Chapter 3
It wasn’t until Roslyn left the study that she realized her hands were shaking.
Somehow, she’d managed to hang onto something close to professional calm while she was conducting her examination of Malachi Van Horn, but now that she was alone, her body seemed to have decided it was time for reaction to set in.
She’d been kidnapped by the man her clan knew as the Collector and was trapped in a house with wards powerful enough to prevent her from leaving. Her phone was gone, and she hadn’t seen one in his study.
Not that he would have allowed her to use it even if there had been a phone.
Because he couldn’t see her, she allowed herself a minute to lean against the wall and pull in a few bracing breaths. Losing it wasn’t going to help her — or him — and she needed to get it together.
In a way, it helped to focus on his condition rather than the way he’d trapped her here.
That put her squarely in healer mode…or nurse practitioner mode…
although she had to admit this was a case that would require her healing ability more than anything she might have studied during her time at Northern Pines.
She’d never seen anything like the dimensional scars his time in the void had caused. Not so surprising; it wasn’t as if the McAllisters or any of the other witch clans she knew made a habit of popping in and out of other dimensions, let alone getting stuck there for more than a year.
So she’d had to work by instinct, creating ways to describe both to herself and to him the damage she’d seen and how to fix it.
Luckily, the same magic that allowed her to repair a broken bone without really thinking about the mechanics involved would allow her to do much the same here, although she hadn’t been lying when she’d told him he would never recover fully.
If a femur was shattered badly enough, a limp was often the result.
But limping was better than not walking at all.
The shaking in her hands seemed to have calmed down somewhat, so she followed the hallway past several other doors that appeared to open onto another parlor and a formal dining room, and then pushed open a swinging door that had been painted so many times, its hinges were stiff with accumulated layers of enamel.
The kitchen beyond was larger than she’d expected.
Sure, the house was large — she guessed it was probably even larger than the big white Victorian where Angela and Connor lived, so bigger than three thousand square feet — but kitchens in old houses were unpredictable.
Sometimes, they were much smaller than the footprint would indicate because kitchens back then hadn’t been the center of the house the way they were now, and sometimes they were large because someone had come along and decided to modernize the place.
This house appeared to be one that had been updated at some point.
Not truly modern, because she guessed the appliances had to be at least fifteen years old, maybe more, but there was a big six-burner stove and an equally oversized stainless refrigerator, along with a large copper farmhouse sink that added a welcome touch of warmth to the space.
As in the rest of the house, everything here seemed to be covered in a layer of dust.
Well, of course it is, she thought as she headed over to the big walk-in pantry on one side of the room. No one’s been here for more than a year.
In a way, that realization made her feel almost sad, that the Collector could have been gone for such a long time and no one had come to check on him.
She knew he’d had servants of some kind — what her cousin Bellamy contemptuously referred to as his “minions” — but there didn’t seem to be any indication that they’d stuck around after he’d been trapped in the void.
But maybe they’d all perished in the battle with Brianna and Belshegar and the elders out on the promontory where the McAllister clan held its rituals at the four quarters of the year.
Since no one really knew anything about the Collector, they also had no idea how many people he had working for him.
The electricity was on, though, and so was the water and the gas when she checked the tap and the stove. Roslyn guessed he must have all the utilities on autopay, yet another reason why no one had come to see why the house had stood empty for so many months.
And although she had no idea where exactly she was, except that it was somewhere near the coast and probably in the Pacific Northwest, judging by the perpetually gray skies she’d glimpsed through the windows, she could tell this wasn’t the kind of neighborhood that had an HOA that would pounce the second the grass in the yard got too long.
She realized she was thirsty — she hadn’t dared leave the Collector’s side in case his sleep slipped into something worse — so she went to a cupboard, found a glass, and turned the water back on.
This time, she let it run for a minute to make sure it was clear and didn’t have any sediment in the pipes after all those months of disuse, and then she drank half of it down before refilling it.
There. That was a little better.
Of course, now that her thirst had been somewhat sated, she realized how hungry she was.
At the clinic, she’d taken a break at lunch to run over to Safeway and grab a salad, which she’d eaten at her desk before her one o’clock client showed up, but that little bowl of lettuce and vinaigrette and dried cranberries had been consumed more than twenty-four hours ago.
A quick peek inside the refrigerator revealed a bottle of Perrier and a withered lemon, and the freezer was similarly empty. So much for grabbing a Lean Cuisine or a frozen pizza.
Not that the Collector seemed like the kind of man who would lower himself to eat anything so plebeian.
For some reason, that thought awakened a hint of amusement. Could she really be standing in the kitchen of the man who’d attacked her clan and thinking about what kind of frozen food he might eat?
It sure looked that way.
She set down the glass on the butcher-block countertop and gazed out the window over the sink.
It showed a landscape just as neglected as the front yard, the grass overgrown and turning yellow, the trees with suckers coming up around the roots and several branches that looked as if they’d been broken during one storm or another.
To one side was a tangle of roses, with a few of the bushes still flaunting a few blood-red blooms.
Without thinking, she reached out to touch the window. At once, a sharp tingle went up her arm, accompanied by a faint spark that spiraled out from the glass before disappearing.
Clearly, the wards were still in place despite her captor’s weakened condition.
Well, she’d already decided to stay and heal him, because that was what healers did. In school, she’d taken the Nightingale Pledge, an oath that emphasized compassion.
She wasn’t sure if she could be completely compassionate toward her patient after everything he’d done, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to give him the best damn care she possibly could.
And that meant getting some liquids and some food inside him.
Since her search of the refrigerator hadn’t revealed anything useful, she went on to the pantry, which was much larger than she’d expected, probably converted from the butler’s pantry it had been when the house was originally built.
Unlike the refrigerator, the pantry appeared to be extremely well-stocked.
She saw cans of tomatoes and beans, cartons of cashew milk, and even more cans, these of chicken broth and beef bouillon.
There were also a rough dozen soups in various flavors, artichoke hearts and several varieties of olives, as well as sundried tomatoes and pesto and spaghetti sauce.
In addition, she found dried pasta in glass jars, rice in sealed containers, and a collection of spices that included things like smoked paprika and sumac alongside the usual salt and pepper and garlic powder.
And there was olive oil, one bottle opened and one sealed.
All kinds of vinegar — red wine, white wine, and balsamic.
On the top shelf, she located several tins of loose-leaf tea, oolong and Darjeeling.
Well, at least they wouldn’t starve, although she would have liked to have found some fresh fruit and vegetables.
Still, the contents of the pantry would provide enough sustenance to get some nutrients into her patient, and that was the important thing, even though some people — all right, most people — would have probably argued that the most important thing was for her to find a way out of there, wards or no.
But Roslyn knew she wasn’t most people. All of the Arizona witch clans had healers, but she was the only one who’d decided that she wanted to be schooled in regular medicine rather than simply relying on the gift that had been her birthright.
The combination had served her well so far, although she had a feeling her current patient was going to test her abilities to the utmost.
For now, though, she knew she needed to focus on putting a meal together for him.
Nothing heavy…it was going to be a while before she felt comfortable feeding him pesto and linguine…
but a nice, clear broth and some rice, along with something soft, maybe some beans, should work for starters.
Then she could assess how he did with that and decide what he could eat next.
Her mother had some fairly strong opinions about canned broth, but Roslyn hadn’t seen a chicken coop in the backyard, and even if those hypothetical chickens hadn’t flown the proverbial coop, it wasn’t as if she knew how to butcher a chicken.
Not that she would have had the intestinal fortitude to do such a thing unless she was completely starving.
So, they had food and running water and electricity, and she’d noticed baseboard radiators in the study, so they would have heat as well, although she might have to check on the condition of the boiler.