Page 96 of Ruled By Fate

“Yes?”

“Don’t let the bad blonde lady come back.”

Brie’s blood ran cold. “What bad blonde lady, honey?”

“You know. The one with the bad fairy dust. The one with the silver horns.”

? ? ?

Brie didn’t know where she was going.

Kylie had fallen asleep. Brie had waited for her mother to return, her thoughts racing crazily. Then she took off through the hospital, almost running, without a thought as to her destination.

She was real. I didn’t imagine her.

She wanted to slap herself.

Of course she’s real. How could she not be? Matthews knows who she is. He’s spoken with her at least twice. That plot? The one that had something to do with a child? That was this. That was Kylie.

She’d ended up in an atrium, a space filled with plants and trees and enclosed by glass. She wondered if it was one of those meditative spaces they made for cancer patients. She sat down on the nearest bench and tried to think it through logically. If logic had any place in all of this.

By now, they’ve reviewed all the security cameras dozens of times. The blonde woman couldn’t have shown up on any of them, or they’d have locked down the hospital looking for her. And Denise couldn’t see her the other day in the ER. It wasn’t that the woman left before she turned around — it was that she actually couldn’t see her.

The realization struck like a ton of bricks.

She can only be seen if she wants to be.

Just like Cam.

Because she isn’t from here.

A second later, she was up and running. A few minutes later, Brie burst through the doors of the morgue so suddenly that Rashida nearly dropped her test tube.

“What is it?” Brie demanded, trying to catch her breath.

“Brie!” Rashida gasped. “Are you alright? I heard what happened—”

“I’m fine,” she said quickly, trying to calm her racing heart. “Ida, what is that stuff? The stuff they found in her system. What exactly is it?”

Rashida was looking at her like she might be crazy, but in light of recent events, it was understandable, and she certainly deserved the benefit of the doubt.

“Here,” she finally answered, “have a look for yourself.”

She stepped aside and indicated the readout screen of the mass spectrometer. Brie focused on the monitor and found herself looking at a series of symbols and graphs. She didn’t know what any of it meant.

“Okay, new approach. Why don’t you pretend that I don’t know anything about mass spectrometry and explain this to me as one would explain such a thing to a small child?”

Rashida sat beside her. “Alright. The mass spectrometer identifies unknown compounds by measuring the weight of their molecules after converting them into gas-phase ions.” This was met with a blank stare. “You might need to just take my word for it.”

Brie nodded. “Fair enough. Just tell me what it is.”

“I can’t,” Rashida answered. “I can only tell you what it very nearly was.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It was almost strychnine. It was just different enough from strychnine to fool all the usual tests. I’d never seen anything like it before.”

Brie absorbed this for a second, then looked up with a hint of dread. “Why do you keep using the past tense? Isn’t it still in the lab? Did you send it off to the CDC already?”

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