Worldweavers: Spellspam by Alma Alexander

bolted upright into a sitting position.
    The sharp movement made Tess lift her head. For a moment it looked like she might content herself with that and go back to her book, but then her eyes lost their soft, slightly unfocused look and her face lit up with a smile of genuine delight. She closed the book with one hand and crossed the room to perch on the edge of Thea’s bed.
    “Well, hello, Sleeping Beauty,” Tess said. “About time you woke up.”
    “What time is it?” Thea said. “What happened? Where is everyone? Did they really…”
    Tess laughed, lifting both hands to stem the outburst. “You slept for…” She consulted her watch briefly. “Well, it’s pretty close to twenty hours,” she said. “Another hour or two and Mrs. Chen would have had the nurse declare you to be in a coma and taken to the hospital. But Humphrey May said you’d be okay, and apparently he was right.”
    “Are they still here?” Thea asked.
    “Who?” Tess said. “The hotshot triplets? Yeah. Luana’s been prowling the place like a caged tiger. She was supposed to go back to Washington yesterday with Keir, but the car thatwas supposed to pick them up never arrived—and now apparently the bigwigs are sending a helicopter for them. Or so the rumors have it. It seems that whatever was going on with all of you folks just before you passed out has stirred up a nice little hornet’s nest back at headquarters.”
    “Could you start at the beginning, please?” Thea asked. Her hair was a tangled mess, hanging over her face and dangling before her eyes, and she lifted one hand to push it back. “I’ve been asleep for nearly a whole day.”
    “I was hoping you’d tell me the details,” Tess said. “All I know is that Terry somehow invoked Twitterpat’s ghost, and apparently that was enough to spook everyone—”
    “That wasn’t what spooked everyone,” Thea said slowly, trying to piece together the fragments of her memory. “When Terry suddenly started spouting Alphiri…”
    Tess sat up sharply. “What?”
    “Everyone was jabbering in tongues,” Thea said. “I have no idea what any of them actually were , even, and I don’t know if they did either—and I’m not even sure that any of them were aware that they were talking funny, they all just thought that everyone else was—and then Terrysaid something and Humphrey said that was Alphiri, and that he needed to find out…and then we went back…and I went…”
    Her voice died out altogether as she sat in the infirmary bed, frowning slightly, trying to remember something elusive and yet important, which was nagging at the fringes of her memory. Tess glanced down at her watch again, and then at the door.
    “Humphrey made everyone swear that they’d call him the moment you woke up,” she said, “but if nobody else knows you’re awake, then nobody can call him…. Do you want a bit more time to pull yourself together?”
    “Are you telling me that someone’s been sitting with me nonstop?”
    “Yeah,” Tess said. “It was mostly Magpie and me, in shifts, and Ben, once—and the nurse has been keeping an eye on you at night. Whatever went down was big , apparently, and you made quite an impression on the government folks.” She shook her head a little, a gesture full of the regretful knowledge of someone bearing bad news. “I have to tell you, I am not entirely sure of how much of a good thing that is.”
    “From obscurity straight to center stage,”Thea said with a grimace. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”
    “Mrs. Deaver would shoot you for using a cliché,” Tess said primly, and then laughed. “But I know what you mean.”
    “I just wish…I could remember what exactly happened back there,” Thea said. “I can see stuff, but it doesn’t make any real sense….”
    “Do you want me to get Humphrey?” Tess said. “Maybe he can explain things to you.”
    “He’ll probably need to haul the other two in here, too,” Thea said. “Mrs.