Invisibility

by Andrea Cremer

  Without taking his eyes from me, Arbus tilts his head in Laurie’s direction. “Your brother is entertaining some unusual ideas at the moment.”

  I risk looking away from him so I can focus on Laurie. My brother’s eyes are glassy, his expression grossly serene.

  “I haven’t decided yet what Laurie most wants to do,” Stephen’s grandfather tells me. “Fly or jump to the next building.”

  “Don’t.” My voice almost cracks. I don’t want to break for this man, and I know I’m on the verge.

  “The jump would be more sporting, don’t you think?” Arbus continues. “He might make it.”

  I attempt negotiation. “Please let him go. My brother has nothing to do with this.”

  Arbus’s laugh is like a sharp bark. “He’s here, isn’t he? I think that makes your brother very much a part of this.”

  “And my mother?” I don’t want to do this. I’m letting him bait me, but I can’t stop. Rage and fear are driving my thoughts, my words.

  “A lovely woman, I’m sure,” Arbus answers. “Such a shame that single mothers can’t discipline their children as needed. If you had a proper father, I’m certain we wouldn’t be in this unpleasant predicament.”

  I’m withering beneath his cruelty and he can tell. A smile slides up one side of his thin mouth.

  “In fact.” His voice becomes dangerously quiet. “I’d hate for her to miss the finer points of my instruction.”

  After shifting his weight slightly and uttering a few words I can’t hear, Arbus says, “The curse on your mother is lifted.”

  I know better than to feel relief, an instinct that’s confirmed when he tells me, “Soon she’ll fully grasp what a mistake it is to leave her children alone for so many hours of the working day, all too free to meddle in the lives of others. Consequences are best realized in a stark and brutal manner. Else the lesson may not be learned.”

  His gaze shifts to Laurie. My brother, wearing a bemused smile, begins to walk to the edge of the roof.

  “No!” The shout isn’t mine. It comes from Stephen.

  Laurie stops just shy of the two-foot brick ledge that rings the building.

  I understand why Stephen hasn’t spoken before now. He can’t see his grandfather, but Arbus has been chatting so freely with me that Stephen knows precisely where the cursecaster is standing.

  Arbus’s eyes narrow, focusing on the space behind me. “I was wondering when you’d join the conversation, Stephen.”

  Stephen doesn’t answer. Arbus continues to look over my shoulder, but in my peripheral vision I can see Stephen quickly sidestepping. I don’t let my gaze follow him. Stephen’s grandfather is unconcerned that his voice continues to pinpoint his location. He rocks back on his heels, pleased with the way this rooftop scene is playing out.

  “I want to give you one more chance,” Arbus tells the empty space where Stephen used to be. “Understand this is who you are.”

  He gestures towards me and Laurie. Why motion with his hands when Stephen can’t see it? Then I realize it’s for my benefit. Wherever Arbus is going with this, he’s betting on me to help him get there.

  My suspicion is confirmed when he continues to address Stephen but keeps his eyes on me.

  “What can you offer these people?” Arbus asks. “Your inheritance is pain. Whether you like it or not, suffering will spread around you like a disease. Are the last few days not demonstration enough of that truth?”

  “That was you!” I shriek at Arbus. “Stephen has nothing to do with your curses!”

  His eyes narrow at me and I see Laurie put one foot on the building ledge. I can’t risk speaking again. My brother’s head and shoulders are surrounded by a swarm of silver and gold winged creatures that fill the air with a chiming, playful melody. They’re moving so fast I can’t tell if they’re fairies or birds. They dip and swirl around my brother like a glimmering tornado, their sweet music and light luring him to towards his doom.

  I have never hated anyone like I hate Maxwell Arbus in this moment. Every one of his curses is stronger than I am. I’ve always been a fighter. Plucky. Defiant. Sometimes obstinate. But any grit or earnestness I could supply is outflanked by the years of experience Arbus brings to the game. I’m still a rookie, while he’s a Hall of Famer. By working a curse upon my brother, Arbus has rendered me helpless.

  An entire reel of emotions plays out in the blink of an eye. I see images of myself: sobbing, screaming, howling, vomiting, fainting. Not one of those reactions will help me or Laurie or Stephen.

  An already-horrible scenario is made even worse by Maxwell Arbus’s obvious enjoyment of our plight.

  “I’m waiting, Stephen.” Arbus flicks his wrist and Laurie steps onto the ledge.

  I am on my knees. Mute and desperate.

  Though that hook-like smile still graces his lips, Arbus glances at me, and in his eyes I catch something. A flicker of wariness. I can’t breathe, but fear isn’t the culprit. Arbus needs me off balance, and not only as a ploy to get what he wants from Stephen.

  The cursecaster went after Millie. Settling an old grudge was part of his motivation, but there was more to it. As a spellseeker, Millie remains a threat to Maxwell Arbus. And I’m a threat too.

  I stay where I am. Low. Submissive. But sparks are firing in my brain, charging my body until my blood is electric. I am not a cowering girl. The sliver of Stephen’s grandfather that fears me poked through his facade of unwavering confidence. I recognized it, and now I grasp the hope it offers. My only way of protecting Laurie is to exploit the cursecaster’s elusive vulnerability.

  I know what I have to do.

  It takes more will than I know I have to look away from Laurie. In doing so I’m giving away Stephen’s location, but I have no choice. I am a spellseeker. I can cut through the knots of pain and suffering that monsters like Maxwell Arbus tie in the lives of others.

  Placing my hands on the sun-heated roof to ground myself, I take a deep breath. Stephen’s curse is already hovering around him. Its dark tentacles, ephemeral as mist, become solid as I watch Stephen. The squelching sound of the curse fills my ears.

  Before I begin, I tell myself it’s not suicide. I’ve been training. My resistance has grown. Taking on this cursecaster’s masterpiece will not kill me. I am comfortable enough with this lie to believe it for Laurie’s sake. For Stephen’s sake. I must cut off as much of Arbus’s power as possible.

  Stephen is watching his grandfather as he takes careful sidesteps across the roof. He stops suddenly, pivoting to face me the moment my mind connects with the curse, as if I’d physically touched him. His eyes widen in alarm. He begins to shake his head.

  It doesn’t matter. This has to be done. And then I am drawing the dark into my veins.

  Chapter 31

  WHATEVER IT IS THAT she’s doing, it’s too much for her.

  One moment, she is the picture of concentration.

  I cannot do anything. I cannot stop her.

  The next moment, she starts to break.

  It is there first in her eyes. The shock. Her body falls back, as if it’s been pushed in the middle. She can barely stay upright.

  Then her nose starts to bleed. A single rivulet of blood at first. Then more. And more. Blood running down her face. And the scariest part is that she doesn’t seem to notice.

  She cannot steady her hand. Once she opened herself up, she stopped being in control.

  My grandfather starts to flicker. There, in front of my eyes, he appears, then disappears. I look down at my hands. For the first time, I look down at my hands and I see them. It almost doesn’t register at first. These must be someone else’s hands, I think. They flicker into being, then flicker back away.

  Elizabeth collapses.

  I run over to her, try to use my voice, my hands, my will to revive her. She is writhing. The blood won’t stop pouring out of her nose. I see it on my hands, then I stop seeing my hands again.

  He’s killing her.

  Just as I see h
im flickering, he sees me flickering. I do not feel him drawing on my curse, like he did before. No, this is something else.

  Laurie is calling out Elizabeth’s name. He is off the ledge and running to us.

  My grandfather looks me in the eye, then disappears.

  I do not feel any of this.

  It is Elizabeth who feels it. Elizabeth who suffers.

  Elizabeth who is dying.

  My grandfather is winning. He knows it, and the next time he’s visible, I can see the smile on his lips. The satisfaction.

  I must stop him.

  Laurie is cradling Elizabeth’s head in his lap. He’s crying out to me, asking me what’s happening, what’s happening. He’s telling me to make it stop.

  I have to make it stop.

  There’s a gurgle in Elizabeth’s throat. More blood coming up. Coming out.

  I cannot ask my grandfather to stop. I know he will not stop. He will never stop. I cannot take his powers away from him. I am not that strong. None of us can be that strong.

  If he does not die, she will die.

  I would like to kill within a rage. I would like to kill without thinking.

  But that is not what this is.

  I know I am making a choice.

  As Laurie watches over the only girl I will ever love, I ram my body into my grandfather, summoning all of the strength that I have. As we flicker, we are not quite human, not quite magic. The only thing we are is kin. He wields his knife, but I grab him by the throat. It jolts him, loosens his grip. I twist his wrist and the knife falls.

  “Stephen,” he gasps. But all I can think is that he doesn’t have the right to know my name.

  We are invisible again, but I hold on. I am pushing him back, back.

  Elizabeth is convulsing. Laurie can’t stop crying out.

  I need to finish this.

  As I push my grandfather to the ledge, I am apologizing to my mother. She would not want me to do this, although I hope she would understand. I am apologizing to Elizabeth because I should have never met her, should have never let her love me. I am apologizing to myself because if I do this, the curse will never end. But the only alternative is for it to continue filling Elizabeth until she is dead.

  I will not lose her. Not for anything.

  We are at the edge. My grandfather is struggling but losing power. As we flicker, I see the hatred in his eyes. The disgust for me. For us all.

  With one hand, I hold his throat.

  With the other hand, I push.

  As I do, a surge of power fills him. With a strength I didn’t know he still possessed, he grabs hold of me. If he’s going to fall to his death, he is going to take me with him.

  For a moment, we are strangely balanced. I lean away, he leans back, and we hover there in the air, visible and invisible, about to die and still alive, grandfather and grandson, the curser and the cursed.

  Then his hold grows even stronger, and I feel myself moving in his direction.

  There’s a scream. My grandfather’s scream. And an arm around me. Laurie’s arm.

  My grandfather has a knife in his side. He doesn’t have the strength to hold on to me anymore.

  He falls.

  And as he falls, he disappears.

  And as he falls, I disappear.

  Laurie holds on to me.

  Laurie holds on.

  And I must make myself solid to him. Until I see that knife hit the ground. Until I know it is now over, and my grandfather is dead.

  I am safe, and I will always be invisible, and Elizabeth will die anyway.

  Laurie lets go of me, runs back to her. I am right behind him. She has risked everything to save me. Everything. And I don’t believe enough in a fair world to think she’ll be okay now.

  Both of us call out her name. We see the slight rise and fall of the breath moving through her body, and we are infinitely grateful for it. It’s hard to tell if the blood has stopped. There is so much of it, everywhere.

  “We need to get her to a hospital,” Laurie says.

  I stand up, as if there’s something I can do.

  But what can I do? Nobody outside this roof will ever see me or know me or even know I exist.

  I kneel back down beside her.

  It is the most horrible feeling in the world, to be willing to give anything and to know it’s not enough.

  I reach out for her hand and put everything I am into that touch. Every desire I have ever had, any ounce of love I have ever received. I borrow every piece of the future and pull them into the present, bring them here for her to sense, to feel, to know.

  “Please, Elizabeth,” I tell her. “Please be okay.”

  Miraculously, her eyes startle open.

  Chapter 32

  “It worked.” I look up at Stephen, visible Stephen, and try to smile through my exhaustion, not knowing why those two small words made him wince.

  I try to sit up, but my arms and legs are boneless. Looking down, I see all the blood. Crimson soaks the cotton of my shirt, making the fabric warm and heavy on my skin. It takes a moment, and the salt-copper taste on my lips, for me to realize the blood is mine. Stephen begins to carefully leverage his arms under my back, but Laurie appears beside him.

  “You can’t carry her,” my brother tells Stephen.

  “Laurie!” What I intended to be a joyful shout comes out as a pathetic croak.

  Laurie kneels and takes my hand. “Yeah, Josie. I’m here. It’s all going to be okay.”

  While Stephen reluctantly pulls away, Laurie gathers me in his arms.

  “Are you sure we should move her?” Stephen asks, notwithstanding the fact that he’d just been about to pick me up himself.

  Laurie nods. “It’s not her bones I’m worried about. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

  Now that Laurie’s lifting me, those words come to life in my body. With each movement spots float across my vision and my skull feels like it’s been jammed full of cotton.

  Though my brother is carrying me towards the door, I try to look around. Moving my head makes me feel sick and my sight becomes increasingly blurry. Closing my eyes against the spots and the nausea, I ask:

  “Arbus?”

  “Gone,” Laurie says.

  I keep my eyes closed. “Gone or dead?”

  “Dead.” Stephen’s voice is close. “Off the roof.”

  My numb fingers manage to grasp Laurie’s shirt. It was much too close to being my brother who went over the ledge instead of Stephen’s grandfather.

  “I think you should try not talking, Elizabeth,” Laurie tells me. His voice is gentle, so I know it’s not a joke.

  Normally I’m allergic to obedience, but I’m so, so tired. I lean my head on Laurie’s shoulder, letting the spots expand from little points of darkness to large globules that blot out all the light.

  I experience the next few hours in a bizarre, episodic fashion.

  * * *

  Episode one:

  My brother and Stephen wait for the elevator and have a conversation I don’t understand.

  “You didn’t kill him,” Stephen murmurs.

  Laurie’s arms tighten around me. “Don’t talk about it. Just don’t.”

  Stephen glances at me, sees that I’m frowning but looks away. “I have to say it. You saved me. Nothing else happened.”

  “I stabbed him,” Laurie answers. “I think that counts as something else.”

  I force my chin up so I can see Laurie’s face. He’s wearing a bleak expression that makes him seem so much older than he is.

  “You had to,” Stephen says quietly.

  Laurie replies, “We both had to.”

  I remember the elevator doors opening and then nothing.

  * * *

  Episode two:

  The blaring sirens bring me back to consciousness. The Upper West Side has been invaded by triage units: the result of Maxwell Arbus’s cursing spree through our neighborhood. The upside of this horror is that my condition doesn’t strike the EMTs as
strange. I’m just one of a dozen or more victims. The downside is, well, obvious.

  As I’m transferred from Laurie’s arms to a gurney, I lift a hand towards Stephen, who is hanging back.

  “I need him,” I say to the EMT who is pushing the gurney to a waiting ambulance, which also takes me away from Stephen.

  The EMT glances at Laurie. “He’s right here.”

  Laurie bends down, whispering, “The ambulance is too crowded. He can’t get in without bumping up against somebody. It’s too risky.”

  I shake my head and Laurie says, “I told him which hospital. He’ll meet us there.”

  The ambulance doors slam shut and the wail of its siren sends a new wave of darkness to swallow me.

  * * *

  Episode three:

  The room is too bright and I’m covered in a sheet that’s too scratchy. The itch concentrates in the crook of my right arm, but when I attempt to relieve it by rubbing the culprit spot with the heel of my hand, I’m rewarding by a sharp pain.

  “Oh!” The needle joining my vein to the IV drip punishes me for disturbing it.

  My cry brings someone rushing to the bedside.

  My mom presses her palm to my cheek like I’m three. “Sweetheart, you’re awake.”

  “You know who I am,” I say. My eyes sting with sudden tears.

  “Of course, Elizabeth.” Mom glances at the IV. She must think that the medicine has skewed my mind towards looniness. “How are you feeling?” she asks.

  “Weird,” I say. Vague, I know. But I don’t really want to say that my body feels like a million overstretched rubber bands and that I still taste blood.

  “You’ll probably feel weird for a while.” Mom smiles and looks across the room. Following her glance, I see Laurie seated in one of the hospital room’s chairs. Stephen is sitting beside him in the other chair. Without looking at Stephen, Laurie gets up and comes to join Mom.

  “Hey there,” Laurie says. That withered effect from earlier is still touching his eyes.

  “You okay?” I ask him. When I stretch out my hand, he catches my trembling fingers in his.