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“Oh, that. No. I called to say no one has seen Sergeant Lowry. I wanted to ask you what is going on with that. Is he a suspect? Are you looking for him? Have you—”
“Diana,” Storm interrupts me. “I need you to keep an eye on India for me. Make sure Sergeant Lowry doesn’t come anywhere near her. If you see him, call me right away. The officer assigned to guard her also has the same information.”
“Is that really all you are going to tell me?” I say incredulously.
“I’ll keep you updated when I have all of the information,” he says, and to my frustration he hangs up.
I glare in annoyance at my phone. It’s so typical of Storm to tell me to do something but not give me all of the information.
“Problem?” says Theo looking amused.
“It’s fine,” I mutter. Theo is far too observant sometimes. I don’t want him knowing what I might or might not feel for Storm. Or how irritating I think the damn man is.
Theo has already gone to stand over India’s bed, and now he turns his attention back to scrutinizing her. I go over to her and Theo.
“I was hoping you might be able to help her. They said she is in a coma. Is there some kind of magic you could use to help her to wake up?”
Theo is frowning. “Actually,” he says. “I think it might be magic that has been used to do this to her. You said that the hospital said that there is nothing physically wrong with her?”
I nod. “They couldn’t find anything that might have caused her to slip into a coma. They don’t know if she came in by herself and passed out in the waiting room or if someone brought her in. Accident and emergency was so busy that no one noticed. She looked just like another ailing person waiting to be called up. She could have been there for hours. She’s stable, but she won’t wake up. Why do you think its magic? Can you sense something?”
The very first time that I had come into his magic shop Theo had told me that he could sense I had magic. I assume as a wizard that he must be finely attuned to the presence of magic.
Theo nods. “It’s the most curious thing,” he says. “I have no idea how this could be, but it feels like my magic.”
“Your magic? Well, she did come into your store on Friday,” I say. “Could that have left some trace of your magic on her?”
“No. It feels like one of my spells. Like the sort of magic that I would bind into an amulet. It’s localized on her body, but I can’t actually see anything on her.” He raises an eyebrow at me and gestures at India’s prone body on the bed. “Perhaps you can check?”
India looks just like she is sleeping. I hope that she doesn’t mind when I ease back the sheet covering her. The nurses have put her into a hospital gown. I have no idea where she could have come by one of Theo’s amulets, but if he says that is what he is sensing, then I am more than willing to check. Even if it is just to eliminate that possibility.
“She said she’d never been to your shop before Friday,” I say as I look her over. “But maybe someone else got her something from the shop? Maybe they told her about the shop and that’s how she knew about it? It could have been her boyfriend. He could have afforded one of your amulets.”
India’s wrists and her ankles are bare. There are no rings on her fingers. I feel around her throat and chest in case there is a necklace hidden out of sight beneath the gown, but I don’t find any chains there. I pat down her torso and her hips and thighs, but there are no unexpected little bumps.
“There’s nothing,” I tell Theo, in frustration.
I cannot understand how it came to this. She had been talking to me only yesterday. She had wanted so badly to recover her memory. I had thought she would in time. It never occurred to me that she might get worse. Where could she have been? She must have been gone for at least a few hours. Why take her and allow her to escape again? Or maybe she hadn’t needed to e
scape. Maybe she had walked out of here of her own free will.
I wonder if India is the girl that I thought she was at all, or if I had been so eager to make a friend that I had wanted to believe that she is something that she isn’t. I really don’t know what to think any more.
Feeling utterly dejected, I pull the sheet back up in place around India. When I see her foster parents I am going to give them a piece of my mind. I cannot understand why they didn’t come and visit her. She cares for them so much. Do they really think she did that to Rachel?
Theo is frowning. He has moved to the other side of the bed. He gently turns India’s head to the side. He gives a murmur of dismay. I quickly go to his side to see what he is looking at. India’s thick curly hair has been bound into a ponytail. It is held in place by a hair band with two flat stones dangling off it. I recognize one of them. It is a lavastone, a red the color of hot lava, like my own amulet. The other is dark purple.
Theo looks astonished. And angry. He quickly slides the hair band off India’s hair. His fists close around the two stones. He utters a series of sharp words that I don’t understand, and I hear a cracking sound. When he opens up his hand, the two stones have broken into several pieces.
He walks out of the room and all the way down the corridor to a bin and throws them into it with disgust. He returns looking still angrier.
“What was it?” I ask him.
Theo closes the door firmly behind him. He is glowering at me in a way that he never has before. “Did you remove those stones from my inventory?” he says abruptly.
“What? No way. Why would I do that?”
“When this girl visited my shop did you allow her anywhere near the inventory storage?”
