“The man who gave you this, this is the guy you saw before, right?”
“Yeah, twice last week, in the mess tent,” I said.
“What did he look like?”
“Old-fashioned. And his face seemed…angelic. Like he had a halo or an aura surrounding him, but then again, my memory could be a little warped. I was tanked when he showed up.” I looked away, afraid I’d see shame in Henry’s eyes in response to my stupid, stupid behavior. “I only realy got a good look at the back of him, as he walked away from me.”
“Did he say anything to you?” Henry resettled the amulet against my chest.
“He told me to keep it close. To never take it off.”
“And so you can’t. If Teo told you to keep it on, do what he said.”
“Teo? The man’s name is Teo? How do you know that?”
“Alicia…she must’ve sent him, before she left. He’s from an Original Seven family. The amulet…,” he said, “it connects us. Ted and I looked everywhere for you. You must’ve grabbed onto it when you fel because al of a sudden, I saw you. I knew exactly where you were. I was drawn—puled—to the sawmil, to that place in the woods. The energy you were generating was overpowering. I felt your fear. Deep, in my chest,” he looked down. “It infuriated me.”
I turned the triangle so the point was perpendicular to my chest, puling the slack of the rope so the attachment point midsection of the triangle’s side lay flat against my palm. “But what does it say? I don’t recognize the language.”
“It’s Hebrew.”
“I don’t like this…this, whatever it is,” I said. “Damn thing burned me. Look!” I puled my shirt down to expose the red lines.
“I don’t want it. You take it.” I lifted the heavy metal triangle and began to pul it over my head. I didn’t want the necklace on me; its growing weight was oppressive.
“NO!” He sprang forward and grabbed my arm just as I was about to free the leather rope from my neck. The contact of his hand on my forearm lacked its usual benevolence; a piercing jolt of electricity coursed through my arm, causing me to cry out, and the rope tangled on my hair. The amulet bounced off the top of my head before faling back around my neck. I winced from the electric current in my arm, my face contorted in frozen pain.
“Gemma, do NOT take this off, under any circumstance,” he said, releasing his grasp. My knees bent like one of those weak-joint toys, the kind that when you push the button on the bottom, the figurine colapses.
Henry steadied himself against the car and then moved to help me up, but I flinched away from my place on the ground.
“Please, no—” I said. Nausea washed over me like an aftershock.
“I’m so sorry, oh my God, I’ve hurt you.” Henry kneeled down in front of me. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry.” I reclined on cold concrete, wiling the queasiness to pass. “I’m fine. Just…give me…a second.” Though my eyes were closed, I could feel him looking at me, his hands hovering just above the surface of my body. Clearly, he was afraid to touch me again.
He muttered to himself, speaking in a tongue that was clearly not English, and as he spoke, he placed a gentle hand on my thigh.
Gone was the cold electricity. In its place was the usual kindness.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. The sick feeling abated and I opened my eyes to his worried face scanning me, my face, for signs of recovery. “Forgive me, Gemma. I panicked. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
I scooted into a sitting position but declined his outstretched hand to stand. “What is this thing, Henry?” I was trying my best to keep it together, but his reaction freaked me out. And my fingers were stil pins and needles.
“Remember, I told you about the avrakedavra charms?
They’re meant for protection. You cannot take it off. You’re going to need it. We’re going to need it.” Henry stood arm’s length from me, mindful of maintaining his distance until I colected my bearings.
I puled my sleeve back to reveal a red welt in the outline of his hand rising on the inside surface of my arm. Henry ran his fingertips over it and gave me an apologetic look.
“You need clean jeans,” he said, grabbing a pair from my bag.
He turned away to grant me a moment of privacy, and I managed to remove the old and pul on the new without his help.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, touching his shoulder so he’d turn back to me, the amulet flat against my palm. “Do I have to wear it forever?”
“Its protection is only good for ten days. That’s why we’re on the move now.”
“Does it make me stronger or braver or buletproof?”
“No. No one is buletproof. The amulet is a symbol, a herald to let others know that you are under the protection of the Seven. That you’re an heir,” he said, looking down at his feet. “But it should make things better with the shades. They can’t hurt you when you’re wearing the amulet.”
“Why don’t you have one?”
“Because I have you.” He brushed my cheek with the side of his index finger.
“Are we going to France?” Get to Rouen, the message in Delia’s book had said. The spirits cried it to me that night after the show.
“Yes. The Delacroixs are waiting for us,” he said.
“Henry, I can’t do this,” I said, backing away from him. “I cannot do any of this!”
Henry moved closer, ready to grab me should I decide to run again. “You don’t have a choice. It’s destiny.”
“This is bulshit! I don’t want this, any of this. I don’t want to see dead people or hear conversations from across the street. Just because Lucian donated some sperm and abandoned my mother doesn’t make me responsible for anything. This is not my destiny, Henry. It’s yours and yours alone!” I railed at him, my vocal cords aching.
“No, it’s not.”
“It is! I cannot do this. Lucian is too strong. He kiled my mother…he’s responsible for Marlene dying. He’s kiled al the other Original Seven families. He kils everyone who gets in his way! We cannot defeat him,” I said. “I cannot defeat him.”
“Gemma, please…”
“You do it, Henry. Yourself. You’re stronger than I am.”
“Don’t you get it? We have to do this together. It won’t work if it’s just one of us. Marku told you…” As he spoke, he again closed the distance between us until he was standing over me, his eyes soft, yet scared. He moved his hand to my face, resting his palm against my cheek, and reached down to kiss me.
Before his lips made contact with mine, I stepped out of the way and ran to the car. I watched him in the side mirror as he stood where I’d left him. After a motionless minute, he walked back and climbed behind the wheel. He didn’t look at me, didn’t say anything, just turned the key and puled onto the road.
He kept his magic hands to himself.
:40:
Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.
—Edgar Cayce
The sun was bright but not hot. Temperate. A spring day, the flowers in vast bloom as bees flitted here and there, their legs swolen and yelow with polen. Butterflies, graceful in their landings and takeoffs, avoided blossoms that had been claimed by other insects. Everything was alive, new, and fresh. Daisies stretched toward the light, wishing they could grow tal enough to kiss the sun.
I inhaled, the promise of the season swaddling me in a blanket of optimism and hope.
I saw the familiar form across the field, her red curled hair lifting with the breeze, the smile on her face as she carried on a conversation with an as-yet unseen friend. I squinted against the brightness of the sunlight and cupped my hand over my eyebrows.
Delia.
Not the worried, obsessive Delia but the kind, unburdened Delia I’d only seen when I was little.
She saw me, too, and waved for me to join her. As she waved, another figure popped up from the grass. Marlene. She was here, and she was whole.
I felt a hand, warm and reassuring, grasp m
y own. “Let’s go say helo,” he said. I didn’t have to look up at his face to confirm who was standing beside me. The softness in his voice and the warmth of his skin next to mine told me everything I needed to know.
As we strode through the tal grasses, hand in hand, Henry stopped to pluck a flower to tuck behind my ear. It was the closest thing to the heaven I’d always imagined existed and for a brief moment, I wondered if perhaps I’d died in my sleep, a prospect that didn’t frighten me if it meant I could remain here for the total of eternity.
As we approached, my mother and auntie beamed at us.
“Gemma…,” Marlene said, planting a kiss on my cheeks, first one, then the other. “My pretty girl.”
Delia stood beside her, waiting her turn to say helo. She hugged me, then took a step back to look me over, her eyes sparkling as I’d never seen them do before.
“You must be Henry,” Delia said, extending her hand toward him. “Your mother has told me so much about you.” She hugged him, too, the thin fabric of her dress fluttering behind her as she reached on tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck. “Thank you,” she whispered when their faces were paralel.
“Mom, Auntie, God, I…I miss you both, so much,” I said. “The Roulette, Mar…Ted said something went wrong. I’m so sorry I didn’t come see you before you…before…,” I was choked up, my prior anguish reasserting itself. Delia smiled, a hint of sadness in the slant of her lips, but she was quiet.
“There was nothing you could have done, sweetie,” Marlene whispered, touching my face with her bent fingers.
“I see Teo found you,” Delia said, her hand on the amulet. As she sang his name, Teo appeared beside Henry, though he wasn’t draped in the black trench coat. His rugged handsomeness was almost too much to look at, the dark eyes piercing but gentle under the thick line of his brow. He bowed and took my free hand, upon which he placed a gentleman’s kiss.
“Where is Alicia?” I said, looking to everyone for answers.
From them, I received nothing. Marlene, Delia, and Teo turned suddenly; their facial expressions hardened as they surveyed the field around us. Henry’s grasp of my hand tightened.
The warmth was subtle, just a pleasant sensation on my chest that at first went unnoticed. It wasn’t until Teo moved a few steps ahead of our group, folowed by Marlene and then Delia, that the warmth gave way to heat that quickly morphed into burning. My skin was on fire.
As sunny and bright as the sky had been just moments before, it switched to bleak and dark within a single blink. Henry let go of my hand and positioned himself in front of me, shoulder to shoulder with Teo. I was consumed by the searing pain radiating across my chest. It started in the middle, shot outward across my ribs, and sliced into my shoulders. Al around us, ragged, prickly weeds replaced the once-plentiful flowers; the soft grass turned dead and coarse under our feet. It was like the scene in the field at the fairgrounds.
He materialized across the expanse, layers of dark fabric flapping violently in the wind that stirred from nowhere.
The cloaked man.
Al of my energy was channeled into the agony dancing its way through my body. I heard Delia crying as she scrambled next to me, her hands on mine, grabbing at me. Marlene had her arms wrapped around the both of us, but I squeezed my eyes shut as we sat clinging to one another behind the wal formed by Teo and Henry. I opened my eyes just in time to see the cloaked man appear before us, his arms spread wide, his furious eyes driling straight through the two men and into me. I reached for the amulet, my eyes locked in a gaze I could not escape as Delia howled mere centimeters from my ear. My hand seized the triangle and the heat from its surface fused the metal aloy to my skin, puling a scream from my ravaged throat.
The cloaked man reached for me, his fingertips straining toward my hand where it sizzled around the amulet. I was frozen, paralyzed as he made physical contact, his touch shooting a fresh torrent of pain through my arm.
“Henryyyyy!” I screamed. Glowing eyes burned ferocious through the blackness under the man’s hood. In my peripheral vision, I saw Henry and Teo push against him. Teo sprang forward and wrapped himself around the man’s upper body while Henry yanked his arm from the connection he’d created by touching me.
“Gemma, run!” I heard, a thunderclap overhead. I forced my eyes from the man’s hold and exploded from the mud, commanding my legs to move. Delia’s crumpled shape had disappeared, the sole evidence of her earlier presence a soiled piece of fabric that had once been her dress. No matter how hard I pushed, the ground beneath my feet refused to relent to the pounding of my soles. The cloaked man was always on my flank, his outstretched arm reaching closer and closer, restrained only by the blockade of Henry and Teo pushing against his body.
“RUN!” Henry yeled, louder this time. I tried to grab onto Marlene but could not secure a firm grip with only one hand, the other stil in a death grasp around the burning amulet, despite efforts to unfurl my fingers and free it. I felt invisible fingers tightening around my throat and choked for breath. I tasted blood.
The cloaked man was winning. I was going to asphyxiate right there in the field.
A voice glanced my ear. “Wake up…wake up before it’s too late.”
Hands were on me, heavy on my shoulders, shaking me as I sank deeper and deeper into the darkness.
“Gemma!” the voice demanded. “Say the word!” The word. The amulet. The protection from evil.
AVRAKEDAVRA! My voice was mute, my throat stripped from screaming, but as the word flashed like lightning in my head, I was awake.
Henry stood over me, his hands on my shoulders. It was his voice that had puled me from the tempest. I looked up at him, stricken by the torment on his face.
“Henry,” I sobbed.
He held me tight against his chest, my clothes soaked with sweat, my heart racing. “I’m here. I’m here…sshhh, it was a nightmare.” He fumbled around in the backseat for a box of tissue, handing me a wad. “Your nose is bleeding again.” He cupped the sheets under my leaking nostrils. “Pinch it…here.” I was gutted with exhaustion, my limbs weak. Except for my right hand. It was tensed and throbbing.
“Where are we?” I pushed against Henry with my left arm.
“At a rest area. I was afraid I’d fal asleep driving,” he said, easing back only enough to look down at my contracted arm.
Gently, he reached for my curled hand, turning it over in his palm.
He pried my knotted fingers open, one at a time, skin tearing as he puled. I holered in pain, and his shoulders slumped once my hand was freed from the bronze. On my palm was etched a raw, fresh burn, a perfect imprint of the Hebrew script of the very charm that was supposed to protect me.
The smel of charred flesh permeated the space between us.
Blisters bubbled along the triangle’s edges, the soft skin blackened and weeping. Even the slightest movement of air through the dashboard vents shot spikes of pain through my arm. I tried to keep my fingers bent just enough to protect my palm as the skin tightened and sweled.
Henry reached across me for the glove box and puled out a green zippered first aid kit.
“Let me see your hand,” he said. My head tilted back, the blood ran down my throat. I pinched harder and swiveled my body so I could rest my hand, palm side up, atop the console between the seats. He sprayed an anesthetic mist onto the burn and used gauze to dab at the fluid seeping from my skin. Despite the anesthetic coating, it stung like hel every time he touched it, and I sucked in through my teeth with one particularly painful swab.
“You okay?” he said, looking up at me. I nodded and tried to hold my breath. This burn hurt a hel of a lot more than the one from the Bunsen burner. And I didn’t have Marku here to fix me.
As Henry spread some gel across the open wound, I realized that the pads of al four fingers were burned, as wel, impressive whitish blisters shining in the fatty tissue of my fingertips. So much for the violin.
I watched him as he wrapped the whole of my righ
t hand with sterile gauze and pressure bandage, careful not to make it too tight.
His hair was messy and his cheeks were flushed, as if he’d just run a race. A slight sheen covered his forehead. I wadded the tissue onto my lap and brushed a finger across his eyebrows.
“Let me see your nose,” he said, tilting my head back. “I think it stopped.” I test-sniffed a few times to be sure.
He handed me two smal tablets of ibuprofen and a bottle of water. “For the sweling,” he said. I thanked him and swalowed the orange pils. “We’l need to stop at a drug store or something and get some more supplies.” He’d used pretty much everything in the smal kit.
“So, what now?” I said. His eyes were troubled, his head bowed so that I was looking at his hair instead of his face. I reached over with my bandaged hand and touched his cheek with the uninjured side of my hooked fingers. We made eye contact.
“Come here,” he said, leaning toward me. When my face was close enough, he placed his left hand on my cheek and kissed me, his lips soft but desperate. “Are you okay?” I nodded. I couldn’t speak.
“That was a bad one, huh?” The dream. Yeah, it was a bad one.
“I thought this stupid amulet was supposed to keep me safe,” I said, flicking at it with my index finger.
“It wil, Gemma. I promise.”
“Please. Don’t promise anything. It’s too dangerous.” Henry lifted my chin and brushed my cheek with his finger.
“You’re a brave one. You’l get through this. I’ve seen it,” he said.
“You just have to believe. Believe in us. Believe in you.” I couldn’t respond. Nothing he could say was going to bring Marlene, or Delia, back. I just wanted…I wanted everything back to the way it used to be. Before al of this.
“The cloaked man…it’s Lucian…isn’t it?” I said, my voice quiet.
“Yes.” He said nothing more but instead resituated himself in his seat and started the car. “We have to get to the airport,” he said. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I wanted to climb into his lap and bury my head in his strong shoulder and never look out the window again or face another bad dream. I only wanted to feel safe and protected. And I wanted to go home.
Sleight: Book One of the AVRA-K Page 28