Conduit Read Online Free PDF Page B

answer.
    Evan paced the room, and Jimmie was
wondering if the angel was hiding something important, something that he needed
to know to save Lizzie.
    “Well?” Lev prompted.  “You seem to
think this was done by dybbuks .  So tell us one reason the spirits of
the dead would focus on Lizzie.  There’s nothing special about her.”
    “That’s where you’re wrong, and you
know it,” Evan argued, stepping in front of his son.  “It’s like saying there’s
nothing special about you since you’ve been changed from an angel to a human.  Supernatural
events always leave marks—always—and the dead sometimes use those as landmarks
for guidance.”
    “But Lizzie was never an angel,”
Jimmie argued.
    Suddenly, Lizzie’s eyes flew open,
and she moaned as her body convulsed.
    “Evan!” Jimmie yelled, reaching out
as Lizzie’s body shook so hard he was glad of the rails.  Suddenly the monitors
attached to her went wild.  Her heart rate spiked.
    “I’m coming.”  In a flash, Evan
leaned over Lizzie and put his hands to her chest.  Light flared from them
until Lizzie’s body stopped jerking and she fell back to a sort of silent peace
as two nurses rushed in. Once more, Evan had disappeared.
    As one nurse checked Lizzie’s vitals,
the other focused on the suddenly calm readings on the monitors, bewildering
both of them.
    “What just happened?” the nurse
looking at the monitors asked.  “I know I saw the monitors go crazy, but none
of it’s here.”
    Her partner checked Lizzie’s pulse
and blood pressure.  “You’re right.  I know what the monitors said, but she’s
resting peacefully.”  They exchanged glances.  “I don’t understand.”
    The first nurse looked at Lev and
Jimmie.  “Did you see anything?”
    Under the nurse’s scrutiny, Jimmie shook
his head first.  “No, she seemed to be quietly sleeping.  Beyond that I didn’t
notice anything.”
    “Did you?”  She desperately stared at
Lev, seeking some kind of confirmation.
    “No, nothing.”  Lev spoke quietly,
calmly, something that seemed out of character for him these days.
    “She seems fine,” the second nurse
said.  “Maybe we are both just too tired and short-handed.”
    “Maybe,” the other nurse agreed,
picking up Lizzie’s chart and looking over it, trying to glean anything she
might have missed before now.
    The two women glanced at Lev and
Jimmie one last time before slipping out, closing the door behind them.  As
soon as the door shut, Evan reappeared.
     “What just happened?”  Jimmie
demanded, leaning over Lizzie again.
            “The dybbuks keep coming, trying to claim her as a host for
their spirits, and when there are too many at one time, her body cannot handle
it.  I’m driving them away, but they keep coming back, which means I have to
stay with her at least until Celia can come and relieve me.  If I leave her
unattended, dybbuks will kill her in their desperate fury to claim her,
and a hospital is a breeding ground for their kind.  We need to get her out of
here as quickly as possible.”
    “So what do we do now?”  Lev clenched
and unclenched his fists, obviously angry at his inability to handle anything
himself.  The last thing he wanted to have to do was rely on Evan.  Once, he’d
been an angel, and he’d been able to protect Lizzie.  Now he was human and just
as vulnerable as she was, which meant for all intents and purposes, he was
useless.
    “Go home,” Evan suggested.  “I’ll
stay here with Lizzie, and by the time she’s finally cleared for release, we
will have devised a game plan.  Perhaps I can figure out something that will
tell us why the dybbuks are targeting her now.  It’s more than
coincidence.”  That much I’m sure of.”
    Jimmie sat in the chair beside the
bed.  “I’m not just going to leave Lizzie.  What if she needs me?”  Jimmie
glared at him.
    “And what can you do against the
supernatural?”
    “But what if it’s not just