They put me in a private room in the pediatric wing. One of the perks of being a nurse’s daughter, I guess. The bed is right next to the window, and I gaze outside, looking at the snow coming down. Like the rest of our little town, Ridgemont Hospital is surrounded by towering Douglas firs, and the snow clings to their branches, making the evergreens look ever-white instead. Even though my temperature has rebounded, a chill runs down my spine.
Why did whatever was happening to me stop all at once like that? Why did my heartbeat go back to normal and my fingers turn from blue to pink? Did I help those spirits move on without realizing it? Or did they just float away when they discovered how useless I was, in search of a better, more competent luiseach to help them? Of course, deep down inside I already know the answer. When I turn from the window to the door, I see him standing right in front of me.
He was the better, more competent luiseach. He helped all those spirits move on, drawing them away from me like a magnet. And he’s been waiting patiently ever since for the right moment to talk to us.
The last time I saw Aidan it had been only twelve hours since my mother was released from a demon’s possession. It had been just a few minutes since I learned Nolan was my protector, since I learned that although Victoria was declared dead right here in this very hospital, she stood up and walked away—very much alive, still enough of a luiseach that a demon couldn’t kill her.
Once again it feels like there are about a million questions bubbling up in my throat, like the words are literally fighting among my vocal chords, arguing over which one of them gets to be spoken first. But before I can say a thing, Mom looks up from her chair beside my bed and says in her calm, collected, professional nurse voice, “Can I help you?” She probably thinks he’s lost, that he’s here at the hospital to visit someone else.
She has no idea that he’s here to see me.
Aidan steps inside the room, his right arm extended formally in front of him. He’s wearing a perfectly tailored black suit and black wing-tip shoes; a gunmetal-gray tie is tied tightly around his collar. His hair is several shades darker than mine, almost black, and his skin is paler. His nose is straight as an arrow, and I bet he never wrinkles it like Mom and I wrinkle ours.
He looks nothing like my mother, in her pastel-colored scrubs and black clogs, and nothing like me, in my hospital gown and socks. Most everyone else in this hospital is probably dressed more like Mom and me than they are like him. Still, somehow he makes me feel like we’re the ones who are inappropriately dressed.
“My name is Aidan,” he begins. “It’s nice to meet you, Katherine.”
“Kat,” Mom corrects automatically, the way she always does whenever anyone calls her by her full name. She stands up, no doubt wondering how he knew her name.
“I just wanted to see how Sunshine was doing,” Aidan continues, and I bite my lip so hard it hurts. Because now Mom is about to ask how he knows both of our names.
I shake my head. I don’t want him here, filling Mom’s head with questions.
All those words that had been battling it out in my throat calm down long enough for me to say, “I think you should probably leave.”
It’s the first real sentence I’ve ever managed to say to him, and I can’t help feeling a little bit proud of myself. If I can manage one sentence, soon I’ll be able to manage another, which means I’ll be able to ask him all of my questions eventually. But I don’t want to ask them now. Not here. Not in front of Mom. Not yet.
“I think I should probably stay,” Aidan counters calmly, settling into a chair across from Mom’s on the other side of my bed. He gestures for her to sit and she does, perhaps off-put by how at ease he seems in here with us. His pants don’t even wrinkle when he sits. Before I can protest, Aidan continues, “She’s not going to believe you if I’m not here to prove it.”
“To prove what?” Mom stands again, her arms folded across her chest. She takes a deep breath, still anxious about what happened to me, still waiting for the doctors to show up with an explanation for why her daughter nearly had a heart attack. “Are you some sort of specialist?” she asks, still searching for a reasonable explanation for this poised man’s presence. Her voice is more high pitched than normal, so I can tell she’s anxious. “Did they call you in for a consult? Do you have new information on my daughter’s condition?”
Mom must think Aidan’s here to deliver some kind of hopeless diagnosis. And in a way I guess he kind of is. It probably doesn’t help matters that he’s dressed like he runs a funeral home or something. I reach out and take her hand in mine. Her skin is clammy and cold.
I close my eyes, like I believe that maybe when I open them, Aidan won’t be here and maybe Mom and I won’t be here either. Maybe we’ll be magically transported back home. And not home to our house here in Ridgemont. Home to our old house in Austin, with its sun-dappled backyard and the windows flung open wide to let the warm air in. The house where we lived for the sixteen years before I discovered I wasn’t even human. Before I knew ghosts and demons really existed. The house where I lived when I was still normal.