“Don’t talk about dying,” Elizabeth says, her voice unsteady. “And don’t put your finger in any more sockets.”
“What happens if we find him?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
She looks so tired. Drained.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Sleep here. Just sleep.”
I stand up so she can stretch out on the couch.
“I’ll call Laurie,” I tell her. “I’ll let them all know where you are.”
“And that I’m safe.”
“And that you’re safe.”
I get her a blanket, turn off the lights. But before I can go, she says, “I want you there with me at Millie’s. I want you to be my shield.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I tell her yes.
* * *
When I go with her to Millie’s the next morning after a strained breakfast with my father, Millie will not let me in.
“It’s too dangerous,” she says. “When Elizabeth opens herself up to the curses, you cannot be around. If she happens to look at you when she is that vulnerable—I don’t want to say what might happen.”
How can I argue? I am banished back to my apartment, banished to pace the floor as I wonder what Elizabeth is doing, and if she is putting herself in harm’s way.
Weeks pass like this. My father comes over to tell me that he has to go back to his family, that he’s been away too long. He is not going to ask me to go with him—we both know that. He says he’ll be back, and that if I need anything at all, I should let him know. I need many things, but none of them are worth him knowing. He doesn’t ask me about Elizabeth, about curses, about the “teachers” who appeared in the apartment. He doesn’t want to know about any of that, not really. He wants to stay in his own world, the one that most people think is the real one.
Most nights, Laurie comes by after school, and Elizabeth comes by after Millie’s. We watch movies. We eat Chinese food. It’s all very normal, except for the fact that I’m not visibly there.
The days are the hardest—long stretches of alone time, their loneliness amplified by the sound of the people who are not present. I go to the park. I walk through museums. I suffer in the summer heat like everyone else. But all the while, I am aware of the curses I can’t see. I am aware of the problems I can’t solve. I see that Ivan the dog walker and Karen the live-in nanny have gotten together. I am happy for them. But I can’t feel that happiness inside myself. Not during the day.
One night, after her mother is asleep, Elizabeth slips out to stay with me. She and Laurie have a deal—he’ll cover for her if she covers for him on another night so he can go to the roof with Sean. They want to watch the sunrise together.
It’s strange to have her over and to know she won’t have to leave until morning. We’re shyer with each other, but also a little looser, a little freer. When we kiss, it doesn’t feel rushed. When we do more than kiss, we only rush when we want to.
Our intimacy stops well short of sex. We’re not ready for it yet, and know we won’t be for a while. Not because of the circumstances, but because we both need to know each other really well and for a long time before taking that step. Also, in the back of my mind, there are the circumstances. I know we would be careful, completely careful. But if something went wrong—would the curse be passed on? Elizabeth and I never talk about this, never mention it. I doubt it even crosses her mind. But it’s there on mine. It hovers over the whole future.
It is more than enough to have her sleep in my arms. It is more than enough to be there as her breathing takes on the pace of sleep. It is more than enough to wake up and find she’s doing the same thing—watching me, seeing me, marveling at it all.
* * *
It starts to feel almost routine. There are a few minutes when I feel dizzy, when I feel a little weak on my feet, but I don’t think much of it—I often exhaust myself during the summer, and have never really understood how the sun affects my skin if it can’t be seen. Do I get sunburned? Heatstroke? Elizabeth tells me I look fine, but I’m not sure.
When she comes home, it’s almost like we’re husband and wife, and she’s the one who’s gone to the office. I ask her how it went. She tells me what she’s learned, and I understand about half of it.
Then one day she comes home and tells me something that needs no further explanation.
“He’s come back,” she tells me. “It’s him, Stephen. Maxwell Arbus is here.”
Chapter 20
I’VE BEEN LYING TO STEPHEN. The lies twist like a restless ball of snakes in my stomach, as if I’ve earned a curse of my very own. I tell myself that it can’t be helped. Repeat over and over that this dishonesty serves a great purpose. But the words are bitter on my tongue, and I know I’m a hypocrite. I know that lying to someone you love is never okay.
But I don’t know what else to do.
* * *
Things are so much worse than he knows. I think it’s worse than even I know.
* * *
Sometimes when I’m lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling, I try to remember how it happened.
I push my mind back to that afternoon, to the fever that was burning my body from the inside out, because that’s when the memories become a bit clearer. I think it has to do with the way that the fever took me into a place not unlike the strange shores I occupy between dreams and waking.
What happened on the subway comes in jarring flashes that jolt me back to myself before sleep fully takes hold. I can hear gasps from other passengers, followed by shouts to call 911. I feel Saul’s arms gripping me and I scream because his touch on my sore-splotched skin is unbearable. Despite my cries, he doesn’t let go and doesn’t lose his footing when the train slows at the next stop. Through the fog of pain and the fever I sense bodies lurching around me as the train squeals to a halt on the tracks. Millie whispers urgently to Saul. I am lifted, carried from the brightness of the car and plunged into the shadows. People shout after us, pleading with Saul that I need an ambulance, demanding to know where he’s taking me.
After that I don’t remember anything until a tepid, vile liquid invades my mouth. I imagine gutter water has a similar taste. I choke on the substance, coughing so it runs down my chin.
“There, there,” Millie says, patting at my wet skin with a soft cloth. “You need to drink it. Drink it, child.”
I start to shake my head, but now Saul is holding my mouth open. The swamp water pours in again and this time Saul clamps my jaw closed, so I can either swallow or drown in a stagnant puddle.
My stomach cramps and I’m sure I’ll vomit.
“Breathe.” Millie squeezes my hand. And I do breathe, and despite the horrible taste in my mouth, my body begins to unclench. Something cool trickles through my blood and eases through my pores. The fire scorching my skin is smothered and the festering sores that bubbled over my throat, chest, arms, and legs fade to bruises and then disappear altogether.
Saul’s grip loosens. “Has she had enough?”
“I think so,” Millie answers. My vision isn’t blurry anymore and I can see her peering at me. “How do you feel, Elizabeth?”
“Like I’m about to throw up.” I hope she doesn’t want me to keep talking because if I open my mouth again, I’ll be sick for sure.
Millie putters around me in nervous circles. “No, no, no. You can’t regurgitate the tonic. Your body needs it to repel the curse. Sit still, be quiet, and I’ll go fix you some peppermint tea.”
She gives Saul a meaningful look and his huge hands clamp down on my shoulders, making sitting still involuntary. I’m grateful Millie ordered my silence because I wouldn’t know what to say to the giant man who’s glowering at me. He stands like a statue; I can’t even hear him breathing. In the quiet I’m getting fidgety, which I take as a good sign. Instead of feeling nauseated, I’m starting to just feel awkward. When Millie reappears with a teapot, cup, and saucer, I’m ready to try speaking again.
“W
hat was that stuff?” I ask her.
“What stuff?” Millie pours a cup of tea and sets it before me. Only when she nods at him does Saul release my shoulders.
I take a swallow of tea. It scalds my tongue, but even burning peppermint is preferable to the aftertaste of Millie’s remedy.
“That stuff you made me drink,” I tell her. “It was horrible.”
“That horrible ‘stuff’ saved your life, young lady,” Millie huffs.
She looks genuinely hurt, and I backpedal. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . .”
Millie takes my floundering for the sincere contrition that it is. “I know it doesn’t have a pleasant taste, but it’s effective.”
She watches me like an anxious fairy godmother, and Saul abandons his post at my shoulder to hover over her shoulder.
“The tonic recipes are one of the treasures of the hexatorium’s library.” Millie waves proudly at the shelves filled with cracked book spines and musty tomes. “I suppose I’m not completely irrelevant after all.”
“You could never be irrelevant, Mildred.” Saul speaks so softly I barely hear him, but his words paint Millie’s paper-white cheeks with a pink hue. Even so, a moment later she’s peering at me, eyes sharp as a hawk’s.
“Do you realize what you did?” she asks. Her tone makes me fold in on myself. “You’re lucky we were able to get you to the hexatorium in time.”
Saul glowers at me over her shoulder for emphasis.
“You will never, never draw in a curse without permission again.” Millie clasps her hands over her heart as though she’s the one who’s about to make a solemn vow. “Never.”
“But—” I sit up, earning a more menacing look from Saul.
“Not until you’re ready.” Millie’s face is pale again, bearing no trace of the youthful blush that appeared a moment earlier.
I can’t back down, though what she’s saying is scaring me. The memory of the smell of festering sores on my skin, of the wrenching pain in my stomach, is scaring me. But Stephen. Stephen.
“He could die,” I say.
Millie sighs, and without prompting Saul pulls out a chair and Millie sits. Her anger has vanished, and now she looks so, so tired.
“You could die,” she tells me.
Her weariness is contagious. I slump down. “I know.”
“I wish there were an easy way to do this.” Millie manages a tiny smile. “But spellseeking runs bone-deep. Your body and spirit need time to adjust to the work.”
A shortcut jumps into my head. “What if I always have a tonic with me? I could use it like an EpiPen for curses.”
She’s shaking her head before I’ve finished talking. “The tonics are an emergency measure only. Each time you use one, it becomes less effective. You have to build up your own natural resistance to curses. And that will take time.”
“What if we don’t have time?” I ask. It’s a pointless question and I know it.
I know there are epic tales of romance, where love means you’re supposed to die. Where it’s all about sacrifice. But I don’t want to die. I don’t want Stephen to die. I’m looking for the scenario where we both get to live. Where we can continue this marvel that is love and discovery and trust. I’m not even asking for happily ever after. Just survival in the meantime so life can keep happening as it will.
There must be another question. Something I could put into words that would magically reveal a path through this minefield. I gaze at Millie, hoping she has the words I don’t.
Millie simply puts her hand over mine.
* * *
The one concession I wring from Millie is the promise that she won’t tell Stephen what really happened on the subway. I stare at Saul until he grunts his oath of secrecy too.
And the lies begin.
Keeping things from Stephen, dangerous things, isn’t all that bothers me as one week, then two, and then three pass. The lies force me away from him. And not just in terms of the barriers I have to put up about where my mind and heart live. I’m pushed away from him by necessity. Though I told Millie I wouldn’t draw curses without her supervision, I’m unwilling to restrict myself to our daily lessons. I can’t tell Stephen what I’m doing. Millie seems happy enough that I’m sticking to our training plan and is taking me at my word. I’m pretty sure Saul suspects I’m cheating because of the way his one-eyed stare bores into me during my lessons at the hexatorium. But if I confided in Stephen, he’d try to stop me. He’s not willing to risk me just as I’m not going to risk him.
And I can’t tell Laurie for the same reason.
That leaves only me.
I’m going out into the city. Alone. And I’m looking for curses.
I convince myself that I’m not betraying Stephen and Laurie and Millie because I’m not taking risks. Not big risks anyway.
Though I can find curses of all shapes and sizes, laughable to appalling, I only draw the small ones. These are my self-administered inoculations against curses. I should collect a fee from all the people I’ve saved from taxi-less days. Millie wasn’t kidding when she said the cab hex is a common curse in Manhattan.
I try to further mitigate my betrayal by limiting my curse drawing to once a day, after my lessons with Millie, so my body can have the space of hours to recover. If I haven’t had too bad a reaction to a curse, I’ll rush back to the apartment building to watch Howl’s Moving Castle or The Last Unicorn for the millionth time or continue our epic inventive Scrabble tournament, where all the words are made up but the creator of the word has to provide its definition and all players have to agree that the definition is feasible. We fill the time we share with everything but talk of spellseekers and cursecasters.
Sometimes I can’t hide how tired the lying and the curse drawing makes me. When that happens, Stephen will pull me into his bedroom. Into his arms. And I’ll sleep curled against him until I feel strong enough to go out into the bustling streets again.
He must know I’m keeping things from him. But he chooses not to ask, not to press about my increased absence from our building. Our safe space. At first I felt the need to construct a mythical purpose, explaining that I needed to learn to navigate the city on my own if I was to conquer Stuy in the fall. Stephen accepted my words at face value, despite their emptiness. I’m certain he’s filling that hole with his own narrative of what I’m actually doing. Why I’m spending more time away from him.
But we don’t discuss it further. Sometimes I wonder if he’s afraid to ask. If he knows that tapping the thin veneer between truth and fiction I’ve constructed will make it shatter and we’ll lose all we’ve built together. But I don’t ask either. It seems almost impossible that we can be so entwined and still hold back.
So we continue our dance of new love, at a close distance.
* * *
The morning the pattern breaks, I’m asking myself the same questions I ask every day: Am I getting better at this? Have I built up a resistance? Should I try to draw a stronger curse?
I’ve developed a regular rotation of curse-spotting locales. The angel fountain. The Apple Store that faces the Plaza. The balloon vendor near the Central Park Zoo. I even return semi-frequently to the 1 train that I took with Millie and Saul, though doing so never fails to give me goose bumps and a stomachache.
I’m at the Frick, which means I’m feeling uneasy. I hunker down in museums when I need a bit of a break. I’m not exactly avoiding curses, because I’ve spotted a few here, but among these cultural monoliths the Frick is a rather quiet place and I end up here when I don’t feel strong enough to encounter a wide range of curses.
Within the halls of the Frick, I don’t spend much time looking at the collections. I prefer to gawk at the structure for its original purpose. It was someone’s house. Even though I’ve read that Mr. Frick built the house with the intention that its collections would one day be open to the public, I can’t help but feel that the building is seeking redemption for its opulence. That the staircases and walls are sel
f-conscious, aware that so few on this earth will touch the gilt splendor afforded to its founder. I consider the mansion’s rebirth as a museum some kind of penance for its previous life as a steel baron’s abode: a palace of the Progressive Era that stood a few miles from the withering, over-packed tenements of the Lower East Side.
The Frick, like so many places, reminds me that New York has, and will always have, an identity built on contradictions. It is the perfect reflection of life’s imbalances. Maybe that’s why I’ve begun to feel so at home here.
Maybe I come to the Frick because I’m hoping for redemption too. Good deeds of the future to erase my current deceptions.
It so happens that when time begins to speed up, I’m gazing at a clock. Like so many of the clocks at the Frick, this one is gold, but it’s a favorite of mine because of the angel swooping across its base. Her arms scoop up a man, and I’m not sure if she’s meant to be saving him or if he’s running away from the soldier of a vengeful god.
Angels are everywhere in the city. While peering at this one, I wonder if the city’s angels whisper to each other about what they see. When they trade their tales, do they laugh at us or weep for us? Probably both.
Since my life has been overtaken by spells and curses, I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about other supernatural possibilities. It’s not a big leap to go from cursecasting to telepathic angels in artwork.
When I start to hear whispers, though, I think my imagination needs reining in. I step back from the clock, but the sound of quiet, urgent voices still slips into my ears. Prickles, sharp and cold, move up my arms. A steady, clear snapping sound joins the murmurs. It must be the clock. What I think are whispers are actually the whir of gears and the snaps it’s rendering of the classic ticktock.
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