Chapter 77

Jo and Cadon stepped out of the way as a flurry of longtime LIGHTS members from the US rushed to the door to greet Heather. There were hugs and cheek kisses all around, lots of questions about where she’d been, what she’d been doing, and why she’d been MIA, as well as plenty of comparisons to people’s parents. It wasn’t until Elliott said, “We searched half of Africa looking for you! Were we even on the right continent?” that some indication of what had become of Heather leaked out.
“Africa?’ the blonde asked. “Hell, no. I ain’t been in Africa for years. Too damn bright down there.”
“Bright?” Mandy, Elliott’s daughter, who clearly didn’t remember Heather and had a similar reaction to Jo’s when the cowgirl had declared she, “looked just like her mama,” questioned as she stood next to her dad, her arms folded beneath her bosom. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… you try bein’ in a damn portal for a hundred years and then you’ll understand. Ain’t the heat that bothered me. It was the brightness. Besides, when all of this hell broke loose, me and my man decided it was best to hightail it to the middle of nowhere and try to be inconspicuous.”
“Man?” Elliott echoed. It seemed to Jo that Mandy came by her lack of understanding naturally. “Did you get married?”
Heather’s already smiling face beamed into something even more cheerful as she nodded. “I did,” she said. “‘Bout time, too! Anyway, he stayed back. Hopefully, he’ll be okay till I get back there.”
“And where is there?” Scott wanted to know. He’d already been told how much he looked like his daddy and asked if he was going to play her a ragtime song on the piano later. Scott didn’t actually play the piano, but since he shared his name with a legendary pianist, those who knew who Scott Joplin was liked to ask him regularly to play them a tune, something like The Entertainer or Maple Leaf Rag. Scott was usually polite about it, but he didn’t actually play the piano, and Jo could distinctly remember a time when they were younger that he’d sworn, when he grew up, he was going to burn every piano on the face of the earth.
“Well, I reckon I wouldn’t be too good at hiding if I went and told everyone where I’d been, now would I?” Heather surmised, taking her white coat off and hanging it by the door. She kept her hat on. It was sort of like a fuzzy cowgirl hat, and while it didn’t quite look like something one would wear inside, Jo couldn’t quite figure out why she needed either the coat or the hat since the weather shouldn’t have bothered her, unless it was all just one fashion statement. Heather didn’t seem like the sort of girl who would care about making any sort of statement at all, though, so she was still puzzled when the woman asked, “Where’s Cass?”
An exchange of stares passed between Jo, Elliott, Scott, and Cadon, the four of them assuming one of them should be the one to answer the question. “Well,” Elliott began, rubbing his chin, “she’s in one of the bedrooms with Brandon.”
“I gave her a sedative,” Scott added. “It was the only way we could get her to calm down.”
“She has no idea who she is,” Cadon added, sounding more upset than he had about anything in a long time.
“I know,” Heather said with a resounding nod of her head. “I got her distress signal a few days ago and headed this direction. Seems like it’s gotten a lot worse in the last few hours, though.”
“A few days ago?” Jo said before she realized the echoing epidemic had struck her. “But… Cassidy just hit her head today. She was fine a couple of days ago.”
“Was she?” Heather asked the question like she already knew the answer was no. “Are you sure about that?”
“The cave,” Elliott reminded all of them. It hadn’t been too long ago that Cassidy had been buried in the rubble of the cave-in after the explosion in the mine.
“What did she tell you?” Jo asked, not sure she quite understood what was happening. If Cassidy had contacted Heather, why hadn’t she said anything to any of them?
Heather shook her head. “No, honey, it don’t work like that. I just knew she was in trouble. I been hidin’ all of my thoughts from everyone for a while now. She wasn’t able to find me neither. But when she was in distress, it hit me like a ton of bricks. And that’s when I knew the jig was up.”
Thinking she had some sort of an understanding of what Heather was saying, though she didn’t quite grasp how it all worked, she decided it was best to just take her to her aunt. “Does it matter that she’s unconscious?” she asked as she gestured for Heather to follow her.
“Nope,” was the reply. “It’ll actually be better that way.”
Heather followed Jo down the hallway to the bedroom where Cassidy was sleeping, still tied securely, and Brandon was sitting in a chair, waiting for her to wake up, praying she’d be herself. Jo knew all of this through his IAC. He was aware that Heather was there, and as they approached, he stood to meet them at the door.
“Brandon!” Heather exclaimed, paying no mind to Cassidy since no amount of noise would wake this sleeping princess. She flung her arms around his neck, and he gave her a bone crushing hug. Jo waited for her to tell him he looked just like his daddy, but she didn’t. “Don’t worry,” she said as he set her back on her feet. “We’ll get it all sorted out.”
“I’m so glad to see you.” The relief was evident in Brandon’s tone. “I think you’re the only one who can fix her.”
“I will do my best,” Heather promised him. Elliott, Cadon, and Scott had followed her back to the room, as well as Cale, who seemed more curious than anything else. He knew Heather; they had greeted one another, but he wasn’t one of the enthusiastic group who’d declared how happy they were to see the Hybrid either. Jo’s eyes flickered from the blond doctor back to the blonde cowgirl as she noted that Dr. Ryan’s bitterness at the world seemed to be more prevalent the longer the mission went on.
Heather pulled a chair close to the bed and smoothed back Cassidy’s hair that didn’t need smoothing. “Well, now, girly,” she said quietly. “Let’s see what’s going on in there.”
Jo didn’t know if they should all leave the room, give the two Hybrids some privacy, or stand there and gawk at Heather as she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind to try and find out what was going on in her aunt’s head. Since no one else moved to leave, she didn’t either.
Heather was perfectly still for a long while, only her shallow breaths and the occasional flutter of her eyelids letting them know she was still with them. The rest of them also tried not to move, as if a sudden movement or a loud noise might make Heather lose her train of thought and abandon Cassidy at a station so far away, she’d never be able to find a ride back home.
When Heather’s mismatched eyes finally flung open, she took a deep breath, her gaze fluttering from face to face, as if she couldn’t quite remember who was supposed to be in the room.
Brandon spoke first. “Well?” he asked. “How is it? Is she going to be okay?”
Heather shook her head slowly. “It’s bad,” she told him, not pulling any punches. “She doesn’t remember… anything. She doesn’t know who anyone is, including herself. She doesn’t know who she is, let alone what she is. She’s terrified because she knows she should know who she is, and since she doesn’t, she’s freaking out about everything. It’s like Holland completely fried her hard drive.”
“Son of a bitch,” Brandon muttered, his dad’s hand coming down on his shoulder in a show of support, but Elliott didn’t look any stronger than his child at the moment. “What can you do? There’s got to be something.”
A hint of a smile came over Heather’s face as she said, “I’ve got some ideas.”
Brandon blew out a long breath. “Thank God. Do whatever you need to do, Heather. You’re the only one that can save her.”
“Don’t worry, Brandon. I’ll figure it out,” Heather assured him, and something about the way she said it made Jo believe her, even though, from the sound of things, it was going to be a tough road. “If I can find some of her memories and bring them back to the front of her mind, I think she’ll be able to pull out the rest, but it’s going to be slow going. Her mind is like a forest, ya see. It’s like the damn jungle with trees and vines and critters everywhere. And it ain’t like I’m lookin’ for an X that marks the spot where her memories are hidden. It’s like I’m lookin’ for a damn tree. A damn tree that looks like the rest of the damn trees. And there are hundreds of thousands of them.”
The situation sounded pretty dire to Jo when Heather put it like that. But she had to trust that Heather would figure it out because no one else was going to be able to do anything to help Cassidy. She reminded herself that her aunt was one of the toughest women she’d ever met and knew, if anyone would keep fighting for Cassidy Findley Keen, it was herself.
“What do you need?” Jo asked Heather, remembering that she was allegedly in charge of this fiasco.
“Just a few hours alone with her,” Heather replied. “We’ll start with that. See what I can unravel. Brandon can stay if he wants to, but if everyone else could skedaddle, that’d help.”
“Sure,” Jo said, already headed toward the door. She almost clapped her brother on the back as she passed him, intending to usher him out in a friendly manner, but she caught herself and remembered they weren’t friendly and let it be. He was already headed toward the door anyway, as was everyone else except for Brandon and Heather. Elliott was the last one out. He closed the door quietly and sighed. Jo did put her hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be okay. She’ll get her back.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look so sure of himself. He didn’t say anything, only pressed his lips together in a tight, forced smile, and then headed toward the living room. Everyone else was headed that way, too, except for Scott.
“You look like you need a nap,” he said to her.
“Thanks,” Jo said, smirking at him.
He grinned. “I could’ve said you look like hell, but I thought I’d be nice. For once.”
She shook her head. He was almost always nice. “I’m exhausted,” she admitted. The idea of finding an empty bed was a good one. She knew some of the other Hunters had already collapsed. She needed to go over the footage from the attack. Something about the way the Vampires broke ranks wasn’t sitting right with her. Watching the film from various perspectives might clue her into what had actually happened. She also wanted to check in and see if Adrian’s people were still tailing Holland. But Scott was right. All of that was going to have to wait.
“I think I will go lay down,” she said. “Will you have someone come and wake me up if anything changes?” She nodded her head at the closed door, indicating she meant Cassidy, but then, changes in the status of anything would probably be worth telling her about.
“Sure,” he said with a small smile. “Sweet dreams.”
A loud chuckle escaped her lips, coated in sarcasm. “Thanks.” Jo headed down the hallway in search of a bed and hopefully no dreams at all. The chances of them being sweet were next to none, so it was always better not to dream than experience a nightmare even worse than the living hell she’d been stuck in for as long as she could remember.