There was nothing to smile about once we got to the hospital.
The Kingussie Sanatorium was a two-story building made entirely of brown stones, and looked like it might crumble at any moment. Inside, the hallways were long and dark, and surprisingly dirty. And not with the kind of dirt you could just clean up, but with grime that looked like it had become part of the walls centuries earlier. Cracked florescent lights, which had probably been added to the ancient structure with the advent of electricity, flickered ominously. Even though it was daylight outside, inside, it might as well have been midnight.
I was relieved to get out of the creepy hallway and into Jo’s room, but only until I saw her. She was lying still, her skin sallow and her cheeks sunken in like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. Long, bloody scabs bisected her face. I wasn’t prepared for her to look so bad so quickly. And I definitely wasn’t prepared to see that she was tied down to the bed with wide restraints.
“She kept trying to scratch out her eyes,” her mother explained to us tearfully from the corner. “They finally had to sedate her. She was going wild. All the kids are.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
“I was hoping you could tell me, Maren,” Mrs. Dougall said through sniffs. “Weren’t you with her? Why aren’t you sick?”
I wondered if I had gotten more than the date rape drug at Anders’ party. Maybe Graham’s antidote had saved me from two horrible fates.
“I was, but she left pretty early to go see her grandmother,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Dougall’s face twisted with confusion. I wondered if lack of sleep and worrying about Jo had made her a little loopy.
“She got a text that her grandmother had a stroke,” I reminded her. “She came to the hospital to see her?”
“Her gran is fine,” Mrs. Dougall said slowly. “We didn’t text her. We found her this morning, lying on the front lawn. When we woke her up, she attacked us. The ambulance workers had to chase her out of a tree.”
I didn’t know what to say; I couldn’t explain it. Had I imagined Jo getting the text? Was that part of my drug hallucination?
“Where’s her phone?” I asked, wanting to prove myself not crazy as much as I wanted to help any investigation find out who had set up Jo.
“We don’t know,” Mrs. Dougall replied. “It’s missing.”
And not by coincidence, I thought grimly.
Twenty-eight other partygoers were in the hospital with the same symptoms. There were originally twenty-nine, but one boy struggled against the staff so fiercely, he bit his tongue in half and drowned in his own blood. Since then, all the patients had been strapped down and sedated.
Gavin excused himself and left me with Mrs. Dougall.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, my eyes suddenly swimming in tears. “I didn’t mean to abandon her. I thought . . .”
“Of course you didn’t, dear,” she said, crossing the room and wrapping me in her arms. “It’s not your fault. The police will find out what happened, don’t worry.”
But it was hard not to worry, and even harder not to blame myself. If only I hadn’t let her go. If only I had insisted on going with her . . .
I sat down next to Jo’s bed. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know how. Her face was a mess. I reached down to squeeze her hand, to let her know I was there. Her skin was ice cold.
I kept Mrs. Dougall company, tried to keep the mood light and my outlook optimistic, but it was hard with Jo lying next to us, looking like she was knocking at death’s door. And my good-friend guilt didn’t make it any easier. I didn’t know if I felt worse that Jo was hospitalized or that I wasn’t.
Stuart arrived to visit Jo, looking healthy but worried. I was glad he was unharmed, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder why. How was he spared? And what happened to him after I left for the bathroom? I never came back, but he never seemed to go looking for me, either. What did he think happened to me? Where had he been?
He wasn’t my guardian, of course. I shouldn’t have expected him to be, or think less of him because he wasn’t. Why couldn’t he have saved Jo, though, like Graham had saved me?
Gavin reappeared in the doorway.
“I promised your gran I’d get you back before dinner,” he apologized.
I stood up, probably too quickly. I was ashamed at how badly I wanted to leave, to be out of the world’s most depressing hospital.
“Say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton for me,” Mrs. Dougall said as we hugged good-bye. “I promise I’ll call you if we hear anything.
The cool outside air helped clear the dank and dust out of my head. As we walked across the parking lot to Gavin’s car, he told me what he’d learned.
“The early toxicology reports are totally clean. Nothing is showing up in the bloodstream of the kids. No drugs, no poison, no substances of any kind,” he said.
“How did you see the toxicology reports?” I asked.
He tossed me a smile that made my heart leap. “Charm will get you far in this world.”
“I know,” I answered. “But how did you get to see them?”
He stopped walking. “You don’t think I’m charming?” he asked. He looked crestfallen, but I couldn’t tell if he was serious or just playing with me.
“I’m sure you could be,” I said. “I just haven’t seen it yet.”
“I guess you haven’t been around me enough, then,” he said with a smile.
Is it possible to be around him enough? I thought. My stomach was full of tiny champagne bubbles.
He opened the car door for me, just as he had in my grandparents’ driveway. It made me feel grown-up and special and almost like we were on a date.
“The High Council knew something might happen in this area; that’s why I was assigned here,” he said as he drove me home. “But they didn’t know what. I guess we do now.”
The High Council. My mom’s letter had been addressed to the High Council. I guess they received reports from agents around the world. I kept quiet, hoping he would keep talking. He did.
“It looks like a faction of jinn demons are testing a new kind of killing, a chemical warfare that poisons the population.”
“Killing?” I thought of Jo. “Will everyone who’s infected die?”
He nodded. “Unless we get an antidote out here quickly, I’m afraid so.”
Antidote. The scrambled ribbon message from my mom’s journal flashed in my brain. Get antidote from Magnificat.
“What’s Magnificat?” I blurted out.
“How do you know that name?”
“I read it in some of my mom’s stuff,” I said. “What is it?”
“It’s a place. Well, more than one place, actually. Magnificat is a safe haven for humans working with angels. There’s one hidden in every major city.”
“Where’s the nearest Magnificat to us?” I asked.