“I don’t scare so easily.”
“You were going to leave me.”
Her hands dropped to his belt buckle and his hands immediately covered hers.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Not what you’re hoping for, but we need these off. Where is your phone, Malichai, and quit stalling.” She poured firmness into her voice, using the tone Marie used on Jacy when she meant business.
Malichai hesitated only for a moment but then complied. “My phone’s in the back pocket of my jeans.”
He was lying on the thing and didn’t want to move. Amaryllis felt bad moving him, but it didn’t matter, she had no choice, she shifted his body, pulling his jeans from him and sliding them over his hips and down his leg. She settled him carefully back onto the mattress and just pulled up the sheet as he was still so hot. He lay back against the pillows and closed his eyes.
She retrieved the phone and looked at him with one eyebrow raised. “Honey, I need your passcode. I know this is hard for you, but you need to concentrate for me.”
He opened his eyes briefly and looked at her and then at his phone. He gave her the code and then closed his eyes again, frowning, clearly not fully comprehending what was going on around him.
Amaryllis immediately punched in the code, and then found his brother’s number and hit that as well. She knew it was late, but he had to answer, and he did, very abruptly.
“It’s late. What’s wrong?”
She put her hand on Malichai’s chest, more for her own reassurance than for Malichai’s. He seemed to be drifting in and out.
She wasn’t certain where to start. What to say. What Ezekiel would believe. She was feeling desperate. They needed help and they needed it immediately. “My name is Amaryllis. I’m here with Malichai. I need your help. That bone in his leg has been deteriorating at a rapid rate. There are little fragments spreading everywhere like a spiderweb. I examined it this morning and could see the bone was going to begin to fail completely. I’m not an experienced healer, but I do have the gift. If you know someone else, another healer like me that could talk me through it, I might be able to save the bone, but it has to be fast. He’s developed an infection. His temperature is spiking, and he can’t put weight on the leg at all. He’s kind of drifting in and out so sometimes is responsive and other times not so much.”
She took a breath. “I have absolutely no experience. None. Zero. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m willing to take him to the naval hospital, but he doesn’t want to go. I don’t think the bone has much time, by the look of it.” Now she was just chattering like some ninny because she was so afraid of whatever this man might ask her to do. He was so far away. “He really needs help. He does and I don’t know what I’m doing.” That last was a plea.
There was a long silence. She knew what that meant. Ezekiel was looking for something from Malichai that would tell him the call was real and that his brother wasn’t a prisoner or being used to set the team up in some way. There had to be a code they used between them.
She tried again. “He told me about all of you, including Nonny and Pepper and the three little ones. He’s not unconscious but he’s not very alert either. I don’t know how much he’s taking in. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but . . . please believe me when I tell you I need help.”
“Is he with you now?”
“Yes.”
“You say he’s not unconscious. I need to hear his voice.”
She wasn’t certain how she could get Malichai to talk. She put the phone on speakerphone and put it close to Malichai’s mouth. “Honey, can you hear me? Your brother is on the phone. He wants to hear your voice. Can you please say something to him? For me? Will you do that?”
She thought she might weep a million tears. She’d learned not to cry, but maybe she’d just stored up all those tears for just the right situation because she wanted to put her arms around Malichai and just give in to that need to weep. She felt helpless and she had never wanted to be that woman again.
Malichai seemed to rally when he heard the tears in her voice. “I’m all right, baby,” he whispered. His hand came up to stroke her hair. “Zeke, you there?”
“I’m here, bro.”
“Amaryllis is my Bellisia. I need you to get her a clean ID. Amaryllis Johnson.”
“Honey, we need to talk to your brother about your leg, not my identification,” Amaryllis interrupted. It was so like him.
Malichai ignored her, his eyes closed, his fingers threading her hair, bunching it, holding it to his face. “If anything happens to me, you get her out of this mess. Cops will be looking into her, so get that ID fast.”
Amaryllis took the cell off speakerphone. “Listen to me. He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. He’s running a high fever. Don’t worry about the identity thing. This is more important. Find me a healer. You don’t have to give names, just have him talk me through this. I know that’s the big worry. Whitney and everyone else in the world want the psychic healers, so no one can know who they are. I don’t care who they are. I just want him better.”
“I’ll call back in a few minutes. I’ve got your photograph. You go by Amaryllis. What’s the surname you gave to the cops?”
“Amaryllis Johnson. Please get a healer to call me.”
“About that. Do you think a trained healer could actually heal that bone? Or would it take one even above you? A psychic surgeon?”
She was stunned. She wasn’t certain there was really such a thing. She had heard a whisper of it but only when Whitney had speculated that it was possible, and he was always looking for such a talent.
“If there is such a person, I would get them here as fast as possible. A psychic surgeon might be the only one who can save Malichai’s leg. I’m not certain how long they have, but the infection came on so fast it terrifies me. In the meantime, have a psychic healer talk me through getting him stable enough for a surgeon, psychic or otherwise to save his leg. I’m telling you, at this point, I think it isn’t only his leg at risk. Right now, the possibility is there that his life is as well.”
“A healer can turn that around in a matter of hours.”
She was aware of that, but she also had never dealt with anything this enormous before. “It’s Malichai,” she whispered.
There was another silence. “He’s my brother,” Ezekiel said back.
For that one small moment of silence between them, she felt they touched each other across the distance. They connected. They understood what it was to love Malichai Fortunes.
“I’ll call back very quickly. And we’ll have a plane in the air immediately.”
The relief was so tremendous, again the ridiculous, useless tears threatened. They didn’t fall because she was trained not to let them, but she felt them burning behind her eyes.
“Thank you,” she whispered, but he was already gone.
She put the phone down beside Malichai and then put her head on his chest just for a moment because she needed to take a breath. To think. To try to stop the fear pounding through her brain.
“I didn’t tell you how I feel about you, Malichai. You’re always so wonderfully direct. You had the courage to tell me you were a GhostWalker and that you knew I was one of Whitney’s orphans . . .”