“Why isn’t it working?”
Ivy watched the patient on the hospital bed, unease stirring in her gut. The elixir had proven effective on the first three people she had administered it to, but the elderly man she had just dosed showed no sign of improvement. The black veins stood out on his rail-thin arms just as prominently as they had ten minutes ago. Machines beeped a steady rhythm, tracking the man’s vital signs. No change there, either.
Helios spared her a glance from the door to the quarantine ward where he stood watch. Every fifteen minutes a nurse came by to check on the patients, recording vitals and making sure the equipment keeping them alive was functioning optimally.
Ivy and Helios had had to hide from her twice already, huddling behind a large cabinet shoved in a corner of the room to open up more space for beds. But the nurse’s rounds had seemed more perfunctory than anything else. She hadn’t noticed the subtle changes in her patients, nor was she likely to for a few days, when the elixir’s magic would heal them enough for non-magical eyes to see the difference.
Ivy could feel the change, slight as it was. Even humans had a magical trace to them, an aura. It was difficult to detect, since most humans went through their lives blissfully ignorant of their own magical potential, rendering their metaphysical presence all but inert, but Ivy had been taught to scan the aura of all living creatures for signs of illness or injury. The kuçedra changed the fundamental nature of one’s aura, altering it the way a stubborn stain affected carpet fiber. The bloodweed elixir removed that stain. So far.
“Did you give him enough?” Helios asked.
Ivy shot him a withering look. “Yes, I gave him enough. I know what I’m doing.”
Helios held up his hands in surrender. “I meant no insult. I’m only trying to help.”
“Sorry,” Ivy said. “I know … I just …”
Don’t actually know what I’m doing.
“Could there be a reason for him to be resistant?” Helios checked his watch – an antique pocket watch on a chain that Ivy had lifted from Echo’s stash of treasures in the library. Echo hadn’t gone back, but Ivy had. All her clothes had been lost at the Nest, and she and Echo were roughly the same size. Echo hadn’t said a word when she saw her own clothing appear in the room they shared at Avalon, but Ivy had seen the shift in her friend’s stance. A relaxing. Subtle, but there. A little something familiar went a long way when it felt like nothing in the world made sense.
“I don’t know,” Ivy admitted. “I guess it’s possible. Human bodies don’t all process human medications the same way, so maybe this is no different.”
Helios cast a glance down the corridor. It was empty. They had precious few minutes before the nurse came back, but they hadn’t seen another soul. Ivy assumed no one was eager to spend unnecessary time in the quarantined area. The medical mystery behind the condition the kuçedra had left these people in had unsettled even the doctors sent by the CDC. Ivy had read about it in the paper she’d picked up at a newsstand after her last foray into the city.
“We’re running out of time,” Helios called in a hushed whisper. He abandoned his post by the door with a last searching glance and came to join her by the old man’s bedside. He slipped the sunglasses down his nose and peered at the man over the top of the frames. His yellow eyes had a greenish cast to them in the ward’s fluorescent lighting. He made a noise that sounded like he was considering the man’s condition. Ivy suspected it was mostly for show. He didn’t know the first thing about the healing arts. Ivy might be out of her depth, but she was confident she knew more than he did. For what that was worth, which was evidently not much at all. Helios picked up the patient’s chart from the slot that held it at the foot of the bed and read, half mumbling medical jargon to himself.
“I don’t understand,” Ivy said. “He was affected at the same time and the same place as everyone else. The circumstances of his infection were identical. I already checked his chart. There’s no preexisting disease or condition that might —”
“Did you look at his date of birth?” A puzzled frown pulled at Helios’s mouth as his gaze bounced from the chart to the elderly man on the bed.
“No,” Ivy replied. “I didn’t think it was relevant.”
Helios handed her the chart. “I admit, I’m not great at predicting human ages – they live and die so fast – but this gentleman” – he waved a hand at the man’s wrinkled countenance – “doesn’t look twenty-three to me.”
“Wait, what?” Ivy scanned the chart. “He can’t possibly be …”
Her questioning gaze found his date of birth, sandwiched between his name and gender. March 21. Nineteen ninety-four.
“What the flapjacks?”
“What’s a flapjack?” Helios asked absently. He had removed his sunglasses and was leaning in to study the man’s face closely. His nose scrunched as if he smelled something rotten.
“A pancake,” Ivy replied. She flipped through the pages of the chart. Attached to the final page with a paper clip was a photograph of a smiling young man, face ruddy from the sun, standing on what looked like a mountaintop. White-capped peaks dotted the horizon behind him. A golden retriever sat at his feet. Ivy glanced at the man on the bed – withered with age and looking closer to seventy than twenty – and the man in the photo. The bone structure was the same. Identical strong eyebrow ridges. The broad jawline. The wide cheekbones. “How …? Why …?”
“Do you feel that?” Helios asked. He motioned her closer to the man’s bedside. Ivy stepped toward him and leaned over the bed’s plastic guardrail. The closer she got to the man, the stronger that sickly sensation clogging his aura became. It hadn’t been nearly as powerful with the other victims.
“Is it …,” Helios pondered aloud. “Could it be …?”
“It’s feeding on him,” Ivy said, her speculation solidifying into certainty as she spoke the thought out loud.
“I thought it was feeding on all of them,” Helios said with a dubious look. “Why is this man worse off than the others?”
“I don’t know.” Ivy shook her head. “It’s possible the kuçedra doesn’t deplete them all at the same pace. Maybe this is what it looks like when it’s nearly sucked someone dry.” This was something she would need to discuss with the Ala. From their previous conversations about the Ala’s own experience under the influence of the kuçedra’s toxic malevolence, it seemed a plausible enough explanation, though how the man had managed to age so rapidly without dying was an even bigger question.
Footsteps sounded from the corridor, the nurse’s rubber-soled sneakers squeaking in the hazmat suit she donned every time she entered the ward.
“That’s our cue,” Helios said, tugging Ivy behind the cabinet. There was a very real chance they were going to be caught one of these days; Ivy hoped it wasn’t today. She huddled against Helios’s chest, closing her eyes as she held her breath, listening to the night nurse’s steps as she puttered around the room. The smiling face in the photo ghosted behind Ivy’s closed eyelids. Michael Ian Hunt. Born March 21, 1994. Age twenty-three. Hiker. Dog owner. Geriatric.
A shudder ran down Ivy’s spine. A warm hand pressed against her lower back. Helios, trying to offer her what silent comfort he could.
If poor Michael Ian Hunt was getting weaker, it meant only one thing: the kuçedra was getting stronger.