“Appreciate knowing that,” I said.
“I also want to be clear that I will be useless for any metaphysical offense. I can protect myself, but no one else.”
I nodded. “Good to know,” I said.
“Yes, most people with my ability to shield can flex it outward to protect others, but I can’t. I didn’t want you to count on me to do something I am incapable of.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“You’re welcome.” He studied my face as if he would memorize me. “You aren’t lying about what you’re sensing on the floor, are you?”
“No, Dr. Paulson, I’m not.”
“Then you need to know that this is the first time I’ve seen the metaphysical unit completely full. That’s why we had to put patients next to each other that we normally would have separated.”
“Was it one incident that left a lot of injured?”
“No, Detective Havelock, they’re all from different incidents. In fact, there’s not even a theme. It’s not a shape-shifter gang war filling the ward, or fairies getting drunk on energy at Solstice, or even spells going wrong at the dark of the moon and sending us a whole coven. There’s no pattern.”
“Is it all”—I tried not to say evil, since the new, more sensitive vocabulary meant we couldn’t call anyone’s religion evil, but—“negative energies, except for George here?”
“No, we have three that you would call purely negative, two that are somewhere between good and evil, and the rest are neutral. Literally just injuries from magic gone awry. We’ve even got one teenager with a broken wrist from a poltergeist.”
“It’s rare that a poltergeist will hurt someone badly enough to be hospitalized. Are you sure it’s not something more malignant?” I said.
“The injury isn’t that bad, but the witch on duty suggested we keep him overnight in a warded room so the poltergeist wouldn’t be able to feed off the teenage energy until a more permanent solution can be arranged.”
“Aren’t all the rooms on this floor warded against magic?” I asked.
He looked at me as if I’d said something stupid and then pointed at a small flat box set into the wall beside the door. It was blank and innocuous looking, but I knew if I looked at it with that other part of my vision it would have holy symbols on it.
“Of course, the new ward panels that got installed last month. Sorry, they’re new enough I keep forgetting,” I said.
He nodded, face softening, as if I’d redeemed myself a little. “Yes, even someone with a small talent could touch the ward panel and they would be invoked.”
“Can you activate the ward panels?” I asked.
“I haven’t tried, but I’d go on the assumption that it’s like all magic and would require my shielding to be more porous, but I assume you have talent in that area, so the panels should work for you.”
“Does it keep things in, or out?” I asked.
“What is inside the warded area remains, what is outside can’t cross, or that’s the theory.”
“Theory?” I asked.
“It’s very difficult to make a generic warding spell that a magical practitioner can use that will stand against all energies, Detective. I cannot work magic, but I’ve seen enough of it trying to get in and out of these wards to tell you that it’s good, but it’s not a perfect system.”
“No mystical system is perfect,” I said.
“There are a few priests assigned to this hospital that would disagree with you, but they aren’t here right now, and I agree with you.”
“Are the wards turned on in the two rooms with open doors, and the closed one across the hall from them?”
“No on the open rooms, yes on the closed one.”
“I know you don’t want to give me details, but with demons isn’t it protocol to put up any wards you have?”
“Not in the case of possession, because we want the demon to leave the patient. If we put up magical walls to contain the demon, that means it’s less likely to be able to leave the human host even if it wants to.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t a full possession.”
“It’s not, but it’s similar enough, and when the wards were invoked the patient’s vital signs became erratic. We tried everything else but only the wards being deactivated saved the patient’s life.”
I fought not to give him a look similar to the one that he’d given me just minutes ago. “Don’t you think that was suspicious of demon possession? They have been known to almost kill their hosts to try to prevent priests from exorcising them.”
“It was one of my colleagues who made the decision. I haven’t had a chance to complete my rounds on the floor because you and your friend here have caused me to have to herd the nursing staff.”
“So you haven’t looked into any of those rooms yet?”
“I was just stepping in to do my own evaluation when another patient needed more immediate attention and then there was you.”
“Do you have an exorcism team on call tonight?”
“If you mean priests, then no, but we have a Wiccan high priestess on call. She’s also a nurse so she can help triage after the supernatural emergency is over.” Something in his tone made it clear that he found her more useful than any of the priests who cycled through the hospital. I couldn’t argue that most of them didn’t have medical training.
“Don’t most exorcism rituals take days to perform?” he asked.
“Yes, and if we need that kind of help tonight, we’re going to need something quicker acting.”
“We have angels,” George said, smiling up at us from the bed.
“We did see an angel,” I said, and smiled back, because how could I not with his eyes full of such perfect trust? George was an optimist, but he’d been a police officer long enough to make detective, which meant perfect trust had been left behind years ago. I didn’t know any detectives who still believed in the ideals that they’d started with.
George’s face crumpled a little, like he was thinking very hard about something, but it wasn’t his usual grinning cynicism. It was like a glimpse of what he might have looked like at age five when the world was new and explaining yourself to grown-ups was hard.
Nurse Gonzales went past the door, not running, but like he had a purpose. He never glanced in at us; maybe whatever effect George was having on the nurses was fading.
Nurse Prescott rushed past the door next. It made me look down the hallway in time to see her go into the open door that Charleston had been worried about.
I stepped farther into the hallway and the moment I did I felt . . . evil. There was no other word for it. No politically correct term covered the sensation of it crawling over my skin, raising the hair at the back of my neck and along my arms.
Charleston texted, “Elevators not working. 20 floors be there ASAP.”
A woman screamed and then Nurse Prescott stumbled backward out of the room; she fell on her ass in the hallway, but it was like she couldn’t look away from whatever was in the room. She started backing down the hallway on her hands and feet like the crab walk they used to make us do in gym class. I was moving to help her before I’d even thought about it. I was a cop—we ran toward the sound of screams, not away from them.