WILDFLOWER
Chapter Two
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
The phone rings and I’m sitting on the concrete stairs at the hospital shaking. My teeth tear at my fingertips and, despite the handrail over my head, it’s my pink scrubs that are the only thing grounding me.
“C’mon girl,” I beg while the phone continues to ring. “Please pick up.”
For a second, the phone stops ringing. For a second there’s hope.
“Hey girl! You’ve reached Ivy. Unfortunately, I can not come to the phone right now but please leave me a message and I’ll get back to you real soon. Mwuah.”
I don’t hear a beep. I hear my heart shattering and I hear myself choking on sobs.
“Ivy,” I can barely get it out before my voice breaks. “I don’t know what happened. If I did something or if I said something - just,” It’s hard to speak. “Just please, just call me back. Text me. Let me know you’re safe. Please.”
It’s been three weeks since the last time I’ve seen her.
My trembling fingers find the end call button and I collapse.
It’s been three weeks since she left the apartment that night. At first, I didn’t think anything - Ivy disappears all the time, but she’s never been gone this long. I tried asking her what she had going on, but Ivy loves her secrets. It was like that almost immediately after we moved in together where she’d be gone a night, maybe a couple days. But she would come right back. And Ivy never ignores a text. She replies maybe an hour, at most, later.
But there’s nothing I can do right now. I take a staggering breath and get up sucking the fear right back into myself and tucking it away.
The nurse’s station is buzzing as usual. Screams fill the halls as a patient was passing on a gurney. His wrists were restrained but under his nails, I could see blood and skin. My eyes wandered up to his face where red streaked tracks made lanes for his tears and black veins spidered around his eyes. Violet foams around his mouth as he begs, “please stop him!”
“Girl, there you are.” Alyssa comes up behind me.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Obsidian shit.” She grumbles.
And I immediately understood what was happening. In our world, there’s magic everywhere. It’s in the way you speak, the way a child draws and the way a person dances, the way you do your hair and make up. It’s even in the way you breathe. Magic is foundational to the country, the land, to our spirit. It makes us stronger, it makes us smarter, it helps the way we perceive and navigate life. The way we talk to and meet other people.
That’s how Ivy explained it.
“Everyone has access to magic,” She’d say when she asked why I never practiced. “But if you don’t use it, you lose it.”
“I don’t know, I just, never felt like I needed to.” I’d respond. “I mean, if it’s like putting on make up in the morning, well then why cant I choose when I want to and when I don’t want to wear makeup?”
“Because you can always be prettier.”
Magic is a life booster - an enhancer.
But that’s not what’s going on here. The way this man is writhing in pain. The way this man is screaming. The way his veins have blackened.
This is not an enhancer.
“He was such a sweet kid,” Alyssa said. “He used to live a couple blocks over from me before Mimi was born.”
“What happened to him?”
“The fucking Obsidians.”
Everyone knows the name. Everyone knows someone who’s affiliated with them. Everyone knows someone whose life was ruined by them.
“It’s disgusting.” I shake my head. “How do they keep getting away with this?”
“Money.” Alyssa snorts.
“Money? That’s it?”
“Money, fear, connections. You got that, you don’t need nothin’ else.” Alyssa says. “It keeps people looking the other way.”
I got sick. “Corruption plaguing a nation like Xynthonia is insane to me.”
“Yeah, but what can you do?”
“And nobody stands up to them.” I’m shaking my head, eyes finding the patient who was just wheeled in. A nurse has just sedated him and is putting an IV into his arm. The black veins aren’t receding but his head lulls over as the heart monitor beeps him a lullaby.
“Who would?” Alyssa responds. “They run basically all of Blackveil. Not only that, they’re some of the most powerful sorcerers in the country. Their hands are in so many pockets, I wouldn’t even be surprised if they basically owned half of Monoris.”
“How do you know all this?” I ask her.
There's a tick in Alyssa’s face. She blinks once and I can see her throat bob. “Everyone knows. You ever seen those black suits? The way the bouncers aren’t like bouncers anywhere else,” She starts. “You can’t see magic, but you can feel it, whether you practice or not. Trust me, you can feel it where the Obsidians be at.”
I couldn’t help but notice how she didn’t answer my question so I asked again. “Alyssa, how do you know?” I say slower.
And with hesitation, she finally says it. “Because Enzo is one of them.”
It’s like all the sound goes out the room and time stops.
“What?”
In a loud whisper, she says it again. “My husband is one of them.”
When I met Alyssa, we were in Nursing school. We carried each other through the courses. She wasn’t loud like Ivy but she spoke up for herself. No one, not even our seniors, was going to bully her and get away with it. Her smile lit up her face and more importantly, if Alyssa felt it was right, she was going to do it, protocol be damned.
But now, I see someone else. Now, I see someone who would marry someone, devote the rest of her life, to someone who ruins other people. And for what? So I turn away and inhale.
“I want him out. He promised me he’d get out, but the Obsidians are dangerous - I know. And now he’s out every night, all night.”
“Out where?” I ask. “Do you think he’s cheating?”
Alyssa’s brow furrows and she gives me an incredulous look. “What, no, Enzo would never -,” and then she pauses. “At least, I didn’t think he would before you said that stupid shit.”
I breathe. “Sorry, I’m just-,” I start but intuition makes me do a hard stop. “I’ve been stressed out a lot lately.” I say.
“What’s going on?”
I shake my head. “It’s nothing, I just been overwhelmed with work and all this shit about the Obsidians. I don’t even know what number this one is this week,” I gesture to the latest patient, now stable. Now asleep.
Alyssa shakes her head. “I know. I feel you girl. And all this shit with Enzo.” She swallows. “No, I don’t think he’s cheating.”
“Then what do you think is going on?”
“He tells me he’s working.”
“Every night?”
“Every night.” You can hear the anger in her voice rising. “Every fucking night. Some club, some party, some meeting. And what’s worse is he won’t tell me anything, and when he does it’s just enough to shut me up. So he may as well be cheating because now, I’m hiding around corners in my own house. Coming home after hours here just to creep around and hear him whispering on the phone.”
“Wow, that is a lot.” I breathe.
“Yea girl, it is,” She pauses. “You know that place downtown? The one made from the abandoned church?”
“The nightclub?” My heart started beating and my jaw tightened.
“Yeah. The Black Diamond.”
“Huh?”
My stomach dropped.
Suddenly, I’m back in my apartment.
Ivy is in the vanity in my room applying her make up and adjusting her wig.
She’s telling me to come with her.
I’m telling her “no”.
Ivy rolls her eyes and goes anyway.
“That’s one of their spots. One of the most popular in Monoris.”
The last place Ivy said she was going. To her job as a waitress and bottle girl.
The Black Diamond.
