“There is nothing more precious, nor more essential to preserve, than the life of a daughter.”
—Jonathan Healy
St. Giles’s, a cryptid hospital under Manhattan, waiting for news.
MARY HAD COME QUICKLY when called, and together, the three of us had been able to stop the bleeding and get Sally to street level, where Sarah had been waiting with a human cabbie who’d been under the star-struck impression that he was transporting a minor pop star to a secret rendezvous. He wouldn’t be able to identify any of us later, had anyone been left alive to track him down and ask. I didn’t remember calling Sarah. Maybe I hadn’t needed to. Given how much broader her receptive range seemed to be these days, it was entirely possible that she’d just plucked the need out of the air.
And that was a concern for later, when I had the emotional energy to care about anything but getting Sally to help before she stopped breathing. The cabbie had dropped us off by a locked door, covered with a sliding steel grate. Mary looked at us, smiled reassuringly, then walked through to open it from the inside, allowing us to carry the still-unconscious Sally into the hallway on the other side. It was industrial and featureless, gray concrete and white linoleum, and we’d been roughly halfway along it when a pair of chupacabra had come loping out of the distance to relieve us, one carrying Sally around the nearest corner to a stretcher, the other escorting us to a surprisingly ordinary-looking registration desk.
Filling out paperwork never changes very much, and always takes too long. By the time we were done, Sally had been whisked away to an operating room, and we were being checked for injuries and hustled off for chest X-rays after Thomas mentioned the grenade to the doctor who examined us. After that, we were sent to the waiting area until there was news. It was all very mundane and ordinary, which just made it all the more terrifying.
I tried to take Thomas’s hand, and flinched away. His skin was burning, almost hot enough to raise blisters. “Ow,” I hissed, and stuck my finger in my mouth.
He turned to me, eyes bleak and haunted. “You knew we were clear of the blast before you threw the grenade,” he said. “I may not always trust you with your own safety. I trust you with munitions.”
“Thank you?” I said, not sure what else to say.
“But Alice . . . couldn’t you see he had a gun?”
There was no good answer for that. Yes, I’d seen the gun: it had been aimed at me. Sally had been on the opposite side of the room, not remotely in the line of fire. He must have pulled the trigger as the grenade exploded, his aim going wild. He’d been looking at me. Sally shouldn’t have been in danger. But there’d been a gun, and a bullet, and a finger on the trigger; once those things were in play someone was getting shot. That was the way it worked. My luck just meant it was rarely going to be me.
I’d been looking out for myself for fifty years. Thomas said he and Sally had my back now that we were all together. That meant I needed to figure out how to have theirs, or it wouldn’t be safe for them to be around me. “Be careful” didn’t only mean being careful about myself. It meant being careful with the people I loved.
All of that was too much for me to put into words, and so I leaned over, resting my cheek against his shoulder where the shirt covered his skin. Thomas slumped back in his chair, the heat that radiated off his skin slowly dying down, and we sat, alone, waiting.
Mary was gone, had been since we finished filling out the paperwork, off to check on the other two teams and how they were faring. It was just us, and it stayed that way until a man stepped into the room, dressed in blue hospital scrubs, scaly orange feet bare against the tile. That wasn’t the most remarkable thing about him. No, that honor was reserved for the wide, white wings that grew from his shoulders, primary feathers long enough that they nearly brushed his ankles. He stopped in the doorway, looking at us.
“We don’t normally treat humans here,” he said, voice stiff and somehow awkward. “But it seems your family is determined to be the exception to our admissions policy. Your daughter was shot in the chest, as I’m sure you’re aware. The bullet punctured her right lung and exited out the back. She’s awake and well, if you would like to see her.”
Thomas stood so quickly that he nearly knocked me over. “Please,” he said.
“This way, then.” The doctor turned, beckoning for us to follow, and walked away.
I followed. Honestly, I would have followed even if he hadn’t wanted me to. Caladrius are rare enough in the modern world that the opportunity to spend time with one, even professionally, wasn’t something I could pass up.
Now that we were in the hospital proper, it was much less brutalist, although no less industrial: the hall around us could have belonged to any hospital in the world. We even passed a few nurses and technicians. The only thing that made them stand out at all was that none of them were visibly human. This was not a human space.
I took Thomas’s hand, relieved that his skin was cool enough to touch, and held on as we walked the rest of the way to Sally’s room. The doctor stepped aside to let us go by. I smiled at him as we passed.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Just go as soon as you reasonably can,” he said, uncomfortably. “We prefer not to have humans lingering on the premises.”
Thomas didn’t pause for conversation, plunging on ahead while I followed behind. The room was boxy, square, and white, remarkable only in its lack of windows; Sally was in the single bed, propped up on a pile of pillows, wearing an unfamiliar scrub top that was only halfway buttoned. I couldn’t see any bandages, and she wasn’t hooked to any machines.
Hearing us enter, she looked over and smiled, wearily. “Hey, boss,” she said.
Thomas sagged with relief. “Sally,” he said, and crossed to the bed to enfold her in an embrace.
I stayed where I was, smiling at the two of them. This was my family now. This was where I belonged. Oh, maybe not in an underground cryptid hospital, but in the room where these two people were, holding on to each other and not letting go. I turned back to the doctor.
“Thank you for the gift of your training and your gifts,” I said, as formally as I could. “I know you risk discovery whenever you aid a human, and want to assure you that we pose no threat.”
“Miss Dunlavy tells me the girl was injured taking out a Covenant team,” he said.
“Yes. All going well, the other teams will be gone before morning.”
“Good.” He nodded, expression grave. “We’ve got deep roots in this city. I’d rather not sever them.”
“I can believe it.” I had so many questions, and this wasn’t the time for any of them to be asked. I turned back to Thomas and Sally instead, watching them. The local Covenant threat was neutralized for the moment. We’d provided the additional firepower necessary to clear out the teams in the city, and now the war was well and truly on, as if it hadn’t been before. Our cumulative scorched-earth approach would trigger a proportional response. The cryptid world might be exposed.
And maybe it was time for that. Nothing stays concealed forever. Not everything that’s buried is dead. I’d call Rose, see if she agreed that our job here was done, and if she did, Apple could send us a ride home.
“You okay?” asked Mary, stepping up beside me.
“Yeah,” I said. “I missed you.”
“Missed you, too. What are you going to do now?”
“Well, first, I want to figure out how the world works and how to be a part of it again,” I said. “But I won’t be doing it alone, so that’s all right.”
“And I’ll be here if you need me. I’m only ever a call away, and I’ll always be your babysitter.”
“I’m a little old for that, Mary.”
“Maybe so, but you’re who I was hired to watch, and you don’t get away from me that easily.” Mary laughed lightly, then continued, “And you’re going to Portland sooner than later, right? You need to talk to Kevin and Jane. Like, really talk to them, not just say what you think they want to hear and run away again.”
“We’re going back to Buckley after this, and then we’re heading to Vegas to get new IDs for Thomas and Sally,” I said. “Then, yeah. Portland. We have a bunch of people we need to catch up on things. But we just got home, and then we had to head straight here. I think we’re all still suffering from the dimensional-travel equivalent of jet lag, if I’m being completely honest.”
“You are,” said Sarah, walking up behind Mary. “You all are.”
“See? Even the telepath agrees.” I managed, barely, not to jump at Sarah’s sudden appearance. I was used to the ghosts coming and going like distance was nothing. For Sarah to do it . . . that was going to be an adjustment. It was also eerie having her read me that easily after years of needing to make an effort. She clearly picked up on that thought, too, looking briefly sympathetic. I cleared my throat, focusing on Mary. “We’re getting our bearings as fast as we can.”
“Well, you did good here,” said Mary. “The kids were very taken with the way you rescued them. And they’re insisting on keeping the carriers.”
I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it. “Kids will be kids.”
“Rose called while Sally was in surgery,” said Mary. “Your ride will be here in about fifteen minutes.”
“Is it always going to be like this?” asked Sally. “Running around like our asses are on fire, never holding still long enough to think?”
I smiled beatifically at my family—both old members and new ones, both familiar and less so—as I walked over to sit down on the edge of her bed and sling my arms around them both. Thomas smiled at me.
“I certainly hope so,” I said. “It would mean everything was pretty much back to normal for us.”
And for a moment, that felt like something we might someday actually achieve. We were, all of us, finally finding our way home.