Uncertain Allies Read Online Free PDF Page B

She didn’t react, of course, but a small part of me hoped she would. I slipped onto the edge of the bed and held her hand. “He’s a jerk no matter what you say.”
    Her face remained slack, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. Silence wasn’t one of Meryl’s strong suits. Seeing her on a bed without a sharp observation or comment was like not seeing her at all. Something had driven away her mind. Gillen Yor, High Healer at AvMem, hadn’t been able to break through the silence. Maybe I was wrong to resist Nigel’s help, but I worried that he would make matters worse.
    Meryl’s hair had been dyed a fiery red. She changed the color regularly, but dark roots had appeared since she had been in the hospital. “Your dye job’s growing out. I’d fix it, but you probably wouldn’t like it.” She didn’t answer.
    A nurse stopped short in the doorway. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”
    I hopped off the bed. “I was visiting. Do you know if Gillen Yor is around?”
    The nurse pulled a cart into the room. “He’s down at the desk. Can you excuse us a moment?”
    “Sure.”
    I found the nurses’ station empty. Glancing down, I noticed the file rack for the floor patients. As casually as possible, I craned my neck to see into nearby rooms for Gillen Yor. I pulled Meryl’s file. It was nosy and a violation and wrong, but she didn’t have anyone acting as a health-care proxy. I skimmed through the notes, deciphering Gillen’s scrawl as best I could. I didn’t understand most of it—trance sessions, spell orders, and essence ward boosters mixed with standard physical care like saline fluids and electrolytes. No eureka moments.
    Gillen Yor yanked the chart out of my hands and shoved it back in the rack. “Mind your business.”
    I hadn’t sensed him come up behind me. Even as I turned toward him, he relaxed the body shield that had hidden his essence. He had snuck up on me on purpose. “I’m sorry.”
    Gillen was over a foot shorter than me, a strange man with a halo of gray hair circling his bald spot. He pulled at the hair often when he was thinking. Staring up at me, he tilted his head to the side. “No, you’re not. You want to know what’s going on, ask me.”
    “Okay, what’s going on?”
    He slipped his hands into his doctor’s coat and shrugged. “Nothing. No responses to anything yet. Nigel gave me some things to think about, but I’m not confident.”
    “If it’s coming from Nigel, I’m not either,” I said.
    He peered at me with his usual angry attitude. “I don’t give a damn about your personal opinions, Grey. If the Elven King himself gave me an idea I thought would work, I’d damned well use it.”
    I tamped down my own anger. Given Gillen’s personality, there was no competing with him in the annoyance department anyway. He didn’t care what I thought, didn’t care what anyone thought. He lived and breathed the healing arts and was the best druid healer alive. I was his biggest failure. For years, he had been trying to figure out the dark thing in my head. With Meryl, he had another mystery on his hands, and I suspected he blamed me for it. “I didn’t mean . . . I don’t know what I meant.”
    He shook his head. “You look like hell. That thing in your head looks like a dagger. Does it hurt?”
    Like Nigel, Gillen was a powerful enough druid to scan me from a distance. Touching made the exam more refined, but it wasn’t always necessary. “No. Well, yeah, but no different than usual.”
    “I saw video of what you did down in the Weird. Actually, I didn’t see a damned thing, but darkness. Can you control it?” he asked.
    At one point during the riot, I lost control of myself. I thought Meryl was dead, and a fury built inside me that I didn’t know I was capable of. I remembered the dark mass spiraling out of me, becoming a huge cloud of shadow that sucked up essence in its wake. It happened so fast and I was so angry, I don’t know if I made it do that