were, or what they were doing here.
Just then, a door a few feet in front of me swung open. I stopped mid-step and watched a skinny girl with matted brown hair, who was a couple of years younger than me, slip into the hall and close the door very gently behind her. She tiptoed across the hall and knocked on another door. For some reason, I’d been expecting only shamans here. The nurse wasn’t one, and neither was this girl.
The girl didn’t see the nurse come back around the corner and cross her arms over her chest.
“What are you doing?” The nurse’s shrill voice bounced off the walls.
The girl jumped and put her hands behind her back. I could see them shaking. She didn’t answer. Instead, she ran back across the hall and darted into her door.
The nurse strode forward with a deep frown and followed her inside. The door slammed shut behind them, and I cringed as I listened to the nurse yell, even though I couldn’t make out the words. The door was too thick for that. When the nurse came back out again, she took a ring of keys out of her pocket and locked the door.
I felt my face flame up in anger. She was locking the poor girl inside her room?
Only after the nurse had disappeared around the corner did I think about following after her. I paused at the girl’s door and looked at the lock. I could pick it. I wondered if I should. If the girl got out again, she’d probably just get into more trouble.
But maybe she would run away if I did it. Get away from this place. Whatever it was.
I took out my pick and fiddled with the lock. It clicked, a loud sound in the silent hallway. I wanted to tell the girl to leave, to run away, but I didn’t know how she’d react to a disembodied voice. I had my supplies in the backpack slung over my shoulder. I could cancel out the Shadow spell but not until I'd found out more about this building and who these people were.
On the way out, I told myself. On the way out, I’d become visible and get her out of here. Maybe even the others if this place was as creepy as I thought it was.
I turned the corner and found myself in some kind of lobby. There was an oval center desk, like at a regular hospital, with several nurses flittering around with clipboards or carts of food. A few couches sat nearby around a small coffee table covered in medical magazines. It looked like a waiting room, minus the patients waiting for their yearly checkups.
There were no signs, no pictures, no identifying tags. The white concrete walls were blank and lifeless. Dead.
I watched for a few moments as the nurse from the front door tittered in excited whispers with another woman who looked like she was in charge.
“Well, he isn’t here, Luanne,” said the nurse she was talking to, in a loud enough voice for everyone to hear. “And you know he won’t be very happy if we call him up about something like this.”
“Well, I just hope that boy doesn’t come back,” the nurse said. “He made up that story. He must know something. What if he’s in league with spirits?”
“He must only suspect something or he wouldn’t come creeping around here,” the other nurse said in an exasperated voice. “Plus, the wards are strong. You know that.”
So, they knew about spirits here. And who was this “he” they were talking about? It had to be the shaman.
“Can’t you at least log it in his books and have him check into it when he gets back?”
The head nurse tsked but nodded her consent. She moved past a row of doors and unlocked one that had several deadbolts. She disappeared inside, leaving the door open. The other nurses glanced over but continued on with their business, one disappearing down the hallway with a loaded food tray, humming a tune that sounded familiar.
I snuck along the wall and toward the open door. When I got there, I peered inside. It looked like a very fancy office complete with a curving oak desk, a wide-screen monitor and a high-backed leather chair. The nurse was scribbling something in a large notebook, bottom lip tucked under her tongue.
I held my breath and pleaded with my body to stay quiet while I slipped inside. I stood there waiting, barely breathing in