Being inside a hospital always made Sandelene want to wash her hands. She never felt clean until she left. The whir of machines, the scrubs, the beeps and tears of all kinds. She always felt like a stranger in a foreign land, unsure how to act or behave, never knowing where to go or what to say or do. She even felt a little shy, walking up to the receptionist and asking after Officer Peabody.  She's his friend, she lied, when the receptionist, with an upturned nose and sharper eyes than a hawk's, hesitated. She'd heard he'd gotten hurt tonight and needed to see him to make sure he's safe. She gave the man her name, had been about to give up a long wait, when an off-duty officer (and actual friend of Peabody's) who'd heard her plea pulled her aside.

"He's not accepting visitors," Officer Saltz told her. Saltz looked a few years younger than the injured officer. It was in his eyes, Sandy thought; they were bright and fresh, as if they hadn't yet seen all the world had to offer. And his posture was the same way; trim and athletic. Brown eyes, blonde hair, a bit of a sunburn. Just a pup in her mind, at least as far as the force went.

"You don't understand," she said, pulling out her phone. "I have to see him. He's been asking after me, see? Right here, all these calls from your department."

Saltz, leaning his elbows against the grey counter, looked her over. "That's our number, but I've never heard mention of you. Peabody's got a mouth on him. If you were his leading lady, I-"

"I'm not, " Sandy was quick to correct, running a hand through her hair with a coy little smile. Saltz was rather handsome when he stared her down like that, and she took just a tiny bit of guilty pleasure in being able to announce that she was single. That is, until her fingers snagged on a bird's nest of a knot. She cursed, tried to rip her hand out and only made a slightly-smoothed mess of the left side of her head. "I was, uh, in the building with him when he got hurt."

Saltz pushed off the counter. The intense look in his eyes was no longer pleasant. "You were there?"

Sandelene's hands rose in instinctual defense. "Before you say anything, he'd only gone in because of me."

Saltz's eyebrows rose.

"That sounds bad, I know. I meant to say I was hired by the library owner to locate and dispose of a cursed object. You see, I'm a, a..." Her tongue felt thick and stupid. 'I'm a half-assed witch' sounded lame as fuck. She straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath, and declared with a head held not-quite-proudly, "I'm, I specialize in the magical arts trade. Officer Peabody was escorting me inside after I'd witnessed a, well shoot me now, this is gonna sound ridiculous. After I'd witnessed a dead man. You know, an apparition."

"A ghost?"

"Yeah, I know. But when you say it like that..."

"How am I supposed to say it, Miss Magic?"

"Sandelene," she said quickly. "Sandelene Jhel. And you're supposed to say 'ghost' like it's possible they exist." Or better yet, she thought, don't say it at all. She'd never been much of a believer until a few hours ago. She was beginning to feel quite certain that she wanted to go back to not being sure of their existence.

"I see," Saltz continued. "And have you given your statement?"

"No," she said, and the guilt hit her hard. She pulled at knotted strands, wincing. "I  sort of got what I came for, got scared when Officer Peabody disappeared, and ran away from the scene. I didn't mean any harm to befall him, and I didn't mean to-" She paused, corrected course, stopped trying to make herself look better. "Fuck it, yes, I meant to leave him behind. He didn't answer and I could feel it, deep in my bones, the malevolence in the silence that waited between me and him. It was like one of the horror movies, where you scream at the tv, 'Don't be stupid! Just leave! Don't look in!' Well, I didn't look.  I took off, and locked up the cursed object and went and got myself a drink before I could even think straight. And I'm not proud of acting so horribly,  but that's where we are. Where I am, sorry. So, I'm here to pay my respects if he'll let me see him. It's the least I can do. Could you help me do that, Officer?" 

"It's Captain," he said. "I must've said it three times."

Sandelene's cheeks reddened. "Oh," she muttered softly, and looked him over again.  He was a real good looking thirty-something year old. And a dark hoodie with jeans and a button down didn't look very official. Nevertheless, she was too much a ball of nerves in this strange environment, and there was no recovering from the embarrassment. She smiled weakly. "I'm sorry. Just tack on 'poor listener' to the rest of my crimes."

"It's alright," he said, "You're just a civilian, went through a traumatic incident. We don't expect everyone to be a hero." And he said it in a tone that was disapproving in the kindest way, like she'd expect from her grandmother. 'You've got beautiful calves, Sandelene, child. You don't need to hike your skirt up to your thighs to show them off.'

"Yeah, well," Sandelene began. "I don't apologize for getting out with my life. I just expected more from myself."

She felt herself fall once more into Captain Saltz's intense scrutiny. He wasn't pleased. She didn't need to pay attention to see the anger drawn into his pursed lips. After a stern warning that he expected her to come by the station, he moved back to reception and got her a visit with the wounded officer. As she passed on her thanks and headed for the elevator, Captain Saltz stopped her with a brush of his hand.

"If I were you," he said as she pulled away, "I'd lead with how grateful you are and how brave he is."

"Of course," she promised. "That's why I'm here."

*

From the way Saltz had been talking, Sandelene had expected Officer Peabody to maybe be sitting up in bed, smiling, chatting with a few officers while the tv played the news of his heroics in the background. What she found, after being let in by a grave young woman seated outside his room, was a battered and bruised man with eyes so swollen she couldn't tell if he was awake or not.

"Officer Peabody?" she called, easing into an uncomfortable chair at his bedside. The monitor blinked and beeped and announced his status to the world. It somehow felt too personal to look at. She studied the tile at her feet, instead. And when she looked at the speckled, lemon-scented surface she couldn't help but get the sticky, unclean feeling as she squirmed into a marginally improved position in the chair.

"Officer Peabody?"  she tried again when her voice returned. "It's Sandelene, the witch from the library. I wanted to thank you for saving me, and to apologize for leaving you." She paused, considered her encounter with Captain Saltz. "And to say you were very brave. I saw what hurt you, and I'm sorry it did. I want you to know that it can't hurt any of us anymore. I've got it under control."

Officer Peabody turned his head toward her, and in a thin voice called out. "How?" he asked. "What I saw, what it did...How?"

His arm was under a thin blue blanket. She wanted to peel it back. She didn't dare move her fingers off her lap. "Monsters have got their own laws. If you follow the rules, you can put them back in their box."  The best lies always contained a little grain of truth. Tonight, she hoped Officer Peabody was a bit too hurt, a bit too distracted, to question her over how magic worked.

And he didn't, at least, not directly.

"What's out there, on the dark side of life?"

"Nothing that will come for you tonight," Sandy assured him, pulling at the knot in her hair.

The man's eyes, too tired to spot a lie, had noticed the condition of her wrist and scratch on her arm. "It got you."

"No, this was a dumb bird," she said, rubbing her arm, suddenly conscious of the fact that he wasn't staring at her wrist or forearm at all. His eyes, round and white and filled with terror, had locked onto her neck. The moment she realized that, a hot, prickling fear started in her neck and burned through the veins in her arm. She reached a hand up, slowly, and felt  a series of five raised lines. Nail marks. Scratches.  She ran to the small bathroom in the room. Against her paling face the bright red slashes stood swelling and angry. Before her eyes the red surface turned full and white, then burst. A yellow pus dribbled into her shirt collar.

In a mad frenzy, she grabbed sheets of toilet paper, wound several layers around her palm and pressed the wad against her neck. Her eyes watered against the raw shock. It burned, burned like she'd been branded, sharp and searing.

A loud bang, accompanied by the startled scream of Officer Peabody, sent her stumbling through the door back into the room. The other officer was already there, gun lifted, voice a level below a commanding yell. "What happened?" Sandelene asked, holding her throat, teary-eyed and panting.

"Bird hit the glass," the other officer explained, holstering their gun. They nodded at her neck. "You alright?"

"Fine, yeah, fine," she said, scrambling past the two cops. "I'll be back late morning, Officer. I'm a little on edge tonight, and talking about that sort of subject is a lot less spooky in the daylight."

It isn't real, she told herself in the mechanical hum of the elevator. But she knew it was. She'd always known it was possible, the way you always knew winning the lottery was possible. It was an interesting dream, but it was never supposed to be real for you. It's not really possible.

She felt the stinging burn against her throat and swallowed hard, then called Margery.

*

Half an hour later, Margery paced the length of the curb in front of Smudge's darkened sign. The edge of his scarf fluttered in the breath of  rotted wind. "So you mean to say we kicked over a hornet's nest, and the woman I hired as a pest control specialist isn't more than a conartist?"

"I know my stuff," Sandelene said, folding her arms across her chest. "I'm in over my head, and I thought you should know before anything else happens."

Margery's shoes clicked against the concrete. "If it wasn't my money on the line, if it wasn't a priceless piece of American history...."

But Sandelene wasn't listening to him. A little splash, a ripple of water as if a toad had jumped through a puddle, caught her attention. She glanced at the gutter, and it was only luck that she'd seen it, it'd happened so fast. A hand, bones sheathed in filmy skin, tapped impatiently on the rain grate. It stiffened at the sight of her, then slunk, digit by digit over spotted leaves and road gunk, into the drain.