Page 36 of Nightmares and Numerology

“What was the reason again?” Fifi asked.

“I want to build or adapt a home on our books with yourhelp. Lydia’s flat is too small, and her place might go up like a tinderbox now that she’s manifesting fire powers. Ivan moved after the Grave Eater incident.”

I couldn’t even blame the ill-tempered dragon for it. If I’d been mauled within an inch of my life and watched Lydia dragged off to be torn apart by an abomination, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay either.

“So?”

“So, I’m thinking Ivan’s fire-proofed home would do nicely, but I need your help to make it feasible. What do you say, Fifi? Spot me this once? I’d like to make sure Lydia’s safe.”

Fifi beamed like a proud schoolteacher who’d finally hammered the answer into Timmy’s thick skull.

“I’m sure we can work something out.”

Fifi’s phone rang, and she answered it with a pleased smile, but the expression dropped a moment later. She held the receiver to her shoulder and mouthed ‘Taliyah.’ I held my hand out for the phone, which she handed over reluctantly.

“Angelo Stedham speaking,” I said.

“Come to my office, Angelo. I’ve just received the footage from the camera facing the parking lot. I think you should see this.”

Chapter Sixteen

Lydia

I always hated hospitals.

It didn’t matter if I was a patient or just visiting; I disliked being there. The empathy that manifested as a minor magical gift within me reacted badly to suffering. No one arrived at the hospital happy, healthy, and well. It was temporary housing for the sick and dying. It had been difficult to be here as a patient, but pacing the halls, waiting for news about Rodney, brought the suffering to a new level.

I’d worn a path through the waiting room carpet so often that I was surprised there wasn’t a visible trail. Dr. Sherman didn’t seem amused by my constant circling. At least one thing had gone well since then: Poppy had given me just enough Confusion Oil to muddle the doctor’s senses. The blonde surgeon speaking to me wouldn’t recall the horns, just my inability to stay still.

“Could you sit, please, Mrs. Rourke?”

“It’s Lydia Morton.”

“Not legally,” the doctor replied in a tone of strained patience. “Technically, you’re still married to Rodney. And he hasn’t replaced you as his power of attorney.”

“The point?” I asked, frowning.

“The point is that I need consent to perform exploratory surgery.”

“Surgery?” I repeated.

She nodded. “He appears to have aplastic anemia without any of the conditions I’d expect to see associated with it. Unless there are things he’s been diagnosed with that he hasn’t told his doctors about?”

She looked at me expectantly, as though she assumed I had nothing better to do than keep up with Rodney’s healthproblems. We hadn’t talked about anything as ordinary as our health in a long time. I’d expected his condition to worsen in my absence, but not like this. I was the one who remembered to make appointments and pay the insurance. He would, I thought, have worse than average colds and suffer through them. Not this.

“What conditions could cause this?”

Dr. Sherman tucked a strand of blonde hair behind one ear. She looked tired. I couldn’t blame her. Rodney had needed transfusions when he arrived. It had been bizarre, to say the least. Other than being on death’s door, he seemed otherwise fine.

“It can be an inherited condition, like Shwachman-Diamond syndrome, but that would have presented in infancy. Most of the time, it’s an indicator of a larger problem in the body. Viral infections that affect the bone marrow can deplete the number of cells the body makes. Some autoimmune conditions can achieve the same result. Do you know of anything like that in his history?”

I wanted to throw my hands up in defeat. It wasn’t my fault that my information was out of date. If anything, it was Rodney’s fault for leaving the medical documents as they were. I was certain it was a way to drag me back into his life one last time. Once the divorce was final and he could put a ring on Andrea’s finger, she’d be his go-to person.

“Unless she’s the one killing him,” Indigo said. “Pestilence demons can cause all kinds of havoc in the human body.”

“What about a vampire?” I asked. “I mean, he’s basically anemic. Doesn’t that scream bloodsucker to you?”

“It would if there were puncture marks and several missing pints of blood. Vampires might bleed someone to the point of anemia, but there’d be loss of volume as they fed. Rodney’s blood isn’t missing; it was just destroyed, and his body isn’tproducing enough to let him bounce back. That’s why he looks so pale and confused. He’s not getting enough oxygen to his brain. For once, we can’t blame the idiocy on the man himself.”

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