Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Iwake up in a hospital room, Mackenzie halfway bent over the bed and a doctor shining a light in my eye.
“You're awake,” Mackenzie says.
“Did I get struck by lightning?” I grumble.
The doctor—a middle-aged man with laugh lines aplenty—chuckles, a deep sound. “Not exactly, though from what I hear, it was a close call. Unfortunately, you did hit your head, probably on something very sharp, if the cut you’re sporting is any indication.”
“You have a concussion,” Mackenzie says. “I told you we should have left.”
“Left?” the doctor asks.
Apparently, she hasn't told him the whole story.
“We were up on the mountain,” she says, crossing her arms. I halfway expect her to tell the doctor that we were up there to investigate more of my apparent insanity, but she doesn't. She glares at me.
She's not the one with the concussion, so I don't know what she's so mad about.
“Well, you're going to be fine,” the doctor says. “You can stay here for observation, or—”
“I’ll watch over him,” my sister says. “Don't worry.”
The doctor smiles up at her, a gentle, paternal smile. “And I can trust you not to smother him with a pillow?”
“Probably,” she says.
I sigh and settle back into the bed. I can't believe this happened. I got one good shot at this before winter. And now, I'm going to be too busy for another couple of weeks to get back up there. And by then, everything's going to be frozen over.
It's not like I couldn't trek up the mountain in snow boots or whatever, but it's a lot easier in the summer, when everything's just kind of soggy.
It’ll just have to wait.
That night, Mackenzie stays at my house. We stay up late into the night, and I can tell she's afraid to let me sleep, even though I'm exhausted. The cut on my head is killing me, but eventually, I fall asleep with her watching me, the bedside lamp still on.
When I jerk awake sometime later, MacKenzie is asleep, and my heart is racing. I don’t realize I'm sweating until I push up in bed and my shirt sticks to my skin. Outside the window, it’s started to snow, and I sigh.
I'll never make it back out to the waypoint now.
“Are you there?”
I gasp and look around at the sound of that whispering voice, certain there must be someone else in the house. The room is dark but my eyes have adjusted.
All I see are empty shadows and Mackenzie in the bed next to me.
We live on a ley line, I remind myself. I’ve heard plenty of stories of people hearing voices, seeing shadows, feeling a presence in an empty room.
I sit quietly, wait to see if I'll hear the voice again, that gentle voice that I know wasn't in my head, but the room is silent, apart from the sound of the radiator in the corner of the room.