Book II: These Three Remain

Chapter 11: Ghostsongs and Videoloops (part 3)

After Joe left, I actually did what I had said I needed to do. Then I hid all my contraband, finishing just as light in the room turned off and the green light on the camera turned back on. I restrained the urge to wave to my observers. Instead, I began pacing around as I had been doing 15 minutes ago, hoping that anyone watching the monitors wouldn't notice too much of a "skip" when the recording ended and the monitors went back to a live feed.

I paced for a few minutes, then lay down and took a self-assessment. My heart rate had fallen, and most of my cuts were starting to look much better, although the deep one on my right arm still hurt. I was rehydrated, which really helped. And my snacks, even if they were kind of gross, had replenished my blood-sugar levels. All I really needed, besides sleep of course, was a shower and a change of clothes. Well, that, and a lock-picking kit and a gun.

Amazingly enough, the Vigil was starting to wear off, but it still was difficult to get my mind to stop buzzing. My conversation with Joe had given me too much to think about. I had gleaned a lot of useful information about this organization. The building was only open from 6 am to 9 pm, though there was a "night crew," whatever that meant. I also figured out, from Joe's comment, that "the truck" was their nickname for the area we were in, which was apparently a small town. If I ever managed to get in touch with Adrian, that would be useful information to pass along. But what on earth was up with the group's connection to the Keepers? I couldn't understand why humans who hated Moroi would align themselves with Moroi who hated... well... almost everyone.

Even more confusing and disturbing was Joe's talk about the Creep-a-droo. If this person was coming tomorrow, then it was possible that tomorrow was the day that my memories would be stolen from me. Was it really possible that someone could go into my mind and steal my feelings away? As an alchemist, I had done a little bit of memory tampering in my time, and it was always a very delicate process. I knew how to make a compound that, when slipped into a witness's beverage, made it a lot easier for me to convince him or her that the pale, red-eyed person on a rampage had just been on a weird drug. People preferred to believe that. People didn't want to think that there was such a thing as monsters. Like compulsion, memory-tampering worked best on a semi-willing victim. I I consoled myself by thinking that the depth of my feelings for Adrian might protect me from such a mental attack.

By that logic, though, Joe's feelings for Angeline, no matter how deep they might be, were extremely vulnerable. He wanted to forget her. How could that be? From what he'd said, they'd made a real connection. Both of them were far from home, both of them were lonely, both of them felt unappreciated. It must have meant a lot to him to find a kindred spirit. Maybe it had meant a lot to her, too. I felt sort of sorry for him, but the pity was mixed with disgust. If he was starting to feel for Angeline what I felt for Adrian, then it was awful to think of him willingly erasing the thought of her from his mind, especially if Angeline was feeling the same way. But that was their problem, not mine.

I yawned and managed to find a comfortable position at last. My muscles began to unclench. Then... time skipped a little. I thought I smelled pine needles. There was a confusing sensation of movement. And then –

The lights flicked on and the door opened. I jerked awake so completely that I actually got to my feet. Gary walked in, closely followed by Joe. Gary had a gun in one hand, and a needle full of Vigil in the other. My stomach lurched.

"I got this," Gary was saying to Joe as they came in. "You really don't have to be here."

"Nah," Joe said, closing the door behind them. "If nothing else, it's a learning experience. And you might need back-up, sir."

"Whatever," Gary said, though he looked pissed off. "Bitch!" he called, by way of greeting to me. "Time for a top up!"

I wondered for a moment how he was planning to give me the injection while still aiming a gun at me. Then I saw him gesturing with the gun for me to come close. I couldn't risk defying him; Gary was just the right mix of crazy and insecure to actually shoot me. So I got up and slowly crossed the room.

"Give yourself the shot," Gary said. "Or I shoot you. You get a shot, or you get shot!" He laughed at his little word play. "End of fucking story." He put the needle down on the table.

"I could give her the shot, sir," Joe said, instantly, eagerly. I couldn't help but feel a little betrayed. He didn't have to sound so happy about it.

"I'll do it," I said. I didn't know what Joe's game was, and I wasn't feeling too trusting at the moment. Besides, he wasn't even a trained alchemist.

"Do it right here, on the table," Gary said.

I laid my arm down on the table top and picked up the needle. Then I took a moment to steady myself. I briefly thought about jabbing the needle into Gary's eye - or maybe someplace even more sensitive - but Eddie had always taught me that a 4-year-old with a gun was more dangerous than an unarmed karate master. In other words, no matter how well I could fight, a gun would always trump anything I could do.

"Go on," Gary said. "Do I have to count to three?"

I wanted to ask him if he even knew how, but I didn't want to get shot. I pierced my skin with the needle and began depressing the plunger.

At just that moment, though, Joe sneezed loudly, which distracted Gary from watching me for a second. A second was all I needed. I pulled out the needle before all the liquid had gone into my veins, then quickly squirted the rest on the floor, out of Gary's line of vision. The needle was empty now, but only about half of the drug had actually gotten into my system. Half a dose was plenty, of course. All the calm, all the peace within me that I had waited for, was instantly gone. But I consoled myself that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Joe didn't seem to have noticed what I'd done. "Are we done, sir?" he asked Gary.

"Yeah, so long as the bitch can't sleep. Word from the Creep-a-droo is that he works better with people who are already... a little unsteady."

"Cool," Joe said.

Their voices were starting to come from very far away. The car alarm had started in my head, the search lights were in my eyes again. I wanted to cry, and I wanted them gone when it started to happen.

"You know, you really can go," Gary said to Joe. "I think I might question Sage a bit now." I looked up at him in time to see him rub at his gun like it was a lover. I felt vomit rise in my throat. I thought I knew what "question" meant.

"Oh wow, you're going to question her?" Joe said. He sounded like a kid whose parents had just suggested a trip to Disneyworld. "Can I stay and watch?"

"I'm sure you have other things to do," Gary said.

"Nothing this important," Joe said. He seemed completely earnest.

"I'm sorry, but this is above your clearance level," Gary said.

"Oh," Joe said, sadly. "OK." Then he got out his cell phone and hit a push-to-talk button. "Mr. Wheldon? Gary is questioning the prisoner..."

"What are you doing?" Gary hissed.

"Gary!" the elder Wheldon shouted, through the intercom. "What are you doing in there? I told you to get someone to give Sage the injection and then come upstairs!"

"I couldn't find –" Gary said, but his father was already interrupting him.

"Report to 613 at once!" Mr. Wheldon said. "You're leaving for the elephants in twenty minutes!"

Here was another mention of "the elephants," but I was so relieved by the sight of Gary skulking out of the room that I didn't even have time to think about it. Joe gave me a quick smile – which I couldn't manage to return – then followed Gary out of the room.

The minute the door closed, I got down on the floor for more sun salutations. I was starting to really hate the frickin' sun. A few tears escaped my eyes as I moved through the poses. Of course, I realized, things could have gone much differently if Joe hadn't been there. I had no doubt that without him, Gary might have decided to pick up where we had left off right before I had kicked him in the face in the backseat of the Jeep.

It occurred to me that Joe may have followed Gary into the room for just that reason. Maybe Joe had sensed that Gary was planning something. Maybe he was just looking out for me. Either way, he'd definitely proven his worth as an ally a few times over now.


A few hours later, I was in the middle of yet another sun salutation when the door opened again. This time it was Mr. Wheldon, trailed this time only by Dave. I didn't need to be able to see auras to tell that they were both in a terrible mood.

"Get her on the table," Wheldon said to Dave, with none of his usual fake niceties. I was too exhausted, both emotionally and physically, to fight, and Dave got me tied down in just a minute or two. I already felt like crying. My cuts had all just healed. If the Creep-a-droo was going to come steal my heart tomorrow, why did they need to spill my blood today?

"So, Miss Sage," Wheldon said, once I was in place. "I have a few questions for you."

"Yes, sir," I said. I had learned by now that saying "sir" as often as possible got me a lot fewer slices from the boxcutter. I didn't mind saying it. Words were just words. What did I care?

"You told me that you weren't serious about Ivashkov," Wheldon said, and my heart skipped a beat. "I believe your exact words were, 'We were just having fun. We weren't in love or anything.'" He repeated my words back to me in a wooden tone, almost like a 6-year-old sounding out words he didn't understand. "Do you stand by that claim?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Then, what can you tell me about this item?" And he held something in front of my face. It was the key-chain, the one I had woken up with after my dream visit to New York City with Sonya Karp. On one side, it said my name. On the other side, it said "I love Adrian," in the classic "I love NY" logo style. A crack ran straight across the red heart in the logo because I had thrown it across the room once, in anger and fear. "I thought that you and Adrian weren't serious," Wheldon said. "I thought you were just having what you call fun. But yesterday, one of my men searched your room at Amberwood, and he retrieved this item from your room. Can you explain it?"

"Oh, that," I said. "That was just a gag gift from Adrian. Sir."

"Bullshit," Wheldon said, all pretense of politeness dropped now. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. "I'm not in the mood to wrangle, Miss Sage," he said. "You lied to me. There are consequences to our actions, I'm afraid. We reap what we sow. You have sown the wind, and you shall reap the whirlwind!" He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke in my face. The smell of the cigarette reminded me forcefully of my early days with Adrian, when he still smoked heavily. The memory of those days – so heady, so full of promise and mystery – came back to me in a flood, and I tried to use them to draw strength.

"So," Wheldon said. "I have a few questions to ask you about that little bitch of a dhampir."

"Rose, sir?"

"Angeline Dawes," he said, pronouncing the words as if they were the name of a hideous disease. "Tell me everything you know about her. Everything."

"Um," I said, flummoxed. "She and I never got along. I don't know much about her –" Suddenly, there was a searing pain in my arm. I couldn't help but scream aloud, regardless of the promises I had made myself. It took a second to figure out that Wheldon had jabbed the lit cigarette into me. I could just barely see the circular burn on my skin. It hurt like hell.

Wheldon got his cigarette lighter our of his pocket and relit his cigarette calmly. "I am in no mood for bullshit," he said. "That bitch stole something from me. Tell me about her."

For a split-second, I considered telling him everything I knew about Angeline. I had no particular loyalty to her after everything she'd done to me. But I thought of the water, the M&Ms, and the stolen files. I thought of her tearful apologies of the night before. Looking back on it, I thought that maybe, just maybe, she was sincere. I found that I just couldn't bring myself to tell Wheldon the things I knew about her - her feelings for Adrian, her loneliness at Amberwood, her inability to overcome the cultural gaps between herself and the other students. I surely wasn't going to tell him about Angeline and Joe's weird little... relationship. So, instead, I launched into a description of her that embroidered fiction on fact. I told him that she had thought that electricity was actually magic, that she suggested collecting road-kill in order to give it to Clarence, that we had had to force her to shower daily. None of that was true, but it fit in with his image of her so squarely that he nodded and wrote it all down on his clipboard.

But none of it really helped saved me from his wrath. He was in a mood to hurt something, and that something was me. I had, apparently, earned a punishment for lying about my relationship with Adrian. And when he was done collecting information about Angeline – a not entirely painless process, to be sure – I found out what the punishment was.

I don't really want to talk too much about the hour or so that followed. The whole time I just stared at the ceiling, envisioning nicer places, my friends, my loves, my family, even my car. I tried to keep the pain in my body from infecting my spirit. I'm proud to say that I didn't cry or beg. But if it had gone on much longer, I probably would have.

After Wheldon and his son untied me and left, I climbed down from the table slowly. It was hard to move, and even harder to navigate when the light switched off again a second later. It took me a solid two or three minutes to crawl across the floor to where I had hidden my small stash of medicine. With my back to the camera, I treated the worst cuts and burns I had. I was as sparing as I could be with the lotion, but still, I ran out before I'd treated all my wounds. Holding my breath against the pain that I knew would come, I used some of the other compound, the kind that didn't have any anesthesia, on the rest of my cuts. I had to disinfect them, I knew, but it hurt so much that I couldn't stop the tears from falling. Making the situation worse was the fact that the anesthetic didn't seem to be working very well on the burns.

"Hey, sweetheart," said a familiar voice next to me. I looked over to see Adrian, looking at me like he was about to cry, himself.

"Adrian," I said. It came out in a sob. I started to think about why and how he could be here, but then firmly pushed the thought from my mind. I would understand later. Right now, I would enjoy. That was the rule.

"It's OK, sweetheart," Adrian said. "I'm here now. I'm so proud of you. You're doing great."

"I'm not," I said. "I'm a wimp. Look at me. I'm crying."

"You're doing great," Adrian repeated. "You're keeping your dignity. I'm so proud of you. I think anyone would be crying right now. So tell me, what can I do to help?"

"Hold me," I said, in a tiny, sad voice. I didn't even have the energy to be embarrassed. "Please. Hold me really tight. Don't let me go."

He got closer to me, but when he touched me, his hands just went right through my shoulders and disappeared. I didn't let myself think about what that meant.

"I can't hold you," he said. "I'm sorry. I would if I could. But I can't. Because I'm not really –"

"Don't say it," I said. "Don't say it. Dontsayitdontsayitdontsayit..."

"I won't, don't worry, Sage," Adrian said, trying to smile through his tears. "What else can I do? Do you want to dance some more?"

"I can't move," I whispered.

"I thought you couldn't stand still," Adrian said.

"That was the Vigil," I said. "This dose is much lighter, and anyway, I think it's starting to wear off. In fact, that might be why you can't touch..." I stopped that line of thought just in time. "Anyway, I can't move. I hurt too much."

"Oh, sweetheart," Adrian said, miserably. "Please tell me there's something I can do to help."

"You could tell me a story," I said. "Distract me."

"I can't think of a story," Adrian said. "I just can't."

"Tell me the story you told me that time," I said. "About the little Moroi boy who grew up to be a tall Moroi man."

"I don't really remember how it went now," Adrian said. "I wish I did."

"I know," I said. "I can't remember either. My brain doesn't work."

"But you want me to distract you?" Adrian said. "What else could I do to distract you?"

"You could sing to me," I said. "Any song you want. I just want to listen to your voice."

"But I want you to like me, Sage," he said, and smiled. That's what he had said to me in Venice, when he had talked about singing like a gondolier. I remembered that whole wonderful day – our first real date. Now it seemed like a million years ago.

"I already like you," I said. "And I like your voice."

"I have a terrible voice," he said. "I always tell people, don't worry, I can pay to take you to a good concert instead. Or at least, I used to tell people that, when I had money. Now I just offer to illegally download them some good stuff from the internet..."

"I like your terrible voice," I said. "I love your terrible voice. I'd rather listen to your terrible voice than anything else."

"If that's what you want," he said. "I'll sing to you, of course I will. Just don't be afraid to tell me to stop if you can't take any more. You've been through enough." He smiled ruefully.

"OK," I said, returning his smile.

So, we sat for a while together, and Adrian sang a few songs to me with his terrible voice. I loved every off kilter note. I focused on him, and managed to tune out the screaming of my body.

When Adrian finished his rendition of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi," I asked him if he'd get me the bottle of Vitamin Water that I had hidden in the bottom drawer of the examination table.

"I would if I could, sweetheart," Adrian said.

"Right," I whispered, and didn't analyze why he couldn't get it for me. Don't ask too much of any visitor. That was Rule #4.

I began crawling across the floor to get the bottle myself. "Good work, Sage," Adrian said, coming with me as I retrieved the bottle, the M&Ms, and the rest of the stupid cracker sandwiches. I began crawling back, and as I did, I passed over the spot where some of the wound preparation lotion had sunk into the carpet the previous day.

"Too bad you can't use that stuff," Adrian said. "If you had some water, maybe you could pour it on it, loosen it up."

"Hmm," I said. "I don't want to waste the Vitamin Water. It has fructose and vitamins, and can help me replenish what... I lost."

"Of course," Adrian said. "Do you have any more water? Stuff that you don't need to drink?"

I thought about it. "Yes," I said. "I do."

I drank a little of the Vitamin Water and ate one of the cracker sandwiches. I took small sips and bites, not wanting to throw up, so the process took a few minutes. Adrian began singing "Bridge over Troubled Water," which I thought was a lovely song for the moment. I began to feel a little bit better as the sugars and fluids began to enter my system. I vaguely hoped that it was dark enough in the room that no one monitoring the cameras could clearly see what I was doing, because it wouldn't be fun to explain where the food had come from. But at this point, I didn't really care. I didn't, because... I couldn't. I had no energy left to care about anything except the pain I was in.

When I had eaten and drunk as much as I wanted to for the moment, I slowly crossed the floor to retrieve the empty water bottle from the drawer. Then, I crawled over to the toilet.

"What are you doing?" Adrian asked, breaking off in the middle of a verse.

"Getting water," I said. I took a few deep breaths, then lifted the lid off of the tank in the back of the toilet. The lid was heavy, and I set it down carefully, then allowed myself a few moments to rest. When I was ready, I stood up and carefully scooped some water from the back of the tank into the empty water bottle.

"Um, sweetheart?" Adrian said. He was right beside me, watching me. "Is that... sanitary?"

"It's fine," I said. "It's actually safe to drink, if I need to."

"Oh, ewww," Adrian said.

"I know," I said. "But the tank is fed directly from the water supply. There isn't any backwash from what's in the bowl. Drinking from the water in the tank is the same as drinking from the sink, and if I have to, I'll drink it. But that's not what I'm going to do right now." I began making my way across the floor to the spot where Wheldon had dropped the wound preparation lotion.

"Ok," Adrian said. "Because I'm not sure I'd want to kiss you directly after that..."

"Thanks for your support," I said, and Adrian laughed.

"An alive Sydney in slight need of mouthwash is infinitely better than a dehydrated, sick Sydney," Adrian said. "Drink it if you have to."

"I still have the Vitamin Water," I said. "I'll drink that first. This is for the floor." I had reached the spot where the wound preparation cream had sunk in to the carpet, and I poured some of the water from the bottle onto the stain. With my finger, I managed to mix the water with the dried lotion, and then I was able to actually scrape off a usable portion.

"Is it working?" Adrian asked, hopefully.

"I think so," I said. I applied some of the stuff to the cuts I hadn't been able to properly dress before, and then I exhaled in relief as the numbing began to take effect.

"My little MacGyver," Adrian said affectionately.

"Finally, a reference I get," I said. "My mom and I used to watch old reruns of MacGyver together, on this little black and white TV in the garage."

"Why the garage?"

"Dad didn't really like us watching TV," I said. "Mom got him to agree to just a couple of shows. Dad said MacGyver was OK."

"So your Dad controlled what your mother did as much as he controlled what you did?" Adrian asked, incredulous.

"Well, yeah," I said. I paused. "I don't want to talk about him."

"Neither do I," Adrian said, with feeling.

I crawled back over to my corner and began eating my M&Ms. Each one was a little bomb of sugar and fat, but I told myself that I had to eat something, that I could wait until I was free to really worry about my weight. I looked up from my candy to see Adrian looking at me. I couldn't figure out what his expression meant.

"Will you sing to me some more?" I asked him.

"Of course, sweetheart," Adrian said. "Any requests?"

"Just keep singing songs I know," I said.

"That's easy," Adrian said, and started singing the old Beatles song "Hey Jude."

I leaned against the wall, just a foot or so away from him. I looked at his wonderful handsome face as he continued to sing. I was able to distract myself from the pain, from my racing heart, from the fear, by just focusing on Adrian. My Adrian. He sang for a while, moving from the Beatles to James Taylor to Paul Simon. At least with my some of my cuts soothed, and with Adrian here to sing to me, I felt relatively at peace.

After five or six songs, though, Adrian suddenly stopped singing in the middle of his rendition of "Natural Woman." "Is that someone in the hall?" he asked, looking up. Then the lights flicked on.

I looked around the brightly lit room. There was no one in there but me. I couldn't help but burst into tears. I couldn't do this alone. "No," I whispered. "Come back. Please. Come back."

The door opened, and Joe came in. I wiped away my tears and gave him the best smile I could give. I was angry at him for scaring Adrian away, but I didn't want that to show in my expression.

"Hi, Joe," I made myself say. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," he said, automatically. "I'd ask how you are, but... uh, you really don't look so good." Joe didn't look fine to me. He looked frenzied and upset. "So you're uh, singing, huh?" he said.

"Not me," I said, absently. "Adrian was singing."

"Okayyyy," Joe said. "That's uh, good."

He came over and sat down next to me, right where Adrian had been sitting a moment ago. I wondered if the carpet was still warm. Joe held a needle in his hand, a needle full of bright yellow liquid. I saw it and my lower lip began to tremble.

"Please," I said. "I had some this morning. I don't need any more. I want to sleep, Joe. Please."

"They told me to give it to you," Joe said. His voice was quiet, insistent. "I... I have to, Sydney. They're up my butt about my attitude. I tried to tell them that you needed some proper food and water and they accused me of being a vamp-lover myself. And Gary's mad at me for following him in here. I swear, I was just trying to look out for you. I wasn't sure what he was going to do, you know?"

"I know," I whispered.

"Plus, there's this whole thing with Angeline and the files. They know I was the one who let her in. I told them that I had thought that since she was working with us, she could come in if she needed to, and they seemed to believe me, but they're giving me weird looks. No one has said anything about the hickey, but what if they know?" He looked at me miserably. "Everyone's in an uproar. Mr. Wheldon's ready to kill the next person who fucks up..."

"Please," I whispered. I had hardly heard a word he'd said. "Please don't give me the shot."

Our eyes met. Joe began to reach out a hand as if to wipe some tears from my face, but remembered himself in time. The cameras were still on, after all. "Listen," he said, quietly, his back to the camera. "I need you to do some acting, OK?"

"What..."

But he was already knocking me over on the ground and pinning me down. I screamed out loud when he bumped one of my burns with his arm. "Good," he murmured. "You gotta look like you're fighting me."

"Not acting," I sputtered. "That really hurt!"

"Hold still," he said, and plunged the needle down – right behind my arm, near the bend in my elbow. The liquid dribbled out over my skin, but on the far side of the camera's viewing field.

"Rub your arm," he hissed, as he crawled off of me. I did as I had been told, rubbing intensely at the crook of my arm as if I had just been given a shot. Really, I was just rubbing away the bright yellow liquid. The burn that Joe had bumped was hurting more than ever, but if that was the price I had to pay to not get a Vigil shot, then so be it.

"I'll be right back," he muttered, through gritted teeth. "Lie very still for three or four minutes. Literally don't move a muscle until I come back."

I lay down and turned so that I was facing the camera, anticipating what was coming next. Joe left, and moments later the light flicked out. I watched as the light on the camera changed from green to red. It was recording. I was careful not to move except to blink my eyes. A few minutes later, the light went out completely. I knew what that meant: the video loop was now being played to anyone watching the monitors.

A minute or so later, Joe came back in. By the dim light of the emergency lights, I could see that he was carrying an alchemist kit. He handed me a small black bag of popcorn. "That's the healthiest snack I could find," he said. "Eat that quickly while I mix this up."

"A healthy snack?" I said.

"I could see you weren't so much a fan of the Poptarts," Joe said, getting ingredients out of the kit.

"Oh," I said. "You're very thoughtful, Joe." I saw him pour several peculiar ingredients into a jar, and I swallowed heavily. "You're not an alchemist," I said, trying to open the package of popcorn. "Are you sure that you..."

"I don't have the tattoo," he said, cutting me off. "But I know what I'm doing."

"Is the camera...?" I asked.

"It's on a loop, yeah," he said. "But we don't have much time. Everyone's still here. If someone comes in, we're both screwed. Especially me." He looked up and saw me still struggling with the popcorn bag, which I was too weak to open. "God, you're a mess," he whispered. It wasn't an insult – more of a general comment, and one I couldn't disagree with. He opened the package with no effort at all and handed it back.

I dug into the bag awkwardly, not wanting to get any salt on my cuts, and began eating the popcorn. It turned out to be white cheddar flavor, and actually, it was pretty good. Sending my senses information about flavors and smells helped distract my brain from pain and fear messages, which was another bonus. I ate quickly, as he had asked me to do, and watched him continue to mix ingredients.

"Are you making me wound preparation?" I asked. "I could use some more. Or maybe something for the burns."

"They have the supply cabinet locked with their own lock," he said, tersely. "Guess they don't trust me. And I'm out of lotus root." Lotus root was a key ingredient in the wound preparation compound and most other compounds with soothing properties.

I sighed, then let out a startled squeak when I saw him add another ingredient. "Wait!" I said. "That's capsicum. That goes into Vigil. What are you making?"

"It's going to help, I promise," Joe said.

"Please, just let me be," I said. "The popcorn was great. I'll... I'll be OK. This last dose of Vigil will wear off in a few hours. I might get a few hours of sleep before they come back. It's fine."

"This will make it better than fine," he said. "This will help you sleep."

"A sedative won't help," I said. "And I don't want one. I just want natural sleep."

"That's what I'm giving you," he said, and poured the contents of his mixing jar through a funnel into a syringe. "I swear, Sydney, you can trust me."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Vigil-out," he said, with the ghost of a smile. "Antidote. Come on. Give me your arm."

I knew there wasn't really time to argue. Besides, so far, Joe had never really hurt me. I prayed that my instincts weren't wrong about him, and gave him my arm. He gave me the injection, and it felt like a cool breeze running through me. I shivered, and Joe pulled the towel up over me like he was tucking a child into bed.

Almost immediately, I began to feel the effects of whatever he'd given me. If Vigil felt like someone turning on a huge spotlight under my eyelids, this stuff felt like someone hitting the dimmer switch.

"It's sedative," I said. "I told you, I didn't want..."

"It's not a sedative," Joe said. "I told you, it's the antidote."

"Vigil doesn't have an antidote," I said.

"Everything has an antidote, if you know the principles," Joe said. "I'm a good alchemist, Sydney. You'll see. Just relax. You're going to be fine. But I need you to turn and face the wall, away from the camera. I don't want them to be able to see your face."

"I meant to ask you," I whispered, as I laboriously moved onto my side. "How'd you get so good at this stuff?"

"Alchemy? My older sister taught me everything, before she was stationed in Buenos Aires."

"No," I said. "The misdirection. Sliding the jar up your sleeve that time. Maneuvering the needle so it looked like you injected me. That kind of thing."

"I worked in the summers at the beach," he said. "Near the side-shows out at Coney. I did a few card tricks, magic tricks, that kind of thing. It's how I made my money. Mets tickets aren't cheap, and even tickets to the Cyclones aren't free."

"Oh," I said, even though there was a lot about that I didn't understand. "Does your... Does your..." I trailed off. I was so tired.

"Does my what, Sydney?"

"Does your sister have brown eyes?"

"No," he said. He seemed a little surprised by the question. "She has greenish eyes. Why do you ask?"

"Not like your... your mother," I whispered. It was an effort to make my mouth move.

"No," he said, carefully. "My mother had brown eyes." He took a deep breath. "They were... they were just like yours." He reached out and squeezed my shoulder, and I closed my eyes. It felt wonderful to close my eyes. "People tell me that I have my mother's eyes," Joe continued. "But I don't really look like her." I heard him draw in a very ragged breath, and his next words came out funny and pinched-sounding, like he was trying not to cry. "You do, though. I have this picture of her, and it's like..." His voice became very, very quiet. I almost couldn't hear him. "It's like every time I look at you, I'm seeing her, alive again. That's why... That's why I can't stand to see you hurting so bad. I already saw my mom die once. That was enough."

I tried to answer him. I wanted to tell him that I wasn't going to die if I could help it. But sleep claimed me before I could.