I feel like a jerk. She’s just confronted my grandfather, my enemy, and I am not giving her the space to recover. I want her to relive the moment over and over again so I can somehow be there with her. So I can encounter this man, this mystery, who has haunted my life in ways I can’t even begin to understand. But however much I desire that insight, that connection, it’s not fair to her, because it isn’t letting her step outside of it, to see it for what it might be once the heat of the moment cools into perspective.
I think, not for the first time, What have I done to your life?
I wish I could simply be her boyfriend. I wish we didn’t have all of these shadows swirling around us. But even if they weren’t there, I’d still face the everyday, extraordinary challenge of being a boyfriend. A good boyfriend. There are times—times like now—when I wonder if being invisible is the only thing I’m good at. It feels like there’s too much to catch up on, too much that everyone else already knows. If we build our current relationships from the relics of old relationships, I am starting without any material.
I see that something in her has been twisted, that something in her was touched by his poison. My grandfather. My enemy. He tore my mother’s world apart. He doomed my parents’ marriage. He determined my life. And even now, he’s dictating the moment. He is standing in the way of me and Elizabeth, just as he’s stood in the way of everything else.
There’s a knock on the door, followed closely by Laurie shouting out, “Hey, lovebirds—are you mating?”
Elizabeth looks relieved by the interruption, which I take as a rebuke of my relentless curiosity.
“I’ll get it,” she says.
As soon as the door is opened, Laurie bounds in. He takes one look at her and says, “Definitely not mating. What’s going on?”
Elizabeth doesn’t answer.
“Your sister had something of a run-in today,” I say.
“Anyone I know?” Laurie asks flippantly. Then, when he really looks at Elizabeth, he gets serious. “Was it someone from home?”
She shakes her head. “No. Not that.”
“Oh God. For a second, I thought . . .”
“It was Stephen’s grandfather. Maxwell Arbus.”
Laurie stays serious. “That’s not good.”
“We needed to find him,” I point out.
“Was he nasty?” Laurie asks.
Elizabeth nods. I expect her to launch into the full story, but she stays silent.
“I think I’ve exhausted her,” I tell Laurie.
“It’s fine,” Elizabeth says, but there’s a testiness in her tone that isn’t fine at all. “I just need to think.”
“We all need to think,” I say. “Together.”
The words feel worthless. I’m not certain why. I look hard at her face. She is pale, preoccupied. There’s a traffic jam of thoughts going on in her head, but I’m not in the car with her.
He’s done something to her. Seeing him—fighting him—has done something to her.
And by not telling me what it is, she is making me feel like she wants it to happen again.
I want to stop it. Right now, I want to turn it all back. Forward feels dangerous, and I’m no longer the one who’s most at risk.
“Elizabeth,” I say. I want the understanding to be there in my voice, for her to hear it.
She looks at me. Straight at me, taking everything in. Even now, it’s still unsettling, to be seen that much.
“Who wants pizza?” Laurie asks. “I know I want pizza.”
“At least now I’m sure,” Elizabeth says. “If he’s anywhere near us, I’ll know.”
“And then you’ll kick his butt,” Laurie tells her.
“My dear brother,” she replies, “it’s not going to be that easy. It’s not going to be easy at all.”
* * *
Millie is horrified. She is horrified that Maxwell Arbus is so close. She is horrified that Elizabeth saw him. She is horrified that Elizabeth didn’t run the moment she knew who he was.
“Have I taught you anything?” she cries, sitting down in her usual chair in the hexatorium. It’s the first time we’ve been here so late at night, but the circumstances seemed to call for an immediate visit, a banging on the door. “Your lack of caution will destroy everything.”
I don’t think this is fair.
“What else was she supposed to do?” I ask. “Just let him hurt people?”
“Sometimes there is a greater safety than the one at hand,” Millie replies, turning back to Elizabeth. “Do you understand what you’ve done? He knows you now. He knows you can see. And if you think for a second that he’ll forget that, then you are thoroughly unworthy of your gifts.”
“It happened so fast,” Elizabeth argues. “I’m not even sure he got a chance to really look at me.”
“Do you remember what he looks like? Do you remember every aspect of what you saw?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then you must assume he remembers everything just as clearly. Probably more so. You are a pawn and he is a king in this game. For all we know, it was a trap.”
Elizabeth doesn’t respond to this, so Laurie asks, “What kind of trap?”
Millie sighs. My presence and Laurie’s presence are clearly an imposition, but from her tone, we were right to have come along.
“You have no idea what Arbus has been up to,” Millie says. “Even if he doesn’t see Stephen, he may still be drawn to him. It might be irresistible. He wants the power that will come when the curse is done.”
“What do you mean, ‘the curse is done’?” I ask.
“She means that he wants to check on his handiwork,” Elizabeth tells me. “Every curse is a story, and every cursecaster is naturally curious about how the story turns out.”
Millie gives her a hard look. “That’s one way of looking at it,” she says.
“Are you saying that he knows where Stephen is?” Laurie asks.
“I am saying it’s possible. And I am saying it is also possible that he would know that Elizabeth is a spellseeker who is close to Stephen. It is, in fact, possible that everything Elizabeth witnessed was meant to draw her out. And that’s exactly what he’s done. Arbus might not know of Elizabeth’s connection to his grandson, but he certainly knows there is a girl in Manhattan who can see—what did you call it? Oh, yes. His handiwork.”