Edie

After a moment the female cop returned. “I’ve made sure his cuffs are secure,” she said. “We can’t predict his actions now, and he might attack you if he thinks you’ve turned against him. But he’s still being quiet, so I think you’ll be all right.”

“You two can come into the observation room with me,” said Officer Mustafa, gesturing to the next door down. Edie squeezed Corrie’s hand, then followed him inside, while Corrie went into the interrogation room.

The questioning was over quickly, and Officer Mustafa escorted Edie into the hallway while he went off somewhere else, apparently trusting Professor Lal to keep an eye on her, or them to keep an eye on each other. The two of them waited for a couple of minutes in silence before Corrie and the female cop came out of the room. Corrie caught Edie’s eye and smiled. Edie smiled back.

The police were quite easy-going about having Edie and Professor Lal come along; in fact, the one female cop said that she was glad Corrie had a friend and a responsible adult to go with her. Riding in the back of the police car was uncomfortable, and a longer ride than Edie had expected—they must have been going back to the city, or to some other centralized police department, rather than just the West Ashburn police—but nothing stopped or stalled them.

When the nurse came in, he didn’t seem all that surprised to see Corrie awake, alert, and with no apparent signs of trauma. He brought a doctor to check her out, and the doctor pronounced her well, but was still reluctant to let her out of the hospital until Edie, Dawn, and Roe all promised to keep watch over her and Edie explained that she was Corrie’s roommate and would definitely be in the same room with her for the rest of the night.

A noise at the door made Edie nearly jump out of her seat. She turned around quickly, not letting go of Corrie’s hand. Had the doctors or nurses figured something out? She was slightly embarrassed by her first reaction, that it was Paul coming back to attack them again… but it was better than any of her ideas. Dawn was in the front of the group, followed by Rico, Roe, Professor Lal, and a redheaded woman she didn’t recognize, but who had to be on their side.

People kept asking Edie what had hit Corrie on the head, and she had to keep saying she didn’t know. As far as she had seen, nothing had hit Corrie on the head. But whatever was wrong with her, it must seem like a head injury, because that was how they were treating her. After they dried Corrie off and put her in a dry hospital gown, a pair of nurses shaved Corrie’s head—Edie hated to see it done—and inspected every inch of her scalp, face, and jaw, but apparently found nothing.

The ambulances reached the gates seconds after Dawn, her friends, and the security guards did. The police arrived shortly after that, while they were loading Corrie onto a stretcher and into one of the ambulances. “He should come to the hospital and get dried off,” one of the EMTs, a youngish woman with a tight blonde ponytail, said to the police.

“Fine with me,” said the older cop with a nod. “As long as we can question him.”

“Don’t put him in the same ambulance with Corrie,” Dawn said.

“Of course not,” the EMT said, giving her a dirty look.

“Keep holding him, Edie,” Corrie said. Dawn couldn’t completely see what they were doing, since there was practically a wall of water between them, and it was taking all her strength just to keep enough water flowing to keep Paul down and confused. She just hoped that they were going to get the knife away from Paul soon.

“Oh my god!” Corrie screamed. She tried to run toward Dawn, but she was still in trance, and she fell. She tried to yank herself out of trance, pulling her consciousness up hard, but when she tried to stand she was dizzy, and she knew she’d done it wrong. “Dawn!” she cried. Edie was screaming, too.

When Corrie started to bring herself into trance, she realized that she was glad to have her friends there, even if she had argued that they didn’t need to come. Not that she expected an attack, but the faeries were obviously up to something weird, and if something happened while she was still in trance, she could be helpless. She couldn’t move while still in trance, not unless she wanted to fall down again, but Dawn and Edie could easily keep an eye out for her. It wasn’t likely that she’d need them, but it was better to have them there anyway.