Millie pauses. There is an incurable sadness in her eyes.
“Over time, this changed. There was no single event, no caster revolution. It may have been their plan, to have us die out. I don’t know—you’d have to ask them. But whatever the case, there became fewer and fewer seekers. Casters did what they wanted, without repercussions. And, as you know, the world became a much, much bigger place than anyone had known it to be, which meant it was impossible to follow and monitor all of the casters. The rules did not break so much as disintegrate.
“I know I am not the last of the spellseekers, but I know I am certainly one of the last. As the world became smaller again—as technology made us closer—I wondered if there wasn’t some way that contact would be resumed. But I’ve never heard from another spellseeker, even though I’ve hardly kept my gifts a secret. I imagine it didn’t take you very long to find me, did it? That was deliberate.”
“All you really need to do is let the comic book geeks know,” Laurie says, “and the rest of the world will follow.”
“I don’t know if that was precisely what I intended, but I can see from years of experience that your hypothesis bears scrutiny. Still, being so open has of course left me somewhat vulnerable. The casters no doubt know what I am.”
“Or they think you’re a crackpot,” Laurie offers.
“Or that. It’s always possible. The good thing about casters is that they are unable to seek—they can create spells and curses, but they cannot see the work of others. Nor can they sense seekers in the same way that I can. For example,” Millie says, looking at Elizabeth, “I doubt that Maxwell Arbus knows about you. Not yet.”
The way she says this makes me shiver; it is as if my grandfather knowing about Elizabeth would be the worst thing in the world.
“Tell us about him,” Elizabeth says.
Millie steels herself. Clearly, this was one of the things she debated telling us about. Then she decided that, yes, she should.
“Arbus isn’t the most malevolent cursecaster I’ve ever seen, but he’s close. There isn’t really such a thing as a benevolent cursecaster—if you for some reason acquire a cursecaster’s gifts, the benevolent choice is to never use them. There used to be a few cursecasters who only used their casting punitively—that is, they only cursed murderers and rapists and the like. People who had done evil. But Arbus is hardly like that.
“Arbus is the worst kind of cursecaster: He’s clever. And when cleverness meets cursecasting, the result is sadism. For example, he once cursed a man to feel pain whenever he saw the color blue. This seems small at first, no? Then consider the color of the sky, the color of the sea. And how often you see blue in your daily life. Another time he made a woman allergic to the sound of her husband’s voice. Every time he spoke to her, her skin would break out into heinous hives. It didn’t matter how much they loved each other. It was unendurable.
“Cursecasters don’t have an unlimited amount of power. Arbus is genius at making the smallest curse go far. That’s why, frankly, I was surprised to see an invisibility curse made in his hand. An invisibility curse will cost a caster a significant amount of power. But if it were in the name of spiting his own kin—well, I can see why he’d expend that much. By and large, cursecasters spend much more energy on people they know.”
Hearing all this dark history, my mind goes to a dark place. Yes, invisibility is my curse, forged by malevolent magic. But it seems that this was, at best, a secondary curse. The true curse is much more random, much less magical—the blunt curse of lineage. My mother was cursed the moment she was born to such an evil man. I was cursed the moment I was born to such an evil grandfather. It doesn’t take a spellseeker to see that. Everything you need to know is in the blood.
“You said that my grandfather had been in the city. Do you know why? Can you tell what he did?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Millie replies. There’s a sorrowful compassion in her voice. “The curses he made were minor—no doubt aimed at people who displeased him. But there wasn’t a single, big curse. He was here for other reasons. Perhaps watching over you and your family.”
“There is no other family,” I tell her. “Not anymore. It’s just me.”
Millie nods. “I see. Then maybe he was watching over you.”
“But I thought you said cursecasters can’t see spells?”
“Not other people’s. But they sense their own. I would guess that although you’d be as invisible to him as you are to me, he would certainly be able to sense the curse. But it wouldn’t look solid—they can’t see curses the way Elizabeth can. You can see it, dear, can’t you?”
Elizabeth nods, but something in her eyes must give her away.
“Oh, my,” Millie says. “It was rather unpleasant, wasn’t it?”
“It was horrible,” Elizabeth admits.
I keep reminding myself that I can’t take it personally. What my curse looks like has nothing to do with who I am.
But still—the idea of Elizabeth looking at me and seeing something horrible . . . I take it personally.
“You want to break his curse,” Millie says, “and I have to warn you again—I’m not sure that can ever happen. The easy, vaguely responsible thing for me to do would be to tell you to give up, to get used to it. He’s been dealt the cards he’s been dealt, and you just have to use them, live as best you can with the status quo. There is such a grand temptation in that. But what’s keeping me up at night isn’t the easy, vaguely responsible route. Because, my dear, you’re the wild card. You might—might—make impossible things possible.
“I don’t need to tell you this—I have a feeling you already know—but I’ll say it anyway: Even though being a spellseeker is a job like any other job, there’s a part of it that becomes an essential part of who you are. And that essential part is linked to the essential part within all of the spellseekers who came before you. I’ve lived for years—decades—just keeping my nose to the ground, focusing on the smallest pictures possible. But now it’s like that essential part is speaking to me, telling me it’s time to get back to the big picture. There was a time that spellseekers made sure life was safe for everyone else around them. And maybe it’s time for this old spellseeker to remember that.”