CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
He remained in the hospital for another twelve days, and he did not make the journey to Morrighan's room again.
Not until the day he checked out.
Frankie was at his side, her arm hooked through his, his overnight bag in her other hand. He took a last look at the hospital bed in which he had spent so many hours. He would not miss it.
It was visiting hour, and the corridors were filled with people looking either anxious or relieved. As they walked down the wide passage, he was deliberately keeping his eyes straight in front of him, not looking left or right. But from the edge of his vision, he knew they were approaching the door that led to Morrighan's room.
He stopped. "I must go in."
Frankie was reluctant. "That's not a good idea."
"It's something I have to do." He pulled on her arm.
As they entered the room, a plump woman dressed in a mustard-colored tweed suit got up from the chair next to the bed.
She nodded at Frankie. "Hi, Frankie."
"Hi, Lisa." Frankie spoke gently. "How are you doing?"
"All right." The woman smiled, but the smile did not dispel the resigned sadness from her face. "Is this your friend?" She looked at Gabriel.
"Yes. He's being discharged today, I'm happy to say."
"That's great news. I'm Lisa Duval, by the way. Morrighan's cousin."
"Pleased to meet you." They shook hands briefly. Her palm was moist. She had not inherited the beauty gene so blazingly obvious in her two cousins. But her eyes were kind.
He had been avoiding looking at the bed, but now his eyes drifted toward the figure lying there. His breath stalled.
Morrighan no longer looked like a sleeping princess. In some indefinable way she had aged. Her skin looked chalky and grayed. The black hair was pushed back in a no-nonsense fashion behind her ears. The hair seemed lank.
"How is she doing?" Frankie was actually whispering.
"Not good."
"Maybe she'll get better." Frankie sounded awkward.
"No." Lisa Duval shook her head. "Morrighan scored very low on the Glasgow Coma Scale."
"The Glasgow Coma Scale?"
"It is a standardized system used to identify the degree of brain impairment." There was a parrotlike quality to Lisa's response. She had obviously been talking to the men in white coats. "Morrighan's total score out of fifteen was very low."
"So the doctors-"
"The doctors don't know anything." There was a quiet vehemence in Lisa Duval's voice. "They still don't understand what happened to her. There's no physical reason for her coma. It's a mystery." She dabbed angrily at her eyes. "Excuse me. I think I need to go to the bathroom. But very nice meeting you." She held out her hand to Gabriel again. "And good luck."
He shook her hand numbly.
After she had left the room, it was quiet between him and Frankie. They didn't look at each other.
The hospital sheets were folded neatly cross Morrighan's stomach. Her arms were by her sides. Her hands were large-out of proportion to the rest of her body. He had never noticed that about her before. The nails seemed tinged with blue. Large green veins stared from the skin.
"We did this to her. Minnaloushe and I."
"You had no choice."
"There's always a choice. You said so yourself."
"Morrighan brought it on herself, Gabriel. You have to put this behind you now."
"I have to do one more thing."
Frankie looked at him questioningly.
"Do you think Monk House is empty?"
Her voice was wary. "I suppose so. Why?"
"I need to get in there."
"What!"
"I need to download The Promethean Key."
"I thought you had a copy. The one you showed Professor Stall-worthy."
"That copy is imperfect, remember. I never managed to download the code for the portal. I need the whole thing."
"Why?" Frankie's eyebrows were high against her forehead.
"I'm just interested." He realized how evasive he sounded.
There was a long silence. "You're lying." Frankie's voice sounded utterly disbelieving. "You want to become a memory artist yourself. That's what this is about."
"Don't be absurd." But Gabriel was unable to meet her eyes.
"Gabriel. Talk to me. What's going on with you?"
He searched for an explanation. "You remember I told you about that guy in the creepy magic shop? The one who gave me the amulet?"
Frankie nodded.
"Well, he told me that one can become addicted to madness. Develop a taste for it. He said once you start walking down that road there is no turning back. You start craving the rush. At the time I had no idea what he was talking about." He paused. "I do now."
He looked into Frankie's eyes and he saw the incomprehension. How to explain to her that ever since the last ride, he had felt an insatiable hunger to experience the rush of the memory palace again? How to explain that ever since he had woken up from the operation, life seemed unbearably stale? It felt as though his senses were dulled.
Colors were not as bright. Sounds not as resonant. A layer of dust coating every object.
Frankie seemed almost relieved at his stumbling explanation. "It's only the aftermath of your surgery, Gabriel. Of course things will look flat and miserable to you after what you've been through. You're tired. Give it time. You'll bounce back."
He shook his head. The malaise he was suffering from went much deeper. The ride had been frightening-the most frightening experience of his life-but it had marked him. The world around him now seemed deeply pedestrian. Utterly banal.
As he looked at Morrighan's still figure, he had a vivid memory of her standing inside the portal, vital and glowing, describing to him the magnificence of her creation. Taste of it, she had said, and ordinary life can never again satisfy you. And she had smiled, triumphant.
Only now did he know what she meant. And for the first time he understood-truly understood-the restless hunger that had driven Robert Whittington to join Minnaloushe and Morrighan in their quest for transformation. He had caught the sickness as well. It burned steadily in his blood, and he knew he would never be free from it. He wanted to be a solar magician. He had become a searcher himself.
"I thought I had beaten her."
"You have."
"No. She has infected me." He clenched his hands into fists. "I need to get The Key."
"Gabriel, leave it alone." Frankie's eyes were scared.
"I need it, Frankie. Unless I get The Key…" He stopped. He felt suddenly cold at the idea that he might never feel the rush again. Life would be a desert.
He had to get The Key.
It was within reach. He knew Morrighan's true name: the password to the portal. If he could fit password and portal together, he could feed his hunger. It would be Minnaloushe's gift to him.
His eyes rested once more on the motionless figure. He felt such guilt. But his hunger was stronger.
He looked back at Frankie. "Monk House will be empty. I'll slip in and download The Key from the computer. No one will know."
He took a deep breath. "And then I'll be free."
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
No one will know.
The woman in the hospital bed heard the words. She was in a coma but her inner eye was still alive. It was damaged-but it was picking up input from the brick-and-mortar world around her like a broken antenna. Voices, movement, flashes of color. Brief bursts of information from the real world before she'd sink back once more into the torment of her own mind.
She was in hell.
She was trapped, searching obsessively for a key, a room, the right door-some way to escape the nightmare in which she had become marooned. If she could rediscover the order of places and things, she would wake up. She knew this with every cell in her body. But she had lost her compass. Minnaloushe and Gabriel had made sure of that.
But she still had her inner eye. Minnaloushe had not been able to take that away from her. It was broken, yes, a faulty aerial of the mind, but at times it allowed her a brief escape from the memory palace before she tumbled back into hell, searching, searching.