by Meg Kassel
“Are you going to survive this?” I ask him.
“Dunno,” he rasps. “Got the bullet out, but…”
I sit on the side of the bed, carefully. My frenzy has died to a heavy sadness. “I need to ask you something.”
Michael winces as Adele shoots a stream of the liquid—saline, I’m assuming—into his wound, and I’m reminded once again how lucky I am not to feel most pain. There is one advantage to being less human than the harbingers.
“You may need to be quick about it.” His voice is thin, breathy.
“I just came from Essie’s house,” I say. “Do you think it’s possible that I am the cause of her insanity?”
“Why would you think that?”
“A woman I stung back in the mid-nineteenth century. I followed you to a town here, in this territory. It was a religious massacre. My memories are hazy on the incident.” I close my eyes, rub a hand over my face. “I stung her, but she didn’t die. You harbingers have more contact with one another. You share more information than beekeepers do, so I want to know if you have heard anything that might affirm that Essie’s condition was carried down from an ancestor who I stung but didn’t die.”
“Possible, but unlikely,” Michael pants softly. “There have been a few counts of people surviving stings.”
“Any idea what happened to them? If they—” I can’t finish. I’m so horrified with myself. “I think I may have made a mistake. A temporary imbalance can be mistaken for a target. The bees can sting if someone steps on them or swipes at them.”
Not that that excuses it.
“I don’t remember stinging this woman, but it’s too much of a coincidence. That woman is Essie’s great-great-grandmother, and she began the so-called Wickerton curse shortly after we were here. She survived to old age, passed the condition to her children, and through the generations. To my Essie. What if—” My breath catches in a gasp. “Michael, I made the monster. That’s what the Strawman told me.” Agony cracks my voice. “A thousand slow deaths is too good for me.”
“Take it easy, Dres.” Michael sighs. His eyes close briefly, reopen slowly. “Could be your connection to her. Told you…it wasn’t a coincidence.”
“Yes, yes. You were right.” I give his wound a critical look. “You really must pull through this time. I need your help. Besides, you’re a thoroughly irritating child.”
He chuckles, but the movement pulls at his wound, and he cuts off with a grimace. “It’s not good, buddy.”
Buddy? Thankfully, he’s never called me that before. Adele stares at me with big, moist eyes. I imagine how strange I must appear to her: the emotionless, stoic beekeeper unraveling over a human girl. I look away from her and back to Michael’s wound. She had only just begun stitching. It is a bad injury. The bullet clearly damaged him internally in places that can’t be stitched.
I’ve seen Michael die numerous times. The pale, sickly gleam of his skin, the tight, gasping breaths are all signs of his imminent passing. The death of a harbinger is disappointingly anticlimactic: the black fog pours from their mouth and envelops them, and there’s a crow sitting where the dead body was.
I never gave their death much thought, and Michael never made a big fuss when he has gone through it. No screaming, or moaning, or writhing about like humans tend to do. Harbingers are accustomed to physical pain. Michael grips fistfuls of sheets, his only real indicator of discomfort. How awful it must be, to be essentially immortal but stuck with the limitations and miseries of the human condition. I give Michael credit—he bears his impending death well. My fingers brush a thick, raised scar along the side of my thumb—an ancient injury from my time working one of my family’s fishing boats. I had been afraid I’d lose the finger, but my mother had slathered it in honey, fresh from the hive, wrapped it in wax and linen, and it had healed.
Honey. On impulse, I unhinge my jaw and stick a finger far down my throat. I can reach quite far down. I scoop out a hearty glob of honey. My bees make it. It coats my throat and everything inside me. In the rare event that a beekeeper does get injured, our honey heals us very quickly. Perhaps it has the same effect on harbingers.
I smear the honey into his wound, as deep in as my index finger can reach. Michael groans. Adele stares at me in open-mouthed horror.
“I would be grateful if he lived,” I say in explanation, but her shock doesn’t abate. “He’s my only friend.”
The room is thick with silence. My bees rumble, sensing my unease.
Adele shakes her head and points at Michael’s stomach. “You just saved his life.”
“Maybe,” I say warily. “I don’t know how the honey works with harbingers of death.”
“You’ve had so many chances to help over the years.” Lish puts her fists on her hips. “Why now? Because there’s something you want?”
“Yes,” I say, with a quick baring of teeth. “I want him to live. And yes, I want his help, and he can’t do that as a crow or a three-year-old trying to remember how to use a toilet.”
Her eyes narrow. “You watched him suffer so many times.”
“I did.” I return her gaze, feeling the faces twist over my face with increased speed. “He—all of you—are cursed. You exist in a cycle of pain and death that I cannot interfere with. Michael is my friend, and if I patched him up every time he got a scratch, I would grow to hate him. Worse, he would come to hate me.”
Lish holds my gaze for a moment longer, then nods to Adele, who picks up the needle and finishes stitching Michael’s wound.
Lish looks at the others, raising her chin. “We’re going to help you,” she says. “Michael is no longer your only friend.” She angles her eye to give me a piercing stare. “As long as you keep the insects contained.”
The other harbinger in the room is a young man, standing against the back wall. He’s the newest of all of them, having caught the curse only a few decades ago. I’ve never heard this one say a word, which is fine, as he has made an art form out of becoming invisible. He studies me with dark, shadowed eyes and nods.
Something akin to panic shudders through my bones. As it had been with Michael, it appears I don’t have a say in this new, group friendship. Did they consider that maybe I don’t want them all as friends? I wasn’t trying to win their favor. I just wanted Michael to live.
Harbingers are tortured creatures, too, but not one of them remains from the beginning of the curse. All of those found a way to die. They have a way out, while I do not. We beekeepers have endured since a time erased from history. These harbingers staring at me cannot understand the weight of knowledge I bear. They cannot know that feeling and attachment are the things that can break even my sanity, and that is probably the most isolating part of my existence.
Michael smiles weakly. “You may regret that,” he says to them. “He’s a cranky pisser.”
“So are you.” Lish pinches his nose. “There are degrees to all things. He’s proven something. And if he’s going to try to break the curse, we’ll help.”
“See? This is what you get for doing a good deed,” Michael says to me while glancing at his sticky wound. Already, the tissue is knitting together. “A few more people willing to talk to you.”
My head is spinning a little. Sharing a little honey did not warrant this reaction, but harbingers are sentimental creatures—emotional, and so very human in temperament. I won’t say no to help. I will likely need a considerable lot of it in the coming weeks. “I’m…grateful,” I say. “I don’t know if I can break the curse, but I would like to learn more about that rumor you told me the day we arrived here. You said there was talk about the curses weakening.”
Michael looks to Lish, who shakes her head. “There’s no secret harbinger of death online group,” she says. “When we say there is ‘talk,’ we mean brief communications, usually shared while traveling on the wing. We don’t know specifics.”
It wouldn’t have surprised me if there was a secret online harbinger of death group. “Is there a way to find
out?” I hate to ask a favor. Favors always result in another one owed, and I have little to offer. But for the first time, a tiny spark of hope flickers deep and quiet.
So many long-held beliefs have been burned down since I arrived in Concordia. That I am alone. That no one could ever care for me as I am. That I am content being alone. None of them are true anymore.
I have someone to live for.
Someone to fight for.
Impossibly, someone who cares about me. It makes me wonder what else is possible. The slight chance of freedom for Essie is worth finding out about. And possibly, maybe, there exists a crack in the curse that has controlled me for hundreds of years. Maybe the cryptic words of the Strawman mean something helpful, after all.
“We’ll see what we can do.” Lish runs a hand over her short, natural curls. “Do you promise you won’t do harm with any information we may find?”
Can I blame them for still seeing me as a danger? It was only Essie who only ever saw my humanity. It was she who reminded me of the person sleeping beneath all my hideous masks.
My course of action shifts from something I want to do, to something that I will do. It’s hard to speak through the bees clotting in my throat. “Of course. I won’t harm anyone.”
“Good.” Lish’s gaze sweeps the rest of them. “We’ll find you something, Dresden.”
“What about the event? It must be approaching soon,” I ask Lish. Of all of them, Michael refers to her most often when trying to predict the type of event. She is often correct.
Lish purses her lips. “There’s a violent taste to the air,” she says. “I think the event will involve the weather. And there are a few weeks left, yet.”
That’s actually incredibly helpful.
Tornado, hurricane, flooding. It could also be fire. The nuclear power plant two towns over could turn the air toxic.
Actually, there are a number of things that could happen to Concordia. “Thank you,” I say again. I can’t recall the last time I uttered those words, but today I’ve said them twice.
“Dres, I don’t want to disappoint you, but you may not be able to recreate another scenario, if there is one,” Michael says. “Your situation is unique. Just…be prepared to hear that there is nothing you can do to help or save her.”
“Aren’t those the same thing?” I ask.
“No.” He doesn’t blink. “I know you want to free her from her condition, and protect her from this killer, and save her from the event. None of those things may be possible.”
“I must try.” I get up and move toward the door.
“You’re right, you know.” Michael struggles to sit up a little.
I pause. “About what?”
“I would have hated you,” he says. “If you used your honey to heal me every time. My suffering makes us equals.”
I bark out a laugh. “No, it does not.”
“Shut up, Dresden.” Michael sends me a weary smile. “I bet you have no idea you called me your friend for the first time just now.” He chuckles as I stand there in appalled silence. “Thank you for the help this time, but don’t ever do it again. I’d rather you be my friend than whatever you’d become as my honey dispensary.” He waves a hand. “Go. Find a way to save your girl. Then tell us how you did it.”
They’re all quiet. I can’t take the way these harbingers are looking at me—all shining eyes, as if they are so proud and pleased I want to do something noble and good for our kind. But it’s only Essie I care about, and that makes everything I’m doing right now as selfish as it gets.
“I know something.” This from the silent man standing in the back—the new harbinger I’ve never heard speak. Everyone turns to him. He watches me with eyes that are more crow than man.
“I heard something in passing,” he says. “A few months back a beekeeper found his death and a harbinger gained freedom from the curse. The humans stung by the beekeeper were cured of their psychosis, but it wasn’t clear how.”
Michael gives him a slow blink. “Seriously, Jonas?”
So that’s his name. Jonas nods. “What do you intend to do with that, beekeeper?”
Ah, so, sticking to titles with this one, I see. I take a moment to digest, but can’t control a shudder. The stab of elation that jolts through me steals my breath. It had been done. Curses have been broken—recently. It didn’t matter who lived and died, just that the humans infected by the venom had been freed. “If this is true, then there’s a way to free Essie from the effects of my bees’ venom. And I will find it.”
17
Essie
the beginning of dark
We are in the car, returning home from grocery shopping. The last of the flavor ebbs from my watermelon bubble gum, and Aunt Bel sings along to an old Simon and Garfunkel song about the sound of silence. She has perfect pitch, and stays on key, but sings everything in a high octave and in this tremolo voice that turns head splitting very quickly. I can tell by the flush in her cheeks that she thinks her singing is magnificent.
We turn down our street, and my aunt slows the car. Her singing cuts off in a snarling curse word—one that earns me a slapped hand when I say it. One she only reserves for encounters with a particular person.
My father’s car is parked on the road in front of our house. Today, anxiety takes the form of a red, late-model Acura.
Aunt Bel pulls in the driveway. “Stay in the car.” She gets out and disappears inside. Immediately, I can hear the yelling. Something crashes inside the house, and I get out of the car in a series of jerky moves. I walk puppet-like toward the house, controlled by the desire to help my aunt, not by self-preservation.
Dread. Panic. My knees lose some of their rigidity when my hand closes around the front doorknob. I should hide in the car and wait for him to clear out, but I hear Grandma Edie’s quiet sobbing and Aunt Bel’s strained voice. She’s trying not to yell. He is not returning the effort. His voice twists my belly into achy knots. There is no sound I hate more.
I smooth back my hair and go inside, trying to look as together as I can. I ignore the urge to pull at my hair, pick at my arm. A twittery voice in my head begins counting by twos.
He’s in the kitchen, leaning against the counter. My father lives well outside of town and works at the college. He’s a professor of psychology, of all things, which is why he and Dr. Roberts are such pals. I can’t explain what he looks like beyond the basics—blond hair, brown eyes—but if you ask me what fear and pain looks like, my mind draws up an image of Bradley Roane.
I don’t remember specifics of my time living with him. I was younger when I was taken from him, although a very expensive lawyer ensured that he still has say in my care. What I do remember are basic feelings, sensations. Hunger, for example. The need to hide, and the comfort of small places. I hid to avoid my father’s drunken rages, but that resulted in more hunger, because he wouldn’t feed me if he couldn’t find me. I remember pain and fear and a pungent sense of betrayal, desolation. All things children shouldn’t feel. All things I still feel, acutely, whenever I’m near him.
My father leans against the counter. His suit appears fresh from the dry cleaners. “Goddamnit, Essie, it took you long enough to get in here.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “Hello Father.”
“Lazy brat.” He tilts a small, label-less bottle to his lips.
“Bradley, don’t speak to her that way,” Aunt Bel says.
“I’ll speak to her any way I like.” He kicks a chunk of a shattered coffee mug. There’s a brown splatter mark on the wall next to the refrigerator. He must have helped himself to a cup before we arrived. “She’s my daughter.”
“She’s as good as mine, according to the law.” My aunt holds her own against him, but her usually rosy cheeks are colorless. She’s terrified of him.
“Don’t I know it,” he snarls at her. “I give you enough of my hard-earned money for her, don’t I?”
I don’t know how he hides this side of himself at work. I
see him in the newspaper sometimes, all smiles while accepting an award of recognition or dispensing student diplomas. He talked himself into rehab and out of a jail sentence for his treatment of me. Intelligence is one quality my father doesn’t lack.
Grandma Edie sits at the table, rocking and tearing her napkin into tiny pieces.
I need to take my medication. Now. I move to the refrigerator with the slow, deliberate movements of an animal handler inside the tiger enclosure. This is what it’s like when he’s here—walking on eggshells, knowing that one will break, and it will be because of something totally unavoidable and benign, like breathing too deeply.
I take out the orange juice and reach for my pill dispenser. I pop open the day marked “Friday” and shake the contents into my hand.
Oh God. My arms are covered in long cuts, deep slices that are crudely sewn up with oily black thread. Blood oozes from the cuts, smears on the counter. My back is to them. They can’t see. I reach for a towel to wipe up my blood, then force myself to put it down. He’ll see me do this. He’ll know I’m cleaning up something that’s not real. Not real.
I close my eyes and try to focus. I need my pills, but my hands are too unsteady to pour orange juice. I drop the pills into the pocket of my T-shirt and turn around, slowly, knowing I’m going to see something horrible.
I almost groan at the sight of him. His face is shiny scarlet, and a pair of pointed horns curves out of his hairline. He looks like the devil, but the Halloween-costume version. His devil is so clichéd, I’m actually comforted. A little.
“I hear you can’t tell the difference between real people and the ones walking around in your crazy head. And now you’re being investigated in the murder of your tutor.”
“I–I didn’t hurt anyone.” I swallow thickly. “I just…found her.”