Chapter 5

“Please tell me you’re going to share some of that coffee with me.”

The voice made Miriam stir sleepily in her chair along with the one that came right after it.

“Why the hell should I?”

The solid tone made her freeze.  Especially when she considered the fact that Nurse Corey and the comatose Lizzie were the only ones allowed in this room…beside her father.

But those deep, husky tones sounded nothing like him.  And, now that she thought about it, the woman sounded nothing like the gruff Nurse Corey, either.

“Oh, Eliot, darling,” the woman pleaded.  Her voice was soft and tinkling, like the chime of a bell.  “Please, don’t be grumpy with me.  Pretty please?  Now, be a good boy and give me a sip.”

Eliot.  Miriam wondered if he was Lizzie’s brother, but she couldn’t place the woman he was speaking to.

Another sister, maybe?

There was a slight pause, before the sound of heavy footsteps thudded over the linoleum. “Here,” he grumbled, annoyed.

“Lovely!”  The woman sighed in content along with the sound of a delicate slurp.  “You have no idea how much I have craved caffeine.  I have been tempted, you know,” she added around another sip, “to slip the good doctor the idea to pump this stuff directly into my veins along with that horrible medicine.  Though, I don’t think that would go over very well with the board of ethics…”

The man didn’t laugh.

“I didn’t come all the way here to have tea with you, Alazzdria,” he grumbled.  “What do you want?”

“Now, now,” the woman scolded playfully.  “That is no way to talk to an invalid, is it?”

The mocking tone made Miriam frown, confused, into the sleeve of her sweater.  Carefully, she kept the rest of her body still, feigning to be asleep.

Surely…Lizzie wasn’t the one talking?  She couldn’t even hear the beeping of the machinery.

Was this all just some strange daydream?

“Tell me.”  The man’s voice was a frightening growl that made her stomach lurch.  It was hard to keep pretending as her heart pounded like a sledgehammer into the walls of her chest.

The woman, however, didn’t seem very fazed.

“Goodness, gracious, Eliot,” she whined.  “I haven’t seen you in nearly a decade and the first thing you do is pepper me with nosy questions?”

Eliot’s voice was as sharp as a whip.  “Start talking.”

“You are so insufferable—”

The sound of heavy footsteps moving for the door cut the woman off.

“Wait!”  Miriam heard a squeak like that of someone sitting up in bed.

“Alright, alright, alright…”

The footsteps slowed.

“Why are you playing the role of a vegetable?” Eliot demanded.  “Did you get bored with having to fend for yourself?”

Alazzdria hesitated, before adding on a sigh, “Oh nothing really…just someone wants to kill me.”

Miriam had to bite her lip to keep from gasping out loud.  The familiar taste of blood exploded on her tongue.

“Again?”  Eliot sounded annoyed.

“Mhmm,” Alazzdria mumbled.  “Actually make that several someones.  Though I won’t say who or why—just know that they seem very, very serious about making me very dead.”

Miriam went stone-still, though the woman, Alazzdria, didn’t seem very bothered by the fact that people wanted to murder her.  Miriam couldn’t help thinking that instead, she just sounded…amused.

Eliot released a sharp breath.  “What did you do this time?”

“Nothing,” Alazzdria said innocently.  “But my little comatose rouse only seems to have thrown them off for a little while.  They’ll be on my tail any day now…”

“Which means?” Eliot demanded.

“I need protection,” the woman said while Eliot cursed.  “Say you’ll guard me!  Pretty please?”

“You put yourself in a coma and dragged me all the way across the country for…protection?”

Alazzdria scoffed.  “Well, when you put it that way, it sounds just plain silly!”

“No.”

“Eliot—”

“No.”

“Pretty, pretty please?”

“Why should I?”

Alazzdria seemed to mull his words over.  “I’ll make it worth your while, darling,” she said finally with a smack of her lips.  “Pinky swear.”

The man sighed.  “Sage and Hazel won’t like it.”

“Ugh, God!”  Alazzdria groaned.  “You brought them?  I told you not to bring them—”

“It would have raised too many questions if I left those two behind,” Eliot said simply.  Miriam could almost picture him shrugging—a faceless figure of shadow to match that dark voice.

“Whether you like it or not, they’re part of the coven.  Besides, you’re not the one who had to travel with them…”

Alazzdria didn’t seem very sympathetic.  “Thosehorrid twins,” she hissed.  “I’ll never understand why you left everything behind to play bodyguard to those two spoiled little—”

“This isn’t about me,” Eliot said.  “This is about you, and why you think I owe you a damn thing.  Especially after—”

His tone was like a blade cutting through her—down to her very soul.  The sound of it made Miriam’s body clench.  Her nose pressed harder into the thick wool of her sweater, unintentionally breathing in a cloud of lint and…she couldn’t help it.

She sneezed.

The sound cut through the man’s words like a knife and an instant hush fell over the room.

Miriam squeezed her eyes shut, and tucked her head lazily into the arm of her chair, still pretending to sleep until finally she heard Eliot say, “Who is that?”

“Oh,” Alazzdria said.  “That’s Miriam.”

She drew the name out in strangled vowels; Marrriiiiiam.

“She’s my sitter.”

Her sitter, Miriam wondered?  She was there for Lizzie…

“About damn time you realized you needed supervision,” Eliot grumbled.

“Haha, touché,” Alazzdria quipped.  “She’s to keep me company, actually.  The people at this hospital supply all the coma patients with sitters to ‘improve the patient experience.’”

“Can she hear us?”  Eliot demanded.

“I like her,” Alazzdria went on, as if he’d never spoken.  “She’s sweet…I want you to tell them to make her my official coma sitter—”

“Can.  She.  Hear.  Us?”

“Of course not,” Allazdria said, shrugging off his worried tone with a laugh.  “I may be playing the role of a comatose beauty, but trust me my powers are still in full effect.  No mortals for miles around will be able to hear our little chat.  Promise.”

“Good.”

“So, you’ll help me then?  My sweet, wonderful, handsome Eliot?”

“…I’ll think about it.”

“Oh, bloody hell, Eliot!  They’re trying to kill me.”

“You’re immortal.”

“So?” Alazzdria tossed back.  “That doesn’t mean I particularly relish the idea of being beaten or stabbed, or staked through the heart. Again.”

“Do they usually stake witches through the heart?”

Alazzdria sighed, exasperated.  “Staked through the heart, burned at the stake—tomato, tomato.”

Her voice quivered, turning small and pathetic.  “Please don’t let them hurt me!”

Eliot wasn’t impressed.  “Knock it off—”

“Shhhhh!” Alazzdria hissed.  “Someone’s coming!”

Sure enough, the soft pitter-patter of footsteps ate up the silence as the door opened with a solid click!

“Oh! You’re back!” Nurse Corey exclaimed.

“Yes.”  The voice was rueful.  “I’m…back.”

He seemed to put a whole lot darker meaning to the statement that the nurse did.

“I trust you’re settling in okay?”

“Fine.”

There was an awkward pause, as if the curt answer wasn’t exactly what Nurse Corey had expected.

“That’s…good,” she said on a nervous chuckle.  “I hope you don’t mind Miriam being in here.”

At the sound of her name, Miriam wrenched her eyes open.  She felt rather than saw both sets of eyes focus on her.  Casually, she leaned down to fiddle with her shoe laces as her eyes adjusted to the harsh artificial light, before peeking up from beneath her lashes as if she’d been merely tying her shoes this whole time.

It was harder to pretend as she faced the two figures watching her, however—two, not three.

The strange woman was gone.  The unconscious Lizzie, still hooked up to beeping machinery was the only other person in the room.

The entire strange conversation must have been just a strange dream.

Miriam might have believed it…if it weren’t for the man by the bed.

He was a stranger with eyes like amber fire and hair to match.  On second thought, he wasn’t really a man.  More like a teenager, eighteen or nineteen at least—around her age.

But his eyes seemed older.  Much, much older.

Ancient eyes.

The look in them gave Miriam chills as she rose shakily to her feet.

“She’s a volunteer,” Nurse Corey explained.  “The doctors on this floor like to make sure that all the intensive patients have someone there to keep them company at all times—though, if you want your privacy, we can arrange—”

“No.”

Miriam flinched at the icy voice from her daydream.  At least…it could have been the same voice, only it wasn’t laced with anger and annoyance.

Now the dark tones were just empty.

Dull and lifeless, as if their speaker was perpetually bored.

Bored with hospitals.  Bored with doctors and nurses.

Bored with life.

Cautiously, she peeked at him from the corner of her eye, unwilling, for some reason, to look him head on.

Her gaze trailed along broad shoulders shaping a dark green sweater, to the pale throat rising above a narrow collar…all the way up to a face that looked ripped from a roman statue, and two eyes sporting a gaze that burned.

Those eyes…

They were brown, but they could have been red.  A bloody, scarlet shade that seemed to capture Miriam’s breath even as he turned away.

“I don’t care,” he added in Nurse Corey’s direction.  “She can stay.”

“It’s probably for the best,” Nurse Corey agreed with a nod of her head, though Miriam could tell that the man’s coldness threw her off.

Her gray eyes darted nervously to the bed.  “Is there anything you want her to know?  A-about your sister, I mean?”

The boy turned around, slowly as if the nurse’s words were annoying hooks dragging him back against his will.

“Well…”  His voice was a brush of winter, and Miriam felt frozen as those amber eyes settled over her.  “If I were to give her any advice about my sister,” he made the word sound like the punch line to a joke, “it would be…to stay away.”

Miriam blinked, sure she had misheard.  Nurse Corey glanced at him too, a sharp jab of her gray eyes.

When she spoke, however, her voice was all honey.

“ You’re quite the kidder, Mr. Marexsson,” she cooed, writing off his words as a playful quip.

Though, Miriam could see quite clearly in those amber eyes that there was nothing ‘playful’ about him.

Not at all.

“How about I have Miriam fill you in on any updates while I go get the doctor?”  she suggested, glancing at Miriam expectantly.

“S-sure,” she stammered, while the man watched on, gaze utterly empty.

It was unnerving.

Almost as though he wasn’t really seeing her, but seeing through her.  Through her skin, through her muscle and bone to gaze at the opposite wall with mild interest.

He didn’t answer, not even as nurse Corey turned on her heel and slipped from the room on a cloud of nervous energy.

Leaving just the two of them…alone.

Miriam felt the need to emphasize that part mentally.

Alone.

Even after four months as a student at Wafter Point high, she couldn’t remember the last time she had been actually alone with someone her age.  Most of the kids at school were polite, but they always tended to scatter whenever the bell rang for next period.  Even the group of kids she sat with at lunch barely seemed to notice she was there.

Though, glancing up she figured that he didn’t look like the type of person to have ever set foot in Wafter Point high.  He had the kind of face and dark handsomeness that stuck in the mind like something shiny.

Not to mention those eyes.

No, she thought almost desperately.

He was…different.

“Hi,” she blurted, sticking out her hand.  “I’m Miriam.”

He raised an auburn eyebrow.  For a moment those red eyes just eyed her intently, as if he expected her to melt beneath the scrutiny.  And not in the sexy, boneless way heroines did in movies when a handsome man swept them off their feet.

He seemed to literally want her to melt…into a puddle…right there at his feet.

When she didn’t his eyes narrowed slightly, and he dryly uttered, “Eliot,” so quietly she almost wondered if he had spoken at all.

Miriam blinked.  Eliot.  Just like the man from the strange conversation—that odd daydream.

Though it had to be a coincidence, because this Eliot didn’t look capable of sounding half as angry as the Eliot who’d argued with the mysterious Alazzdria had.

No…he just looked downright unhappy.  Utterly impressed.

Even as she stood there with a stupid grin plastered on her face.

Her hand hung awkwardly in the space between them, and it was a painful moment before Miriam realized that he had no intention of taking it.

“Is Lizzie your sister?”  She asked on a bit of nervous laughter.  A shaky, hahaha that dripped from her throat as she forced her hand down to her side.

“Foster sister,” Eliot corrected.  “No relation.”

Miriam flinched, positive that something had rustled over by the bed, but when she turned around there was nothing there but the blanket tucked smoothly beneath Lizzie’s folded hands.

“D-do you have a big family?”  She asked, turning back to face him.

His lip twitched, almost into a smile but not quite.

An amused frown, more like.

“No.”

“Oh.”  Miriam felt her gaze slip down to the corner of his pale chin.  It almost hurt to look at him straight on.

So, she settled for the corner of his mouth instead.

“I bet you’re relived that Lizzie was found.”  She tried to sound sympathetic.

He didn’t answer.

“Is…is anyone else from your family coming to see her?”

His mouth clenched and she instantly felt stupid for prying into his personal life.  The look on his face made her go cold all over.

Somehow, he had no trouble making that fiery gaze as chilling as ice.

“No,” he said, almost in a murmur.  “She’s burned bridges with everyone else.  I’m the only one she could call…”

He frowned as if quite annoyed by that fact.

“Oh.”  Miriam turned back to Lizzie, unable to fight the wave of pity that washed over her.

Name or not, maybe the girl was still alone.

She knew the feeling.

“I just thought…”

A flash of motion caught her eye, and she broke off, whipping her head around to face the bed.  She could have sworn…

“Are you alright?”

Eliot’s voice was a murmur, but Miriam couldn’t shake the cynical voice at the back of her head that said he was only pretending to be concerned.

As if he knew damn well what made her glance at the bed, searching for any glimmer of movement.

“Yeah,” she whispered.  “I just thought I saw her move—”

“Miri.”

She turned to the door where a thin man with red hair poked his head through the doorway.

It had been so long since she had seen her father in person that Miriam had almost—comically—forgotten what he looked like.

He was thinner than she remembered.  Dark shadows bruised the skin beneath his green eyes as if he’d been punched.  His skin was so pale she could see the throbbing blue line of a vein snaking beneath his left eye.

He looked more lifeless than even Lizzie Marexsson.

“Can I…can I talk to you for a minute?”

He inclined his head toward the hallway.

Miriam nodded.

Stiffly, she turned for her backpack only to realize with a shock that Eliot was already behind her.  She had to crane her neck just to look up into those amber eyes.

He towered over her.

The tiny pink bag looked minuscule in his grip, and…Miriam couldn’t help thinking that suddenly the powder-pink color didn’t look so harmless against his pale skin.

She’d never considered pink to be a dangerous color.  But, paired against those ruby red eyes…it almost looked more threatening than black.

“Here.”  He pressed the backpack into her shaking hands.  Deliberately his gaze trailed down from her face to the pink fabric and back again.

His eyes widened ever-so slightly, as if he had just managed to solve a mildly irritating puzzle.  Something glimmered in them that she couldn’t put her finger on…

“Miri,” her father called, voice trembling like it did when he was strained for time.

“T-thanks,” she blurted to Eliot.

Gracelessly, she turned on her heel and followed her father into the hall, hating herself for screwing up another conversation.

Maybe her social skills had reached the point where it was just better to keep her mouth shut whenever she didn’t need to utter a lie?

It had been so long since she’d spoken—really thought about what she was going to say instead of just utter the same old tired lines.  As she slipped into the brightly lit hall, she realized that Lizzie had been the first person she’d actually spoken to in a really long time.

Her father leaned against the opposite wall, messaging his temples with a free hand.  His glasses dangled from the other.

“Hey…kiddo,” he greeted her tiredly as she move forward on heavy feet.  “Your uncle told me what happened in school today.”

Miriam glanced around, but she didn’t catch sight of her uncle at either end of the hall.

“He left,” her father explained with a wince.  “He had to get back to the school…”

It was a plausible lie, but Miriam knew the truth.  He just couldn’t stand to bear the sight of his alcoholic brother for another minute.

Her father knew it too.

“How do you feel?”

The sight of real concern on her father’s face made her swallow, heart heavy for reasons she couldn’t explain.

“Fine.”

He nodded with a hesitant smile.  “I’ll get you an appointment with one of the doctors here, soon, okay?”

She shrugged.  “Okay.”

“Right…”  He trailed off, eyes darting around the hallway anxiously.

Almost as if he hoped that someone might come along and save him from having to have a real conversation with his daughter.

One that didn’t involve talk of doctors of medication.

Put him out of his misery.

But no one came to answer his wish and the awkward silence grew into a suffocating blanket.

“I…have to go,” Miriam lied, hefting her backpack onto her shoulder for emphasis.  She fought the urge to sigh with relief as the tension snapped like a rope being cut.  “Homework.”

“Oh,” her father said.  She couldn’t help thinking that he sounded almost relieved as well.  “You have a way home?”

“I could ride with you,” she began, hating the hopeful note in her voice.  “W-when you get off, I mean.  I don’t mind waiting…”

“Another overnight kiddo,” he said, shaking his head.  “I…I could call your uncle if you want?”

Miriam shook her head.  “No,” she said tightly.  Her nails dug into her shoulder from around the strap of her backpack.  “It’s  fine.”

“Hey, tell you what.”  Her father grinned as he reached into the pocket of his lab coat and withdrew his car keys as if they were a pack of candy.  “Why don’t you take the car home?  I don’t know why you don’t drive yours anymore.”

He smiled and held out the keychain for her to take.

Miriam just stared.

She was surprised that he even remembered the tiny little sports car he’d gotten her as an afterthought birthday present last year.  The red sports car which was currently collecting dust in the garage.  Still in the exact same spot it had sat since being brought by the movers along with the rest of their stuff.

These days, when he could barely remember something as simple as leaving a message on the voicemail to let her know when he was working late, it was surprising that the stupid car stuck out in his memory.

Almost as surprising as the fact that he didn’t even remember the reason she couldn’t drive it.

“You know I can’t,” she said, softly after a long moment.

“Why not?”  He scratched his forehead, confused—before it all clicked with a look of horror.

As a doctor who specialized in disorders of the brain, he knew better than anyone what kind of danger came with an uncontrolled epileptic behind the wheel.

“O-oh.”  He flinched, tucking the keys back into his pocket.  “Right…  Are you sure you don’t want me to find someone to give you a ride?”

Miriam shook her head.  “No.  Actually, Liza said she’d give me a ride when she got off.”

“Oh, right.”  He nodded, eagerly accepting the lie even though it sounded as flat as a stone, even to Miriam’s own ears.  “I’ll catch you tomorrow night, then?”

Another tired smile that made her stomach churn.

“Tell ya what,” he added with a charming grin.  “…I’ll even make your favorite spaghetti.  How does that sound?”

“Great.”  It hurt to smile as he turned away with a wave.

“Catch ya later, kiddo.”

“Catch ya…”

She felt cold as she wandered all the way to the back entrance of the hospital where she waited four hours for Liza to get off her shift and take pity on her enough to finally give her a ride home.