I look right into his eyes. “We will never stop knowing each other,” I promise.
Even though he can’t see me, he looks like he does. He looks like he sees me perfectly.
“Good,” he says.
* * *
The doctors don’t know what’s wrong with Elizabeth, but Millie does. Even though it horrifies her, she can see Arbus’s presence within her, the last tendrils of dark cursework that have gripped her in spaces that are neither blood nor tissue, muscle nor bone.
“Will it go away?” I ask. Elizabeth is safely sleeping. Millie does not have to pretend that everything is all right.
“Over time, I believe so,” she tells me. But I can see she’s not sure. “It is a miracle that she survived. But just as you remain invisible, the power that she absorbed from him doesn’t go away when he dies. We’re basically relying on a magical immune system to break down what she’s taken in—the hope is she’s built up enough resistance to fight it off. Especially since she’s young and innately powerful. More so than most.”
“But there’s no precedent?” I ask. “Nothing like this has ever happened to you, or to any other spellseeker?”
Millie shakes her head. “None that I know about. None who lived.”
“And there’s nothing you can do?”
“I can see it. That’s all.”
“So she’ll live with it inside of her?”
“Yes. Her body will recover from the shock of it. But it will be there, until it isn’t. But when that will be—I don’t know.”
The doctors think it’s a speedy recovery. But Millie and I know better. And I suspect that Elizabeth knows better too.
* * *
I watch her asleep in her hospital bed. She is bruised. Her hair is greasy, dank. There are dark patches under her eyes and blotches on her neck. Her breathing sometimes comes in clots. A line of drool creeps from her mouth.
I have never loved her more.
* * *
She becomes well enough to leave the hospital.
I accompany Laurie and their mother as they wheel her home. This is her request—that if she’s going to have to go back in a wheelchair (the doctors are worried she’s still too weak, too drained) that they will not be taking a cab or an ambulance. She wants to be in the air again. She wants to see the city that we saved. She wants me there beside her, an invisible participant in the homecoming parade.
It is a beautiful summer day. Even though the city still hovers under the fears that Arbus’s attack unleashed, the weather eases people’s minds somewhat, because we all treasure the innate illusion that nothing bad can happen on a beautiful summer day.
Elizabeth smiles under the sun.
* * *
It is hard to get Elizabeth’s mother to leave her side, but a few hours after the grand return, Laurie manages to convince her to go grocery shopping with him, leaving me and Elizabeth alone together.
“How are you doing?” I ask her. “Do you need anything?”
She’s sitting on the couch. She pats the space next to her.
“Come here,” she says.
I make my shoulder solid so she can lean on it.
“I still don’t remember most of it,” she tells me. “I wonder if that will come back to me, or if it’s lost.”
“You don’t need to remember it.”
“But I want to. I don’t like having this gap in my past.”
“You were brave.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”
“You were astonishing.”
“Stop it.”
“You were strong.”
“But not strong enough.”
“Definitely strong enough. Because he’s not here anymore, is he? You did what you had to do.”
She closes her eyes, tired.
“It’s over,” I tell her. “Now we go back to normal.”
She lets out a breath that’s part laugh, part sigh. “You have a very strange conception of normal.”
“You know what I mean. In a few weeks, you and Laurie will go to school. I will stay at home and wait for you to come back. It’s not a normal life for anyone else, but it will be a normal life for us. That’s what matters. Not that it’s normal to anyone else. But that it’s normal to us.”
Her hand finds my hand. She squeezes.
“You’re right,” she says. “That’s how it will be. Only, it’s not over. I still have many, many things to learn.”
“We all do. And we’ll learn them.”
She nods, and I can see I need to let her rest.
I kiss her a temporary goodbye.
“We’re safe,” I tell her. “That’s what matters.”
“Yes,” she says. “We’re safe.”
Then she drifts off into dreams.
* * *
I return to my apartment. All the familiar, quiet sounds. All the familiar furniture, all the familiar history.
For a moment, I feel alone again. Entirely alone. I can believe in a life that exists only in this apartment, only on its own. My old life. The life I thought I would always have.
Then I imagine Laurie and his mother returning to the apartment. I imagine Elizabeth on her couch. I even imagine Millie alone in her hexatorium and hope that she, in turn, is imagining us.
This is more than I ever could have wanted. This is more than I ever thought I’d have.
Chapter 34
IN THE AFTERMATH OF it all, when I am sick and broken and so very, very tired, I finally understand that I am not a superhero. I’ve discovered my fragility, my humanity.
In meeting Stephen—in seeing Stephen—I stumbled upon an extra set of senses. Millie claimed me as part of her magical heritage, which I’ve barely begun to understand. She named me a spellseeker.
What little seeking can accomplish.
I see curses. Identify them. But when it’s life and death at stake, I fold.
I thought I could help Stephen, that I could embrace this new, magical me and change the world. But nothing has changed for Stephen since I first discovered he was invisible. I am still the only one who can see him. His passing through the world draws less notice than a flicker of shadow.
It is not fair.
But life is not fair.
How quickly we forget that lesson only to learn it again.
Sometime soon I will go back to Millie’s basement, which smells of tea and musty books. Under the guise of working part time as a purveyor of the comic books I adore, I will train with her. I will be the earnest pupil she deserves. I will try to fill the void that Saul has left. I will get stronger, better . . . deadlier.