The Thief

“The stove—damn it!” Assail ran across and turned off something that had started to burn on the cooktop. “Ehric—open the door. We have to get the heat and smoke out.”

From the corner of her eye, Sola watched the men get dishtowels and wave them under the alarm, and the silence, when it came, was a relief, but not an improvement on the real situation.

That was only happening if her grandmother sat up, got herself to her feet, and started yelling at people for leaving those potatoes on way too long.

Ehlena got to her feet. “I’m just going to call Dr. Manello—he’s coming as fast as he can. Will you excuse me?”

Sola nodded at the nurse, who went over in the corner, put a cell phone to her ear, and spoke quietly.

Leaning down to her grandmother, Sola put the rosary in her vovó’s hand and spoke in Spanish. “Do not leave me.”

“You marry that man,” her vovó said in a weak voice. “You marry him.”

“Okay, Vovó. I will.”

“Promise me?”

“You’re not dying.”

“That is God’s will, not mine. I am happy to go home to Him now that I know you have someone to love you.”

Sola swiped her eyes. “You’re not going anywhere, Grandmother.”

“You are safe with him. He stares at you…like you are his whole world. This makes me happy—I can die now happy.”

“Stop talking like that. Right now.”

“Child…” Her grandmother seemed to struggle to focus. But then she reached up and touched Sola’s face. “I am old. It is my time—I can’t live forever. But now…I don’t have to worry. He will take care of you. I am…at peace as long as you swear to me now…you will marry him.”

Sola had to wipe her eyes again. This wasn’t happening, she told herself. This couldn’t possibly be happening. She did not bring her grandmother all this way back north just to have her die.

Oh, God, I’ve killed her, she thought.

“Marisol, swear to me.” The voice was weak; the demand was not. “Or I cannot be at peace.”

“I swear to you…I will marry him.”

FORTY-FOUR

The hardest part of any doctor’s job was talking to the families of patients who had died. To look a grieving spouse, child, father, mother, brother, sister, in the eye and have to tell them that, in spite of everything you had learned and all that was at your disposal, you had not been able to keep their loved one alive…was a nightmare.

But what the hell did you say about something like this? Jane thought as she stared at the mobile surgical unit’s empty exam table.

As the RV slowed and made a fat turn, she sat back down beside Vishous and tried to put the series of events into perspective. Into a rational framework. Into something that could be explained without the use of the word “zombie.”

God in heaven above, she thought. Not for the first time.

They didn’t even have a body anymore.

“Almost there,” Qhuinn said from up front.

Leaning around V, Jane looked down the surgical unit’s interior and through the front windshield. She couldn’t see much but evergreens and skeleton trees all covered in snow—no, wait, there was the farmhouse.

Havers’s underground medical facility was located on the far side of the Hudson, deep in a forest, and it was accessible through various entry points, all separated by plenty of distance. The one they were going to use was the faker homestead with the barn out back, the one that appeared to be where peaceable humans resided, the ruse to hide the rest.

This was where deliveries came in, and also, when sadly applicable, bodies.

After Qhuinn turned them around in the drive and parked them butt-in to the barn, Jane got out of the RV and took a series of deep breaths. She still had no idea what she was going to say to the civilian’s next of kin. Cause of death: cardiac failure due to traumatic injury. Cause of reanimation: no clue. Secondary cause of death: incineration by my mate’s hand.

“Come on,” V said as he put an arm around her shoulders.

She hadn’t been aware of just standing there in the cold, but Qhuinn had already opened the side door of the barn and was waiting. Getting with the program, she was all in her head as they checked in with the security monitor, were granted access to the elevator, and descended down to the clinic. As they got off, it was into a warm, well-lit, utterly undecorated corridor that looked exactly like all the ones in human hospitals.

“Damn it, I always forget which way to go,” she muttered.

Yup, just like St. Francis. Lost and there was no signage.

“This way,” V said.

After a bunch of turns that she didn’t track, they came around a corner and found what looked like almost all of the Brotherhood standing in a clutch. Havers, the race’s physician and Marissa’s estranged brother, was by them, all college-professor-like with his tortoiseshell glasses and his bow tie.

Everyone got good and quiet as Jane and her two escorts approached, and she hung back as V and Qhuinn answered a lot of very difficult questions. And answered some more. And…

“Excuse me,” she cut in. “But where is the next of kin? I want to go see him now.”

Havers cleared his throat. “What are you going to tell him?”

“What I know to be true.”

“Are you certain that is wise?”

Jane frowned—and before she knew what she was doing, she stepped in tight to the healer. Even though he was taller than she was, she glared right up into those glasses.

“I’m not going to lie to him, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” she snapped. “He has a right to know everything we do, and if I can’t explain something, I’m going to let him know that.”

“There could be larger consequences,” Havers hedged. “This could be a threat to the species at large, and one wouldn’t want to cause a panic.”

As the healer looked around, seeking backup from the Brothers, she was done. “Not my problem. I’m a physician first, the rest of you can worry about politics. Now where is my dead patient’s brother.”

The fact that everyone just stared at Vishous pissed her off. Like she was a problem to be managed by him?

“She’s one hundred percent correct,” Vishous said. “She should tell him what she knows and what she doesn’t. It’s up to us to put it in context. But there will be no lying or subterfuge—and I’m going to make sure no one interferes with what she has to say. Anyone have a problem with that.”

That last one was not phrased like a question and he was pegging Havers with hard eyes as he laid it out there.

The healer looked to the floor and nodded. “But of course. Right this way.”

Havers led them down the hall even farther and then into a waiting area that was half full with lots of chairs. As they passed through, Jane noted the patients and families who were milling around, or sitting watching the TV, or standing in line at the reception desk. Many of them waved to the healer, smiled at him, greeted him with respect—and he was gracious in return.

It was a reminder of Havers’s complicated nature. He was good to the people who came to him for help, he truly was. It was just outside of that sphere that made you want to smack him sometimes.

Now there was signage, the overhead plaques with arrows directing people this way and that to things like RADIOLOGY, OUTPATIENT SURGERY, OBSTETRICS, WELLNESS CARE. Eventually, Havers took them down a short hall that had four closed doors, two on each side. Beside them, discreet labels read FAMILY COUNSELING.

“He is in here,” Havers announced as he went to knock on one of the panels. “He is Aarone, son of Stanalas.”

V caught the healer’s arm. “She goes in alone. You and I are waiting out here.”

“Actually, Vishous, why don’t you and I go in together?” Jane pivoted toward him. “You were there. You might offer some insight I cannot.”

“You got it.”

Jane was the one who knocked, and when there was a quiet “Come in,” she opened things up. A very well-dressed young male with blond hair and pale eyes was sitting in one of six chairs. He was obviously nervous, his palms stroking up and down his thighs, his shoulders braced.