I didn’t know what to say. I felt buried under all the responsibility I already had: a live-in Nana, a growing puppy, a terribly injured friend, a grieving little girl, and a newspaper column with a weekly deadline. Add maintaining the balance of the world, and whose knees wouldn’t be knocking? It seemed an alarm went off in my head, one more substantial than the triggered wards had been.

“Dr. Lincoln!” Celia cried from the top of the stairs. “The EKG monitor’s alarming!”

Chapter 17

It had not been an alarm in my head warning about the news I’d just been given, but a real warning that Theo’s life was in danger. The doctor scooped up his bag and hurried off before Celia had finished shouting. Johnny followed him. My focus stayed on Nana, but the question in my eyes changed. She understood, but said, “No. You need time to prepare to do this spell.”

“Then let’s do it! What do we need?”

“Persephone, this isn’t elementary witchcraft; it’s sorcery.”

I fled from her, angry that there was nothing I could do to help Theo right then. I took the steps two at a time. I had to do something. Standing in the doorway, I scoped out the scene.

Theo was wheezing and sweating, and her skin looked ashen. The doc was listening to her chest with his stethoscope. It seemed so rudimentary what he was doing, so passive. My panic rose. I wanted him to act, since I could not. “What’s happening?” I demanded.

“Pulmonary embolism,” he said calmly, “if I had to guess.” He dug into his bag, pulled a hard-shell case out, opened it, removed a vial, and started prepping a syringe.

“What does that mean? What are you doing?”

“She must have had a thrombus—a blood clot—because of her fractured leg or pelvis. It’s come loose and hit her lung.” He pushed the syringe into the IV. “This should break it up.”

“Should?”

Celia wrung her hands and shifted her weight over and over. Behind her, Beverley stood stock-still, face pale, staring at Theo as tears flooded silently down her cheeks.

“Beverley,” I said, maneuvering myself behind her and guiding her with firm hands on her shoulders. “This way.”

In the hall, I turned her toward the room we were to share and shut the door behind us. She took a few steps more after I released her shoulders. With hardly any sound at all she said, “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’re doing everything we can for her.”

Goliath had done all this, caused so much pain. How did Beverley know him? I wanted to ask, but this wasn’t the right time. “You better get some sleep.” It sounded stupid: Someone in the next room is dying, but you just shut your eyes and sleep. Dream something nice while you’re at it. I couldn’t be that condescending to Beverley. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t a time for sleep. I just…I don’t know.”

Beverley sat beside her box and started pushing things around inside of it. “Why do you think Goliath hurt Theo?”

“On the trip from the hospital, Theo woke up enough to tell me he ran her off the road. Vivian claims he killed your mom too.”

She stiffened. “No. He wouldn’t do that. None of that.”

“Theo saw him, Beverley. She identified him.”

“He wouldn’t do that!”

I sat in the middle of the room. Maybe now was as good a time as any. “How do you know him?”

She turned away and pulled a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt out of the box. “He was dating my mom.”

It was a good thing she wasn’t looking at me. I winced hard enough to give myself whiplash. “What?” I just barely managed not to sound as stunned as I felt.

“Whenever he came to the apartment, he was always nice to me. He actually talked to me like I mattered. Always brought me something too. Not like he was trying to buy me off or anything like that, but like he was thoughtful.”

Every fiber of me said that was impossible, but at the same time, I didn’t think Beverley would lie.

“He told me once he loved my mom and asked me if I was okay with that. Only a guy who really cares about a woman would bother to ask her kid something like that. He wouldn’t have killed her. I know it. I don’t believe that he and Vivian were lovers either. I like your nana, but she’s got to be wrong about that. Vivian is so mean, and she’s just saying mean things.”

“I don’t understand so much of this, Beverley.” We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“I’m going to change into these.” Beverley moved for the door.

“I’ll step out,” I said. I didn’t want her to go to the bathroom to change, it’d mean she would have to walk past the room where Theo was.

“Okay. But don’t leave.”

“I won’t.”

In the hall, I heard Celia say, “Blood pressure’s still dropping!”

Dr. Lincoln responded tersely, “I know!”

My eyes squeezed shut and I whispered another prayer. Finally, the door opened and Beverley said, “I’m done.”

I stepped back into the room with her. She now wore the sweat suit as pajamas, and she sank down onto her inflatable mattress with pink flannel sheets and a quilt. The stuffed animal, still wearing her mother’s shirt, was lying on her pillow.

“Did he come over a lot?” Don’t think about Theo. Don’t fall apart in front of Beverley.

She shrugged. “About once a week, I think. But he might have come over more after my bedtime.”

“What kinds of things did he bring you?”

“Goliath always brought Mom flowers, and he always brought me a little bouquet of colored daisies or tiger lilies for my room. He gave me some books, helped me with homework, and played video games with me. Once he brought me a glass figurine of a unicorn with gold etched into the spiral of the horn. He always had a goofy joke to tell me, and he even gave me an iPod already loaded with a bunch of neat music and super-good earbuds, but that was just to—” She stopped and bit her lip.

I just couldn’t picture Goliath, or any vampire, being so considerate of a human’s needs and wants. Theo had identified him as the one that had run her off the road; to me, that only reinforced his guilt in Lorrie’s murder. “Just to what?”

Beverley blushed. “To keep me from hearing them. But I took the earbuds out sometimes and listened to them. See, he couldn’t be Vivian’s lover, ’cause he was my mom’s lover. He made her so happy. She said she couldn’t date human men anymore because she’d hurt them, but she didn’t have to worry about hurting Goliath. He wouldn’t have killed her. I know it!” She grabbed the stuffed cat and pushed her face into her mother’s shirt. Her shoulders jumped as she cried.

I reached out and rubbed her back, fighting the urge to rush down and question Vivian again, but she wasn’t going anywhere, so I had time for that later. Vivian had said Lorrie had been killed as a warning from some out-of-control Council enforcement agent. But Goliath was a vampire, not an Elder, and the idea that he worked for anyone besides Menessos was ludicrous. Would Menessos have sent Goliath as a favor for some Elder? What would a vampire want from an Elder? Maybe he was trying to get Vivian on the Council despite her stained status. Maybe the Council was politically in bed with the vampires more than I wanted to believe.

There was another possibility—well, okay, there were probably lots of other possibilities, but this one was bright on my radar. What if Beverley was right and Goliath hadn’t killed Lorrie? I had taken Vivian’s word as proof. Now I knew her word was worthless.

But if Goliath wasn’t the murderer, then who was? I didn’t even know where to start if I needed other suspects. What if Vivian had just used this awful situation to her advantage because she could? Because I was that naive?

“Persephone?”

I realized I’d stopped rubbing Beverley’s back. She’d stopped crying, at least.