Chapter 163 - Unexpected Company

And what a beautiful city it was. Not one with the longest history, but the one with one of the richest. As if millenniums of happenings were crammed together in just three centuries, greased by money invested, sprinkled with imported culture. It said something that during these three hundred years the city had time to be renamed not just once, or twice, but thrice—from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd to Leningrad and back to Saint Petersburg.

But it was one thing for me to like this city where I grew up, or for tourists that came to look at all the museums and art galleries, and another for a demon/angel from another dimension to like it.

"If he's so good, the demon, he'd be good enough to go and like some other place. One that's far away from people. Like Antarctica. Now that's be just great," was my last word on this topic. "Come on, Ghost. We have people waiting for us."

He made one lazy stretch of his limbs before standing from his plastic chair and giving me a peppy grin. "That we do! See you later, Jean."

I took a glance at the connected teens who were back to their news feed again, then at other patients, including ours, who went asleep as soon as the darkness behind his eyes stopped echo with a feeling of bone-chilling cold. When I made sure that no one paid me much attention, I gave JJ a quick kiss on the lips, and before he say anything, ran out after Ghost.

Was it love that made me, even now, feel like a giggly child when I did that to him? Was it love that made me, if for a moment, forget about the oppressive aura of hopelessness and suffering that seeped from these white walls? If yes, then more people needed that in their lives, and people who had it already, needed more. I needed more. There was no limit on how much love you could need.

Too bad that for now, at least, I had to settle with what I had.

⠀⠀

There been plenty of confused and baffled people mixed together with the ones aware of the existence of magic. Good thing that all that "yes, yes, magic is real" routine wasn't a part of my obligations.

I just had to assist Ghost. I picked up plenty from the practice, especially now that we mostly worked on non-witches. There were a ton of aspects making a healthy human body, and a lot of them were purely individual: thoughts, feelings, memories, personality. I found you could heal mental disorders with magic just as physical (except that it was even more tricky, of course, and required an awful lot of precision and finesse).

You didn't always have to fine-tune everything. Many simpler traumas, as Ghost told me, could be healed by the body itself. Witch could just slap some life into the body to give it more resources. But that alone won't stop everything, and when fighting something as inevitable as old age, you had to be very thorough in stopping everything. What was the point of having youthful body if your mind deteriorated, anyway? And so on.

I'd be glad to hear more about the details of reverting age, but I and Ghost didn't have that much time between our assignments.

It's been late at night by the time the chief healer—not to mix up with the chief physician, who was non-magic doctor—told us we could leave. Or have a nap in the resting room, but after quick consideration, we waived that up.

A positive prognosis was that, in a couple, maybe three more days, we will be done with the afflicted and would only have public opinions to worry about.

"I want to sleep in my own bed," I said as our team of four walked down the street to the place where Ghost parked our lent out car. "My own bed. Damn, I had milk in the fridge. It's, what, five days old by now? I hope it didn't spoil. Since the demon is calmed down, I think Elena has to let me."

"I don't want to go to my dorm room," Panda said. "The bed in your coven, Diana, is so much softer… And no cockroaches, either."

"Right, you still live in the dorm." I gave her a sympathetic nod. "I've seen those rooms and awfully glad to never live in them."

"I can't count the amount of cockroaches I accidentally boiled in my kettle. They keep getting in like they smell honey inside or something," Panda shuddered. "And once we had one get inside the fridge somehow. The fridge!"

Our conversation came to a sudden halt when JJ put a hand on my shoulder. A single look at his face was enough for me to tense and stop in my tracks, even before he spoke out loud.

"Ma chèrie, we have some unexpected company." An anticipatory smile bloomed on his lips. "You should go to the car with Ghost and Sveta."

They stopped too and, mirroring me, looked around in confusion, trying to see what JJ saw in the many shadows around. "Company?" Ghost was the most clueless.

Panda, though, appeared to have some ideas about what sort of company, and these ideas made her already pale face white as a sheet. Contrary to her, I didn't feel pale at all. I felt sick.

"Who's that?" I asked through gritted teeth. "What's up with people and coming up at night and, what, attacking? Do you want to attack us, whoever you are?"

I opened my well to see what my eyes couldn't. Normally I didn't look at auras beyond five meters away, but this time I stretched my area of sensation until I caught the bright auras that surrounded us. Every way from the street was blocked by one or two. Not humans, but not vampires and not witches. They were full of life to the brim, and wild with souls of animals.

Shapeshifters. Yeah, I doubted they just came to invite us to afternoon tea.