Iris left Felicity to work on the Ambush Bug problem remotely while also grinding away on the issue of the Earth 27 speedsters. She headed down to the medical bay, still ticking off items on her list. FEMA and the National Guard had the downtown combat zone well cordoned off and were assessing damage to the buildings and infrastructure. She still had to figure out a way to track down the missing—and dangerous—Owlman, but for now she had to check in on the one bit of good news she’d had in days.
“Hello,” she said as brightly as she could, sweeping into Madame Xanadu’s room. “Dr. Snow tells me that you’re feeling better.”
Madame Xanadu was sitting up in her bed, a food tray lying across her legs. She’d barely touched the food, but at least she wasn’t screaming or weeping or passing out.
“I am . . .” She paused. “I am well. Thank you.”
“I think we’re the ones who owe you the thanks. You did my husband a solid awhile back.”
Xanadu nodded, a small, almost imperceptible smile tugging at her lips. “I offered counsel, that is all. It was up to him to take it.”
Pulling a chair over to the patient’s bedside, Iris sat down and took the gelatin cup off Madame Xanadu’s tray. About six months ago, Cisco had figured out a new formula for gelatin, and the S.T.A.R. Labs version was amazing. One of these days, Iris was going to start selling it as an auxiliary income stream for Team Flash. For now, though, she raised a spoon and her eyebrow. Madame Xanadu shrugged and nodded her permission.
“Great.” Iris peeled the lid off the gelatin. The enhanced blueberry scent that Cisco had infused in the stuff made her mouth water, and she scooped out a perfectly wiggly spoonful of blue goodness. It tasted like cool, fruity heaven. “Look, I know you’ve been through a lot. But right now, it would be helpful if you could help us locate our missing people.”
Xanadu grimaced, shaking her head. “I’m not a parlor magician or a telephone psychic, Ms. West. My powers are substantial, but numinous and subtle.”
“It’s Ms. West-Allen,” Iris informed her.
Madame Xanadu shrugged, as if to say, I’ve proved my point.
“We need to get Cisco and Curtis back,” Iris said. “They’re lost somewhere in time. I know you can see other worlds—”
“I see through the eyes of my alternate doppelgängers,” Xanadu said with an air of gentle reproof. “From one dimension to another. Not through the time stream.”
Iris sucked a glob of gelatin off the spoon, then pointed the utensil at Madame Xanadu in a gotcha motion. “Ah, but you gave Barry a card here in the present that turned out to open an important door in the future. The really far future.” Barry had told her how the mysterious blank card from Madame Xanadu had turned out to open the Spire of the Techno-Magicians in the sixty-fourth century. Without it, he’d have been unable to stop Abra Kadabra from running roughshod over the people of that era and then returning to the present with his powers at their mightiest.
“I gave your husband a card because it occurred, Ms. West-Allen. That card was not a part of my deck. It was . . .” She cast about, seeking the right word. “It was conjured by my magic and the Flash’s need, working in concert. It was an instrument of fate.”
Iris hmpfed.
“I told you my powers were numinous. Ineffable. Even I cannot always explain them.” Madame Xanadu stared down at her food tray and picked listlessly at some noodles, stirring them with her fork. “I help those who find me in need. You merely had to walk down a hallway.”
“So . . . you’re saying that your powers kick in when people stumble upon you?”
“I’m saying that the power of serendipity is a monumental thing, and it enhances my own.”
Iris tossed the spoon and empty gelatin cup on the tray, then leaned back in the chair, arms folded over her chest. This wasn’t quite working out the way she’d hoped. Then again, Madame Xanadu’s powers were magic. Real magic. Scientific laws and rational thought need not apply.
“Can you tell me how Barry is on Earth 38?” she asked.
At this, Madame Xanadu smiled. “I can tell you what my doppelgänger knows. There is danger there. Your husband is in the Midwest, helping people, and the heroes of that world are arrayed against the horror that is Anti-Matter Man, even as the skies turn red.”
Iris pursed her lips and nodded tightly. Red skies. She thought of the Time Vault, the newspaper.
Crisis.