Dahlia - The Velvet Witch and Her Dark Spirit

PART 19 - CASSANDRA COMPLEX

"What the fuck have you done," I scream at the rent-a-cop.

He babbles something, but he's more out of it than Dahlia.

"Shut up," I yell at him as I drop down and yank the darts out of Dahlia's side.

He tries to call for backup, but the electrical storm has knocked out his radio.

"Nobody move," he says as he rushes out the door.

It was plain to see how this was going to look. Nobody would believe the diagnosed crazy lady even if she had saved Magnolia. They'll lock her up and throw away the key.

I scoop up Dahlia and push past Ruben. He's standing there with his jaw on the floor, and Maggie's hand clenched against his chest.

"Levi," he says but then says no more.

I shake my head and kick open the door. The hallway is empty, with tense voices coming from the nurse's hut.

"We need the police here, now," the security guard yells at someone.

"Levi," says Dahlia.

I look down at her lost moons.

"Where am I?"

"The hospital, we've got to get out of here."

"I think I can walk," she says gingerly.

I lower her down, and surprisingly, she's able to stand. We creep past the nurse's hut then shoot across to the fire exit. We slink down four sets of stairs and pop out in front of a radiology clinic.

A police car with its sirens screaming squeals to a stop out front. We duck back into the stairwell and watch as the two officers meet the rent-a-cop that tasered Dahlia.

"Follow me. I'll take you to them," he says as though he has just cuffed Al Capone.

Once the lift door shuts, we casually walk across the foyer and hope like hell the admin ladies aren't paying attention. They aren't, and soon enough, the two of us are in a black cab and on our way home.

Back at the flat, I pour a tall glass of whiskey and sink into the couch.

"Well, fuck," I say, not knowing where to start unpacking this one.

Dahlia is a mess. She's staring at the floor, sipping her whiskey and shaking her head with tears streaming from her eyes.

"Are you OK?"

She shakes her head, scrunches her eyes and sucks in a deep gasping breath through her mouth.

"Why?" she asks ever so innocently.

"I don't know."

But of course, neither Ruben nor the guard knew her intentions and were merely acting on impulse. Ruben has seen too much and must be turning Dahlia in right now. But the next two days pass without a peep, and I start to think she is safe.

Dahlia has slept ever since the hospital incident. To her, it was just another brush with authority where she'd come away bent and broken after giving her best the only way she knew how, through Magick.

I sit in the window arch for the third straight day, drawing and contemplating everything that's happened in the previous weeks. And in doing so, I've slowly lost my mind. I try to talk to Dahlia, but every time I do, she breaks down in tears. I even get to a point so desperate that I suggest a visit to Doctor Cross for a heavier dose of meds. But she shakes her head, and that's the end of that.

Finally, the outside world pricks our bubble. A call from Ruben comes in just before the clock reads midday.

"Ruben," I say, clearing a frog from my throat.