I stand up, moving towards the pole between Saul and the woman cursed with despair. She needs my help so much more than the lost girl did.
“Elizabeth, sit down.” Millie’s voice follows me. “You need to rest. We should take this slowly. No matter your talent, you’re still very new to this.”
“No.” I don’t look at her. Gripping the metal pole for balance, I slide into the background. It’s so easy now, I can switch planes in a second instead of in minutes.
Somewhere, like a distant echo, I think I hear Millie calling me. I ignore the sound, focusing on the woman draped in a curse that could kill her. My spirit stretches out. I’m more aware of it now; it’s full of empathy, propelled by the desire to heal. When the connection is made, I shudder, almost losing my footing. I can feel the power of this curse, so much greater than the spell I just drew from the girl. Bracing myself, I beckon the magic. The way it moves is repulsive. While the other curse was floating, this spell slumps from the woman’s back and oozes towards me. I’m fighting fear as the dark puddle touches my foot. It slides over my shoe and inside my pant leg. I don’t expect the spell to have this much substance, but it is slimy against my skin, leaving a sticky trail as it moves up my body. Still, I keep drawing it until I’m sure I’ve taken all of it from the woman and onto myself.
I want to step back into the world and see if I’ve helped her. But I’m feverish. Heat skitters over my body. My skin is on fire. I look down at my arms to see red bumps as large as nickels appearing. They are swelling, bursting open into pus-filled sores. I scream. This is a nightmare. It has to be. I wrench myself out of the background, calling out for Millie.
I think I hear her crying, but my vision is blurry. The sepia of the background is gone, but my world, full of its sounds and colors, is spinning.
My skin is still covered in sores.
“Help me.” I choke on the rawness of my throat.
The fever slams through my head, knocking me off my feet and into Saul’s arms.
Chapter 19
“Stephen.”
I open my eyes as soon as I hear my father’s voice calling through my dream.
“Stephen, are you here?”
He’s right in the doorway of my room, and for a moment, I am a child again. With the light behind him, he hasn’t aged. He is my father’s silhouette, come to wake me up for dinner. My mother is waiting in the kitchen. This is our home.
“I’m here,” I say. Not a child’s voice at all.
My father turns on the lights. This was the way he’d wake me up as a kid too—the full plunge instead of the gentle emergence.
“Dad!” I yell, turning away from the brightness. There’s no way for me to use my hand to shield my eyes.
“Sorry,” he mumbles (without turning the light back off). “It’s four in the afternoon. You shouldn’t be asleep.”
“I thought you were working.”
“I am. But the rest of my afternoon is email, so I figured I could do it here.”
“You really don’t need to do that.”
“I know.”
“I mean, I’m not sure I want you to do that.”
“Look, I’ll just be in the other bedroom.” He starts to leave.
“No,” I say, stopping him. “You can’t do that either.”
“What?”
“You can’t dodge the things that I say. You can’t just go into another room. Maybe Mom put up with it, but I won’t.”
It’s the way he woke me up. It’s the way he called it the other bedroom. It’s my fear that he is going to try to assert some control over me after all these years. I am not going to let him get away with it. I can’t.
“Say what you want to say, Stephen.”
I don’t want to destroy the bridge between us. I just want it to be a drawbridge, with me choosing when it’s up or down.
“You need to give me warning,” I say. “You can’t just show up.”
“Stephen—”
My name hangs in the air for a moment. If he takes this chance to remind me that he pays the bills, I will never forgive him. I am already very aware of that.
But I don’t find out what he’s going to say, because once my name fades, I hear the reason he’s stopped.
Someone is pounding on the door.
I get up on my feet and push past him. It’s not a delivery knock.
It’s urgent.
I look through the peephole and see Elizabeth and Millie and the one-eyed guy from Millie’s store.
“Who is it?” my father asks behind me.
I open the door—my father didn’t lock it behind him—and see that Elizabeth’s leaning a little on Saul. She looks pale and shaken.
“I’m fine,” she says. “We just need to come in.”
“What happened?” I ask as Saul leads her to the couch.
Millie looks almost as stricken as Elizabeth.
“Baby steps,” she says. “I told her baby steps.”
“Who are these people?” my father asks.
“Dad, stay out of this.”
I’ve snapped too quickly. He’s not going to take that.
“Stephen, I will not have you talk to me that way.”
“Dad, now is not the time.”
Millie walks over to my father and offers her hand. “I am Mildred Lund. I am Elizabeth’s . . . teacher. And this is Saul, one of my associates.”
It’s as if a thought bubble actually appears over my father’s head, saying, What kind of teachers are these people?!?
“Curses, Dad. They’re the ones teaching us about curses.” I turn back to Elizabeth. “What did you do?”
“I ate too much. Or had food poisoning. Only, it was curses instead of food. Where’s Laurie? We couldn’t go to my house, just in case Mom was there.”
“Laurie’s with Sean. Do you want me to call him?”
“No, it’s okay.” Then she looks at Millie and Saul. “Really, it’s okay. You don’t need to watch over me.”
Millie shakes her head. “What you did was so foolish. So dangerous. I will not teach you if you are not going to listen to me.”
“I want to be alone with her,” I say. “Please, can everyone just leave?”
Saul seems eager to take up my invitation, as if he’s not used to being in apartments that have windows in them. Millie is more reluctant, tutting over Elizabeth some more. My father doesn’t seem to include himself in my request, and remains standing right where he is.