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“Shane?”
“Yes.” My voice broke. My throat was shaking now. Too hard to speak.
“Really? Your voice sounds different.” His voice was low, tight. Suspicious.
“Yeah, it got pretty fucked up. From Vincent’s collar.”
“Yeah, I got a taste of that thing. Tell me, Shane. What’s Mom’s favorite poem?”
“Nature’s first green is gold,” I said.
“Okay. How about Dad’s?”
I hesitated, thinking about it. “Dad didn’t like poetry,” I said. “He liked westerns and mysteries. And the blues. Old, classic stuff, from the twenties and thirties, like Mississippi John Hurt. He liked ‘The Candy Man Blues.’ ‘You and your Candy Man are getting mighty thick, you must be stuck on your Candy Man’s stick.’ Remember?”
“Oh, fuck, Shane.” Ethan’s voice shook. “Where are you?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute but first, I need a favor,” I said.
“The fuck? What kind of favor?”
“There’s this girl,” I said. “She busted me out of that place just now, on the condition that I help save her little sister. The kid’s stuck in one of Halliwell’s clinics.”
“So it was Halliwell who had you all along? That fucking lying bastard.”
“Yeah, it was him. The kid is Holly’s age. And this girl risked a lot to get me out of there. But I don’t want to put you guys in danger.”
“Fuck danger,” Ethan said. “Tell me what you need.”
Red stared at me, mouth open, eyes wide and shining with terrified hope.
“I’ll put her on the phone,” I said. “She can tell you what she knows. It’s time-sensitive. He’ll punish her for breaking me out by hurting the little sister.”
“Like I needed another reason to hate that prick. Pass her over.”
I handed the phone to Red, who started talking a mile a minute to my brother, too fast for me to follow. I’d been shaking before, from cold, stress, and whatever mix of drugs were in my system. Now I felt the whole earth shaking. For so long, I had not permitted myself to feel those feelings, or remember my people. I had closed the door on all of it. Hope, love, family, the future. I’d let it all go.
Red had blown all of that up. In just a few seconds, I was rubble.
She was still chattering. I tried to focus in on the words. “… the Cascade Clinic, outside Issaquah. Regina Clarke is her name. She’s only ten. I think she’s being held in a sub-basement room. She told me she smelled humidity, mold. And she saw big, fiberglass wrapped pipes in the ceiling of the corridor outside when the doctors come in and out. She’s never seen another patient there… yeah, I took her there. She said they haven’t moved her, unless it was while she was unconscious... I have no idea. I saw what I thought were doctors, nurses, orderlies, admin types. The place looked totally legit, but when I tried hacking into their inpatient database, I couldn’t find one… did the building blueprint come through? Yeah, exactly. She’ll need a supply of whatever meds they’re using, too. Okay. Yeah. I know. I understand. Thanks for giving it a shot. I appreciate it immensely.” She leaned to pass the phone to me. “He wants you again.”
I took the phone. I craved the sound of Ethan’s voice, but the intensity of my feelings were literally painful. I cleared my throat. It was stiff, tight with emotions I had forgotten how to name, let alone negotiate. “I’m here,” I croaked.
“You aren’t under duress? She’s not holding a gun on you?”
I felt my chest shake with dry, rusty laugh. “Nah. She doesn’t have the stomach for it.”
“That girl is a piece of work,” Ethan said. “So. You want us to go save this kid?”
I hesitated. “She busted me out, Ethan,” I said. “He was going to put me down today. With poison gas. She got me out just in time, on her own. It’s quite a feat.”
“I want to get you first,” Ethan said. “Then we get the little girl.”
“It’ll be too late for the kid if you do,” I said. “It might already be too late.”
“Okay, we send a helicopter to Issaquah. We hit the clinic with some shock and awe, we get the little girl, and with the other chopper, we come get you. Where are you?”
“No fucking clue.” I turned to Red. “Where are we?”
