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.”
“So what do you want to do?” Elizabeth asks.
“I want to sharpen your skills. I want to show you the ways. Then I want to find Maxwell Arbus, and I want to take him down. I want to become the first spellseeker to break an invisibility curse. And I want to do it sooner rather than later, because this broad’s not made of time.”
“Sign me up!” Laurie cheers.
But it’s not Laurie that Millie is staring at.
“Sign me up,” Elizabeth says.
“Okay,” Millie says, rubbing her hands together. “Boys, you’ll have to excuse us. We have some training to do.”
Chapter 16
MILLIE WASTES NO TIME in shooing Laurie and Stephen out of the hexatorium. She even makes a high-pitched shoo, shoo sound, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard a person vocalize before now. Laurie backs out of the room, giving me a thumbs-up as he disappears into the stairwell. Stephen lags, watching me. He’s trying to hide a frown, and I throw a smile his way. It’s a stronger smile than what I’m feeling, but I know he’s worried and I don’t want him to be. I’m where I have to be. I need to do this, even if I don’t even know what this is and I’d rather not be alone with a woman I barely know who says “shoo.”
Millie ends up closing the door to the hexatorium in Stephen’s face. He’d opened his mouth and I’m left wondering what he was going to say. It was probably just goodbye, but with my world turning end on end with each moment, I don’t want to miss anything. Not even a simple farewell. The more I learn of what’s at stake, what we’re dealing with, curses, magic . . . revenge, the more I’m afraid of what we could lose without any warning.
I push away the chill of suddenly being without the boy I’ve fallen in love with. The invisible boy.
“Dear, dear, dear.” Millie is pinching my cheeks, startling me out of my torpor and sending me back a few shocked steps. “No sallow faces here.”
I’m about to snark back, asking what my complexion has to do with spellseeking, but think better of it. I know she’s trying to be kind in a weird, grandmotherly way. I’m desperate to stop the rattle of nerves in my bones.
Millie gives me an indulgent smile. “I’ll get us some tea and nice cookies.”
Yep, 100 percent grandmother.
She vanishes behind a thick velvet wall hanging that I thought was a tapestry but actually conceals a hallway. She must be going to a kitchen, but what else is back there? Does she live below the streets of New York, alone with the hexatorium and the one-eyed bodyguard upstairs?
As much as I’m thrown by her sudden shift in attitude, it’s also kind of nice. Between Mom’s crazy work schedule and my excuses to be away from home and with Stephen, I’ve barely seen Mom the past few weeks. As I hear Millie’s muffled, out-of-tune humming, it strikes me that this is strange for her too. Her new exuberance for curse breaking was borne not only out of guilt, but also loneliness.
I rub my arms, shivering. The hexatorium feels more like a catacomb than a residence—a place to hide from the world and then be forgotten by it. And Millie’s lived in exile here . . . for how many years, I can’t be sure.
Certain these sober thoughts are giving me unwelcome sallow cheeks again, I move around the room, searching for distractions.
How can I make this easier? I’m a student. This is school. I know school. I can do school.
I try to pretend it’s my first day of class
. What would I do?
Before Laurie’s hospitalization, I’d been a pretty engaged student, sitting close to the front of class, answering questions. After the attack I’d withdrawn, sullen and resentful of my classmates and even my teachers. My only desire was to be left alone, so I’d migrated to the middle of classrooms. Away from the eager students in the front but equally removed from the troublemakers and jokesters at the back. In the middle I could be present without being noticed. I could sneak comics to read instead of my textbooks. I could work on my sketches instead of taking notes.
I wanted to disappear.
The thought stops me in my tracks. Not only does the idea of invisibility mean something entirely different to me now, but the whole point of being here is because I can’t fade away. I have to become whatever it is I’m supposed to be so I can help Stephen.
Squaring my shoulders, I reach for one of the thick books, figuring I might as well get started before Millie brings out the tea. Before I can pull the book down, I’m turned around by the clattering of a tray on the table. Tea sloshes over the edge of the cups but is sopped up quickly by the paper doilies adorning the silver service.
“No, no!” Millie fusses me away from the shelves. I move quickly since I don’t want to be shooed.
“Those books are about history,” she says. “Our concern is with the present. You need action. The past is for pondering and meditation, and that’s for another time. Sit down.”
She waits until I obey. I watch as she smilingly sets a cup of tea before me. From the scent I guess it’s Earl Grey. Then she pushes a plateful of shortbread towards me. Deciding it’s not optional, I select a cookie and munch on it in the hopes that my compliance will get Millie to move along with our training.
She beams at me, takes a sip of her tea, and says, “Now then, let’s get down to it. Shall we?”
I’m glad I don’t sigh in relief and get away with a nod.
“Like I already told your boys, there wasn’t a sudden upheaval that transformed spellseekers from actors into observers,” she says. “It was gradual.”
She stiffens slightly, lip trembling. “Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t laziness . . . or perhaps apathy.”
I see her face shift from doubt to determination. She fixes me in a sharp gaze. “But when I’m having better days, my first instinct is that it was fear.”
“Fear?” The tea and cookies are soothing, making me feel like a child being spun a wondrous story. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m living this story, not hearing it. I wonder if I should be taking notes.
Millie sweeps her arm around the room. “You’ve seen my home. It’s a place of wonder, certainly, but it’s my refuge. I fear people like Maxwell Arbus. Cursecasters bowed to the judgments of the spellseekers because they had to, but we were always considered a nuisance at best, an enemy at worst. A threat that the cursecasters would come after their perceived persecutors always existed.”
“But you don’t know?” I cast a sidelong glance at the moldering books.
“Another reason we can’t rely on the past.” Millie shakes her head. “The histories I have are incomplete. And what I’d be looking for probably wouldn’t have made it into the official record. Nasty business that it was.”
I raise my eyebrows at her while I take another sip of tea.
She laughs and it lights up her face, taking ten years off. “Blackmail is what I’m suggesting, dear. And of the worst sort. Not the silly fiddle-faddle of these days about someone sleeping with someone else they shouldn’t have. I’m talking about threats to one’s family. To one’s own well-being.”
As I add fiddle-faddle to my new dictionary of Millieisms, sadness creeps back into her eyes. “Enough speculation about the past. Let’s start with what we do know and what we must yet discover. When did you first gain your sight?”
I stare at her.
“I mean, when did you first sense curses?” Her question is patient.
“But haven’t I always been able to sense them?” I ask, frowning. “It was only yesterday that I figured out how to see them.”
She nods. “Of course, dear. What I’m referring to is what we call an awakening. Spellseekers are all born with a latent ability to do their work, but he or she doesn’t come into that power until the moment of awakening. It’s usually an event. A trigger, if you will.”
I’m still frowning, confused. “Then I guess it was yesterday.”
Now it’s Millie’s turn to frown. She hasn’t lost patience with me yet, but I can tell the conversation is frustrating her. “No, no. Yesterday you learned how to hone in on the curses and see them. That’s an ability that’s unique to you alone and is tied to your natural talent. What I’m talking about is when you first sensed the curses. It’s a shame you were alone because the shift would have affected the way you see the world, but you wouldn’t have known why or what was happening.”
“I’m sorry.” I crumble a cookie beneath my fingers, feeling stupid and helpless.
Fortunately Millie is a good teacher, one who doesn’t easily doubt or give up on her pupils. “Then tell me, what made you go out yesterday to look for the curses?”
“Oh!” I sit up straight. “It was my drawings.”
“You’re an artist?” Millie sounds surprised but pleased.
A hot blush paints my cheeks. “I . . . I want to be. I want to write and illustrate comics.”
“How interesting,” Millie says, though her face tells me she was hoping I was an artist of the more traditional variety. “So how did your drawings lead you to seek curses?”
“It was the story I’ve been working on.” I speak slowly, thinking about my words as I say them. “It’s The Shadowbound.”
Millie tilts her head, waiting for me to continue.
“And I realized that I’ve been drawing curses. Cursed people.”
“And when did you start working on this story?” she asks.
I have to put my teacup down because my hands are shaking. I know exactly when I started working on The Shadowbound. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t do anything. So I drew. I drew on recycling-bin-bound paper that the nurses scrounged up for me. I drew for hours while my brother lay unconscious in a shrine of beeping machines and twisting plastic tubes.
I’m staring into my half-empty cup. “My brother was attacked.”
Millie draws a sharp breath. “By a cursecaster?”
“No,” I say. “By people. Just people.”
When I force my eyes up to meet Millie’s, she offers me a sad smile. “It’s amazing what people can do to each other even without the aid of casters. Amazing and terrible.”
I nod, blinking hard so tears won’t escape my eyes.
Millie politely pretends not to notice. I am really starting to like her.
“I believe we can safely say that your brother’s misfortune awakened your ability,” she says. “The awakenings are more often the result of trauma or loss than a happy occurrence.”
“Yours was immediate,” I say quietly. “Because of your sister. You knew she was missing. You could sense the emptiness that she should have filled.”
She takes a deep breath that lifts and lowers her shoulders. “Always. So yes, my case was unique. I sensed curses from the beginning.”
I’m feeling unsteady, even a little sick. This is information I’m not certain I’m ready to process. Why do bad things happen to good people? So your superpower can be awakened?
Suddenly I don’t care what I might be or how training as a spellseeker could help anyone. What happened to Laurie was unforgivable. A silver lining to that horror is unacceptable. Every cell in my body recoils against that thought.
My reactions must be scrolling over me like a news ticker, because Millie stands up.
“Now, now.” She comes around the table to stand beside me, placing her hand over mine. “You mustn’t do that.”
I think for a moment she’s going to comment on my sallow skin again, but she simpl
y squeezes my fingers within her slender bony ones.
“If it wasn’t what happened to your brother, it would have been something else,” she says. “Your natural talent is greater than any I’ve known. Its awakening was simply a matter of time.”
I manage to squeeze her fingers in return, though I still don’t like it. I have to admit that it makes sense. I’ve never experienced anything so visceral as that siege of emotions that battered me in the wake of Laurie’s attack. The world changed around me, becoming brighter, sharper, harder. Full of angles and shapes I’d never seen before.
I’d considered it my initiation into the jaded club, when it turns out I was simply seeing the lingering effects of magic, good and evil, for the first time.
“So we’ve pinpointed where it began.” Millie speaks softly, coaxing me back into the room and out of the dark corners of my past. “Would you like to discuss where it might lead you from here?”
“Yes.” I’m surprised by the strength in my voice.
“Let’s start simply.” She hesitates, withdrawing her hand from mine. “I’m afraid I’ll be learning too. It’s already obvious that your talent is greater than mine.”
I open my mouth to protest, but she shakes her head.
“It’s the truth, plain and simple,” she says. “I only hope it doesn’t hinder our purpose.”
She returns to her chair and closes her eyes. “When I was still identifying and analyzing curses as a way of making a living, I could sense the lingering power of magic on the victim. The aftereffect of the curse, if you will. It was like looking at the negative image of a photograph, but a blurred negative at best.”
“But you said you can’t undo curses,” I say.
She opens her eyes. “Yes.”
“Then why would anyone pay you for your services?”
“Cursecasters are a prideful lot.” Her laugh is bitter. “By identifying the curse, spellseekers don’t have difficulty tracing steps back to its creator. Many of the cursecasters will take a larger payment than the original fee if they made the curse on behalf of someone else. If the curse is personal, it often only takes groveling on the part of the victim in order for the cursecaster to break their own spell.”
Invisibility Page 15