Chapter Seventeen Powers of the Pendant
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For all her bluster and theatrics about hating cardio, when Sherry heard somebody in trouble, she could move. Before she knew it, Brie was racing to catch up with her friend, who was somehow already twenty yards in front of her, sprinting towards the sound of the scream.
They found the source in a driveway a couple of blocks away. A terrified woman in a bathrobe was already on the phone, screeching out her address to emergency dispatch as a host of neighbors surrounded a man who was perched on top of another, attempting to give CPR.
Sherry wasted no time shoving her way to the heart of the action. “Let me through. I’m an ER nurse.”
She elbowed people aside, and Brie followed in her wake. The well-meaning neighbor was attempting CPR like he’d learned it from a daytime soap opera.
“Get off of him.”
Sherry unceremoniously shoved him aside, and she and Brie got to work. Brie tipped the man’s head back to open his airway and checked for breath sounds. Sherry held her fingers to his carotid artery and felt for a pulse before resuming compressions, this time in the right location and with the correct pressure and frequency.
“Cameron!” Brie called out without thinking, on the off-chance her angel could hear her and offer some assistance. When it became clear that he couldn’t, she decided to ask the witnesses.
“What happened?” she barked into the crowd. The neighbors murmured a collective lack of information, so Brie took it upon herself to summon the partner over. “Lady!”
The woman in the bathrobe tearfully raced over. “How is he?”
“He’s unresponsive. Can you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know! One minute he kissed me goodbye at the door, and the next…” She stared at the man, eyes wide in horror. “You can bring him back, right? On TV, they always bring them back.”
Brie and Sherry shared a look.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, ma’am,” Brie answered. “We work at Daya Memorial. We’ll make sure he gets the very best care.”
Just then, the ambulance pulled up, and two paramedics came rushing out.
“Sherry?” one of them asked. “What are you doing here?” Despite the urgency of the situation, when his eye was drawn down by her garish ensemble, he added, “What are you wearing?”
“We were on a run and heard a scream,” Sherry replied, never losing focus.
“What can you tell us?”
Sherry rattled off the only info they’d been given as the paramedics prepared the man for transport. At the last minute, she and Brie hopped into the ambulance to ride back themselves.
The young paramedics performed their tasks with seamless, stark professionalism, but the man was completely unresponsive. And Brie got the feeling that despite their youth, the emergency response team had seen enough to be well and thoroughly jaded.
“Third one this week,” a dark-haired woman said grimly as they merged onto the highway.
She was answered by the driver. “I bet it’s some new designer drug the cops haven’t gotten wise to yet. They’re all too young for it to be anything else.”
That’s exactly what Cameron said.
“Either way, this guy’s a goner.” The dark-haired girl continued compressions, but her attention strayed elsewhere. “Are you and Janae still doing that escape room thing this weekend?”
“Nah. Billy tried it a few days ago with his wife and said they solved it in less than an hour. I don’t see the point if it isn’t even a challenge, you know? Besides, Janae says—”
“Would you shut up?” Brie snapped.
The team turned to look at her, startled.
“Sorry, I… I’m trying to hear that. Could you turn it up?”
The driver gave her a look but turned up the radio so they could hear the dispatch reports about incoming traumas. Brie blushed scarlet and lowered her head. Much as she didn’t want to be known as “that person” in the workplace, she couldn’t stand the way they were writing this man off as though he was already lost. Even if she was fairly certain they were right.
Sherry reached over and squeezed Brie’s hand. She squeezed back.
By the time they pulled into the ambulance bay, everyone in the rig feared the worst, but they still worked determinedly, as though they had at least some chance of bringing the man back. Only after the code had been run, only after every medical option to save his life had been exhausted, did the on-call doctor snap his gloves onto a nearby tray and call time of death.
Brie and Sherry looked on grimly as the room slowly emptied of personnel. They stayed while the distraught new widow was allowed a last glance at the deceased before being taken away again, sobbing, to complete the kind of paperwork that no young wife should ever have to fill out. They stayed while the room emptied again, sinking onto the bed across from the dead man.
They sat next to one another in dark silence. Finally, Sherry stood.
“I don’t feel much like shopping anymore. I’m going to call Mike to pick us up.” She pulled out her phone. “And I’m getting us some coffee. This isn’t the kind of situation one should face without coffee. Do you want anything?”
Brie shook her head and stared at the body, unblinking.
“I’ll be back. Do you want to come with me?” Sherry asked.
Brie shook her head again, unable to summon words.
After a moment of hesitation, Sherry closed the curtain separating the room, blocking Brie’s view of the body, and walked out into the hall.
Brie stared into space. Only an hour ago, he’d been alive and vibrant. He’d been kissing his wife goodbye. He had a job, a nice home, and a lovely partner. Plans. A future.
Fate is so cold. So arbitrary.
She was still lost in her thoughts when she heard scuffling footsteps enter the room. At first, she thought it was Sherry coming to get her, but some deep instinct told her to stay quiet. That’s when she heard the horrible throat-clearing sound she’d come to loathe just like the rest of the staff.
Dr. Matthews.
She tucked her feet up onto the bed so he couldn’t see her. There was a strange thump, followed by a series of clicking sounds. Then a rustle, like something being lifted out of fabric.
Ever so slowly, she peeked around the curtain.
Dr. Matthews was bending over the deceased. His strange black bag was open on the floor beside him. On the dead man’s chest lay a bizarre-looking object. It looked like a sculpture of some kind, carved in interlocking, polished swoops of wood. The thing had a decidedly claw or antler-like appearance, and a black stone sphere was shining in the middle. Though the craftsmanship needed to sculpt such a thing was undeniably in the realm of artistry, the piece itself was too sinister to be beautiful. The stone emanated a faint golden glow, somehow sickly but growing steadily stronger.
In a moment of decision she hadn’t consciously made, Brie whipped back the curtain.
“What are you doing?” she asked in a loud voice, hoping her volume would hide her fear.
Matthews leaped back with a cry, nearly dropping the strange object. “I’m…” He looked at her with a wild mix of fear and anger before making the decision to go with anger. “What are you doing here?” he glared accusingly.
“I came in with the code,” she answered, turning her head up defiantly. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here? What is that thing?”
He tried to keep his composure, but his breathing was ragged, and his forehead was already dripping with sweat. Nonetheless, he decided the way out of this situation was to pull rank.
“That is my personal property, and I am here on hospital business, which frankly is none of your concern, Nurse Weldon. Now, I suggest you hurry along before I have you written up.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Written up for what?”
Before he had a chance to respond, she cut him off. “You know what? Knock yourself out. In fact, let’s get HR down here right now. We’ll see who they’re more interested in: a nurse who decided to stay with a dead man’s body till the morgue came to pick it up out of respect or a doctor who gets his jollies by sneaking into a dead patient’s room and messing around with the body, even when he wasn’t involved with the case at all.”
He stammered for a moment before stuffing the strange contraption into its case, turning on his heel, and rushing out the door. He nearly knocked Sherry over on his way out.
“Watch it!” she protested, almost spilling coffee on herself. She turned to Brie. “What the hell is going on with that guy? What was he doing in here?”
“Sher, stay here, okay? I’ll be right back.”
Brie rushed out the door before she could hear a word of protest, following Matthews down the hall and past the nurses’ station before she ran smack dab into Denise.
“Weldon, slow down.”
She looked away from Matthews for a moment. “I’m sorry, Denise, I was—”
“Sherry told me. Sorry you caught one on your day off.”
“Yeah. Just can’t stay away, I guess.”
Brie craned her neck to see where Matthews had gone. She caught sight of him across the waiting room, near the exit to the back parking lot. He was talking to that blonde woman again, holding the strange briefcase between them like protection. But Denise and about a dozen other people and conversations were in the way, and she couldn’t hear what they were saying at all.
She couldn’t say what possessed her to do it. She could never tell Cameron what prompted her to try something so ridiculous. Not even when he asked her later, many times. She closed her eyes and tried very hard to hear what they were saying.
Her heart slowed down, then started racing. She focused even harder. She felt a faint prickle on the back of her neck. Then all at once, her eyes flew open, and the rest of the room melted away. With the focus of a magnifying glass, she zeroed in on Matthews and the mysterious woman, observing the conversation at both a volume and distance that made it feel like she was standing right beside them.
“—must know this isn’t our arrangement, and this doesn’t buy you time.” The blonde held up two fingers. “I’ll be back. And you know what better be waiting for me when I get here.”
He trembled before her, clutching the case. “But I was hoping—”
“I will be back.”
Brie blinked quickly, then snapped back to the present, doing the unthinkable and reaching out to grab Denise by the arm. “Who is that?” she asked, pointing frantically at the pair.
Denise looked, then turned back with a frown. “Dr. Matthews.”
“No, I know. Who is he talking to?”
Denise glanced again, then looked at her strangely. “He isn’t talking to anyone, Weldon.”
Brie looked again, shocked. The blonde woman was gone.
? ? ?
Sherry and Brie were quiet in the car. Despite his natural affinity for investigating everything, Mike had the emotional wherewithal to let them keep to themselves. They dropped Brie off at home and waited until she opened her front door before driving off with a wave.
Cameron swept over her the moment she stepped inside. “Are you okay? I was getting worried.”
“I’m sorry, there was no time to call.”
“Time to call?” he repeated, placing his hands on her arms and checking her over for damage. “Are you alright? What happened?”
Brie recounted the morning’s events in as much detail as possible, omitting one vital part. Cameron’s eyes clouded with concern when she mentioned the man with the heart attack and grew darker still when she described what she’d seen with Matthews, the dead body, and the blonde.
“And you still have no idea who this woman might be?”
She shook her head. “The same way I have no idea why he’d be carrying around a gothic-looking, glowing sculpture to put on the bodies of the dead.”
When did I start talking like this? When did this become my life?
His brow was knit together. “I have never heard of such a thing in all my days.” He glanced at her face again. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
She nodded, staring at the ground for a moment. “Cam, the conversation I overheard between them. It was on the other side of a crowded ER waiting room.” She lifted her eyes to meet his. “They were close together. They were speaking softly. There’s no way I should have been able to watch them or hear them like that.”
She hesitated before voicing the thought that had been plaguing her the whole ride home. “No human way.”
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“What do you mean you were afraid of this ?”
Cameron sat on the couch as Brie stood by the fireplace and shouted. He’d been sitting there for five minutes, regretting his initial choice of words. When she finally quieted, he chose his next more carefully, trying to pacify her as best he could.
“I only meant, as I told you before, any contact with life force energy changes you. Prolonged contact? Well, it changes you a lot. Look at me.”
“Yes, but—”
“Not to mention, I think we’ve established that’s one powerful celestial artifact you’ve got around your neck. We don’t understand it, and we don’t know the limits of its capabilities.”
She stopped her pacing and whirled in a rage, pendant in hand. “It’s changing me, Cameron. Turning me into something I’m not.”
He was quiet for a moment before replying. “What if it’s turning you into something you are?”
“Don’t give me the destiny speech. I’m being mutated somehow. And the worst part is, I don’t have any say in the matter. Because if I take this thing off my neck…” She stomped her foot in childlike fury, hands balled at her sides in fists. “This is not what I want , Cameron. This is not what I would choose for myself.”
“Brianna—”
“No! Don’t try to make this less than it is, and don’t try to make it better.”
“Brianna—”
“You have no idea how this feels. No idea how trapped I feel at this moment. No idea—”
“ Brianna! ”
“What?”
It was only then she saw him staring, horrified, at her feet. It was only then she saw that she’d stomped a deep crack straight through her living room floor.
Oh, my God…
She turned and followed the fissure as it slowly spread. It traced to the fireplace and, with a low, ominous thump, started splitting the stones apart. One after another. Cracks and dust.
Cameron was there in a flash, placing a glowing hand on the crack and murmuring something profound and unintelligible. The crack faded slightly before vanishing all at once.
He looked up at her, breathing hard. “Brianna, I say this with no intention whatsoever of invalidating your feelings: perhaps there’s a way for you to experience these emotions that doesn’t break your house.”
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Brie took a bath. It was what she did whenever things felt overwhelming. She’d done it ever since she could remember.
When she was five and had to come home early from a classmate’s birthday party because the excitement had been too much, and she ended up getting frosting on her party dress, the first thing her mom did was run a bubble bath and pop her in the tub.
In third grade, when Bobby Mackavoy pretended he was going to kiss her behind the merry-go-round but held up a frog instead, she ran right home after school and got into the tub.
After her mother’s funeral, she spent two days in the bath.
She didn’t eat or drink. She’d replenish the hot water when it ran cold. Sherry got her a toddler floatie to hold her head up when she had to sleep and stayed awake to make sure she didn’t slip and drown. Her father eventually dragged her out with a strange man she’d come to know as Dr. Rogers.
Her last memory of her old apartment, her old life, was in the tub — granted, it wasn’t the most relaxing experience — before she’d tried to move here to Virginia and start fresh.
What a fool’s errand that turned out to be.
Just as she had that last night in her old apartment, she sank beneath the water and let the pendant float up before her eyes. It glowed softly in the fluorescence, hovering with strange precision in front of her face like it was something alive. She grabbed it between two fingers and twisted it back and forth, looking for something, anything, as though she could find a clue, a mark she’d never seen before in all her years of faithfully wearing it around her neck.
Like a millstone.
She let go and watched it drift back down to her chest, to her scar. Well, to what used to be a scar. She could barely see it anymore. She gritted her teeth together so hard her jaw hurt, and her hands balled up into fists.
It’s erasing it.
It’s erasing who I used to be — turning me into something else, something new.
She surfaced angrily, splashing water out of the tub.
Well, she hadn’t asked to change, had she? She was just fine the way she was. Maybe she liked her scar. Maybe she didn’t need some stupid magic necklace coming in and… and…
Healing your damage? Some inner voice chimed in gently. Giving you strength you didn’t know you had?
She cupped her hands and splashed some water into her face. Things might be fraught right now, but she was not getting into an argument with herself. There were lines, dammit. There were supposed to be lines.
She got out of the tub and toweled off, glaring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes widened as she did a double take.
Are those abs?
She twisted around in the mirror, and there was no denying it. She was more physically fit than she’d ever been, with significantly less cause to be. Her failed attempt at a run with Sherry that morning was some of the only exercise she’d attempted in months. Back in Georgia, she was too busy completing her schooling to do anything more than a sporadic jog to the waterfall. Here in Virginia, things had been such a whirlwind, it hadn’t been a priority.
Yet, here she was, muscles long and lean, curves smooth and firm. Her hair was longer, thick, and healthy, cascading down her back in a mass of chocolate curls. Her eyes were bright, her skin was clear, and her nails were strong and unbroken.
Her existential dread, her fear of loss of autonomy, and even her annoyance all gave way for a moment in favor of that powerful, most tenacious of all human emotions — curiosity.
She wondered, could she do it again?
She closed her eyes as she had in the hospital and tried to focus somewhere else. Anywhere else. She stayed this way for one minute, then two, three. Nothing happened. Just as she was about to throw on her robe and call her reflection an idiot, something happened.
She heard the squirrels from the attic. Only they weren’t in the attic. They were in a tree.
She couldn’t say how she knew, but she knew it was the tree in her backyard, the large beech with the wonky, low-hanging branch. She could hear them rustling around in a little makeshift nest they must have made when unwanted humans moved into their house. She could hear how many of them there were. Two larger ones and a tiny one, maybe their child.
She could hear them breathing. She could tell they were asleep.
She shook her head and glared at her reflection as though it was somehow her fault that all of this was happening — this alternate Brie, in her alternate world, with her alternate abs and her stupid alternate ability to… what , exactly? Imagine she could hear the relative age of squirrels? Spy on a coworker and a woman she was only half-convinced even existed? Break her house in half?
Great superpower, you effing walnut.
Suddenly, the weight of it all came crashing down on her. She’d erected some impressive scaffolding to keep it at bay, built largely of humor, anger, sarcasm, and disbelief, but reality is too heavy a thing to be borne up by such a structure, and it crumbled in the space of an instant.
She couldn’t tell Sherry about the supernatural things that were happening. She couldn’t tell Cameron about the human things she needed to talk about. She couldn’t talk to a doctor, or she’d be immediately committed. She couldn’t even articulate to herself what was going on because she had no earthly idea what was happening or why. There was no one in the whole world she could talk to about this in its entirety. And all she wanted was to feel like herself again.
She did the only thing she could think of. She called her dad.
He answered on the second ring. “Brianna!”
She was startled at his quick pickup. “Hi, Dad. How are you?”
“Better for hearing your voice,” he said warmly. “How are you doing? How’s the new place? And the new job?”
“It’s… it’s great,” she replied cautiously. “It’s all going really well. Just busy, you know.” She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. This job can get pretty dramatic.”
“Sherry told me you had a rough start. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want to call in case you were still finding your feet. But I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Brie.”
She was stunned. A part of her had expected he’d be two-thirds through a bottle at this time of night and was looking for negative reinforcement to convince herself that, yes, everything was terrible, she had made a bad decision, and this was all some punishment she deserved.
But this? This was new.
“You talked to Sherry?”
“We talk every now and again. She called to tell me why you were late getting there. I hope that’s alright. She said you asked her to.”
Brie nodded swiftly, still trying to catch up. “That’s right, I did. You sound different. I mean, you sound great,” she added quickly, trying to backtrack.
“I’ve been trying out some new things.”
“Oh, like what?”
“Well, I’ve been getting up earlier, going to sleep earlier, trying to fix the house up again.”
She blinked. “Oh. Well, that’s really—”
“And I had a meeting with Dr. Rogers.”
“What?” She sat down on the side of the bath, hard. “That’s… that’s wonderful, Dad. But I don’t understand. Why now?”
There was silence on the other end. “I guess change is in the air,” he finally replied. “It’s time. It’s past time, actually. Well past. I let you down by not doing this sooner. The doc says… he says better late than never.”
He took in a deep breath, and she heard his voice shake a little. “I…” He coughed, clearly backing down from whatever he was about to say and choosing something else in its place. “The day you left, it shook something up in me. I knew, well, you might be moving away, but I didn’t want to lose you, you know?”
He drew in another rasping breath. She could almost picture him raking back his hair.
“Anyway, I called Dr. Rogers the next day. What’s that your mom always used to say? ‘Make the next best decision you can,’ right?”
Her throat was too thick with emotion to respond.
Now. Now you do this. After I’m already gone.
She bit her lip.
But in fairness, that is precisely what I needed to hear.
They sat in awkward silence for a minute before he coughed again and decided to change the subject to something less intense. “Sherry texted me, just so you know. Said you’re dating some kind of movie star.”
She had to laugh and held her phone tightly. “Well, not quite. He’s probably too much of an oddball to have a future in the film industry. But I do think you’d like him.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked, and she could hear the happiness in his voice. “Tell me.”
They talked for another few minutes before saying goodbye. Not about anything of real consequence, not about anything supernatural or cataclysmic. Just about normal, human, everyday things. Brie couldn’t remember the last time they’d spoken for so long about anything.
When it finally started winding down, she realized she was much calmer and happier. “I’ll call you again soon, okay?”
“Not if I call you first. Take care, Brie.”
“You too, Dad.”
She hung up the phone and looked at her reflection again, this time with compassion, not blame.
“The next best decision,” she said softly.
I can do that.
She put on her pajamas and stood up, squaring her shoulders with confidence. Just before she was going to leave, on a whim, she high-fived her reflection.
The mirror immediately cracked.