“He only threw up on you once,” Robert corrected pedantically. I crouched to give Erik a sympathetic smile.

“Don’t feel good, huh, lil’ guy?” I ruffled his hair. It was sticky with sweat and he wobbled under the touch. The power resting behind my breastbone burbled, and I leaned forward to kiss his forehead, feeling very much as though I was running a diagnostic on a car. The wash of power that came back to me said there was nothing strange or worrisome wrong with him, just one of the innumerable bugs that children were routinely exposed to. It also told me, in essence, not to worry about it: other than Jacquie wreaking vengeance for being puked on, Erik was in no danger. I brushed my fingers over the scar on my cheek, remnant of the morning I’d become a shaman. That particular scar had refused to heal into nothingness, and it’d struck me at the time that not everything needed to be fixed. So it was with Erik; he’d get better on his own, and I didn’t need to interfere. I stood up to smile brightly down at him. “Uncle Brad’ll take care of you. You’ll be just fine.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re the doctor, Doctor.” I might’ve been enjoying myself a little too much, especially when Erik staggered forward to latch on to Brad’s leg. Brad gave me a look that would peel paint, then bent to scoop the boy up, feeling his forehead. Robert caught my wrist and tugged me down the hall toward his mother’s room. I watched him as he pulled me into the bedroom.

Goose bumps stood up on his arms as soon as he crossed the threshold. My skin felt warm under his grip, though not as warm as Erik had been. “Robert, did you feel cold when you visited your dad at the hospital?”

“It’s always cold at hospitals.”

An uneasy sense of profundity crept over me with his statement, and I resisted the urge to pull him into my lap as I sat down on the edge of Mel’s bed. Like Billy, she appeared to be sleeping peacefully, but when I shook her, she wouldn’t wake. “Always?” I asked, half to distract Robert from his mother’s state, and half because I was curious. He curled a lip.

“Yeah. There’s always bad stuff going on in hospitals.”

“Bad stuff like this? Like the thing keeping your mom and dad asleep?”

He shrugged one shoulder, stiff. “No, but there’s always people hangin’ around. Dad sees ’em sometimes, but I can always feel them. They’re cold.”

My mouth, somewhat ill-advisedly, said, “That’s creepy,” but Robert only nodded, evidently in complete accordance with me. “How’d you learn to feel the cold?”

“I dunno. I guess I always could. It makes my skin itch. Like it’s trying to crawl off.” He gave me another uncertain look, hoping he was communicating. I puffed out my cheeks and glanced down at Mel. There was nothing in my car metaphor that allowed for skin itching like it was going to crawl off, unless rust flaking off a vehicle counted. I stuck my lower lip out, thoughtfully, then shrugged one shoulder at myself, much as Robert had done.

“I’m going to see if I can learn to feel that. Did the Thing in the kitchen feel cold, too?”

“Yeah.” For a kid awake at three in the morning, lecturing an adult on paranormal activity, Robert sounded remarkably patient and composed. “It’s how I knew something was wrong in the first place. My bedroom’s right above the kitchen and I woke up all shivery.”

I squinted at him. “Your dad didn’t tell me it was there.”

“He didn’t know. We couldn’t see it until right before you came over to take care of Mom. I just knew it was there.”

When this was all over I was going to have a long talk with Billy about his family. “Can the other kids sense stuff like that, too?”

“Clara can. But it’s different for her. You’d have to ask her,” he said before I could put the question to him. “It’s not that big a deal, Joanne. Mom and Dad are just kind of weird.”

“Aren’t all adults?” I asked automatically. Robert gave me a very faint smile.

“Yeah, but some are weirder than others. You’re even weirder than Dad, but you don’t know what you’re doing.”

I stared, then laughed to cover dismay. “What, it shows?”

“Duh. Everything about you’s all patchy, like somebody dropped a mirror and stuck the pieces back together.” He rolled his eyes, then looked at his mother. “So can you help her?”

I cranked my jaw back up. “We’re going to have a talk when this is finished, you and me.”

“Okay. But can you help her?”

I sighed and looked back down at Mel’s snoozing form. “Honestly, Robert, probably not. Not right away, at least. You’re pretty much right. I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’m learning, and I am going to figure out how to wake them up. Why don’t you go back to bed? I’ll get you up if I figure anything out, or if your uncle and I decide we need to take your mom to the hospital, okay?”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.” I reached out to ruffle his hair, just like I’d done the three-year-old’s. Robert looked put upon, but took it. “I promise. You’re kind of the grown-up for your little brother and sisters right now, and you did a good job calling me, so I’m going to treat you like you’re an adult. You’ve earned it.”

“Do you mess up grown-ups’ hair?”

I laughed, admitting, “Not usually. I’ll try to remember not to do that again.”

Robert climbed off the bed, looking like he’d won a small battle. “Okay. Thanks, Joanne.”

“For what?”

“For telling me the truth about not being able to help Mom. Uncle Brad wouldn’t have.”

It was a strange world where admitting to my shortcomings was the right thing to do. I nodded and tilted my head toward his bedroom. “Back to bed now, Robert.”

“Okay.” He slipped out, leaving me to turn to Melinda Holliday’s sickbed and see if there was anything I could do to waken her from a sleep of death.

CHAPTER 11

Trying to slip inside Melinda’s mind was as difficult as getting through to Billy had been. Like him, she had solid mental shields, only a trickle of life force draining through them. Syrupy weight pinned her down, heavy with determination that bordered on malevolence. I didn’t try the siphoning approach, or the equally unsuccessful needle. Instead I turned away from Mel and looked into thick shadow, wondering if I could find my way to its heart. Nothing like taking the fight to the source, after all.

It occurred to me, perhaps a moment too late, that such a decision could be terminally dangerous. But by then a pathway had melted open, like a dream obliging me by creating passage when I needed one, and I stepped onto the road offered.

I’d become accustomed to flitting through astral realms in the past six months, whether I wanted to admit to it or not. The world I belonged to in day-to-day life was the Middle World, caught between the Upper and Lower Worlds, places of mythology and mysticism. The names I had for them were Native American in origin, but they fit remarkably well over an ancient Irish structure of the universe as well. I suspected that if I ever entered the Celtic Upper and Lower Worlds, they wouldn’t look like the ones I’d seen in my dealings with Native American gods and demons, but the structure seemed to hold true regardless.

There was also an astral realm I could tune into. That one could be tapped by turning on my second sight, without ever leaving the Middle World. It could also be entered wholesale: that was how I usually got to the Dead Zone, and it was how I’d found ancient Babylon and the ghostly, sad land of Tir na nOg. I wasn’t quite sure how those places connected to Earth, or the Middle World or whatever I wanted to call it. Babylon had, ultimately, seemed to reside in the deepest parts of human consciousness, but Tir na nOg was somewhere else entirely, a world of fae creatures that were gods and immortals in my world. I thought someday I might understand how all those places linked together, but I wasn’t knowledgeable enough yet.