I heard footsteps approaching out of the dimness. “Mari?”
I pushed the sunglasses up onto my head again and blinked as my eyes began to adjust, tracing the outline of a person to go with the voice.
“Vivi?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Are you okay?” Vivi’s huge luminous eyes filled with concern as Mr. Frosty and Joe sat me down in a papasan chair and moved a makeshift ottoman under my feet.
I waved it off. “I’ll be all right. We’re just being extra-cautious.” Mr. Frosty grunted in disapproval, and I ignored it. My heart was sinking. “Taking a break from people?” I said it as lightly as I could. “We’re not disturbing you, are we?”
“No, no, not at all,” she hastened to assure me. “I was here for the talk that ended a while ago, and I just couldn’t face the heat again. That chair’s really good for dozing off, in case you were wondering.”
“So you’ve had the place to yourself for a while?” Maybe someone else had just left. Maybe the vulture was following that person.
“Yeah, pretty much.” She shrugged.
Joe caught my eye and raised an eyebrow. I flicked my eyes at Vivi and gave him the tiniest of nods. Mr. Frosty was busy taking my pulse and didn’t notice. Joe, bless his heart, nodded back at me and turned to Vivi. “If you’re not in a hurry,” he said, “would you mind terribly staying with Mari for a few minutes?” He looked at Mr. Frosty. “If you want to get someone from the first aid tent, I was thinking I could go get some cold water and ice packs.”
Mr. Frosty nodded. Obviously, he had found a brother in arms. Whatever works, right? “Good idea. Her pulse is okay and she’s sweating, so I don’t think it’s heat stroke, but I want to have her monitored for a while to be sure she gets back to normal.”
“Uh, sure, I could stay,” said Vivi.
The guys left, and Vivi paced a few steps before snagging a camp chair and pulling it up next to me. We sat in awkward silence for a minute. “Do you get nightmares?” I blurted.
“Once in a while, I guess?” She was probably wondering if I was on drugs just like Mr. Frosty had.
“I do,” I said. “Not as much anymore, but sometimes. They’re bad when they happen. A lot of the time they’re the same one, repeating.” I took the gamble. “I used to dream a lot about a man without a face. I don’t know who he was, but he knew everything about me. He’d say horrible things. Or he’d tell me that he’d made some lucky thing happen for me and that I owed him. He--he wanted me to die.”
“That’s terrible.” She stared at me, but I couldn’t tell if I was hitting a chord with her. “Is that what happened just now? A nightmare?”
“No, I just--” I caught myself. “I got overheated. It just made me think about how I used to feel this trembly and sweaty when I woke up then, too.”
“It’s funny you should mention it.” Her gaze went somewhere else. “I had some trouble sleeping last night.”
“Bad dreams?”
“No, not really. I figured it was just indigestion and sleeping in an unfamiliar place.”
There was something she wasn’t saying. I was sure of it. I studied her face. “You want to hear something really weird? I’ve met other people who had the same nightmares. Who saw the faceless man and said he talked to them the same way. All of us, it made us feel doomed somehow. Like we were going to die, whether we did it ourselves or just waited for that shoe to drop.”
She glanced back at the doorway, at her watch. “That’s freaky for sure.”
“It helped me a lot, though. Hearing it from other people. Just being able to talk about it to people who didn’t think I was crazy. You know?”
“Sure.”
“I used to think I was being haunted by a demon or something. Tried to learn spells and rituals to protect myself. I was kind of a messed up kid.” I was still watching her. She didn’t meet my eyes.
“Weren’t we all, at that age?” She made a noise that was almost a laugh. “I was a total golden child--salutatorian, Honors Society, ran track, played in the orchestra--so I seemed pretty normal, but I was using that goody-goody reputation to sneak off and hit up biker bars and parties on the wrong side of town. Such a thrill-seeker, always pushing my luck.”
“Is this scene where you do your thrill-seeking now?” Maybe Vivi was simply prone to doing stuff that could end in a bad accident. Maybe that was the crossroads.
“Nah, I’ve calmed down a lot.” She settled back into her chair and looked more at ease. “I took a year off after high school so I could backpack around the world, volunteering in a bunch of places--god, listen to me, ‘took a year off’, could I sound whiter?” We both laughed. “Anyway, so I roughed it in all these crazy places and did a lot of wild, stupid stuff. When I got home, I got a job and started my own business, and that was it. Once I started being the person I was supposed to be, life was exciting enough. I didn’t need to go to the sketchiest parts of town to find an outlet.”
“I wish I’d learned that as early as you did,” I said, feeling wistful. “I spent so many years trying to do everything right and be a normal adult, and it got me exactly nowhere.”
“But now you’re embracing your inner freak, right?” Her big smile showed a dimple. “So it all worked out in the end.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” I didn’t feel like getting into the details of how much things had not worked out in recent years.
Joe poked his head into the yurt and met my eyes. I nodded him in. He shouldered his way through the entrance, his arms full. Besides a couple of deliciously sweating bottles of water, he had a few baggies of ice wrapped in dish towels and more snacks than I could eat this entire weekend.
“Did you stop off at the supermarket on your way?” I watched him dump everything beside me.
He began putting ice packs behind my neck and on my forehead and wrists. “Ha very ha.” He loosened the cap on one of the water bottles and handed it to me. “Drink. Then salt.” He popped open a bag of chips.
I took a long, delicious pull off the water bottle and reached for some chips. “Thank you, is what I meant to say.”
“You’re welcome.” He held the bag out to Vivi. “Want some?”
“Oh, yes.” She sank her hand in the bag to the elbow, hauling out a giant handful of chips. She ate at an almost mechanical pace, one chip following the last into her mouth. Joe gave her a strange look, but said nothing.
That was when Mr. Frosty returned with a chick in sequined hot pants, striped knee-high socks, a fuzzy knit halter top, and a blonde curly wig studded with daisies. “You’re in luck. One of our med staff volunteers on duty happens to be a registered nurse.”
She stuck out a hand. “Call me Hot Lips.”
“For real?” Of course that was her name. I shook her hand.
As Hot Lips put a thermometer in my mouth and readied a blood pressure cuff, Vivi stood up. “Well, it looks like you all have everything under control here, so I’m gonna take off. It was nice chatting with you again, Mari. Feel better, okay? I’ll see you around.” And she was going. Dammit.
I couldn’t talk to Joe about it while the M.A.S.H. unit was hovering over me, so I endured the fussing with what patience I could scrape together, answering their questions and letting Hot Lips check all my vitals. I’m not a good patient by nature, and I dislike it even more these days because it reminds me of being helpless after the accident, but my hospital stay did teach me to embrace a sort of passive resistance when it came to medical care. As in, I passively let them do whatever they need to do, and I consider myself a Gandhian-level martyr for doing so.
“Well,” Hot Lips said when she was done, “you might’ve gotten a little heat sick, but you seem to be bouncing back pretty well. Everything’s normal and your color looks okay. You don’t appear to be having any drug effects that I can tell, either.”
“I didn’t do drugs
.” It might have come out a bit defensive.
She held up her hands. “Everyone says it. I still have to check. Anyway, try to stay to the shade and take it easy for a while. Can you do that for me?”
“I suppose,” I said, mostly because there was no way Mr. Frosty was getting off my ass if I didn’t agree to it.
“Oh hey,” said Mr. Frosty. “Do you need to reschedule either of your volunteer shifts? I can go do that for you if you need.”
“Oh, um, no.” I hoped I didn’t look too guilty. “I was going to take care of that this afternoon. I’ll go sign up after this.”
“Okay.” He was giving me a bit of stink eye. “Just don’t forget. This festival only runs if everyone does their part.”
“Cross my heart.”
Finally they took off and left me in Joe’s supervision. Thank all the gods.
As soon as they were gone, I sat up and turned to Joe. “She’s it, I’m sure. I saw the vulture when we got here.”
He took Vivi’s chair. “You actually saw it?”
I remembered the sunglasses and pulled them off my head, studying them. “I guess Tamar did a better job with them after we went swimming.”
“Did you get anything else out of her? Anything about a way that she might--you know?”
“Short of her heart exploding or an anvil falling out of the sky onto her head? Nope. She seems healthy and well-adjusted.” I pictured her face. “I tried to draw her out. No dice, but there’s something she’s not saying. I think there’s something more going on, but I couldn’t figure out how to get her to open up.”
“We could just tell her.” Joe unwrapped a couple of beef jerky sticks and handed one to me, biting a chunk off the other.
“Tell her what? That she’s maybe on the brink of death? That a demon marked her to claim her soul?”
“I mean, yes? What’s the worst that happens, she thinks we’re crazy people?”
I drained my water bottle. “Yeah, and then she stays away from us, and we can’t do anything for her at all.”
“Fair. Could we keep watch on her?”
“That’s what I was thinking. Like what if we took turns, and kept enough distance that she wouldn’t realize she was being watched, but stayed close enough to jump in and help her if we could?” I mulled it over. “That’s all I’ve got. The only sure way to protect her--even if she dies--is to cut the bond between her and the demon, but I don’t have any idea how to do that. So maybe the best I can do for her is to help her get through this crossroad time alive.”
He thought for a moment. “So we can try to save her from some life-threatening event if there’s anything we can even do. Or we can interfere with the demon. Or we can protect her magically, maybe. If there’s a way to do it without her knowing. Tamar would hate that idea.”
“I wonder if there’s a way to speed up the crossroads,” I mused. “Crossroads end when you pick a road to go down, right? So what’s the choice she would have to make in this case, and could she be nudged into making it faster?” I didn’t have any answer for that.
“If so, I’m sure we could just bribe her with snack foods,” he said. “Did you see her take like half the bag in one grab? Cripes. Raised in a cave much? I mean, when someone offers you some of their chips, you take a few of them and then wait to see if they offer it again.”
“That was a little weird,” I admitted. “Maybe she didn’t realize how much she was taking.”
“Maybe she’s going to get burned to death trying to eat a steak straight off the grill when someone offers to share dinner with her.”
“Charming.”
“I’m a master wordsmith.” He paused. “Wait--in all this--what happened? While you were out? Did you figure out where he’s coming from?”
“And then some.” I told him about the realm, about what I’d figured out about it, about the confrontation. I left out the threatening insinuation that he was still somehow able to hurt me. It freaked me out too much.
“Jesus, no wonder you were so messed up when you got back.” He looked at me with sympathy and--admiration? “I’m impressed you figured out all that stuff.”
“It just came to me,” I said, though I was a little impressed with myself too. “Listen, thanks for taking care of me like this. I hate that I needed it, but...it did make me feel better.”
“I’d do it for anyone.” He shrugged and looked down at the snacks in his hands. “No, that’s a lie. I’m really glad you’re okay, though.”
I was very aware that he was sitting close to me, that we were alone in the yurt, that the worry I’d seen in his face seemed to confirm what Sara had suggested. I remembered being in the glade with him as he measured his hand span against mine. I looked down at that hand; it would be the smallest movement to reach out and take it. In a place like Morph, it wouldn’t even be a strange thing to do. But it wouldn’t be just a casual contact, and he’d know it as soon as it happened.
My gaze traveled up his arm to his face and met his. Behind the veils of his expression, I could see the shifting of unspoken things. Could he tell what I was thinking, or was he thinking it too? I felt a tiny quiver pass through me. It had been such a long time since I’d had any contact more intimate than a friendly hug. My skin was starving for it, just for that warmth and weight and the sense of connection that came with the press of another body against mine. To breathe in the scent of someone’s skin, feel their heat and hear the rumbling of a low laugh against my ear. Joe was here, he was concerned about me, he was funny and kind, he was--probably--interested.
He wasn’t my Beloved.
I looked away, doused in my cold shower of guilt. Not for the first time, I felt a flare of anger--that I didn’t know where my Beloved had gone, that I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t just been abandoned, that I didn’t understand the rules of this love and therefore always wondered if I could only be faithful to it by shoving my human needs into a tiny closet labeled Denial and locking the door.
“Something’s not right,” said Joe.
“I know,” I said miserably, and prepared to tell him what it was.
“How did he get his hooks in her in the first place?”
I blinked. “What?”
Joe hunched forward in his chair, gesturing with a beef jerky stick like an orchestra conductor. “Vivi. This is where it bugs me. She seems like the worst possible candidate for his target, right?”
“Right...”
“And why? Because she’s not--how do I put this--psychically bleeding.”
My stomach prickled with agreement, though my brain was still processing. “Go on.”
He flushed a little. “Look at what we know. He was after you, and you were...in a bad way.” His gaze strayed to my wrists and he looked away. “And that guy on the train, you said he was an addict who was all kinds of messed up.”
“True--”
“Can you remember what came first? Did you have that--despair--first, or did he show up first?”
It was painful to think back to those days, but I could answer that one. “I was definitely deep into depression first.”
“From everything I’ve heard so far, this thing is a sadist,” Joe said. “He liked your suffering. He knew where to poke you to make it hurt. He liked making you afraid. It can’t be an accident that he has vulture egregores circling around his wounded animals. I just don’t think it’s a coincidence that you and your friend Charlie were both vulnerable in that way, both wounded and in pain and conscious in some way of your own mortality.”
“Maybe.” I didn’t trust my voice to say anything more.
“So what is he getting out of this relationship with her?” He talked as much to himself as to me. “Why bother? I mean, here at Morph alone there’s got to be dozens of people carrying around much worse psychic pain who would be easier targets, and surely the odds are that at least on
e is at or near a crossroads. If you’re right, he just got the soul of an entire realm, not to mention Charlie, so he can’t be hurting for whatever that gives him, power or nourishment or just triumph. Why her, and not an easier target? Why is she so different or special that we’ve all ended up here to save her?”
I felt weary. “I don’t know. Maybe she’s just that good at hiding her suffering. Some people are so high-functioning you’d never know it.”
“What I’m saying is that I feel like there’s more to it, that there’s something we’re missing.” He sighed in frustration. “Okay--so, how did you get free?”
“I don’t know the details. When I almost died, when Rosa Vermelha helped me return to life, something about the deal she made to take me for hers also broke the bond.”
“Okay, before that. You survived. How did you hold out when you were, um--”
“Suicidal?” I supplied, and he flinched. “You can say it. I was. At first, when the demon showed up, I think the only thing I was more afraid of than people learning how secretly awful I really was, was for people to think I was crazy and lock me away in a hospital. So I didn’t tell anyone about him, not even my friends. But then my friend Suzanne...” I closed my eyes. Saw her face from my dream. It still hurt to say her name. “He had her too. We tried to fight him off together.”
I turned my face away from him. “It got to be too much for me. One day...so, the reason my mom found me was because Suzanne called. Freaking out. She had this gut feeling that something was so wrong. Begged my mom to check on me. My mom hated Suzanne because--well, anyway, I guess the call got to her so she went into the bathroom and pulled me out of the tub and wrapped up my arms.”
I could feel Joe’s gaze on me. “Mari, you don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s okay. I want you to know. But if it bothers you--”
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 17