“Exactly,” I said. “People who mistake kindness for weakness.”
She frowned. “Are you suggesting that his sickness is the result of a deliberate action?”
“I’m saying that I don’t know that it isn’t,” I said. “And until I know, one way or another, I’m sticking close to the kid until the doc gets here.”
She continued looking skeptical. “You won’t if I don’t think you should. I don’t care how much paperwork you have supporting you. If I start yelling, the winged monkeys will carry you right out to the street.”
“They’d try,” I said calmly.
She blinked at me. “You’re a big guy. But you aren’t that big.”
“You might be surprised,” I said. I leaned forward and said very quietly, “I’m not. Leaving. The kid.”
Nurse Jen’s expression changed slowly, from skepticism to something very thoughtful. “You mean that, don’t you?”
“Every word.”
She nodded. Then she called, “Steve.”
The security guard lumbered into the room from the hall outside.
“Mr. Dresden will be staying with Mr. Pounder for a little while. Could you please ask the cafeteria to send over two dinner plates instead of one?”
Steve frowned, maybe trying to remember how to count all the way to two. Then he glowered at me, muttered a surly affirmative, and left, speaking quietly into his radio as he went.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the food.”
“You’re lying to me,” she said levelly. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m not telling you the whole truth,” I said. “Subtle difference.”
“Semantic difference,” she said.
“But you’re letting me stay anyway,” I noted. “Why?”
She studied my face for a moment. Then she said, “I believe that you want to take care of Irwin.”
THE FOOD WAS very good—nothing like the school cafeterias I remembered. Of course, I went to public school. Irwin woke up long enough to devour a trayful of food and some of mine. He went to the bathroom, walking unsteadily, and then dropped back into an exhausted slumber. Nurse Jen stayed near, checking him frequently, taking his temperature in his ear every hour so that she didn’t need to wake him.
I wanted to sleep, but I didn’t need it yet. I might not have had the greatest academic experience in childhood, but the other things I’d been required to learn had made me more ready for the eat-or-be-eaten portions of life than just about anyone. My record for going without sleep was just under six days, but I was pretty sure I could go longer if I had to. I could have napped in my chair, but I didn’t want to take the chance that some kind of attack might happen while I was being lazy.
So I sat by Bigfoot Irwin and watched the shadows lengthen and swell into night.
The attack came just after nine o’clock.
Nurse Jen was taking Irwin’s temperature again when I felt the sudden surge of cold, somehow oily energy flood the room.
Irwin took a sudden, shallow breath, and his face became very pale. Nurse Jen frowned at the digital thermometer she had in his ear. It suddenly emitted a series of beeping, wailing noises, and she jerked it free of Irwin just as a bunch of sparks drizzled from its battery casing. She dropped it to the floor, where it lay trailing a thin wisp of smoke.
“What the hell?” Nurse Jen demanded.
I rose to my feet, looking around the room. “Use a mercury thermometer next time,” I said. I didn’t have much in the way of magical gear on me, but I wasn’t going to need any for this. I could feel the presence of the dark, dangerous magic radiating through the room like the heat from a nearby fire.
Nurse Jen had pressed a stethoscope against Irwin’s chest, listening for a moment, while I went to the opposite side of the bed and waved my hand through the air over the bed with my eyes closed, trying to orient the spell attacking Irwin’s aura, so that I could backtrack it to its source.
“What are you doing?” Nurse Jen demanded.
“Inexplicable stuff,” I said. “How is he?”
“Something isn’t right,” she said. “I don’t think he’s getting enough air. It’s like an asthma attack.” She put the stethoscope down, turned to a nearby closet, and ripped out a small oxygen tank. She immediately began hooking up a line to it, attached to one of those nose-and-mouth-covering things, opened the valve, and pressed the cup down over Irwin’s nose and mouth.
“Excuse me,” I said, squeezing past her in order to wave my hand through the air over that side of the bed. I got a fix on the direction of the spell and jabbed my forefinger in that direction. “What’s that way?”
She blinked and stared at me incredulously. “What?”
“That way,” I said, thrusting my finger in the indicated direction several times. “What is over that way?”
She frowned, shook her head a little, and said, “Uh, uh, the cafeteria and administration.”
“Administration, eh?” I said. “Not the dorms?”
“No. They’re the opposite way.”
“You got any lunch ladies that hate Irwin?”
Nurse Jen looked at me like I was a lunatic. “What the hell are you talking about? No, of course not!”
I grunted. This attack clearly wasn’t the work of a vampire, and the destruction of the electronic thermometer indicated the presence of mortal magic. The kids were required to be back in their dorms at this time, so presumably it wasn’t one of them. And if it wasn’t someone in the cafeteria, then it had to be someone in the administration building.
Dr. Fabio had been way too interested in making sure I wasn’t around. If it was Fabio behind the attacks on Irwin, then I could probably expect some interference to be arriving—
The door to the infirmary opened, and Steve and two of his fellow security guards clomped into the room.
—anytime now.
“You,” Steve said, pointing a thick finger at me. “It’s after free hours. No visitors on the grounds after nine. You’re gonna have to go.”
I eased back around Nurse Jen and out of the room Irwin was in. “Um,” I said, “let me think about that.”
Steve scowled. He had a very thick neck. So did his two buddies. “Second warning, sir. You are now trespassing on private property. If you do not leave immediately, the police will be summoned and you will be detained until their arrival.”
“Shouldn’t you be out making sure the boys aren’t sneaking over to the girls’ dorms and vice versa? ’Cause I’m thinking that’s really more your speed, Steve.”
Steve’s face got red. “That’s it,” he said. “You are being detained until the police arrive, smart-ass.”
“Let’s don’t do this,” I said. “Seriously. You guys don’t want to ride this train.”
In answer, Steve snapped his hand out to one side, and one of those collapsible fighting batons extended to its full length and locked. His two friends followed suit.
“Wow,” I said. “Straight to the weapons? Really? Completely inappropriate escalation.” I held up my right hand, palm out. “I’m telling you, fellas. Don’t try it.”
Steve took two quick steps toward me and raised the baton.
I unleashed the will I had been gathering and murmured, “Forzare.”
Invisible force lashed out and slammed into Steve like a runaway car made of foam rubber. It lifted him off his feet and tossed him back, between his two buddies, and out the door of the infirmary. He hit the floor and lost a lot of his velocity before fetching up against the opposite wall with an explosion of expelled breath.
“Wah,” I said, Bruce Lee style, and looked at the other two goons. “You boys want a choo-choo ride, too?”
The pair of them looked at me and then at each other, gripping their batons until their knuckles turned white. They hadn’t had a clear view of exactly what had happened to Steve, since his body would have blocked them from it. For all they knew, I’d used some kind of judo on him. The pair of them came to a conclusion somewhere in there that whatever I had pulled on Steve wouldn’t work on both of them, and they began to rush me.