Free J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough by J.L. Doty Page A

the person you were listening to, but it took almost no effort to tune them out. The same was true of the sight ; it was always there but controlled and suppressed. Otherwise it would interfere with simple mundane tasks like driving a car.
    She focused on it now and saw the fellow’s aura blossom about him like the petals of a flower opening to the sun, filled with the indigo and violet of a strong practitioner of the arcane. But intertwined with his primary colors were streaks of black that moved and swirled within the other colors, and that frightened her a bit. The aura of a demon was wholly black, frequently with a halo of gray ash, and this was nothing like that. Nor did the black overlay his entire aura like that of someone truly evil; if that were the case the black would darken the other colors, and obscure them in some places. Instead, the dark streaks were tangled within the colors of his arcane abilities, woven throughout them like the intertwined strands of a thick rope, ever changing but always focused within them. No, he was no demon, and not evil, but she’d never before seen such black streaks, and that bothered her.
    “You my doctor?”
    His voice interrupted her thoughts. He’d spoken in a groggy, muddled croak, and she had to concentrate to close off the sight . Dim light from the hallway spilled through the open door at the far end of the ward, lighting the floor between the two rows of beds but leaving the beds in shadows. She’d pulled back the privacy curtain part way so she could see something of the fellow, and when she saw a faint glint she knew he’d opened his eyes. “No, I’m just checking on you for my father. He asked me to help find you. He’s worried about you.”
    “Your father?” he asked, clearly unable to shake off the lethargy of the painkillers.
    “Yes, I’m Katherine McGowan. I believe my father’s a friend of yours.”
    That statement had the most startling effect on the fellow. His eyes shot open as if she’d just confessed to being a serial killer and at the same time given him a shot of adrenaline, and on the bed he scrambled away from her on his elbows as if her mere presence poisoned the air around him. That sometimes happened when a person returned to full consciousness from the haze induced by painkillers, especially if they were the victims of a violent attack.
    Her cell phone started vibrating. She dug into her purse for a moment to find it. “Just a minute,” she said to Paul. “I’ll take this out in the hall.”
    As she walked the length of the ward she looked over her shoulder, and he still sat watching her with wide, terrified eyes. The display on the cell phone told her it was her father calling. Out in the hall she flipped it open. “Hi father, it’s Katherine.”
    “Wanted to thank you for finding young Conklin. Colleen and I are just pulling into the parking lot now.”
    Katherine hadn’t seen Colleen in quite some time, and was looking forward to a little reunion. “I’ll come down and get you past the front desk.”
    “You’re there?” he demanded fearfully, suddenly upset about something. “At the hospital?”
    “Well  . . . yes. I thought—”
    “Get away from him, now. Get out of there. He’s dangerous.”
    “What do you mean dangerous. He looks anything but dangerous. He’s just—”
    “He’s a rogue. Move, now.”
    The young man didn’t seem like a rogue, though Katherine had to admit she didn’t know what a rogue looked like. “I’ll meet you in reception,” she hissed into her phone, then flipped it closed and started toward the elevators. She was half way there when the elevator doors opened and Vasily Karpov stepped out, flanked by two young men that made her think, thug . She and Karpov had never met so she thought he wouldn’t recognize her. But she knew him by reputation—not a nice reputation—so she raised Paul’s chart to hide her face, turned and pretended to study it as she walked away from the