I gave her a little smile and put my arm across the back of the glider, resting against her shoulders. We would have to go over the events of yesterday in depth, but not tonight. "Good story, by the way." I paused. "When I was in the house, I felt Alisa upstairs."

Morgan nodded. "They're going to the nine o'clock movie downtown. Dad's taking them. I think Alisa might be sleeping over."

"Good." I hesitated before I brought up the next subject. It was an idea I'd had a couple of days before, but it had seemed impossible then. It might not be impossible now. "How strong are you feeling?" I asked.

Morgan looked up at me with curiosity and shrugged. "You mean, after yesterday?" I nodded. "Actually, though physically I feel like crap, magickally I feel pretty strong. It's like every time I go through something that should have killed me, when I come through, I just feel stronger."

I smiled. "There's something I'd like to ask you to do for me," I said. "Not tonight But tomorrow. It involves your magick."

15. Morgan

"How's my little acrobat?" Hunter asked, kissing me and hugging me to him as we walked to his car.

"Ouch. Don't squeeze too hard."

We got into his car, and he looked at me as he started the engine. "Are your parents thinking of suing Mr. Warren?" he asked seriously, and I whacked him on the leg, remembering too late that virtually every part of my body was sore. "Ow!" I laughed, cradling my hand.

He and I hadn't talked much about what had happened with Selene and my shape-shifting. It was as if we were both too freaked out about it and needed time to process it individually before we delved into it together. For right now I wanted to pretend it had never happened.

We headed out of town. It was a beautiful Sunday. My parents, Mary K., and Alisa had gone to visit a garden. I'd wanted to go, but Hunter was more important. Dagda and I had slept in, and I was actually feeling a tiny bit better. "So what are we doing?" I asked, watching the late April sun sparkle on the new green leaves of the trees.

"I wanted you to meet Patrice, the witch I've been working with in Thornton," Hunter said. "And her son."

I gave him a questioning look. He had given me only the vaguest information about the case he was working on with his father. He'd told me the day before that they'd reached some kind of resolution, which I guess made it okay to tell me her name and where she lived, but he didn't seem inclined to say more than that, like why he wanted her to meet me and why she would want to see him again. I just tried to relax and enjoyed the ride. I had never been to Thornton but saw that it was cute and old-fashioned looking in kind of the same way Red Kill is. Hunter drove through the town and into a residential section. He stopped in front of a large, beautiful Victorian home.

"Whoa," I said. "I love this house."

The door opened as we approached the porch. I hadn't really formed much of a mental picture of Patrice Pearson, but she was more normal looking than I had imagined. She didn't look all that witchy, and she didn't look one bit evil. She smiled, seeming a little shy or embarrassed, so I tried to act like I knew nothing of what had been going on. I picked up weird vibes from her, though, as if part of her aura was under a sheet.

"Hello, Morgan," she murmured, holding out a strong, dry hand. "I feel like I've heard your name mentioned before."

"Hi," I said, shaking her hand and still wondering what I was doing here.

"Hunter said you'd like to meet my son," Patrice said, increasing my curiosity. "He's down this way." She gestured down a hall that led toward the back of the house. I looked behind me and shot Hunter a what's-going-on look, but he only raised his eyebrows at me.

We went through a large, homey kitchen that looked fresh and pristine but like it hadn't been updated in sixty years. Old-fashioned sink, antique stove. Patrice opened a small door off the kitchen, and I stopped in my tracks.

My senses picked up on illness and pain, fatigue and hopelessness. Hunter had mentioned Patrice had a son but hadn't said any more than that.

I followed Patrice into the room, Hunter behind me. The room was small and looked like it might have been a sunroom at one time. Cheerful posters hung on the walls, and the bed linens were printed with race cars in primary colors. There was a large TV and a DVD player and a stack of videos nearby. But everything else about the room screamed hospital-the hospital bed, the IV stand next to the table, the cabinet covered with more medicines than I could count. And of course, the little boy, thin and listless, with a tube running under his sheet. He didn't even look up when we entered the room. The TV was turned to some kind of nature show featuring alligators and getting right up close to them. His eyes watched the picture, but they were dull, lifeless. He wasn't really seeing anything. His body looked emaciated beneath the sheet, but his face was round and swollen looking.

Patrice seemed unbearably tense in here and with good reason. "Joshua, this is Hunter Niall and Morgan Rowlands," she said, unnaturally cheerfully. "Morgan wanted to meet you. She heard how brave you've been." She looked at me, and I saw that she wasn't entirely sure why I was here, either. But now I was beginning to understand. I smiled at Joshua and then turned to Hunter.

His gaze was measured, questioning.

I hesitated, then gave a tiny shrug and nodded.

"Oh, Patrice," he said now, turning to her. "Would you mind showing me that book on New York gardening I saw in your living room?"

They left me alone in the room with Joshua.

Now he looked at me with suspicion. "Are you a doctor?"

"No, no," I assured him. "I go to high school. I thought I'd just hang out for a while, that's all. So, you've got a lot of equipment here. What's this thing for?" I touched the IV stand. Over the next ten minutes Joshua and I talked about his leukemia, his graft-versus-host disease, how his mom took care of him, and how tired he was. It was all I could do not to just hang my head and burst into tears. But I didn't.

Instead, as Joshua talked, I very gently put my hand on his arm, picking up on his vibrations, his aura, his life essence. I felt his bony little shoulder through the sheet, and it reminded me of my own injured shoulder, which still throbbed painfully. I gently traced the side of his head, grinned and tapped his chin, and then pretended to tickle the bottoms of his feet. He gave a halfhearted grin.

I sat down in my chair again. "Joshua, is it okay if I just put my hands here for a few minutes?" I asked, putting one hand on his upper leg and one on his chest. He nodded warily.

"Gosh, what is that crazy guy doing with that alligator?" I said, and he turned his gaze back to the TV.

I closed my eyes and relaxed everything, letting go of my tension, my distaste for the smells of disinfectant and illness, the scent of plastic and medicine and clean sheets. The faint noise of the TV faded. I sank into a midlevel meditation, where I consciously dissolved any barriers I felt between the outside world and me. After several minutes I felt that I was one with everything in the universe and it was one with me. There were no beginnings, no endings, only a calm, joyful communion among all things. And between Joshua and me. I let myself sink into him, into his tortured and weakened body. I let myself flow over him and inside him and through him. I felt his pain, artificially dulled by strong drugs; I felt his system being weakened yet also helped by other powerful and toxic medicines. I saw the normal white blood cells in his bloodstream but also cells swollen with fluid, about to burst; I saw Joshua's body being attacked from inside by his new marrow's immune system. His feelings became mine, and I swallowed down the nausea, the pain, the feelings of despair and hopelessness, the guilt he felt for upsetting his mother, the anger he felt, but didn't show, that this was happening to him.