A Beautiful Dark

on my own. In fact, the last time I’d been there was when I was six, and that time, I was in the back of an ambulance. A memory flooded through me as I passed road sign after road sign.
    “Stay with me, Skye. Come on, stay with me, girl.” I was lying on a stretcher, and I couldn’t move any part of me. I was crying, but my tears kept running in between my cheeks and this plastic thing that was covering my mouth and helping me breathe. I was breathing very fast. I kept trying to ask where my parents were, but my words got trapped in the plastic thing, too. The nurse held my hand next to me and told me I had to calm down. I had to stop crying. She said, “Stay with me, Skye. Come on.” I wondered how she knew my name.
    “Skye!” Dan was waiting for me in the lobby. He jumped up when he saw me run through the automatic doors. He looked devastated, his eyes bloodshot with the hint of tears. “I’m so glad you’re here. Hospitals freak me out.”
    “Is she okay?” I asked hoarsely, feeling tears begin to swell in my own eyes.
    Dan looked crestfallen. “She’s unconscious. The doctors say they think she’ll be okay, but she hasn’t woken up yet.”
    We walked to the reception desk, where I signed in.
    “I hate hospitals, too,” I said, shivering.
    There were gurneys everywhere. “Where’s my mom?” I asked frantically when I figured out that all I had to do to be heard was pull the plastic thing off my mouth. “Where’s my dad?” I was sobbing and sobbing. All I knew was what the nurse had told me: they were in a different ambulance right in front of ours. They were on stretchers, too. The nurse reached for me and held the plastic thing in place. I tried to breathe normal like she told me, but it was hard. “Where are they?” I wanted to scream. “Which stretcher is them?” But no one could hear me. My words got trapped in my breathing, which stayed in the plastic thing and traveled away down many tubes.
    Cassie was in room 512. All down the hall, there were people in wheelchairs, people hooked up to oxygen tanks, people with IVs stuck in their arms. There were gurneys everywhere. My breath caught in my chest, shallow and quick. I knew I was sweating, and I was starting to see black spots in front of me. I pushed open the door. I’d had a room just like that one. Eleven years ago, almost exactly.
    Cassie’s mother, Evelyn, looked as though she’d aged a hundred years. I hugged her tightly.
    “I’m so sorry,” I said.
    When we separated, she explained that Cassie’s two brothers, Charlie and Matty, were upset and rowdy, so Cassie’s dad had taken them down to get Jell-O in the cafeteria.
    As I moved toward the bed, I cringed, trying not to let it show. Cassie had a black eye and bandages all over her arms. One leg was covered by a thin white blanket while the other hung suspended from the ceiling in a cast. She was asleep.
    “Cassie,” I whispered. “What happened to you?”
    Evelyn placed a comforting hand on my shoulder.
    “Her brakes weren’t working,” she whispered. “She spun out and hit a lamppost. That damn gas station did a hell of a job fixing her car!”
    “The gas station didn’t fix it,” I said, something dawning on me. “I’ll be right back.”
    I knew they were somewhere in the hospital. If I was there, they couldn’t be too far behind. I scoured the halls. I took the elevator to each floor, searching for any hint of feathers, dark or light hair. Anything.
    Devin was a Guardian. Devin had the power to heal. Devin could heal Cassie. He could make her better. I would make him do it.
    I found them in the lobby, hovering by the reception desk. Asher looked worried. Devin’s expression was harder to read. Did he already know her destiny? No, I wouldn’t believe that. I wouldn’t allow her to die.
    When Asher saw me, he ran to me and let me throw myself against his chest. “Is she okay?” he asked. “Is she badly hurt?”
    “She’s in a coma,” I said. “Or asleep, or unconscious. I don’t know. She hasn’t woken up yet. Devin! You have to heal her! You have to fix her, okay? Come on!”
    Devin looked confused. “What?”
    “She’s in room five twelve. Come on! Why are you being so slow? Let’s go!”
    A strange look crossed his face. “I can’t,” he said awkwardly. “I can’t heal her. I haven’t been given the order to do so.”
    “The order?” I repeated.
    I haven’t been given the order to do so.
    The Order.
    “Yes,” Devin said