Last Call (Last Call 1)

"You certainly don't look like you've been too sick to visit him," the nurse said coldly, standing in an almost protective posture beside Scat's bed. "You look like you've been at some kind of health resort." She looked Diana squarely in the eye then, and must have sensed her real agony, for after a moment her expression softened. "Well, he's better. You can see he's breathing on his own now. He's being fed through the nasal gastric tube; the IV is mainly just for hydrating and antibiotics and to keep a line open for anything we want to get into his veins fast." She waved toward the monitor over the bed. "His vital signs are stable. He's"—she shrugged—"just very deeply asleep."

Diana nodded. "Could I be alone with him?" she said softly.

"Sure."

The nurse had started toward the door, and Diana added, "I'm supposed to be meeting Dr. Bandholtz in the lobby in a few minutes. Could you not tell him I'm here yet? I'll be down soon."

"Okay."

Diana looked down at her son in the tilted-up hospital bed, and she bit her knuckle. The green nasal gastric tube dented his blond curls on the right side of his head; the left side was bandaged, but she could see that his scalp had been shaved on that side. His eyes and mouth were closed, but he was breathing gently, and the monitor over him beeped regularly and showed a regularly bouncing green line on its black screen.

Even if I'd been here every day, she told herself earnestly, he wouldn't have known. He's probably dreamed of me, and that's been more immediate than my physical presence would have been.

Until today. Today, with the full moon overhead, I might make a difference by being here.

She reached out toward the little limp hand that was bound to the rail of the bed by a strip of plastic.

And then she stopped, for she had heard the solid click-and-snap of an automatic pistol being chambered behind her.

For three heartbeats she just stood there with her arm extended; then she lowered her arm and turned around.

It was the young Asian woman she'd seen in the lobby downstairs. The barrel of the gun she held was lengthened with a fat metal cylinder—a silencer, Diana was sure.

"Do you mean to kill me?" Diana asked. Her voice was calm, though her heart thudded and her fingertips were tingling. "Or him? Or both of us?"

"You. My name is Bernardette Dinh."

"Diana Ryan. Uh—why?" Dinh was too far away across the carpet for Diana to be able to kick the gun, and there was nothing she could hope to grab and throw. She could dive behind the bed, but if Dinh shot at her the bullet would probably hit Scat.

"To be Queen. Do you have any change in your pockets? Bring it out slow, and if you throw it, I'll shoot."

Mystified but glad of any delay, Diana slid her hand into the pocket of her jeans, then took it out and held it forward in her palm.

The quarters and dimes still shone silver, but the pennies were all black.

With her free hand Dinh reached into her own pocket and took out a penny. It was shiny red-brown.

"See?" she said. "And if you've tried to wear linen during the last few days, you'll have noticed it goes black, too, just like the pennies." She was talking fast, licking her lips nervously between phrases. "And purple cloth bleaches if you touch it. And if you should happen to approach a beehive, the bees will all leave the hive. All this year those things have happened to me at my time, at the full moon."

"You want to become the Queen," said Diana. "Why?"

"I didn't really come here to talk. Why? To … for the power of it. For the family of it, to be a—a mother, in the profoundest way."

"I already am a mother."

Dinh glanced past Diana toward Scat. "Biologically, I guess. Maybe you sent a lot of get-well cards."

Diana felt her face reddening, but she made herself smile. "And you'd kill me to get that? You'd make a ten-year-old boy an orphan to get that?"

"I'll—I'll adopt him. I'm going to have a very big family."

"But I'm the Queen's daughter."

"Damn it, that's why I've got to. With you gone, I'm the most natural successor." Dinh sighed unsteadily. "There's lots of deaths in this, you know that. Death waits in the desert and in the hot sky, for any of us. I don't know how many times I've thought of suicide."

"Is it important?"

"Suicide?"

"No, how many times you've thought about it. Is this gonna hold us up? Couldn't we say, like, a hundred, and be okay?"

Dinh blinked, and her mouth worked and then kinked in a narrow smile.

Diana reached slowly out to the side, bending her knees to lower herself, and touched Scat's hand. Dinh gasped, looking at the boy, so Diana felt safe in looking, too.

Scat's eyes were open.

His blue eyes swung blankly from his mother to Dinh and then back again, and then the irises shifted slightly as he focused.

His mouth opened, and he started to speak, then coughed hoarsely. "Mom," he croaked finally.