She gives Saul a meaningful look and his huge hands clamp down on my shoulders, making sitting still involuntary. I’m grateful Millie ordered my silence because I wouldn’t know what to say to the giant man who’s glowering at me. He stands like a statue; I can’t even hear him breathing. In the quiet I’m getting fidgety, which I take as a good sign. Instead of feeling nauseated, I’m starting to just feel awkward. When Millie reappears with a teapot, cup, and saucer, I’m ready to try speaking again.
“What was that stuff?” I ask her.
“What stuff?” Millie pours a cup of tea and sets it before me. Only when she nods at him does Saul release my shoulders.
I take a swallow of tea. It scalds my tongue, but even burning peppermint is preferable to the aftertaste of Millie’s remedy.
“That stuff you made me drink,” I tell her. “It was horrible.”
“That horrible ‘stuff’ saved your life, young lady,” Millie huffs.
She looks genuinely hurt, and I backpedal. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
Millie takes my floundering for the sincere contrition that it is. “I know it doesn’t have a pleasant taste, but it’s effective.”
She watches me like an anxious fairy godmother, and Saul abandons his post at my shoulder to hover over her shoulder.
“The tonic recipes are one of the treasures of the hexatorium’s library.” Millie waves proudly at the shelves filled with cracked book spines and musty tomes. “I suppose I’m not completely irrelevant after all.”
“You could never be irrelevant, Mildred.” Saul speaks so softly I barely hear him, but his words paint Millie’s paper-white cheeks with a pink hue. Even so, a moment later she’s peering at me, eyes sharp as a hawk’s.
“Do you realize what you did?” she asks. Her tone makes me fold in on myself. “You’re lucky we were able to get you to the hexatorium in time.”
Saul glowers at me over her shoulder for emphasis.
“You will never, never draw in a curse without permission again.” Millie clasps her hands over her heart as though she’s the one who’s about to make a solemn vow. “Never.”
“But—” I sit up, earning a more menacing look from Saul.
“Not until you’re ready.” Millie’s face is pale again, bearing no trace of the youthful blush that appeared a moment earlier.
I can’t back down, though what she’s saying is scaring me. The memory of the smell of festering sores on my skin, of the wrenching pain in my stomach, is scaring me. But Stephen. Stephen.
“He could die,” I say.
Millie sighs, and without prompting Saul pulls out a chair and Millie sits. Her anger has vanished, and now she looks so, so tired.
“You could die,” she tells me.
Her weariness is contagious. I slump down. “I know.”
“I wish there were an easy way to do this.” Millie manages a tiny smile. “But spellseeking runs bone-deep. Your body and spirit need time to adjust to the work.”
A shortcut jumps into my head. “What if I always have a tonic with me? I could use it like an EpiPen for curses.”
She’s shaking her head before I’ve finished talking. “The tonics are an emergency measure only. Each time you use one, it becomes less effective. You have to build up your own natural resistance to curses. And that will take time.”
“What if we don’t have time?” I ask. It’s a pointless question and I know it.
I know there are epic tales of romance, where love means you’re supposed to die. Where it’s all about sacrifice. But I don’t want to die. I don’t want Stephen to die. I’m looking for the scenario where we both get to live. Where we can continue this marvel that is love and discovery and trust. I’m not even asking for happily ever after. Just survival in the meantime so life can keep happening as it will.
There must be another question. Something I could put into words that would magically reveal a path through this minefield. I gaze at Millie, hoping she has the words I don’t.
Millie simply puts her hand over mine.
* * *
The one concession I wring from Millie is the promise that she won’t tell Stephen what really happened on the subway. I stare at Saul until he grunts his oath of secrecy too.
And the lies begin.
Keeping things from Stephen, dangerous things, isn’t all that bothers me as one week, then two, and then three pass. The lies force me away from him. And not just in terms of the barriers I have to put up about where my mind and heart live. I’m pushed away from him by necessity. Though I told Millie I wouldn’t draw curses without her supervision, I’m unwilling to restrict myself to our daily lessons. I can’t tell Stephen what I’m doing. Millie seems happy enough that I’m sticking to our training plan and is taking me at my word. I’m pretty sure Saul suspects I’m cheating because of the way his one-eyed stare bores into me during my lessons at the hexatorium. But if I confided in Stephen, he’d try to stop me. He’s not willing to risk me just as I’m not going to risk him.
And I can’t tell Laurie for the same reason.
That leaves only me.
I’m going out into the city. Alone. And I’m looking for curses.
I convince myself that I’m not betraying Stephen and Laurie and Millie because I’m not taking risks. Not big risks anyway.
Though I can find curses of all shapes and sizes, laughable to appalling, I only draw the small ones. These are my self-administered inoculations against curses. I should collect a fee from all the people I’ve saved from taxi-less days. Millie wasn’t kidding when she said the cab hex is a common curse in Manhattan.
I try to further mitigate my betrayal by limiting my curse drawing to once a day, after my lessons with Millie, so my body can have the space of hours to recover. If I haven’t had too bad a reaction to a curse, I’ll rush back to the apartment building to watch Howl’s Moving Castle or The Last Unicorn for the millionth time or continue our epic inventive Scrabble tournament, where all the words are made up but the creator of the word has to provide its definition and all players have to agree that the definition is feasible. We fill the time we share with everything but talk of spellseekers and cursecasters.
Sometimes I can’t hide how tired the lying and the curse drawing makes me. When that happens, Stephen will pull me into his bedroom. Into his arms. And I’ll sleep curled against him until I feel strong enough to go out into the bustling streets again.