Chapter Four
The lieutenant started to make his call just down the hallway from Gimble’s room, but I saw him look at the rooms on the other side of the hallway and then he looked at the door in the middle.
He wrapped his hand around something that was under his button-down shirt.
I knew it was a small bag that he wore around his neck.
As long as I’d known him, he’d worn it constantly.
He lowered his hand from the bag and came back down the hallway to me.
“Ask the doctor what is in this room. I don’t mean just metaphysical patients, but exactly what’s wrong with them. ”
“It’s going to fall under medical privacy, Lieutenant. He can’t tell us without a warrant or unless he knows that us not having the knowledge threatens lives, and even then, it’s his call.”
“You’re probably right, but ask him anyway.” He gave me the room number as if I hadn’t seen him point, but it was always good to be precise.
“I’ll ask, but can you give me a reason why? Because the doctor will ask.”
“Tell him I’m not sure that everything in this hallway should be this close to each other, and ask him if it’s typical to have almost every room on the metaphysical injury floor full.”
“Since you’re the one that sensed something, it might make more sense coming from you. He’s just in the room behind us.”
“I need to ask for specific unit members, and some of the energy I’m feeling on this floor will not only hear the phone call, but they could sense things through the phone I don’t want them to know.”
I leaned closer to him, lowering my voice as if that would make a difference to something that could hear both sides of a phone conversation from another room. “What are you sensing, Lieutenant?”
“I’d have to do more spell work to be sure, and I’d have to get a warrant or the doctor’s permission for that, too.”
“Since I’m the one on point, give me a hint.”
“Demonic, maybe, or something masquerading as one, and then just black magic—the kind that compromises the soul of the person who casts the spell.”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Did you feel it the first time you walked past the rooms?”
He shook his head and put his hand back over the bag under his shirt. He closed his eyes for a second. “We need backup. I’ll request people from our unit and then put the word out that we have an officer down; that’ll give us all the manpower—sorry, person-power—we need.”
“Gimble didn’t get injured on the job, he fainted. If the other cops hear that he’ll never live it down.”
Lieutenant Charleston flashed me a grin that was very bright in his dark face. “Tell them he wrestled with an angel and lived to tell the tale, or tell them he’s a big pansy-ass and fainted from seeing his first metaphysical badass.” He gripped the bag a little tighter and the smile faded.
I could feel it now, like something thick and dark trying to crawl down my throat, but it was as if it had to knock on the door of my mouth; I had to give it permission to enter me.
I thought, By free will and the grace of God I hold fast against the darkness .
The thick feeling eased back, pulling backward to the open door of the room.
“Make those calls, Lieutenant. I’ll hold the fort.”
“Get Paulson to talk to you, Havelock,” Charleston said as he moved down the hallway, the phone already to his ear, and his other hand tight on the bag under his clothes.
I watched him until he rounded the corner for the elevators, gave one glance down the hallway at the other rooms, and went back to Gimble’s room to try to get Paulson to tell me what in Heaven or Hell was in the room across the hall.