Chapter Two

Lucy

The ghosts woke him just past 3AM, shaking him with hands like frozen clouds, prodding the Dark Thing that lay sleeping around him. Teague woke up not with a shock, but with slowness, pushing aside the chemical haze of medication running through him and opening his eyes in the darkness before immediately closing them again. Once he was asleep it was hard to wake up; his body demanded that he close his eyes and sink into unconsciousness again, and Teague was more than happy to let that happen. He was tired, it was late, there was no reason for him to be awake.

With the Dark Thing, he pushed aside the ghosts and rolled to face the wall. Whatever they had to tell him could wait until morning. They were ghosts, after all. What kind of urgency could there really be in death?

The icy fingers touched and prodded again, harder this time, accompanied by harsh whispers in his ear.

Wake up! Emergency. Stat.

Teague groaned, rolled over again, and forced his eyes open. The Dark Thing was awake now. Maybe there was an emergency. The ghosts were mostly passive as they relived their lives in the massive hospital. They rarely wanted more from him than someone else to talk to.

“What?” Teague whispered. “This really better be important. I’m exhausted.”

Someone is dying.

Teague processed that for a moment, then lay back down. No one in the hospital was dying. There were safeguards upon safeguards to prevent anything like that from happening. Even the most desperate and pained of patients lost the desire to harm themselves once they stepped within Essex Hospital’s walls. It was one of the reasons the hospital was so successful in helping its patients—the worst thoughts were swept away by a desire and hopefulness that healing was within reach. And it was. Whatever the ghosts were panicking about, it wasn’t death.

“No one can die here, not anymore,” Teague muttered. “You’re probably wrong about what you’re seeing.”

One of the ghosts stepped over and got close enough to Teague’s face that he could smell the still, stale breath he emitted. Teague opened his eyes again. A doctor, or what had once been a doctor stood in front of him.

This one spoke without words, directly into the Dark Thing curled around Teague’s chest, and the message came across.

Teague sat up. Maybe he was the one that was mistaken.

He groaned again and swung his legs free of the thin tangle of hospital-issue blankets. “Fine, fine I’ll check. Just to be safe. Then will you let me sleep? That asshole will be in here at seven to wake me up.”

The ghosts gave their approval.

They unlocked his bedroom with a small click that echoed down the empty hall, and Teague paused for a moment on the threshold to make sure that the sound hadn’t attracted the attention of his night nurse. No one else lived in this wing of the building, and even the smallest noises smashed and banged against the walls in the silence. He held motionless and looked down the hall to the patient room that had been converted into a lounge for his nurses. Nothing, just the slight mumble from a TV. Night shifts were boring—once Teague was asleep he typically stayed that way. Stephen was there to check in every few hours and act in the event of an emergency, but he rarely had to do anything else. Teague wondered how he managed the monotony of it all.

Confident the door hadn’t been heard, Teague crept down the hall on bare feet and slipped past the open door to the lounge. There was still time until the next check, but that didn’t mean he intended to waste time. He liked Stephen, and he didn’t particularly want to cause him trouble.

The hall seemed to stretch on forever, each side flanked with empty rooms and half-open doors to let in the light. This hallway only had windows high on the wall, close to the ceiling. They let in very little natural light, but the Dark Thing could guide him even when his eyes couldn’t. Besides, after ten years Teague knew every inch of the hospital by heart, the wing of the building where he lived most of all. They’d once kept the terminally ill patients in these rooms, which he guessed explained the large number of ghosts who roamed there. Through a half-open door, he saw a man lying on a bed that was no longer there, his face sunken and chest oddly shaped in a way Teague couldn’t explain, coughing endlessly into his fist. This was no ghost like the others; it was just a residual haunting, an echo, a mark left with no actual spirit behind it. Teague looked away and continued to walk.

At the door that separated the North Wing from the rest of the building, Teague hesitated again and looked back at the line of spirits crowding behind him. “You want to tell me where I need to go? There’s a lot of nurses out there, and I don’t feel like explaining myself tonight.”

Lucy.

“Okay, yeah, I barely know who that is.”

The patients came and went often enough that Teague didn’t tend to make friends, and he had a difficult time putting faces to names. Part of him just didn’t care enough to try. He had his own stuff to worry about.

The doctor from earlier stepped forward and passed through the door. He would guide the way. Teague opened the door and slipped through. The Main Wing of the building was busy with residual hauntings, so Teague stepped around them as he walked. Nurses, doctors, patients long gone, even a few patients more recent, who’d had enough emotion and pain to leave behind a piece of themselves behind. During the day Teague hardly noticed them, but they were distracting at night.

The Dark Thing stretched out, examined them all curiously, and came back. Nothing to worry about, but the ghosts had been right. Something was going on. The Dark Thing felt it.

The guidance of the doctor was no longer needed. Teague let the Dark Thing lead him through the Main Wing and into the South Wing where the rest of the patients lived. There were no nurses roaming, nothing for him to worry about, so he padded down the hall until the Dark Thing stopped in front of a patient room. This hall was darker than his own with all the doors closed and the patients sleeping within.

He pressed his ear to the door and listened. Breathing, or maybe a slight sob. Someone, Lucy he guessed, was awake and not in a good place.

Teague looked back the ghosts still following him. “Alright, if you want me to do something you’re going to need to open it.”

They did as he asked, and Teague crept in and shut the door behind him.

Lucy sat in the bad with her legs crossed beneath her and wrists resting on her knees. The room smelled like metal—the sharp scent of blood and a lot of it. It didn’t take long for Teague to see why. The bed sheets were soaked, the blood shimmering down from the cuts on Lucy’s wrists to the floor beneath as she cried with quiet, heaving sobs.

“Aw hell,” Teague sighed. There was a letter opener laying on the bed beside her, probably stolen from the nurse’s station. It wasn’t particularly sharp, but Lucy had meant business. Attempts like this were rare, but sometimes people were more resistant to Teague’s protections than he would have liked.

He crossed to the bed and let the Dark Thing sweep through the building. His most important protection, at least, was in place. He shook free a clean blanket and took both of Lucy’s wrists in his hands as he pressed the blanket to them to staunch the flow of blood.

She didn’t let him do it easily. The sadness turned to fury, her tearstained face twisting angrily as she tried to pull her arms away. Lucy was strong, but Teague was stronger.

He gave her a look.

“Stop it.”

“I want to die,” she sobbed. “Let me go.”

“No,” Teague said simply. “You’re freaking out the ghosts, and when they freak out, they pester me. Besides. I haven’t worked my ass off all this time for one of you to die on me.”

Lucy tried to pull away again, but there was less strength there than before. Her eyelids were starting to droop. The blood loss was making her tired. A little longer and she would pass out. Teague increased the pressure.

“You crazy freak of nature,” she slurred. “How would you know what I’m going through?”

“We all have our battles,” Teague told her, and let the Dark Thing creep in to slow the bleeding. She would make it through the night, but the sooner she ended up in the infirmary, the better. “You’re not dying tonight, sorry. Maybe you’ll be grateful in the morning.”

He pulled away the blanket and checked the bleeding as Lucy closed her eyes.

“Fuck you, pretty boy. You psychotic piece of shit. You have no right.”

“Sure I do. My hospital, my rules. Go to sleep.” He stood and gave it a few seconds for Lucy to fall asleep against her pillows.

Teague considered his next move. Was it better for the nurses to find her during their next check? Probably not. He looked to the spirits still standing with him. They were calmer now.

“Give me like, five minutes to get back to my room,” he told them. “Then push that call button by the bed.” They hesitated. “Oh stop,” he told them. “You can unlock doors, you can push a call button. You want to help her, right?”

Teague smeared some of the blood from his hands on the call button to make the scene look realistic and wiped the rest of it on the bed sheets. When he got back to his room he would wash up properly.

“Five minutes,” he reminded the ghosts. “Then push the button.”

The next morning Teague sat in the cafeteria and picked at the peel of an orange as he looked around. Lucy was nowhere to be found. She would be kept in the infirmary for a little longer while her arms healed and the doctors adjusted her medication to try to stop a second attempt. For a few weeks, her life would be miserable, but there was nothing Teague could do about that. Well, he could, he just hadn’t decided if he wanted to or not.

He pulled part of the peel away and worked out a section of the orange to pop into his mouth. The cafeteria was alive with conversation and energy as the patients ate their breakfast and prepared themselves for the rest of the day. After breakfast would be group therapy, then free time, then more group therapy as the patients went in for their individual sessions. The same routine every day.

While he considered this, someone came and sat down across the table from him. The hospital administrator smiled at him from beneath waves of golden hair.

“Wow,” he commented as she took the orange from him and began to peel it. “That didn’t take long at all. Shouldn’t you be calling me into your office for this?”

Grace shrugged. “I speak to patients plenty. This was easier. Are you still having tremors?” she asked as she passed the newly peeled orange back to him.

“The akathisia is better,” he told her. It was strange that she was beating around the bush. He could feel the stress rolling off her. What Lucy had done had shaken her, and now she was desperate to set things right. “I know why you’re here,” he said in a quiet voice.

She raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“You know how chatty the ghosts are? The rumors fly,” he explained. It was only half a lie. “I’ll take care of it.”

Now she was even more surprised. “Just like that? You must be in a good mood.” She glanced around. “Where is Corbin?”

“Hopefully taking a very long time to get my meds.”

“So you’ll take care of it soon. I’ll get you what you need.”

Teague had a better idea, but it wasn’t one he planned to share. Not with her. “Awesome, great.”

She rose from the table, just in time for Teague to see his day nurse enter the room with a tiny paper cup in his hands. Teague sighed.

That night Teague slipped his sleeping meds beneath his tongue and crushed them into dust in his hands the moment Stephen finished checking. His other meds would make him tired enough, and he needed to be as awake as possible for what was to come. Grace would have everything he needed to take care of Lucy ready by the next morning, so if Teague wanted to act on his own, he would need to do it tonight.

He lay in bed and listened to the sounds of the hospital until the first check of the night had passed before rising. It was unlikely that he would need long, but he wanted to play on the safe side. Like the night before, he crept out and down the hall toward the Main Wing, but this time he bypassed the door to the South Wing and went directly into the reception area at the front of the building. In the dark, the empty desk, the jar of fresh flowers, and chairs waiting for potential patients seemed eerie and alive, and Teague couldn’t remember the last time he had been in that room.

At the front door, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The Dark Thing spread out through the building, feeling every window and door, every carefully drawn sigil that Teague had placed there nearly a decade earlier. They were all intact, their power humming through the building in one long interconnected web. This was what he needed to destroy.

Teague ran his hand over the doorframe and felt for the sigils there. It had been long enough that he couldn’t see exactly where they were, but he felt them when they buzzed under his fingers. There were three there, one on each side and one above the door, and they were the only three he would need to destroy to take down the protections throughout the building. When they were gone, something that hadn’t visited the hospital in a very long time would be able to come in. Teague looked forward to it. It had been a long time since he had seen this particular Patron face to face.

Carefully, he ran his hands over the sigils to the sides of the door and let the Dark Thing creep into his hands. This was his power, and he could get rid of it. He rubbed the sigils away with his fingers and concentrated on destroying them. The web of power loosened, but it wasn’t enough. Teague took one last deep breath, concentrated, and smacked the flat of his palm against the sigil above the door.

Instantly, the atmosphere in the building changed. The hum of energy, imperceptible to anyone but Teague, was gone. The building lapsed into a silence that Teague most closely related to the sound directly after a power outage.

He stepped back from the door and let the Dark Thing stretch out from him, into the thin veil that separated his world from the one where his Patrons lived.

It took only a moment for him to receive an answer. Baron had been waiting. As the tall, dark figure approached the door, Teague pushed it open and backed away to give the Patron space. Baron ducked beneath the ceiling, bringing with him the scent of cigars and dirt and a skeletal grin.

“Ain’t seen you in a long time, Through.”

Teague dipped his head just slightly in respect. He and Baron had been friends for a long time, but he was coming to the Patron with no offering, and that required a little bit of caution. “I need you to help me out with something.”

Baron looked at him from beneath his hat. “I ain’t planning on taking anyone if that’s what you’re askin.”

For Baron to take someone to their death was exactly the opposite of what Teague planned to ask.

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“No, I need you to heal someone.”

“You don’t need me in here for that.”

“No,” Teague admitted. “But I kinda want to put the fear of god into her so she doesn’t try anything again.”

Baron laughed deeply like the hollow of a grave. “Lead the way, Through.”

They crept down the halls to Lucy’s room together, Teague leading the way while Baron followed in long loping steps behind him. Generally, it was a bad idea for Teague to turn his back to a Patron, but he trusted Baron just enough to feel safe.

He looked over his shoulder. “Trouble is I don’t have an offering for you. I can get you back tomorrow, or the Dark Thing can just fill in the blanks.”

Baron waved him off. “Your Dark Thing’ll be plenty. Just this once.”

That was all Teague needed. He stopped in front of the infirmary door and stopped. With all his other planning he had never stopped to think or wonder if anyone else would be in there. If they were, maybe he could just play off Baron’s presence as a bad dream. Without a frame of reference for what they were seeing it was hard for them to see something like Baron as anything more than a nightmare.

To his relief, the infirmary was unoccupied except for one bed near the window. Lucy lay motionless beneath the sheets, curled on her side away from the door. Teague glanced up at Baron and jerked his head to indicate her.

“She’s got a lot going on. I just need you to heal up anything that’s wrong so we can get her out of here.”

Baron looked down at him. The Patron had always seen him as a bit of an oddity. “Ain’t much putting the fear of god into her like that.”

“I know.” Teague stepped the side of her bed, not worrying about whether he would wake her. Actually, he wanted to wake her up. When she only stirred slightly at his approach he nudged her arm and let the Dark Thing spread out around Baron. It didn’t take much for the Patron to understand what he wanted. The idea was communicated as clearly through the Dark Thing as though Teague had spoken it aloud. “Hey, wake up.”

Lucy stirred more, then, with great reluctance, opened her eyes and stared at the two figures standing at her bedside. Her mouth dropped open, eyes flying wide in horror. She wasn’t looking at Teague, but at Baron looming behind him like a hostile shadow.

“Don’t start screaming,” Teague told her, though he wasn’t sure the request would be enough. She certainly looked like she wanted to start screaming and maybe never stop. “This is a good thing.”

“Wha-wha-,” her words came out as only a babble of fear and confusion. Lucy was normal— her mind couldn’t process what she was seeing and make any sense of it. Teague had always wondered what Patrons looked like to humans. He wondered now. Was his perception as a Through different than hers?

“You’re going to feel much better after today,” he promised her, and Baron chuckled darkly behind him. If nothing else, the Patron was getting a kick out of it. “A lot better, and then you’ll go home. Sounds great, right?”

She managed a tiny nod.

“Good. And I don’t want you to try anything like that again. You do, and this guy will show up to take you.” He jerked his thumb back to indicate Baron. “Not what you want right? But I’m a good person so he’s just going to heal you. This is your one shot. So, do you wanna go with him, or do you want him to heal you?”

“Heal,” she said in a voice so tiny Teague almost missed it.

“Good answer,” he told her, and let the Dark Thing stretch out to Baron and fill in the gaps that came with having no offering to give. “I’m making this deal with you, Baron. You heal her in exchange for taking what of my power you need. Those are the terms of our deal, and they aren’t up for renegotiation. Do we have a deal?”

Baron grinned even wider. “Deal, Through.”

Lucy gave a tiny shriek. Teague wondered what Baron’s voice sounded like to her.

His job was done, so he bowed his head slightly and backed away. “I’ll leave you two to do what you need to do. Good to see you, Baron.”

On the way back to his room, a ghost sidled up and walked with him. Teague had seen her around before, the shadow of a nurse who had once worked to try and comfort the hundreds of tuberculosis patients who passed through Essex’s doors. She was a true ghost, one that fell into routines but still had plenty of consciousness.

“That was kind of you,” she said.

Teague spared her a glance. They spoke sometimes, but not frequently. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Maybe it would have been kinder to let her die. She’s suffering. You heard what happened to her.”

“She accidently killed her boyfriend in a car accident. I know.”

The nurse was quiet for a moment as they walked. “It’s not too late to go back to your Patron and let him take her.”

Teague stopped walking. He didn’t quite understand. Wasn’t helping Lucy the right thing to do? He felt a chill run down his back. Maybe he was wrong. Sometimes he had trouble deciphering the difference between the two. “No, I don’t think that’s right.”

“I’ve seen many people suffer,” she explained. “I know death is a mercy.”

“I don’t think so.” It didn’t make a difference. He’d made a deal with Baron, and there were no renegotiations. “Doesn’t matter though. She’s gonna go home soon. My job is done, and I’m going to sleep.”

He left her in the hall with her disapproval radiating at his back.

“Teague. Teague, it’s time to get up.”

Teague woke, judged how tired he was, and immediately decided that he wasn’t in the mood to get up right then. Between staying up later than normal and making his deal with Baron, he was exhausted. What he needed was a few more hours to sleep and let his body recover. Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t much space in his schedule for him to sleep in. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

He rolled and put his back to Stephen as he buried his face deeper in his pillow. “Not yet. Let me sleep for a while longer.”

Though he couldn’t see it, Teague knew Stephen was checking his watch and doing calculations. “Why do you need more sleep? It’s later than you normally get up anyway.”

Teague wasn’t completely sure what Stephen was asking, but he had an idea. It wasn’t an accusation—it was a check in. “I’m not going catatonic or something,” he said. “I just didn’t sleep well, and now I’m tired. Maybe I’m getting sick.”

“If you don’t get up soon, you won’t have time for breakfast before group.”

That alone was almost enough to force Teague to get out of the bed. In addition to being tired from the activities of the night before, he was starving. If he got up too late he really wouldn’t have time to eat until lunch, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to wait that long. He was torn between both needs.

When he hesitated and didn’t move, Stephen sighed heavily. “I go off shift soon, and Corbin will be coming in.”

That was all Teague needed to get up. If he was still in bed when Corbin came in, the nurse would see it as an opportunity to get close to Teague, and Teague certainly wasn’t in the mood.

He rolled over and shoved the blankets away as he sat up. “Fine, fine I’m getting up.”

“It’s sad that’s what motivates you to get out of bed.”

“Your office is gross.”

From her seat behind the desk, Grace glanced up, considered his words, and immediately dismissed them. Compared to her general appearance and air of complete control it was a mess. The desk was lined with papers and files, the bookcases on either side of the room packed to the point of collapse.

Teague paced around the limited space, looking back toward the closed door out to the hallway where Corbin surely lurked. For all that Corbin insisted he had no idea what Grace wanted, Corbin was sure acting mighty interested and ever so slightly guilty.

Grace finished the file she was working with, closed it, and set it aside on an ever-growing pile. There was tension in her shoulders and in the air around her so intense that it crawled up into the Dark Thing and made Teague want to scream. Just because she didn’t let her emotions play out on her face didn’t mean they didn’t spread everywhere like spilled ink. If the rest of the hospital wasn’t feeling affected by it, they would be soon enough.

“Grace, seriously. What do you want? I haven’t had breakfast or meds or anything yet.”

“You rarely eat breakfast. If Corbin can shove an orange down your throat in the morning, it’s a goddamn miracle. And as for your meds? They build up in your system. A few minutes or hours late isn’t a tragedy. You’re fine.”

Teague sat in the chair opposite and winked. “It’s a bad idea for any hospital administrator to be so blasé about their patient’s medication, though. Especially when said administrator isn’t a doctor. I mean, you spend so much time telling me to be compliant or whatever.”

She hardly blinked. “What happened last night?” she asked flatly.

“What makes you think something happened?”

Grace gave him a withering look. “I’m not completely powerless here. I know when something has changed in this building.”

“Well,” Teague reached out to pluck a stress ball from her desk and turn it over in his hands. It was a light, calming shade of blue, branded with Essex Hospital’s geometric, vaguely botanical logo—he squeezed it until he could no longer read the words. “I may have healed Lucy. And the wards to keep death out may have broken. Not sure the two are related.”

The words didn’t sit well with her—the twist of her lips, once a carefully neutral scowl, blossomed into a bitter smirk. She rose and came around the desk to perch on the edge near Teague’s legs.

“It’s funny,” she told him, and folded her well-manicured hands over her skirt. “We have those wards in place for a reason. To keep people like Lucy from hurting themselves. And now she’s healed and they’re broken?”

Teague sighed. “What do you want me to tell you?”

She gave him a long look, searching for reasons to disbelieve him. For cues given off in his body language and expression. He gave her nothing. “So what you’re trying to say is that your magic is fallible?”

“No, not necessarily. I’m saying that this is probably just some normal breakdown of what’s there. I mean, it’s not exactly like we have any precedent to go off in terms of how long things are supposed to last.”

“Did you destroy them on purpose?”

Either she hadn’t listened to a thing he’d said, or she simply knew better than to believe him. He threw his hands in the air. “Grace, why would I do that? What good does it do me?”

Again, she chewed the answer before coming to a conclusion. “If you say so. On purpose or not, we still have a major problem on our hands, as you can imagine. How long will it take you to fix the wards and have them back at full strength? A few hours?”

A tiny laugh made it past Teague’s lips before he could stop it. At one time Grace may have understood a little of what he did and how it worked, but it had been a long time since she was at full strength, and a long time since she had put any of that knowledge into action. A few hours was an amateur’s guess.

“Hours? Try days. Every window, every door, has to be warded, and do you even know how many windows there are in this place? Hundreds is probably a low guess. I know I don’t really sleep well, but I don’t think it’s possible to do in under a week.”

He knew what she was thinking—in place a like Essex, a week was a lifetime. It was unreasonable. Suicide attempts tended to come in clusters, and a week was taking a chance that they couldn’t afford, not with death able to waltz in as he pleased. Grace knew this, and for all her naivety, she seemed to have a plan in mind.

“Well, in that case, you know what will take only a few hours? Healing all of the patients here so they can go home,” she said with a smile, and returned to her side of the desk.

It was not what Teague had expected. For more than a decade his healings had followed a very specific schedule. Two a month, with room to add a third if the situation warranted it, never more than that. He did the quick math in his head. If he remembered the last group session correctly, and he couldn’t be completely sure he did, there were at least two dozen patients currently in the hospital, a varied mix of addictions and anxieties and other mental illnesses. Determining what was at the root of their symptoms and what he needed to do to fix them was a tall order, not to mention an exhausting one. He stared, then shook his head in disbelief.

“What? No. There’s no way I can just heal all of them in one go.”

“Sure you can.” She plucked a folder from the desk and began to read it, roundly dismissing any of Teague’s concerns or complaints. “Make a list of what you need. I’ll send someone to get it.”

“No, absolutely not. Grace, maybe if you had done any healing for yourself in the past ten years you would remember that it’s a bit more complicated than this white light healing BS that you pretend to do.” He stood and pressed his palms to the desk, lowering his voice for the sake of Corbin on the other side of the door. He had become very good at keeping his anger, and worse, in check, but in moments like this he wanted to give in to the Dark Thing’s desire to be cruel. Because this was just another time when he didn’t matter. When his opinions and his experience didn’t matter, and those moments built up like garbage inside of him. “I’m telling you it can’t be done, and I’m not doing it.”

His words had no impact beyond the smallest flinch in her shoulders. Her inability to do anything with herself cut deep, but the moment she let it be known that his words hurt, she had lost. Instead, she made a note in the file and didn’t look up. “A list. By the end of the today. I’ll have Corbin bring the files to you. Now get out of my office.”

The stack of folders was too high for Teague’s liking. He’d grossly underestimated how many patients were in the hospital. He sat with his back against the wooden frame of his bed and tossed an orange from one hand to the next, staring down the pile and wondering where to start. The conversation with Grace had left him with a bad taste in his mouth, but no matter how much he didn’t like it, he would read each and every one of the files and make a plan of action, just as she had asked him to.

At the very least, he wouldn’t have to go to group therapy—it was the smallest plus in a world of minuses. He wouldn’t have to sit in a room full of people and listen to them try and one-up each other in terms of diagnosis and troubles. Each one of them suffered just a little more than anyone else in the hospital. Teague snorted and squeezed the orange as Corbin stepped in with another folder in one hand and a tiny paper cup balanced in his other palm.

“Missed one. Also, it’s time for your meds.” He held them both out in offering, hesitating when Teague simply stared back and held out the orange.

“Peel this for me? Please. I can’t do it.”

Corbin placed the folder on top of the rest of the pile and accepted the orange with his free hand. “This isn’t really breakfast. There’s cereal, pancakes, bacon or sausage…”

Teague’s stomach lurched. Essex had a small rotating menu, and year after year it hadn’t improved. For the patients who stayed only a few weeks or months it was fine, for Teague, it was another story entirely. He would rather survive on fruit, which even the hospital kitchen staff would have a difficult time messing up.

“I don’t eat meat. You know that. And the pancakes taste and feel like paint. I’ll stick with the orange, thanks.”

With furious little movements Corbin tore away the peel. Pretending that Teague was making his job and his life difficult was a hobby of his. “There are gummy vitamins in there with your meds. I think I was right in guessing that you would need them. Fruit is not a balanced meal, and with your condition it’s important that you get proper nutrition. It will help your mood and, well, pretty much everything. You won’t be as tired….”

By halfway through his tirade Teague had tuned him out. Corbin was no doctor, and Teague didn’t have patience for anyone who simply repeated facts they had learned on the internet or read in a magazine. Instead, he plucked the vitamins from the cup and chewed them slowly. Of course Corbin knew that he preferred the gummy kind. With all the pills he took on any given day, it was nice to not have to swallow anything else. Being offered them without being asked could only mean that his nurse/lover was attempting, with small gestures, to get on Teague’s good side. Teague was immediately suspicious.

“I’ll do better at lunch,” Teague interrupted. He had absolutely no intention of even looking twice at whatever they would be served today. “Eating. I’ll eat more at lunch.”

Corbin didn’t look convinced, but he handed the orange back to him and eyed the pile of folders. “Have you started looking?”

“No. After breakfast.”

“There’s a lot. It will take you time to get through them all.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I could help,” Corbin offered. As long as Teague was in his room during the day, Corbin didn’t need to hang around, and that meant he could just as easily be in the lounge or, as Grace preferred, helping out in the Day Room with the other patients. Corbin didn’t want that—he would rather be in Teague’s room, sitting too close beside him as Teague read, making excuses to touch him. There were few things that Teague wanted less. He just didn’t have the patience to deal with that on top of everything else. Not today.

“Oh really?” Teague smirked, the Dark Thing around him coming to life as it scented cruelty. “You’ll know how to help someone with severe depression? Who to talk to, what to offer? What about a heroin addict? Do you know what happens if you fuck that up?”

Corbin’s face blanched. “No, I…”

“Then how the hell are you going to help? By reading and taking notes that I’ll just have to go over later?” Teague shook his head, popped a section of orange into his mouth, and grabbed the top folder. “I’ll manage, thanks. You should go do something else.”

Corbin rose, his face flushed with irritation, and left, making a point to lock the door behind him. Let him be mad. Mad meant he would stay away from Teague. He would avoid the room and, when his shift was over, leave without any private delays. Corbin would see the withholding of affection as punishment, and Teague was content to let him think that it was. He took small victories where he could find them.

Alone in his room again, Teague spread the folder open across his blanket and began to read. There were plenty of medical terms within that he didn’t understand, but he didn’t need to. As long as he could get the general idea, the Dark Thing would help him fill in the blanks and tell him what needed to be done. It was the Dark Thing that connected him to the Patrons that he served and helped him pass information back and forth to find the solutions they offered and what they wanted in return. From there, the Patrons would take care of the rest. The healing, the fixing—it would be finished without anyone even knowing Teague had a hand in it.

Teague smoothed his hand over the page and thought about the Patrons he would need to call on. They all served different purposes, managing their own tiny slices of life and nature and asking for rewards in exchange for their kindness and influence. Their names varied by culture; saints, pagan Gods, voodoo Loa, but no matter what people chose to call them they all did the same thing. In fact, they were the same thing, gleefully allowing different faiths to worship them in their own ways. For Teague, they were simply his Patrons, with no religion or belief behind him.

With every word he read, his mind raced faster and faster, filling with answers and information. Thoughts of the patients and what they were saying in group at that moment, if he had really managed to piss off Corbin enough to earn himself a peaceful night, if anyone else would manage to slip away with Baron before Teague had a chance to return the wards to normal, if he even should replace the wards at all… He could hear the whispering of other people through the walls.

He shook his head, chewed a piece of his orange and started the page over from the beginning. Clinical depression. A chemical balance in the brain that couldn’t be avoided, but could be managed. For purely medical problems, the Patron he needed to speak to was Baron. This time he might invite the Patron in for another chat rather than attempting it from beyond the wards. If Grace only knew that he’d done it all on purpose, she’d be furious.

One by one, he read through the files and divided them up by their issues into separate piles. Healing them one at a time was out of the question—it would push him too far past his limits. By the time he got to the last of the patients he would be too tired to stay focused, and that would open him up to all kinds of trouble. Just because he liked the Patrons and they were willing to help him in return for favors didn’t mean they wouldn’t also take advantage of him if given half a chance. Opening up enough to ask for their help also opened him up for the Patrons to come inside and use his body as their own personal vessel into the world. A risk like that was not one Teague was willing to take, particularly not for Grace and her hospital’s precious reputation.

He would heal the patients in chunks, asking for blanket favors rather than giving each the personalized time and attention they likely wanted and expected. It was as much as he could do. He stretched out on his back, chewing the last of his orange slowly.

Teague passed the day reading the files until the sunlight started to fade grey and watery through his window. Corbin hadn’t come back, not even to bring him to lunch or to any of the other appointments Teague was supposed to keep. He was okay with that. There was only so long that he could do the same things and talk to the same people before it just grew tedious. He needed some peace and quiet.

He stared out window until his eyes grew heavy, his mind still running with ideas and plans whispered in from the other side. If Corbin never came back, he would simply slip a list of supplies under his door and let Stephen or whoever else deal with it. He’d done his part, and no one could ask him to do anything else.