Michelle’s bed had been raised so she was sitting upright. She looked at me with red-rimmed eyes.
“Hello, Michelle.” I looked around, trying to decide where to set my flowers. There were plenty of options, since there was only one flower arrangement in the room. Nearly identical to mine, the carnations yellow rather than pink, it sat on the counter by the window. The lack of cards and arrangements made the room feel bleak. I set my flowers on the windowsill.
The young woman in the bed looked like hell. Tubes coming from bags of blood and something clear that I was betting held antibiotics on an IV stand ran to her arms. She was hooked up to a pain medication pump as well as to various monitors. Her right shoulder was heavily bandaged. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail tied at the base of her neck, a look that didn’t flatter. The hospital gown, faded and shapeless, didn’t do her any favors either, even though most of her was covered by a thin blue hospital blanket. When I’d seen her in the restaurant, her complexion had been warm, with a rose tint to her light brown skin. Now she looked unnaturally pale.
“You were right.” Michelle’s voice cracked when she said the words. “She is dead and she wasn’t really my mother.”
I looked her straight in the eyes and said, “Bullshit.” I kept talking, making sure that every word was emphatic as I could make it. It wasn’t hard. “You may have been adopted. But she was your mother. She raised you. She loved you. And she died protecting you.” There’s a damned sight more to being a mother than giving birth. And I was sure that Abigail Andrews had been a mother every minute of her life since Michelle had come into it.
“You don’t know that.” Michelle wouldn’t look at me. Instead, she stared out the window and the singularly unimpressive view—a few treetops, the landing pad for flight-for-life, nothing interesting.
“The hell I don’t,” I said with enough heat that she turned to glare at me. “Listen to me, kid. You would never have made it out of the airport if your mother had told them you were coming. She didn’t.” I moved to stand by the window, looking out so that I didn’t have to meet her gaze. “They probably would never have found you if you hadn’t come looking for me. They’d seen your mother meet with me. They were probably watching to see if you’d make contact. And you did.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh, really?” I turned to face her. “Let me guess. You think your whole life was a lie. That you can’t trust any of it.”
She flushed, giving her skin the first hint of real color. The machine monitoring her heart rate reacted to the change in her pulse. She glared at me, too angry for words.
I backed down. “Look, I’m very sorry for your loss. I truly am.”
“You didn’t even know her.”
“No. But I respect what she did.”
“Lying to me? Pretending that I was something, someone I’m not?” It was the outburst of a wounded child. Physically Michelle was an adult, but emotionally she wasn’t there yet, certainly not when under this kind of stress.
“Did you ever think to ask yourself why?”
“The detective said it’s because of my bloodline. That I’m the last member of a clan that was wiped out in some stupid feud.” Michelle’s gaze locked with mine. “It’s insane. I’m not even a mage. I’m a channeler. That’s it.
“I do ghosts, and I’m not even particularly good at that. I can’t control it enough to stay myself when they use me.” She started sobbing.
I grabbed the tissue box and went over to sit on the edge of the bed. She cried hard, but not for long. When she was done, she took a couple of tissues, wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
I embraced the chance for a change of subject. “Personally, I’ve always thought channeling was pretty cool. My sister was a ghost. I would’ve loved to be able to talk with her. Instead we worked out a code with her turning the lights on and off. One was yes. Two was no.”
“I could help you talk to her if you want,” Michelle said. “You saved my life. It’s the least I could do.”
I smiled at her. “Thanks. I really appreciate the offer, but Ivy finally moved on not too long ago.” I took a tissue from the box where she’d set it on the wheeled tray that fit over the bed. I wasn’t actually crying, but I did seem to have the sniffles all of the sudden.
Michelle’s next words were so sad. “Did you get to say good-bye?” She looked at me, her wide brown eyes swimming with tears. “I can’t believe my mom is dead and I didn’t even get to tell her good-bye, didn’t get to say ‘I love you’ or anything.”
I was about to say something trite and reassuring when the temperature in the room dropped like a stone. Michelle stiffened, her eyes rolling back in her head. For a second the machines connected to her body went nuts, then settled back to a normal rhythm.
“Ms. Graves.”
I recognized the voice, even though I’d only heard it once, for a few minutes. More than that, I recognized the body language. It was so weird, it was Michelle’s body in the bed, but it obviously wasn’t her using it. “Abigail Andrews.”
“Elena Santiago, actually. My birth name was Elena Santiago. The girl you know as Michelle was my sister’s daughter, Lucia. I was privileged to raise her as my own.”
“Ah.”
“She needs protection from both Connor and Jack Finn. The son is a mere pawn who will do nothing without the consent of his father, but he is still dangerous. They seek to wipe out the last of the Garzas. Their sources have told them that there are three remaining members of the bloodline.”
“Three?” I blinked at that. “But the spell killed everyone. Lucia only lived because she was born postmortem, after the spell was over.”
“It killed all but Lucia, the man who cast it, and the child his wife conceived days later.”
“Wait … Connor Finn…”
“Has Garza blood in his veins. The feud between the families started when Sherry Garza went to Edmond Finn with proof that their spouses were having an affair. What neither of them knew was that the affair had been going on for years. Two of the elder Finn children were actually sired by Julio Garza. Connor Finn is the descendant of one of them.”
“Holy crap.”
Michelle’s mouth turned up in a bitter smile. “I must go. Lucia is tiring. But as of now I am hiring you to protect her. There is plenty of money. You will be paid.”
“And if I say no?”
She was as firm as ever in her response. “You won’t. Otherwise your werewolf wouldn’t be standing guard outside her door.” With that, Michelle’s body thrashed once abruptly and fell back against the bed.
Well, hell.
I leaned over to check on the patient. I could easily see that I was looking at Michelle, who was gasping in pain. She ignored me completely as she fumbled around a bit before finding and hitting the button on the pump that controlled her pain meds. Her body didn’t relax until the spelled morphine actually hit her system. When it did, Michelle’s eyes fluttered shut.
I left the room as the nurse came in to check on her.
Ghosts don’t lie; they can’t. Connor Finn hated the Garzas more than anything in this world … and he was one. The irony of that was bitter enough to choke on. I had more knowledge than when I’d come in. I just wasn’t sure what to do with it.
“Celia, are you okay? You look … strange.” Kevin’s voice brought me back to the present.
He rose and guided me to his chair, where I tried to gather my scattered thoughts. After a moment, I said, “Michelle Andrews channeled the ghost of her mother while I was in there. Abigail hired us to protect Michelle from Connor Finn.”