The Cost of All Things

by Maggie Lehrman

  “I’m sorry. I screwed up. I thought being alone was the worst thing that could happen to me, but it wasn’t.”

  It didn’t matter that I meant that sincerely, and for Diana and Ari, too, because he didn’t have to listen and neither did they. He shoved me by the shoulders—hard—and ran from one end of the wood shop to the other, jumping nimbly over benches and around hulking pieces of machinery, digging through smoldering piles of scrap and tossing PVC pipe right and left. He was looking for something. Another lighter? I clenched his in my fist along with Ari’s spell in its plastic bag. Maybe my anti-hook spell wouldn’t let him see that I had it.

  It wouldn’t be long before he found something that would work just as well, though. I thought about running, but I couldn’t leave them all. I thought about trying to get him to give Echo some money, so we could trigger her mom’s hook and rain hellfire on him like the hook had done to Win, but there was no time. Plus, spells were unpredictable. I remembered hanging out in the ER expecting my hook to kick in and send one of my friends through the doors. They never showed. No one could know how far we had to push before the spell fought back.

  Ari shrank against the wall away from Cal as he tore through the room, and Echo stood in front of her protectively. I glanced at the security monitor and saw cops shining flashlights into the closed front door. Cal must’ve doubled around behind me and Echo and locked the door after we came in.

  That chilled me more than the darkness in his eyes or the lighter fluid. It said to me that he wasn’t simply unhinged, but that he knew what he was doing, and he didn’t want us to leave or be rescued. He wanted us to burn with him.

  As he ran by Markos’s motionless body he knocked over a tin of lighter fluid. It spread quickly, seeping underneath where Markos lay and under the edge of Diana’s cage. She let it soak the knees of her jeans.

  He made a noise—a cry of some kind, almost a howl—and flicked the switch on a knee-high box with a rubber pipe running out of it, sitting just outside the cage where Diana was trapped. The pipe ended in a handheld trigger and a thin neck like the stem of a flower, and he clicked it once—twice—before the flower blazed to life. Blue and yellow. Too bright to look at.

  I didn’t think. I ran straight at Cal, hugging him around the stomach and trying to tackle him. But he was taller than me, and stronger, and I didn’t want to hurt him—I just wanted to stop him. I managed to push him against the wall, He dropped the welder and it went out before it could touch any of the lighter fluid, but he grabbed a two-by-four leaning there, and as I scratched and kicked and flailed, the two-by-four swung and hit me in the side. I dropped to my knees. Then it caught me right in the chest with a crack.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  Fell to the ground and gasped for air.

  I expected another hit from the two-by-four and welcomed it because I knew it would knock me out, and I wouldn’t have to feel my broken ribs and aching side, and I wouldn’t have to see Cal burn down the store and us in it.

  Instead, lighter fluid seeped all around me. Up my nose. Stinging my eyes.

  Ari yelled at Cal—yelled for the EMTs, somewhere out in the store—begged him not to do it—told him we would forget, that we would all take a spell with him, go back to the way things were, if that was what he wanted.

  He didn’t respond. Nothing in him that could hear her.

  Breathing in fumes, lightheaded. The room shimmered.

  Turned my head, and Cal picked up the Zippo from where I’d dropped it. Visible again.

  Dizzy. Lighter fluid on my clothes, in my hair. Couldn’t get up.

  I couldn’t see Ari or Echo. Markos lying next to me, not moving. Diana on the other side of him screaming.

  I rested my head in a puddle. Took a breath and my chest crackled. Ribs broken. No air.

  I felt empty, floaty, like there was nothing left of me but a paper shell. Wouldn’t hurt to burn to death. A whoosh and then nothing, like a scrap of newsprint.

  So much for making things right and reversing the hook. So much for spells.

  They couldn’t be counted on when it mattered. Spells would always find a way to trick you, to use your weaknesses against you, to come up with the ugliest possible solution to your problem. They were blunt instruments—but then again so were planks and flames. Fists and hammers. So were words and kisses.

  Cal held the yellow flame of the Zippo far from his body. It came closer, a tiny sun, and I had to close my eyes.

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  “What’s in the bag?” Cal asked.

  He held the Zippo a foot from Kay’s head, which was soaked in lighter fluid. I smelled barbecues and bonfires. Burned flesh.

  If I ran I knew I’d trip and fall and get lost in the store before finding the door to the outside. I knew the place would burn down with me and Diana and everyone else in it.

  Cal looked at my dancing spell, lying on the floor where Kay must’ve dropped it.

  “It’s—it’s a spell,” I said.

  Kay raised an arm and pushed the bag toward him.

  “What does it do?” Cal asked.

  “It’ll make you forget,” I said more steadily. “Like I forgot Win.”

  He picked up the bag. Something flashed from the depths of his dead, blank eyes. Something alive—something that hurt—a flash of the person Cal had been, trying to claw its way out.

  He blinked at the spell. The bright hot room lit up his face and the hope and desire and anger and fear in it.

  Get ready.

  I looked for Echo, and she was kneeling over something in the corner, muttering to herself.

  Diana’s mouth moved, and she shook the chain link.

  Kay turned her head and managed to half roll over to watch.

  Tears streamed down Cal’s face. No longer a terrifying blank but broken, in agony and relief. He opened the bag and emptied most of the contents into his mouth. Chewed and swallowed.

  A beat of silence, the Zippo still lit in one hand.

  He made a strangled noise and his expression twisted. “What the hell . . .” He turned and crashed into something. “What did you—this isn’t—”

  I ran to him, slipping on the lighter fluid. I landed hard on my knee and it twisted beneath me. Something snapped. Pain shot up my thigh to my back, but I dragged myself up and threw my entire body at Cal, knocking him down. I dug my knees, even the one that felt loose and shaking with pain, into his back.

  There was a whoosh, and fire burst from the spot where he’d been standing. He had been holding the lighter—it was a live flame. Markos was still unconscious. Kay could barely turn over. Diana was locked behind the cage. We would burn up quickly from the fluid in our clothes and hair and mouths.

  An easy way for Echo’s mom’s hook to eliminate the threat of Echo leaving would be for it to kill us all.

  Echo—where was Echo?

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  Breathe in.

  Heat and fire. A table saw caught on fire, then a stack of plywood. Flames licked the sides of my head and chest and legs, but I couldn’t move.

  Breathe out.

  Diana tried to reach me. I could hear her crying. I opened my eyes.

  She wanted to pull me away from the flames. She pressed the fire out on her side of the cage with her shirt. The room brightened like we were back at the July third bonfire.

  Breathe in.

  My head hurt. Cal had hit me in the head. My brother.

  Breathe out.

  It was hot. So hot.

  Breathe in.

  Out of nowhere, the room chilled and darkened. The flames seemed to freeze in place. The air pounded with the heartbeat of a creature much larger than us. In the corner, a single spot of light revealed Echo
with her arm raised over a scrap of paper. She’d pushed up her sleeve, ripped off one of many bandages, and torn at the skin until a cut oozed over the paper.

  The room seemed to shudder and something flashed in the smoke above Echo’s head. She screamed, and a second later the room was as hot and bright as ever. Echo stuffed the paper, wet with blood, into her mouth and swallowed.

  Breathe out.

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  “What did you do?” Ari asked Echo as she dug her knees into Cal’s back, pulling his arms together past where they would normally stretch.

  Blinking took effort. The smoke stung. I wondered what Echo’s new spell was for, in a remote corner of my mind that wasn’t in pain on the floor about to burn to death.

  Echo looked dazed for a moment, then she snapped into action. She ran to the chain link cage and ripped the lock off in one quick motion. Diana stumbled out, coughing from the smoke.

  “You got him?” Echo said to Ari. Ari nodded, though when she stood, pulling Cal up with her, she could only put weight on one leg. Echo turned next to Markos, smothering the flames covering his chest with her long black coat and hoisting him easily onto her shoulder. She went straight for the door to the woodshop, with Ari limping and dragging a moaning Cal behind her, and Diana shuffling last. Away from me and this hellish room.

  Forgotten. The spell to layer over the hook worked so well.

  I took a breath and tried to push myself upright.

  The pain in my chest made me cry out. I couldn’t get enough air.

  Diana heard me and turned around. She came back. She offered me her hand. I almost pulled her over, but then I was standing and coughing and gasping. I leaned on her, she leaned on me, and together we hobbled out of the burning woodshop.

  Smoke had already started to fill the aisles of the rest of the store. I couldn’t tell my way around. We followed the sound of Echo crashing. She didn’t try to maneuver her way around the twists and turns; she kicked over shelving units and ripped up displays, taking the direct route to the door. Behind her, Ari dragged Cal, and Diana and I helped each other pick our way as quickly as possible over the mountains of junk. We passed the EMTs, but Echo didn’t stop, and they followed us to the exit, shouting, asking if we were okay, trying to figure out where the smoke was coming from.

  The door had been propped open halfway, but instead of pushing it the rest of the way Echo’s single kick sent glass and metal flying. We stumbled out onto the street.

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  Ambulances and fire trucks and police cars swarmed the street, the lights turning it bright as day. EMTs and cops swirled around us, shouting questions; firemen ran into the store with hoses. I refused to let go of Cal’s arm until an EMT pried my hand away; another EMT led him to an ambulance as he clutched his head and cried. I watched him, and my EMT had to repeat herself half a dozen times before I could answer.

  “I’m fine,” I said, but she frowned and examined my bruises, fresh and old, as if I might be lying to her. She seemed particularly concerned about my knee. She said I might have torn my ACL. I heard her with only a part of my mind.

  I was fine. None of my scars came from that night; none of my wounds were visible.

  In the lights and confusion, I lost sight of Cal, and part of me wished I would never have to see him again. Dr. Pitts would say I was avoiding facing my trauma. Or she’d say it was healthy to move on. Either way, she’d have lots to say the next time I saw her.

  On the ground near where Cal had been taken away from me I spotted a smushed sandwich bag filled with crumbs: the remnants of the spell Echo had made for me, the one Cal had taken because I told him it would make him forget. My spell. My gracefulness. My future. I didn’t know how long it would last—or even if there was enough power left in the remaining crumbs to do anything at all—but I couldn’t leave it there.

  I clenched my teeth, put my weight onto my injured knee, and kicked the bag into the gutter and down the sewer grate.

  Diana followed Markos into an ambulance—the first to leave, sirens flashing. Echo stood next to Kay and Mina, sentry-like, as Kay sat on the curb and held her ribs, gasping, and Mina held her hand and leaned Kay’s head on her shoulder. “Do you need me to get an EMT?” I asked.

  Kay shook her head. “They’ll get to me.” She spoke in between shallow breaths. “What was in that spell he took?”

  Echo answered. “Gracefulness. He’ll be a beautiful dancer.” With a huge exhale she sat on the ground, her sudden burst of energy and strength spent. Her arm was bleeding thick streams of blood onto the sidewalk: the fresh cut, and several others from earlier. She looked extraordinarily pale. When she spoke, her voice faded, word by word. “And it’ll mess him up. More than he already is.”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said, then closed her eyes and slumped over onto her side.

  “Echo?” She didn’t respond. I dropped to my knees—my poor busted knees—and shook her shoulder. Kay reached for Echo’s wrist to check her pulse, and I held her other hand, just to hold it. The fire blew the windows out of the store with a crash, and she didn’t flinch. “Echo!”

  Her eyes didn’t open, but she managed to murmur loud enough for me to hear. “It’s okay, Ari. It was too late for me and my mom. Not with the hook.”

  “You could rebalance like you did to Kay—”

  “Too many spells. Too many side effects. No more spells.” She exhaled. “No way out.”

  “Echo, no—”

  “Tell my mom I’m sorry, but it was too late.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said. “Echo, listen—you can still come with me to New York. Take your mom with you! Find hekamists together. Or if I don’t go to New York we’ll still find a way to save you.” I heard more sirens in the distance, and still Echo didn’t move. “You probably shouldn’t stay here to be questioned—you should get up. They’ll find you, they’ll find out about you, put you and your mom in jail. Please, Echo—you’ve got to get away. Echo—come on—”

  No lightning fell from the sky to destroy me. My heart didn’t stop. And that’s when I got really scared.

  Her mother’s hook didn’t work anymore.

  Faintly, from far off, I heard someone calling my name.

  “Ari? Ari!” Jess ran toward me, and I let go of Echo’s hand.

  I tried to run to meet Jess but my knee would barely let me stand. She reached me and hugged me, almost knocking me back onto the sidewalk, and I buried my head in her shirt.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Jess said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Shhhh.”

  No one came to hug Echo. No one came to carry her home.

  Echo was in a coma on the way to the hospital, and she died a few hours later. Loss of blood, they said. But doctors don’t really understand hekame—not like I do, with my multiple spells. Echo made herself a spell that allowed her to break though doors, snap locks with her hands, and rip apart metal cabinets. The side effects of something like that would be disastrous.

  The spell made her superhuman, ever so briefly. To balance that, she had to know what she’d give up.

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  The smell woke me up. (Someone left meat on the grill too long.) Then the hurt. (I am a white-hot metal knife of pain.) I tried to will myself back into unconsciousness, but it was like running headfirst into a brick wall. So instead I opened my eyes.

  “Hello,” Diana said.

  “You’re okay,” I said—barely. My vocal chords crackled.

  She held my hand, which set
off such pain that part of my vision went white, but I never would’ve told her even if I could.

  “Cal?” I said, or at least shaped my mouth into the word. I couldn’t hear very well because of the sirens. We were moving. An ambulance.

  “In another ambulance,” she said. He’d set fire to the hardware store. Would they arrest him for arson? For Ari’s house, nine years ago? Either way it was a relief, not only that he’d been caught and we’d gotten away, but also that he was alive. Dead is so permanent. You can’t actually summon the dead for pep talks, or to see what they think about your situation.

  The ambulance went over a pothole and I started to fade—or the world did, at least, Diana and the paramedics and the pain.

  —Win?

  I wanted to tell Diana I was sorry, and that even if she never wanted to see me again, I would still be sorry, but I couldn’t open my mouth, so I squeezed her hand.

  —Win?

  I couldn’t see the real world anymore, but a room in my mind opened up, bright and cool, and I decided to lie down and rest in there because everywhere else was so noisy. But I kept the door open, so I could come back when it calmed down.

  —Goodbye, Win.

  Severe concussion. Second-degree burns on my face and legs. Third-degree burns on my hands. Part of my right eyebrow would never grow back, though they promised me the angry, puckered skin on my cheeks and nose would fade. I wouldn’t look so much like my brothers anymore. An unmatched set.

  “You’re lucky your skull didn’t crack,” the doctors said.

  Yeah. Lucky.

  Diana slept in the chair next to my hospital bed. Her shirt was half-burned and her hair a tangled, charred mess. They’d given her fluids and a sedative, but she seemed mostly fine for someone who’d been locked in a cage and nearly burned to death. Better than the rest of us, for sure.