of old movie and got into the elevator. But then I guess he forgot that elevator didn't open on the floor he wanted, so he blew a hole in the wall to get out of the elevator. Then he took her down the hallway to her room and I guess he was still freaked the fuck out so then he ran off and changed out of his super suit somehow and then a few minutes later he came back just wearing his pajamas and he had Loki with him."
"Wait ... what?" Cassidy asked. She finished the whiskey in her glass and looked dubiously at Yumi.
"She's telling the truth," Lisa said. "I was there."
"I'm just--" Cassidy said. "I'm just having to picture Jaccob Stevens in his pajamas trying to talk to the god of mischief."
"It was a lot," Kara said. "When I asked you if you wanted to meet for drinks, it was only half because we needed to meet. The other half was that we needed to drink."
"Yeah," Cassidy agreed, "I can imagine."
"And it felt weird to order drinks from Miss K's bartender when she's ... ya know ... in a coma downstairs," Yumi said.
"I also just wanted the hell out of that building for a little while," Friday added.
"That, too." Kara reached into her pocket and withdrew a small plastic envelope. She slid it across the table toward Cassidy. "Here. These are the printouts I talked to you about. They're not great. The cameras up on the helipad aren't the best. But at least they're in color. Starcom probably has the tech to enhance the images, but Jaccob is an absolute mess right now, and quite frankly, I'd rather not interact with him if I can help it."
"Nah," Cassidy said, "that's cool. If the pictures were too good, that'd probably draw suspicion anyway."
"I hadn't even thought of that," Kara said, "but you have a point. Anyway, those two men on the roof today, they fit the description of the so-called counterfeiters we heard about at Macky's. I think it's worth asking around. Because if this is
them--"
"Yeah." Cassidy slipped the envelope into her bag as the server returned with a tray of fresh drinks for the five of them. "I get it. That would be one hell of a data point. I'll do a little digging. See what I can turn up."
"Cool," Kara said. "When those fuckers landed, our machines went batshit. The war room looks like an earthquake hit it right now."
"Oof," Cassidy said. "And you'd only just gotten that stuff working, right?"
"Literally moments before," Kara replied. "Needless to say, we're going to have our hands full repairing a room full of priceless, borrowed equipment. So we appreciate the help with the field work."
"No worries," Cassidy said. "I can handle that."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The door was ajar, but Jaccob felt the need to knock anyway. There was something about barging into Ruby's bedroom uninvited that just didn't feel right. He rapped his knuckle gently against the frame three times before pushing the door open just far enough to see inside. The lights were out, save a tiny lamp on the near side of the bed that shone just enough for him to make out the contours of Ruby's face.
Dr. Hao had come and gone in the mid-afternoon as promised, checked Ruby's vitals, and given her a fluid bolus. She declared Ruby's condition unchanged and promised to come again tomorrow. She assured Jaccob her patient was, as best she could tell, stable, but had once again stated plainly that she'd never seen thaumaturgic shock this severe, and she wasn't sure what its course would look like. She had agreed, though, there was little more a hospital could offer by way of care than what they could accomplish in the penthouse, and there would be no harm done by letting Ruby sleep this off in her own bed.
So at least Jaccob could let go of his guilt over not having flown her straight to an emergency room.
Somehow, in the past thirty hours or so, flowers had managed to appear on practically every available surface of Ruby's bedroom. Apparently everyone who might want a favor from Miss Killingsworth had decided to send her flowers upon hearing she was under the weather. As Jaccob understood it, Arsho, the building's manager, had seen the whole shooting through their security cameras and had alerted the appropriate company people to their boss's coming absence. He wasn't sure what details they had and had not shared, but he could tell from the proliferation of vases the news of Ruby's illness-slash-injury had gotten out.
He tried not to think too hard about the fact this wasn't the first time Arsho, or the company, had had to deal with this kind of thing. He'd already resolved this wasn't going to be like last time. This time she would wake up at home, and this time she wasn't going to wake up alone.
Yumi, Lisa, and Katy were checking on her regularly throughout the day, and Jaccob had been by last night to sit with her for probably longer than was appropriate considering the current status of their relationship. And now he was back again, for a second night in a row ...
Ruby lay on her back with her head resting on a little cushion in a damask pillowcase. The oversized pillows in their fancy shams were nowhere in evidence. He wasn't sure whether it had been Dr. Hao or one of Ruby's household staff who had tucked her in, but she looked cozy and comfortable. It would have been easy for someone to pretend she was just sleeping normally.
Not for Jaccob, though. He knew better.
For one thing, she was on the "wrong" side of the bed--in the same place he'd laid her when he brought her down from the helipad. Probably nobody else knew she normally slept on the far side, or that she never, ever slept on her back or with a lamp turned on. She wasn't sleeping. This wasn't normal.
Still, he couldn't help himself but to tiptoe as he approached her bedside, as though he was afraid to wake her. That was silly, and he knew it. He'd be happy as a clam if she were to wake up, although perhaps a little awkward if she asked for an explanation of what he was doing in her bedroom in the middle of the night.
Or maybe not. If she really were to wake up and find him here, he'd have a pretty easy time explaining himself. This trip.
Jaccob slipped the little box out of his pocket and set it on the nightstand, taking care not to bump the rather substantial bouquet sitting beside the lamp. He stood back for a moment, looking at Ruby and then again at the box, and changed his mind. He picked it back up and shook his head as he opened the box at its hinge and looked down at the diamond bangle inside.
He'd wanted to have this back to her sooner. And he'd spent the hours since the shooting--when he wasn't at her bedside--doing almost nothing but getting it back into working order. Was it the right thing to do, giving it back at the earliest possible moment, even though she was unconscious and wouldn't know until she woke up? Or was this a coward's way of handling things: leaving the bracelet where she would find it without his having to be present for the exchange?
Jaccob shook his head and frowned. When did things get so complicated?
Jaccob knew the answer to that question. He just didn't know what to do with it. In the months and years since he'd walked away from Ruby in St. Joan Hospital, he'd done his best to keep his feelings toward her locked down tight. He'd never dealt with them, never processed them, and, as it turned out, never let them go.
There would have to be a reckoning around that sooner or later, but here at her bedside while she was unconscious from thaumaturgic shock didn't feel like the time.
Maybe it was the familiarity of it all that was getting to him. He'd seen her like this before--like this, only to the extreme. That night when he'd found her near death on her balcony had stuck with him, as had the memories of the first few days afterward when all he'd been able to think about was how close she'd come to being gone from his life forever.
And how quickly he'd run away from her once he knew she would recover. And how many of the days between had he been awash with regret over that?
But this time was different. This time there were no secrets between them, no betrayals. And this time, when she woke up, he was going to do things differently.
It felt like a second chance. And he was determined to take it.
And the first thing he would be doing differently this time was to make sure she knew, from the moment she woke up, that he wasn't going anywhere.
He set the open box back on the nightstand.
She'd see it when she woke up and know he'd been here. Jaccob turned his head to sniff at one of the roses in the vase beside it, glimpsing as he did a card that read: "Feel better, Ginger. <3-V. P.S. If you don't like the arrangement, yell at me, not the florist."
