Feverborn

36

I closed my eyes and sagged limply against the table.

No, no, no, I screamed inside my head. Not this. Anything but this.

Then I surged violently from head to toe, trying to explode from my bonds. I flailed, shuddered, and flopped. Minutely.

I got nowhere.

“No,” I finally managed to whisper. And again more strongly, “No.” Not Dani. Never Dani. No one was “fixing” anything about her, and certainly not her bodacious heart.

“So,” she prodded in a whisper. “What’s it fixing on you?”

“You’re strapped to a table, about to be fixed, and you’re curious?”

“If I hadn’t told you first, wouldn’t you be curious about what it thought my problem was?” she whispered back.

“How do you know its purpose is to fix things?”

“Pretty obvious from the images, Mac,” she said dryly.

“How did you know I was here?” I hadn’t known she was. I hadn’t bothered looking to my left. There hadn’t been any sounds over there. Perhaps our would-be surgeon had already set up her instruments before I’d regained consciousness.

“Superhearing. You’ve been sighing. Occasionally, a snort. Can you reach your cellphone?”

“No,” I said.

“Me either.”

How had she gotten here? Had the wraiths broken out a window in BB&B, swooped in and plucked her unconscious body from the bed? Had they always possessed the power to defeat Barrons’s wards and just been pretending? And why? As far as I knew, my ghouls hadn’t been stalking her. Had the Sweeper simply tucked her into its cart like a grocery store customer indulging in a buy-one-get-one-free deal because she’d been handy and according to its nebulous and highly suspect criteria was “broken,” too?

“How did it get you?” I asked woodenly.

“I looked out the window and saw you walking down the alley.”

“I thought you were unconscious.” Damn it, she should have been unconscious! Then she wouldn’t be here.

“I was waiting for everyone to finally leave. Ryodan finished my tattoo today. I had someplace to go. But I looked out the window and saw you following what looked like a walking trash heap.”

“Following it?” I’d never even seen it. Apparently the noisy, rattling heap could cast a glamour.

“It was about twenty feet ahead of you. Then I heard Barrons’s voice coming from it and knew something was wrong. The minute I stepped outside, the ZEWS were on me. I didn’t even have time to access the slipstream.”

They’d straitjacketed her, too, I realized. Smothered her and knocked her out, and like me, she’d awakened restrained from head to toe.

“Slipstream?”

“Used to call it freeze-frame.”

“Got any superhero ideas?” I said. I wasn’t hopeful. Restrained, even her extraordinary gifts were useless.

“Everything I learned Silverside requires use of my hands. Can you move at all?”

“Only my head and only a little.”

“Ditto,” she said.

I searched for something reassuring to say but could find nothing. Barrons would have no reason to look for us beyond the eight-block circumference of the storm, and I doubted we were in that part of the Dark Zone that was inside it. I’d underestimated my ghoulish stalkers. I wasn’t making that mistake again. I had to assume anything that put so much premeditation into its “work” would put an equal amount of thought into choosing a place where it would not be interrupted.

We couldn’t count on Barrons for a rescue. And certainly not Ryodan.

It was just the two of us.

“I’ve been in worse situations,” Jada whispered.

I winced and closed my eyes. I really hadn’t wanted to hear that. “Jada—”

“If you’re going to tell me you’re sorry again, stow it. It was my feet that took me where I went. That night and tonight. We make our own choices.”

“And there’s your responsibility dysmorphia showing again,” I said coolly.

“Responsibility dysmorphia is you being so arrogant you think your actions are the only ones that count. You chased me. I ran. That’s two people doing two things. We can split it fifty/fifty if you want. I planned on going Fae-side anyway. I was hungry for adventure. I never thought ahead. I lived in the moment. You weren’t responsible for that.”

I remembered her laughing as she’d leapt into the mirror, deep from the belly, no fear. “I should have come after you.”

“I would have darted into the nearest mirror in the hall. You know what those were? They showed pretty, happy places, sunny islands with white castles on sand. It took me a while to figure out what was on the other side wasn’t what they showed. Barrons was right. You following me would have killed me.”

“You know about that?”

“Lor told me. And once I’d gone through that first Silver, you had no chance of finding me. There are billions of portals in that hall, Mac. That’s not a needle in a haystack—that’s a billion needles in a gazillion haystacks.”

“But you lost so many years,” I whispered.

“There you go again. I didn’t lose them. I lived them. I wouldn’t undo a bit of it. It made me who I am. I like who I am.”

That hadn’t been how it looked at the abbey, and I told her that.

“It’s hard to be alone,” she said. “You do what makes survival possible. Otherwise you don’t make it.”

Like talking to the equivalent of a ball for five years? I didn’t say. However crazy it was, it had gotten her through. Who was I to judge?

And now here she was, strapped to a table, and the part of her the Sweeper wanted to work on was her heart—that amazing, luminous, live-out-loud in every possible color part of her that, given enough time, could heal and become luminous again.

But not once the Sweeper had worked on it.

I didn’t think for a moment it intended to make her more caring and emotional. I was pretty sure if either of us walked out of here after having been “fixed,” we wouldn’t be remotely the same, probably some Borg-like creature, a distant, collective automaton. I shuddered at the thought of losing my individuality, especially since I’d been altered to live a very long time, with my personality blotted out by the stamp of something that fancied itself an improver. How dare anything tamper with our innate structure? Who the hell was it to decide what was right and wrong with us?

And Dani—so unique, complex, and brilliant—what might it turn her into?

I closed my eyes. Tears seeped out the corners. “Can you forgive me?”

“I keep telling you, you didn’t do anything to forgive.” Then after a long pause she said, “Can you forgive me, Mac?” And I knew she meant Alina.

“I keep telling you—” I said.

We both sort of laughed then, and I cried harder, silently. We’d had to be tied up in the same room together to finally say what we’d needed to say.

The Sweeper was right. My brain was flawed. It couldn’t be relied upon. My heart would always overrule it. Like it had when I’d been determined to bring Barrons back from the dead. Like it quite possibly had in bringing Alina back. There was no way Dani was getting worked on. I would never let it happen. No matter the cost. Right or wrong, wise or foolish, liberating or damning, I wouldn’t allow the Sweeper to harm her.

“I don’t like how quiet you are, Mac,” she whispered. “What are you thinking in that messed up head of yours? It’s your brain, isn’t it?”

I must have made a sound of irritation because she sort of snickered.

“I knew it,” she said. “It’s planning to fix your brain!”

“It’s not funny.”

“It is, too. Admit it,” she said. “We’ve been analyzed by a pile of junk that looks like it’s going to fall apart if it takes one wrong step, and found lacking. My heart. Your head.”

I snorted. It was kind of funny in a really weird and not at all funny way.

“You’ll notice it thinks my brain is perfect,” she said smugly.

“Yeah, well, it thinks my heart is better than yours.”

“It is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Well, my brain’s definitely better than yours,” she said lightly, and I was struck by the realization that cold, distant Jada was teasing.

“You do realize we’re in mortal danger right now,” I reminded.

“You know what Shazam did for me that was one of the best things of all? He kept it light no matter how dark it got.”

Again I winced. I didn’t know how to talk to her about her stuffed-animal delusion. I said nothing.

“So, what’s going on in that badly highlighted head of yours? Have you tried olive oil, by the way? You aren’t over there thinking about trying to do something with the Sinsar Dubh, are you?”

I wasn’t about to defend or argue. It wasn’t open to debate. Not with her. She was the reason I was going to do it. “Of course I tried olive oil. The paint penetrated the hair shaft,” I said irritably. “It’ll come out eventually.”

“You think you can use its power without it destroying you?”

“What do you think?” I evaded.

“I think the odds are high that’s a great big no.”

“Dani would have risked it.”

“There was a time when I”—she emphasized the pronoun—“didn’t understand the price you can end up paying.”

“You mean going through the Silvers,” I said.

“Coming back,” she whispered. “That was the highest price of all.”

“Got any better ideas?” I said flatly.

Long pause, then, “No.”

I closed my eyes and reached for my inner lake. She was never paying another price. Not if I could help it, and I could. And maybe I’d be just fine.

“Mac, I need you to promise me something,” she whispered urgently.

“Anything,” I said, walking out to greet the still black waters in my mind. They didn’t try to rush up and drown me this time. The surface was serene, placid, inviting, no hint of an undertow.

“If I don’t make it out of here—”

“You will.”

“If I don’t,” she repeated, “I need you to do something for me. Promise me you’ll do it. Promise me you’ll accomplish it no matter what. Say it.”

“I promise,” I said. But whatever she wanted, she could do herself, because she was getting out of here. I was going to see to it.

“The Silver I came through that brought me home…” She told me where it was and how to find it. “I need you to go back through it for me.”

“For what?” I backed away from my lake for a moment, giving her my full attention.

“I need you to rescue Shazam.”

My brain stuttered and I just lay there a few moments, opening my mouth, reconsidering and closing it. I’d thought we were having a fairly sane conversation. She’d been composed, intelligent, rational. Showing more humor than I’d ever seen from Jada. Now we were back to the stuffed animal she nearly died trying to save from the fire.

“He’ll wait for me forever,” she said in an anguished whisper. “He’ll wait and wait and he’ll believe that I’ll come. I can’t stand the thought of him being disappointed, over and over again.”

I didn’t say anything. Because I knew that was what she had done. Waited for someone to come rescue her. And no one had.

“Every day, he’ll just keep sitting there. Thinking it’s going to be that day. The happy one.”

She started to weep then, and it set off another flood of my own tears. The happy one, she’d said. How many years had it taken for her to stop believing? To stop hoping for the happy day?

“He’s so emotional,” she whispered. “And he gets so depressed and he gives up. He was alone for so long. I promised him he’d never be alone again.”

He was? Or she had been?

“And I know he’s going to be hungry,” she fretted. “He gets so hungry.”

Oh, God, I thought, she must have starved in the Silvers, with her enormous requirements for food. And she’d passed that trait off, too, to an imaginary friend.

“Do you promise me you’ll go back and save him if I don’t get out?”

“The fish,” I said woodenly. “You were feeding the stuffed animal fish.”

“You might not be able to find him at first. He hides in other dimensions. You’ll have to talk to the air and tell him his Yi-yi sent you and it’s okay to come out. It may take a while before he believes it’s safe. Whatever you do, don’t let him lick you or try to eat you.”

“Dani,” I said brokenly. She wanted me to go through the Silvers and talk to the air.

“I knew the fish were a bad idea,” she said with some embarrassment.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m not crazy, Mac. Shazam is real,” she said.

I blinked. What did she mean? What was she saying? I’d seen “Shazam.” He was a gutted stuffed animal.

She said tightly, “I left him.”

“The stuffed animal?”

“No,” she said irritably, “that was different. I couldn’t sleep. So I pretended it was him to help me sleep while I figured out what to do. But I knew I was pretending. Then when the abbey caught fire, I felt like it was happening all over again. It was that day again, the day I really lost him. It triggered me. I went a little nuts.”

I turned my head as far to the left as I could. “Shazam is real? Really, truly real?” I said.

“He’s a cranky, furry koala bear/cat thing. I found him my first year Silverside.”

I opened my mouth, closed it. Considered what she’d just said, weighing it for clarity and conviction. Was she telling the truth? Or was she so fractured she was now convincing herself, since Ryodan had gutted her delusion, that she’d left it behind? “A koala bear/cat thing that talks and hides in the air?” I finally said.

“Mac, stop thinking so much. It’s probably why it wants to work on your brain. You have all that internal monologue going on all the time.”

I bristled. “Don’t be a bitch.” I knew why I thought so hard about everything; all my life I’d had to sift through two complete beings inside me without ever knowing the other one was there: fifty thousand years of the Unseelie king’s memories bouncing around in my subconscious, recurring nightmares of icy places, fragments of songs, desires that hadn’t made any sense. I’d harbored emotions I’d never been able to pinpoint to any event in my life. Everything was suspicious to me—because half of it wasn’t mine. And I’d done a damn fine job navigating what was mine and what wasn’t.

She said again, “He’s real. You have to believe me. That’s part of the promise you’re making me.”

“You weren’t alone the whole time?” I longed to believe that. I hated the thought that she’d spent five and a half years battling enemies all by herself.

“No. Well, except for when he vanishes. And he’s amazing in a fight. Well, as long he stays focused and doesn’t have one of his pessimistic meltdowns. He hates being alone. And he’s alone again.” She added softly, “He loves me. He never said it but I know. It’s what he means when he says he sees me. And I can’t let him down. I can’t fail him. You have to tell him you see him, okay? Just keep telling the air that you see him. He’ll come out. And if I don’t make it, Mac, you have to love him. Promise me you’ll take care of him.”

I tried to wrap my brain around what she was telling me. I wanted to believe it was true, that she wasn’t broken and she wasn’t crazy. That she’d actually lost someone and it had been killing her inside. That in fact it had devastated her so deeply, she’d pretended he was a stuffed animal. She had feelings, deep ones. A sudden happiness filled me. Whether or not Shazam was real, Dani felt loved—and loved in return.

“There’s nothing wrong with your heart, honey,” I said softly.

“It’s broken,” she whispered. “I can’t go forward with Shazam behind me. I don’t know how.”

God, I knew that feeling! A sister, a parent, a lover, an animal. It didn’t matter where you put your unconditional love, once given, the stealing away of it was an assault to every sense. Smells were the worst—they could ambush you, put you smack back in the middle of the hottest part of the grief. The scent of a peaches-and-cream candle. The brand of deodorant she’d used. Her pillow back home. The smell of the bookstore in the evening, when I’d believed Barrons was dead. When you love too hard, you can lose the will to live without them. Everywhere you look is a great big sucking absence of what you once had and will never have again. And life gets weirdly flat and too sharp and painful at the same time, and nothing feels right and everything cuts.

There was a sudden rattling in the distance, and I inhaled sharply.

“It’s coming,” she whispered.

“Promise me a favor now,” I whispered.

“Anything,” she vowed.

“If you have a chance to escape, if you suddenly find yourself free, run like hell and leave me behind.”

“Anything but that, Mac.”

“I promised you, damn it,” I hissed. “Now you promise me, and mean it. If you have the chance to escape, turn your back on me and run as fast as you can.”

“I don’t run anymore.”

“Promise me. Say it.”

She remained silent. The only sound was the whine and clatter of our would-be tormentor approaching.

“Quid pro quo or I won’t keep my promise,” I threatened. “I won’t save Shazam if I get out.”

“Coerced promises aren’t fair, Mac. You know that.”

“Please,” I said softly. “It won’t mean anything if what I do goes wrong and we both die. One of us has to make it.”

She said nothing for a moment, then said stiffly, “I promise to do what I think is best.”

I laughed softly. That was Dani. Not Jada at all. And it was enough because I knew Dani: survival at any cost.

I heard the screech of metal and knew we didn’t have much time. I closed my eyes, leapt and dove into my black lake.

“What are you doing, Mac?” she said sharply, no longer bothering to be quiet. I knew why. There was an ominous portent to the sound of the approaching Sweeper. It was no longer ambling. It was moving with briskness and focus. Our “operations” were about to begin. Whether we were awake or not.

“What I should have done the moment you jumped through that Silver,” I said. “Believing in the good magic, too.”

She was quiet; as if trying to think of what to say. Finally she said, simply, “I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“I thought you didn’t like me,” I reminded. Chittering, coming closer. Rustling. I swam hard, focusing on the shaft of golden light slicing through the murky water.

“I don’t sometimes,” she said irritably. “But we’re…”

“Sisters?” I said as I drifted lightly to my feet in the black cavern. She’d come after me. She’d looked out that window, decided I was in trouble, and shoved aside whatever it was she’d gotten out of bed to do—go save Shazam?—and come after me instead.

“Peas. Pod. Whatever you’re doing, think hard about it.”

Peas in the Mega-pod, she’d once called us. My heart expanded, so full of love for her it hurt. “I have.”

“And know I’ve got your back.”

“Back at you, kid,” I said lightly. But I’d had to say it loud, to make myself heard over the jarring approach of the Sweeper.

“I’m not a kid anymore.”

“Don’t we all know that,” I said dryly. I dashed into the cavern, the shining, resplendent black rock chamber that housed the enormous power that had kept me immobilized by fear for far too long.

No more.

I had no idea which of my three suppositions was right, and no longer cared. The only thing that mattered to me was that Dani lived. That she went on to love. To save “Shazam” if he actually existed, to grow up and take lovers, regain her wonder and freedom of emotion and wholeness of heart.

And if the price was me, the price was me.

I guess that’s what love is. You care more that they live than you care about whether you do. Dani’s light would never be extinguished. Not on my watch.

Panic was pressing at the outer edges of my mind and I knew the Sweeper was almost on us. I could smell the noxious odor of the wraiths hemming us in.

I hurried to the Book and turned the pages rapidly, scanning, looking for anything I could use.

“Mac,” I heard from a distance. “Don’t do it for me. Don’t lose your soul for me. You know I have responsibility dysmorphia syndrome. You’ll make it worse.”

I laughed in the cavern as I thumbed through page after page. Who said I would lose my soul? Good magic, I reminded myself.

There! A bit of a double-edged sword, but it would work.

Triumphantly, I shouted the words of the ancient spell I’d just found. The syllables echoed sharply off the stone of the cavern, amplifying, growing, shimmering in the air around me. I could feel the power flooding me, ready, able, and more than willing. It filled me with euphoria, and I knew something that felt so good couldn’t possibly be bad.

As I finished the final syllable, the Book abruptly collapsed into a pile of shimmering gold dust.

I stared at it wondering what had just happened. Looking for the same winking red gemstones I’d seen in the cavern.

Had I absorbed it? Was I one with it? I’d been reading it in the First Language. Had I succeeded in doing what Cruce had done?

I didn’t feel any different.

I knew that, beyond me, in the warehouse, the Sweeper and its minions were gone. The spell had done what I’d intended it to do. Well, essentially.

And most importantly, Dani was free and safe.

Even now she was rising from her gurney, restraints falling away as she stood up. I could see her movements in my mind’s eye.

Music began to play in my cavern and I frowned. It was a Sonny and Cher song that I’d always hated. They say we’re young and we don’t know…

My blood turned to ice in my veins and I could feel it, oh God, I could feel it!

Inside me, expanding, cramming every nook and cranny of my being!

Blighting everything, blacking out the tiniest most essential parts of me, draping my soul in homicidal rage and bottomless hunger and madness and horror, shoving me back and down, cramming me into a tiny box with no holes for air, packing me in there as tightly as a sardine.

Just before the lid slammed down, I used the last bit of control I had over my mouth to scream, “Run, Dani. RUN!”

Got you, sweet thing, the Sinsar Dubh purred.