Ruby's face is swollen. The skin around her eyes is scaly and grey, slightly shiny. Her eyes are amethyst puddles.
I put my hand on hers. Her skin feels oddly rubbery. "It's you," she murmurs. "The witchy one."
"What happened?" I ask.
"I guess the fever didn't cool." A wry laugh escapes her lips.
I can't tell her she'll be fine, because I don't know. The doctors are running more tests, but all the initial ones came back negative. This might be one for Witch Doctors Inc.
Addy is on her way, but she stopped by to see her mother quickly. They'll probably both come by the hospital together. Queen Irine seemed oddly shaken.
"Heard there was a murder," Ruby says.
"We don't know if it was a murder yet."
"Come on, Lily. No marks on him, no medical conditions. Just death. I'm thinking a hex, maybe a curse. That one is definitely coming our way."
I didn't sense a curse or hex on the body, but I can't tell her that. She'll want to know how I knew it without performing the necessary diagnostic spells. I can't well say I used my instincts as a witch.
"We'll see. You ought to focus on resting in the meantime. How do you feel?"
"Like someone who's in hospital."
Fair enough.
I'm not one for small talk, so I sit beside Ruby and watch as her chest rises and falls. Up...and down. In...and out. I avoid the tubes hooked up to her arms.
She's quiet enough that I think she's sleeping until I spot a telltale eye-roll. "Are you two going to come in, or just haunt the door frame?" Ruby splutters a little, but still pulls off the smirk.
Addy's hovering in the doorway with a stranger.
No, wait...not a stranger. I blink, unsure if I'm hallucinating things. Queen Irine's hair falls over her shoulders in a fade of barely-there blue. Her skin is missing its gold shimmer, and there are bags pulling at her once-sharp eyes. Her cotton blouse and threadbare skirt are more like something out of my own wardrobe than hers.
She purses her lips into a thin smile as Addy slips from her embrace and into the circle of artificial light around Ruby's bed.
Addy regards her colleague with round eyes. She takes in the scaly skin pressing at Ruby's eyelids. Her swollen cheeks. The greyness of her lips.
"Oh Ruby," she whispers. "Oh no..."
Ruby props herself up on her pillow with a surge of effort. "I'll be fine," she insists.
Addy doesn't move any closer.
"Uh, Addy? Are you alright?" I squint at my best friend, wavering there in the ice-bright light like a spectre of some kind.
"Adamantine," Queen Irine says gently.
Addy turns to her mother. "You were right, Hami," she says. "It's the snake sickness."