Free Retribution by Elizabeth Forrest Page B

see Charlie's still form on the gurney or the techs bending over her, or Mary Saunders standing stiffly afraid in the corner of the vehicle, looking down at her.

    As the paramedics drove off, he found himself making a tiny sound from his throat, not unlike the whine which came from Jagger.

    * * *

    She had a headache. It was bad enough that sleep could not hide the pain from her, though she tried to stay adrift. Jagger lay on her legs heavily and she felt as though she could not move at all, suffocating under his weight and heat. He was not supposed to get up on the bed, and most nights he didn't. Still, there were some nights when he crept up, and she was just as grateful for his company as he seemed to be for hers.

    Tonight was not one of them. The throb that ached through her skull also seemed to have brought an incredibly bad taste to her mouth, pasty and foul. Charlie shifted slightly, trying to get out from under Jagger's body, and wake. Cobwebs seemed to be all around her, thready remnants of a nightmare she could not quite remember, yet that still clung to that thin veil of awareness between dream and consciousness. It held a haunting similarity to the dreamworld that used to seize her before… to the Midnight that would cloud her entire mind and body….

    Charlie shuddered uneasily, trying to throw off the darkness cloaking her.

    She flung a leg out, muttering, "Jagger, get
over
," and tried to open her eyes.

    "Charlie, honey, it's your mother. Can you hear me?"

    Charlie pried one eyelid open successfully, though the blurred vision which met her did no good at all. What was her mother doing there? "Mom?"

    A blur of light and shadow converged into a large blob that leaned near her. "It's me, honey. I'm right here."

    Sitting on top of Jagger, if Charlie could judge the position properly. She slid her legs farther away from the heaviness. With a tongue that felt as sticky and foul as an old turpentine oil rag, she tried to lick her lips. "Jagger's too heavy… make him get down, Mom."

    "The dog isn't here, Charlie. Do you know where you are? Do you know what happened?"

    She peered through the one eye which would stay open, though not focused, and managed to shake her head. A touch, quick and cool and damp, brushed her forehead.

    "You're in the hospital, honey. You fainted on the stage during the benefit."

    Dismay shot through her. "Oh, no. No…."

    Back in the hospital again. Of course that could not be Jagger on her legs. Jagger came after the hospital… no, even after that. Before Jagger, she'd had a dog named Monte. But the hospital had come first. Always first.

    Charlie closed her eyes.

    And before the hospital, Midnight had come.

    The aching throb pounding her skull suddenly became secondary to the drumming of her heart. She let out a tiny groan, one that was not supposed to escape her lips, but she seemed to have as little control over her lips as over the rest of her. She hated hospitals, she despised them, and if she was in one, she did not wish to stay.

    The weight from her leg lifted suddenly as her mother stood up and moved to the head of the bed, adjusting the pillows behind Charlie's head.

    Charlie wet her lips and opened both eyes successfully, gazing around. She knew the look of the room when it met her eyes, and the banks of monitoring equipment sitting with the green screens and tiny blips and floating lines.

    "Take me home, Mother."

    "Charlie! I can't do that. There are tests scheduled. We have to know what happened."

    "I didn't have a chance to eat till eight o'clock, that's what happened. If you won't take me home, I'll call Daddy." Charlie struggled to bolster herself upright in bed, and look her mother in the face.

    Her mother's lips thinned.

    Quentin Saunders, like Charlie, had a poor opinion of hospitals while Mary had the opposite, fully embracing the miracle which seemed to have saved Charlie's life the first time around.

    "Charlie, I don't like it when you threaten