“Can I help you—” Adam paused long enough to get the catch in his throat under control. He leaned forward to read the badge pinned to that built chest. “Officer Martinez?”
“I’m supposed to help you,” the cop said. Smiling, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Doctor Binder asked for someone to show you around.”
“Yeah?” Adam asked, returning the smile.
“Yeah,” the cop said. He had short black hair, the natural glossy kind Adam had so envied in his emo days.
He stood, shook the cop’s offered hand, and cut the eye contact before it went on a little too long.
“He said you wanted to see the construction site,” the cop said.
“Yeah, it’s for a thing.” Adam suppressed a wince. He was forgetting the story he’d come up with. “Officer Martinez.”
“It’s just Vic,” the cop said with a laugh. “Unless you’re in trouble.”
Adam focused on Vic’s shoulders as he walked away.
You’ve got a job to do, Adam chided himself and caught up.
“Does the hospital always use cops for tours?” he asked.
“Just for security,” Vic said with a little shrug. “It’s some extra money for off-duty police and extra experience for us rookies.”
They passed open rooms with sleeping patients and silent nurses. Some energy lay there—fresh sadness and grief, boredom—but not the deep well of feeling an old hospital should contain. It shouldn’t be this way.
Adam didn’t even need his armor, the walls he used to keep such things from overwhelming him. He felt naked without his defenses, but he left them down in case they caused him to miss something.
He had no proof the spirit was connected, but his nerves thrummed with warning. Something wasn’t right.
“What kind of thing?” Vic asked, drawing Adam back from his thoughts.
“Huh?” Adam asked. “Oh, I’m a writer. Or at least I want to be.”
“Yeah?” Vic asked. “What do you write?”
“I’m working on a book,” Adam lied. “A ghost story.”
It sounded childish and he held in a wince.
“Oh,” Vic said, perking up. “My brother likes that stuff. I’m more of a sci-fi and fantasy guy myself.”
Be still my heart.
“How many brothers do you have?” Adam asked without thinking. He hadn’t come to flirt. He’d finish seeing what there was to see with Vic, then figure out how to get into the hospital’s records.
“I’m Mexican,” Vic said. “Lots. A dozen.”
“Really?” Adam asked.
“No,” Vic said, dark eyes sparkling. “Just one.”
He was still chuckling when he pulled at his ID badge. It came on a retractable wire, like a tape measure. Vic pressed it to unlock a door. Adam was going to need one of those.
“If you’re writing a horror story,” Vic said. “Then you gotta see this.”
This part of the hospital felt older, condemned, if not ready to collapse. A floor of chipped linoleum lay beneath fluorescent lights. The air was desert dry, like all of Denver, apparently. Most of the bulbs were out, and the AC was off, making the hall warmer than he’d expected.
It should have had some energy, some aura or impression left from its former life and occupants, but the void, the magical nothing, only deepened.
“Where are we?” Adam asked, turning about. He hadn’t seen this from the street. It must lay behind the Spanish facade where Bobby had parked.
Some of the doors were sealed with sheets of taped plastic. Adam half expected a movie zombie to crash through them. He stepped closer to Vic. The cop smelled faintly of cologne, like oranges and sandalwood. Combined with Vic’s warmth and proximity, it lightened the heaviness that had filled Adam’s limbs.
“The old psych ward,” Vic said, taking a flashlight from his belt. “They’re tearing it down soon.”
“I thought they already had,” Adam said. “I read it on the internet.”
“Not all of it,” Vic said, leading Adam deeper into the hall. “Some of the buildings, like this one, have asbestos sealed in the floor. The removal takes time, but they’re going down. It’s too bad. They’re kind of pretty.”
Narrow windows let a little light in. Vic bounced the flashlight’s beam over the tiled floor and dusty ceiling.
The magic void opened beneath them, an empty maw only Adam could sense or fall into. It no longer felt restful, more like a lurking, open-mouthed monster, ready to snap shut and devour his meager power.
Adam shuddered. This, all of this, was too big for him. He hadn’t wanted to admit it before, but he wasn’t going to be able to save Annie on his own. He was already in over his head.
After a while Vic asked, “You going to take notes or anything?”
“Nah,” Adam said, turning in place. “I’m just going to, you know, soak it in.”
“You look like you already have,” Vic said.
Adam shot him a questioning look.
“You’re shivering,” Vic said.
Adam hadn’t noticed.
“I’m going to look around,” Vic said. “Might as well make sure nobody’s broken in or anything.”
“You’re leaving me alone?” Adam asked, unhappy to hear his voice pitch higher.
“Won’t that be scarier?” Vic asked. He raised the flashlight to illuminate his parting grin and stepped into one of the darker hallways. The echoes of his footsteps faded.
Adam lifted his Sight. Normally he’d hesitate, knowing too well what things lurked in a sanitarium, but he had to See.
The doorways tilted. The sheets of plastic came to life, fluttering and rippling like water. Old brickwork and crumbling mortar replaced the thick plaster walls, but nothing skittered. No spirits haunted. They should have infested the place. Death, trauma, and mental illness made the perfect recipe for ghosts. Adam wasn’t the first practitioner who’d gotten a diagnosis and a trip to an institution.
A flash of memory, other inmates, other teens, too lost in their delusions or a haze of sedatives to talk to him, rose like bile in his throat.
Some of them had been practitioners. He’d felt their presence like a stain in the air. It hadn’t faded, not even when they’d left Liberty.
Mercy should have been the same, echoing with those who’d been hospitalized here, but the void just kept running deeper. Adam sensed no bottom to it. The spirit realm teemed with life. It was nothing but life. Mercy was the opposite: cold, sterile, dead. It chilled Adam to the core. He shut down his Sight.