Leah braced herself for the worst as the doctor cleared his throat. Marisa couldn’t wait.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, jumping to her feet. “Has something happened to Aggie?”
The doctor shook his head. “No, it’s just that there’s a man at the nurses’ station who insists on seeing her. He’s a really big guy and he’s making the nurses nervous. They want to call security, but I thought I’d better ask if you know him. Maybe you can calm him down.”
“What’s his name?” Morago asked.
“He says it’s Diego Madera.”
The name meant nothing to Leah, but Morago immediately stood up.
“I’ll talk to him,” he told the doctor.
“Do you know him?” Leah asked as she followed him down the hall.
Marisa walked ahead of them with the doctor.
Morago nodded. “He lives up in the mountains. On the rez, they call him Old Man Puma.”
“Why?” Leah asked.
“Because he’s an old mountain lion spirit who was here when the deserts were still an ocean. They say the mountains are named after him.”
“You mean, after his family?”
Morago shook his head. “No. After him.”
“But that’s—” Impossible, Leah had been about to say. But with all she’d experienced so far today, she wasn’t sure the word held a real meaning anymore.
They came around a corner and there he was. She had to admit to a little disappointment. Not that Diego Madera wasn’t an imposing figure. She’d just expected him to be bigger than life, somehow—decked out like a vaquero of old in fancy boots and jacket, with a big gaucho hat decorated with silver and turquoise, like Pancho Villa might have worn.
But the man waiting at the nursing station was dressed casually—cowboy boots, jeans, a plain white cotton shirt. His hair was a tawny gold, his skin tone a light brown. He was tall, shoulders broad, hips lean. His eyes, she saw, when he turned at their approach, were a penetrating green-yellow.
“Morago,” he said when they reached him, “tell these people I need to see Aggie.”
“Ohla, Diego. Aggie’s not with us right now.”
“I know that. I just saw her in the spirit realms. I told her she had to make a choice: live or let go. She let go.”
The doctor, nurses and Marisa all looked as confused as Leah was feeling. But Morago only frowned.
“Why would you say that to her?” he asked.
“I thought I was helping.” He looked past Morago to where Leah and Marisa were standing. “Who are you?”
“These are Aggie’s granddaughters.”
Diego studied them for a long moment, then nodded. “I have to see Aggie,” he said, “but the five-fingered beings are objecting.”
Leah didn’t think anybody could stop this big man from doing whatever he wanted. But then she realized he was simply being polite. The look in his eyes told her it was only for the time being.
“To do what?” Morago asked.
Diego’s attention turned to the shaman, his surprise plain. “To call her back—what else? But I need the connection her body can give me, so that she actually hears me.”
Morago nodded. “Let him see her,” he told the doctor.
“I’m afraid that’s not—”
“This isn’t about science medicine,” Morago said, cutting him off. “It’s time for spirit medicine.
“Go on,” he added to Diego, nodding toward the door. “Try not to break the windows.”
“What do you mean?” Marisa asked. “What’s he going to do?”
“Just as he said, he’s going to call her spirit back. But he has a loud voice.”
The doctor started to move forward as Diego opened the door to Aggie’s room, but Morago stepped in front of him.
“My patient—” the doctor started.
Morago cut him off. “She’s my patient now. She’s under the care of the spiritual leader of the Kikimi people.”
“You mean that man?” the doctor asked, pointing at Diego through the observation window. Diego had closed the door to the room and was approaching Aggie’s bed.
“I’m speaking of myself,” Morago told him.
The doctor backed away. “Call security,” he told the nurses.
Leah watched Diego at Aggie’s bedside on the other side of the window. The vibrant woman she and Marisa had met this morning seemed diminished, her form overwhelmed by the invasive life support system that was keeping her alive. Leah was inclined to agree with the doctor. If she was in such bad shape that she needed all of this to survive, they shouldn’t be messing with it.
Movement by the window caught her eye. She lifted her gaze to see that a line of crows had settled along the outer window ledge, black feathers gleaming, dark eyes on Aggie, as though they understood exactly what was happening. Diego pulled a chair over to the bed and sat down.
“You told me when I arrived,” Morago was saying, “that you had no medical explanation for her coma. That her wound, while serious, shouldn’t have caused this reaction.”
“Your point being?” the doctor said.
“That this is a spiritual matter and needs to be dealt with by those with expertise in that kind of medicine.”
“This is a hospital,” the doctor said. “Not some shaman’s tent out on the rez.”
“I’m going to ignore that offensive remark for Aggie’s sake,” Morago said. Before he could go on, a door banged open at the far end of the corridor and two large security guards trotted in their direction.
Leah glanced up, distracted by the noise. She saw the pair of security guards, saw as well a half-dozen other men enter the corridor behind them. Black-haired and dark-skinned. Tall and broad-shouldered. Leah wondered if they were from the rez.
They didn’t seem to be moving quickly, yet they were rapidly gaining on the guards, and in moments, had flanked them, two men to each guard. Behind the counter of the nurses’ station, the male nurse reached for the phone. Before he could pick it up, one of the men leaned over and put his hand over the nurse’s. The nurse tried to break his grip, but Leah could see that the dark-haired man was simply too strong.
From beside her, Marisa suddenly grabbed Leah’s shoulder.
“Oh my god,” she said in a strained voice.
Leah turned back to Aggie’s room to see that Diego’s face was changing. Broadening. Becoming something other than human. In moments, his head became that of a mountain lion. She watched in captivated fascination as he leaned forward, his mouth opening wider than should have been possible. She remembered what Morago had said a few moments ago.
He has a loud voice.
She braced herself for the roar that was going to come, except as Diego continued to lean forward, his head began to disappear followed by the tops of his shoulders. She sensed the doctor stumbling back—an understandable reaction, she thought, given that her own legs had turned to jelly.
Again Morago’s words returned to her.
He’s going to call her spirit back.
That was where his head had gone. He was half in the otherworld, calling to Aggie.
“You see,” she heard Morago say behind her, “not everything’s the way they taught you in medical school.”
“I—I—”
“Don’t worry, doc. Nobody’s planning to hurt your patient. We all have her best welfare in mind.”
Leah pressed her face a little closer to the observation window. She had no idea where Diego’s head was—what world it was in—but most of him was still visible.
Leah noticed a slight movement in Aggie’s hand. Her fingers were beginning to twitch.
Marina’s grip tightened on Leah’s shoulder. “Did you see that?” she murmured.
Leah nodded. Her gaze rose a little to see that all the crows perched on the window ledge—and there had to be seven or eight of them, depending on the moment—were staring intently into the room. Behind them, more crows swooped in and out of sight, riding the wind. They seemed to be taking turns on the ledge.
“Our brothers are just as concerned as we are,” an unfamiliar voice said from behind them.
They turned to find one of the black-haired men there. Leah blinked, looking back at the crows outside, and then to the stranger. She felt a small chill go up her spine. The man was even more handsome up this close. Though perhaps striking was a better description. His dark features were chiseled. Nose a little long, cheekbones prominent. Like the men in the hall, his complexion was considerably darker than Morago’s. And where did anyone get hair that thick and black and glossy?
He held out his hand to Marisa. “I’m Gonzalo, and I want to thank you for looking after our friend the way you did.” His gaze travelled from Marisa to Leah. He smiled, but the humour didn’t reach his eyes. They were too shadowed with worry.
Marisa shook his hand. “When you say brothers…” she began, then let her voice trail off.
Leah knew just what she was going to ask, because the same question had immediately risen in her mind.
Gonzalo nodded. “We’re all Yellowrock Canyon Corbae—winged, or five-fingered.”
Leah wanted to be cool about it all, but it was hard when there was a man in Aggie’s room whose head and shoulders had disappeared.
“Will he be able to call her back?” Marisa asked Gonzalo.
The crow man shrugged. “I don’t know.” He paused, studied them both for a moment, then added, “How do you know Aggie?”
“We don’t, really,” Marisa said. “But we were with her when she was hurt and she…she’s the sort of person who inspires loyalty, even if you’ve just met her.”
Gonzalo smiled. “I like you.”
Leah caught movement in her peripheral vision. “Something’s happening,” she said.
By the bed, Diego’s head and shoulders were still thrust into the otherworld, but on the bed itself, Aggie’s body had risen until it was floating a few inches from the mattress. Leah flashed on too many late-night demonic possession movies. Things always started to get bad when people began floating.
She watched in morbid fascination as Aggie continued to rise. Then the body began to rotate, horizontally. “The IVs!” she cried.
And not just the IVs. There was Aggie’s oxygen and who knew how many sensors monitoring her vital functions.
Pushing past Morago she yanked open the door and ran into the room.
“Wait!” he yelled.
She didn’t. There wasn’t time.
She darted across the room. Climbing up on the bed, she put her arms around Aggie’s legs and held on. She was able to stop the body’s spinning motion, but it continued to rise despite her best efforts to pull it back down to the bed.
“Get away!” she heard Morago cry.
She turned to see him halfway between the door and the bed, but then her vision distorted. Morago’s body seemed to elongate, legs and head and shoulders growing long and thin, while his torso widened to impossible proportions. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror. He reached a weird, rubbery arm toward her that wobbled as though it had no bones, and was flapping in the wind, then her vision went black, her ears popped, and she was falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Aware, but unable to access any of her senses.
She wished she could pass out.
All she could do was fall.