“Storm,” I say in a strangled voice. “I’ll have to call you back.” I hang up, still staring at the thing I saw.
It is in the waiting room. It is a head of curly blond hair tipped in a pink dye bright enough to catch my eye. Its owner is sitting with her back to me on a waiting room chair, her head leaning against a concrete pillar.
My heartbeat begins rocketing. I tell myself that pink-dipped hair is all the rage these days and it is just a coincidence, but all the while the adrenalin is surging through me. I am quivering with a sort of foresight that I would have said was psychic if my gift had still been working.
The girl with blond-pink hair is not moving. She is so still that she is either sleeping or dead. The people sitting nearest her are concerned only with their own cares and pain. One of them is called by a nurse and when she stands up, another woman hurries to take the now vacant seat before someone else snags it. No one looks at the girl with pinked tipped hair.
/> I hurry through the door to the waiting room, my body beginning to shake and jitter with nerves. I mutter, “Excuse me,” and squeeze past a bunch of waiting patients. I navigate to the girl with pink hair and touch her on her shoulder. She does not react.
Her head is angled downwards and I cannot see her face but already I know. I kneel down beside her. I look at her face. Her eyes are closed. But she is warm. She is breathing. And she is India.
Chapter 25
DIANA
As the doctors and nurses whisk India away in a gurney, I call Storm to let him know that I have found India. I tell him she is unconscious and that I will keep him updated once I know more. He says he will send an officer to keep an eye on her, and asks me to call him the moment I have any news, especially if she wakes up.
When he says he will notify her foster parents I almost tell him he might as well not bother. Clearly those people aren’t interested.
The officer Storm assigned arrives in thirty minutes, but it is another two hours before India’s doctor comes to tell us that India is in a coma. “There are no visible signs of any trauma,” she says. “Initial tests showed no chemical or magical substances in her bloodstream that might be causing the coma, but we are running more tests.”
“So the killer didn’t hurt her physically?” I ask, unable to believe it.
“Her physical condition remains the same as when she was here earlier.”
“What now?” I ask.
“She’s stable enough for us to return her to her private room. We will have to wait and see if she wakes up by herself.”
While the doctor arranges for India to be transferred to her room, I call Storm to update him. I had been too anxious earlier to leave the emergency ward where they had been working on India, so now I spend some time showing people the photo of Hank Lowry. Nobody has seen him here either yesterday or any time before that. I call Storm with the news but end up having to leave a voicemail. I ask him to call me back.
I spent the next hour with India, sitting on the chair next to her bed talking to her quietly, hoping a friendly voice might wake her up. It does not. The machines beep quietly, monitoring her heartbeat. There is another one measuring brain waves or something. But no breathing tube. Whatever has put her in this coma has not stopped her from being able to breathe by herself.
I stare at India’s face. It is wan, her glowing dusky skin dull now. Gone is the bright colorful visage of the cheery girl I had met last Friday. Just six days ago. I wonder if it is a lack of makeup or her ordeal which has made her look so grey.
Her hand is limp and cold. I rub it between mine in a futile effort to warm it up. There had been a time when just this action alone might have sparked a vision. I could have seen where India had been, and perhaps even glimpsed whoever had taken her. If I had been lucky.
That’s the thing with being a psychic, the visions that come to you are whatever want to come to you, never what you ask for.
I reach for my phone almost without thinking about it and dial Theo. When he answers I am momentarily disorientated, not knowing why I called him. Then I say, “India’s in a coma. I just wanted to ask if there’s anything you can think of that might help her? Some wizard-ish magic you could work?”
I almost think he is going to tell me it doesn’t work like that, like I have told people so often about my psychic visions, but Theo says he will see what he can do. Forty minutes later he arrives at the hospital.
It takes some persuading before the Agency officer will allow me to let Theo into India’s room. And in the end, I suspect her acquiescing has as much to do with some mumbled words that Theo had muttered under his breath as my persuasive skills. I raise an eyebrow at him as I shut the door behind us.
He has the grace to blush a little. “It wouldn’t have worked if she really didn't want to let me in,” he says.
“Like hypnosis?” I ask.
“Something like that,” he says distractedly, his attention already on India.
My phone rings, and the lock screen shows me that it is Storm ringing me. I raise a finger to my lips to let Theo know to be quiet while I answer the call.
“Hi Diana,” says Storm. “Are you with India right now?”
I wince. I wonder if he somehow knows that I have let Theo in. It would be just like him. I hadn’t seen the Agency officer making a call on her phone though. “Yes. I’m in her room,” I say.
I’m about to open my mouth to explain why I have asked Theo here, when Storm says, “You asked me to call you back? Has her condition improved?”