Page 22 of Smoke & Ashes
He surveyed me suspiciously. Which was fair, I didkindof look like I was a hitman coming to finish the job. Although if I was, I’d have been mega behind schedule. “Name?”
“Mine or hers?”
“Both.”
“Kane. Kate Kane. Is me. And she’s …” This was going to sound monumentally implausible but fuck it. “She goes by Nimue?”
The man got a glazed look and nodded. “Upstairs,” he said. “Follow the birdsong and the scent of apple blossom.”
Nim, Nim, Nim. Couldn’t you even get hospitalised like a normal person? I followed the corridor around to a lift, and was only slightly surprised when tendrils of white mist spilled out of it. In a roundabout way that explained how she waspayingfor all this—if she was still exerting enough magical influence to make weather happen inside a hospital, she could probably make their systems overlook little things like bills, at least as long as the symbolism added up.
On the top floor the air really did smell of apple blossom and I really could hear birds singing just ahead of me. Occasionally I’d see a patient or a member of staff going to or from a different room, seemingly oblivious to all the weirdness happening around them. Was I hallucinating? I didn’t think I’d ever hallucinated before, and this wasn’t a good time to be starting. It was bad enough having people poking about in my dreams, without the dreams they were poking about in spilling through into my actual eyes when I was actually awake.
Nimue’s had to be the last room. That’s how it was with her—the top of the tower, the end of the line, forever and always. If she hadn’t been such a basically decent person she’d have been insufferable. I eased the door open and slipped inside.
I hadn’t been ready to see her. In some ways it was better than I’d expected—nobody did serene quite like Nimue—but the whole left side of her face was ruined where Arty King had struck at her, and I was one thousand percent certain she was down an eye underneath those bandages. For some unfathomable reason, the hospital had left her lying in this awkward, unnatural position with her hands folded behind her back and one leg crooked underneath the other.
Michelle, the Warden of the Watchtower of the South and Nim’s lieutenant in charge of murdering people’s heads off, looked up at me from a wooden hospital chair. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I pulled up another of the room’s relatively generous supply of chairs and sat down. There was a silence whose length was matched only by its awkwardness.
“Why now?”
“Dreams.”
“Figures.”
“Figures how?” Actions were definitely more Michelle’s bag than words, but I needed information.
She cast a wary glance at the door, then at Nimue’s peacefully—not sleeping, the phrase that kept coming to mind was more likesuspended—body. “Gabriel’s been reading the signs for months. You know whatcrisisused to mean?”
“Apart from areally bad thing?”
“Not originally. It was medical. Ancient Greek medical.Crisiswas when you got to where you either get better”—she held out one hand as if showing half a set of scales—“or you die.” She held out the other to balance it.
“You think Nim’s in a crisis? The technical sort, I mean?”
She glowered. If we hadn’t been sitting mere feet away from the comatose body of a woman I’d kinda-maybe-sorta-loved in a complicated way, I’d have been far more struck by how sexy her glower was. I do like a woman who looks like she wants to break all your limbs. “No, I think her spirit’s calling to a fallen knight through the oneiric darkness because everything is totally fine.”
Fallen knightdidn’t strike me as a totally fair description, but I let it slide. I’d never wanted to be anybody’s knight in the first place. “It’s not her that’s calling me. Not completely.”
“Green Lady?” I wasn’t sure how much Michelle knew about Nimue’s dark reflection, but clearly enough to get the colour right at least.
I nodded.
“Not sure if that’s better or worse.”
“I’m thinking worse? She’s basically like Nim’s evil twin.”
“Sort of.” Michelle gave the most non-committal gesture I’ve ever seen a human make. “But evil’s not a thing.”
“Try taking that line with somebody who hasn’t been to actual Hell.”
“Crappy isn’t the same as evil. Point is the Green Lady isn’t Nimue’s evil side, she’s herotherside.”
“Yeah, the side that’s notnot evil.”
Another one of those movements too casual to even be shrugs. “She’s like a reversed Tarot card. Not Nimue’s exact opposite, not the bad version. Just another point of view.”
