by Kat Turner
A few more seconds of quiet dragged. She looked at her short red nails and finally asked, “You said you know a witch, right?”
“Yes.” He sat up straighter in a goofy tell of relief. She smiled. He smiled back, not giving a fuck how silly he appeared.
“I was wondering if she might be able to help me. Point me toward some resources, help me figure out these powers.”
Jonnie drew back as confusion set in. The confounded feeling curdled to suspicion as he realized she’d broken eye contact upon bringing up her magical abilities. Eve was hiding things.
“Taylor wasn’t able to help you?” But something had gone down. Eve’s insistence that they leave Peru immediately after her excursion into the jungle made that much evident.
“I didn’t want to burden her, in her condition. I thought it would be best if I wasn’t around.” She picked at her nail, hair shielding her face.
“Eve, look at me.” The sternness in his tone startled him. But he didn’t do secrets or head games. “I want to help, but I can’t if you’re hiding important facts from me.”
“I’m not.” She said it too quickly, voice kicking up an octave. The mark of a lie.
Pressuring her to confess wouldn’t do any good, might accomplish nothing more than driving her further away. Besides, whatever she was dealing with was none of his business. He could offer his support and empathy, though it was not his place to demand answers or go poking at the tender spots of her secrets. The magic was obviously rather personal to her, as was the debacle with the girl.
Eve needn’t suffer alone, but she did deserve her privacy. “I’ll put you in touch with Helen as soon as we get back in the States. What’s going on with your work?”
Her wan smile was a thank you, a gesture of appreciation offered in exchange for his backing down. He’d rather have her trust, the full disclosure of her honesty, but Jonnie was mature enough to accept that they were not there yet. “My apprentice seems to be holding down the fort. No phone calls or emails. But yeah, I should get back to work. I’m sure Meg is worried about me.”
A dull ache spread through Jonnie. The way she spoke bothered him. The spaces between her words were lagging dips of resignation, goodbye kisses. Outside, the maudlin effect of starless sky lit only by the plane’s red taillights mirrored his regret-tinged sadness. At the moment they were in transition, in the air, though upon landing they would part company. He wasn’t dumb. He saw it coming.
Jonnie rubbed his kneecap, massaging a tendon he’d tweaked jumping off an amp during some outrageous stage antic years ago. “Surely you could stay a little bit longer.”
She laid her hand atop his, gesture straddling the border of reassurance and frank honesty. “I—”
“I understand.” Though he really didn’t. Despite their rough patches, he and she made sense. They were travelers of the same path. “At least spend the night in New Orleans before you fly back. You must be exhausted. We can just hang out, no pressure.”
“I’d like that. To stay one more night.” He swore her voice shook, like the goodbye hurt her too. She laid her head on his shoulder, treating him to her soft, feminine fragrance of fruit and flowers.
“One more night.” Jonnie swallowed a lump in his throat and kissed the part dividing her locks. Another altitude drop tumbled his insides as the craft approached the small airport runway.
Time slugged along in a flow thicker than the humid atmosphere as they deplaned, teetering down narrow steps on the way to the waiting car. Even the palm trees waved goodbye, coy flicks of leaves animating the darkness.
A call zapped Jonnie from his comatose slumber. His mobile buzzed on the end table beside his couch, shaking as it clattered against wood. In a second he processed the ringtone and Cara’s picture on the glowing screen.
His heart plummeted to his feet as he snatched up the phone and answered. “Anya. What’s happened?”
Though the line, his sister sniffled. “I’m not sure. The doctors haven’t said much. She’s refusing food…they admitted her to ICU…oh, God.” Whimpers deteriorated to broken cries.
“I can get there by the morning.” He ran to his room, where Eve slept alone in his bed.
Packing with one hand while awaiting Anya’s reply, Jonnie threw essentials into his duffel. A few more hours in the plane would land him in Iowa. The nomadic life of a traveling musician had prepared him for all this running around, and he wasn’t about to take a gamble when time with his niece was so precious. Queasiness rippled through him. Jonnie rubbed raw, tired eyes.
“I think that’s a good idea.” Fresh sobs, the animal sounds of a grieving mother’s sorrow, wracked Anya’s hoarse voice.
“Hang on. Both of you, hang on. I’ll be there soon.” He was halfway to the door when he remembered his medicine. “Shite.”
Jonnie ran to the kitchen and flicked the light switch. Hands shaking, he pulled a plastic bottle of his organic antidote from the fridge. He fumbled with the dishwasher, tugging the door open and pawing at a short glass on the top rack.
The cup, wedged between two others, would not budge. Frustration scraping his already frayed nerves, he pulled at the stubborn thing. “Come on, stupid.”
He freed it with a yank, but it slammed into something else on the way out and broke in his hands. A big triangular piece fell to the floor, its destruction filling silence as it shattered on the tile.
In a mind-erasing slash of hot pain, the jagged edge slashed Jonnie’s palm from the crease of his fingers to his wrist. He dropped the rest of the glass, and it landed with a crash.
“Fuck.” Agony throbbed in his hand. He clutched the damage. Warm, sticky blood oozed down his wrist and landed with pitter patter drips on the tile. He snatched a dish towel and pressed it to his cut, grinding his teeth and leaning over the sink. To add insult to injury, his blunder messed up his livelihood, his means to play guitar. If he couldn’t play, he couldn’t earn money.
Should have gotten your hands insured like Brian did. Brian, forever the smart one, was tirelessly pragmatic and replete with sensible decisions. Cranky, miserable thoughts sloshed around in Jonnie’s brain as his body glimmered with pain.
His throat tight, he held the cloth against his injury. A sob broke from his mouth. His eyes dampened. He was spiraling out of control, running himself into the ground. He needed a break, a rest. But he couldn’t take one.
“Hey, what happened?” Heavy with sleep and confusion, Eve spoke behind him.
“Cut myself is all,” he gritted out, willing the bleeding to stop as his flow soaked the rag.
“Oh no, it’s bad.” She took his wounded hand and held it an inch from her face, wincing like the pain hurt her, too.
“I’ll be fine. Look, Eve, I have to run out. Cara’s taken a turn for the worse, and well, any time now could be the end. Stay here as long as you need to.”
“You have a stocked medicine cabinet, right?” The tenderness in her voice walloped him, though it shouldn’t have. Empathy was one of Eve’s core traits.
In one swift motion, an inward shift in perspective, Jonnie saw into his own soul. The defective parts he tried to deny, gloss over, or ignore because they were too hard and painful to really look at faced him. “Yes.”
He was so used to being the good friend, the support system, old reliable that he forgot sometimes how he deserved care in return. Someone to nurture him for a change, make sure he was alright. And his bandmates did, of course, though now Jonnie realized how he kept them at arm’s length. Afraid they’d reject him if they knew his secret, his truth, he’d unconsciously rejected their attempts to reach out, to deepen the bond.
But Eve knew the secret, the entire story. She was privy and still present. More than that, she cared. That marked her as special in his book. She’d shown her devotion. And he had to get better about honoring and acknowledging her steadfast loyalty. Because these qualities made Eve the most caring, precious woman he’d ever met—even though she was by far the riskiest.
But rather than running from the danger she posed, balking like he had in the jungle, he could fully embrace it. He really could accept her in all her magic and darkness and messy contradictions. Just like she’d embraced his messiness. And he’d better do so soon, because he couldn’t expect the woman to bestow upon him an unlimited number of chances and mulligans.
She looked in his eyes like she could read his thoughts. Her somber yet solicitous expression hinted that she registered his moment of clarity, his lighting strike of awareness.
“Come on.” With a tug on his wrist, she led him to the bathroom.
He sat on the toilet lid while she got down supplies: tape and bandages and hydrogen peroxide. Sutures would be best, but they both understood there wasn’t time for that.
In a slow, tender pull, Eve peeled the towel away, revealing a deep crimson gash. She slung the cloth, light blue fabric dappled with red blotches, over the sink and poured peroxide on his wound. It tingled and stung, bubbling into white foam.
Comfortable silence passed as she performed her healing ritual, a series of steps undertaken with meticulous care. Several dabs with a cotton ball cleaned his marred flesh. A generous daub of clear, gooey ointment soothed the burn.
The gauze, unraveling as the wispy material unspooled from its coil and wrapped his injury, unfurled with precision. He was enchanted. Eve was so careful, covering the injury while allowing enough give in the layers so his skin could breathe.
He needed stitches, but in the moment Jonnie didn’t care, for, along with patching his hand, Eve had sewn up a hole in his heart.
The first slices of morning sunlight peeped through his bathroom curtains, imbuing her with the glow of an angel as she taped the bandage. When she was through, she rubbed her fingertips in a little circle on his palm.
Jonnie smiled at her, drinking in the effect of her face in concentration. Her lips pursed, drawn in focus as she devoted the entirety of her attention to treating him.
He could only imagine the gratitude of her clients at the funeral home. Could only imagine the dedication and sensitivity with which she must have cared for the deceased, paying individualized attention to each and every one as she ensured their final appearance on earth was one of grace and dignity.
To see a person in this way, to comprehend and cherish and accept them as a bundle of traits comprising a whole greater than the sum of their parts, was a magic he’d only experienced with a few. His family. The band brothers to a lesser extent. And now, Eve. Such an awareness of the wholeness of another, and of locating unique beauty in that other, was one of the fundamental building blocks of love. Did he? Want to hold her in his arms and never let her go?
Could he say those words beginning to form in his heart?
“You’re beautiful, Eve.”
Her cheeks pinked. Her lips quirked into a half-smile he guessed she didn’t want to let show. “I didn’t know you had a Florence Nightingale fetish.”
“I’m serious.”
“Go. See to your family.” She touched his arm above the elbow, an affectionate though undeniably platonic touch.
“I don’t want this to be goodbye.”
In a strange but disarming show of intimacy, she sat across from him on the bathroom floor and stretched out her legs in a V shape.
In some other context, he would have laughed. What a pair they made, two reluctantly magical people stumbling through an insane situation, flailing to get a handle on themselves so they could cope with their lives and do better by those who mattered to them.
Eve laid her hands on his knees. “I think we need to take a step back. It’s been an intense few days, and you need to focus on being there for your family. Not on starting something up with me when. Let’s be real, my shit is far from together.”
He made a study of her delicate hands, her healing hands. Long fingers suited to a pianist, those cute painted nails of hers. He imagined there were practical reasons for keeping nails short in her line of work.
“I don’t know how much time I have left.” This was not a guilt trip, it was facts and figures. He had a couple of months worth of medicine and no subsequent plan.
Eve’s eyes misted. She twisted her lips into a scowl. Incoming light morphed from stark gray-blue to sunny yellow, bringing into relief their sad, private moment. Her on the floor, processing his words. Him on the pot, bruised and bleeding. They were the walking wounded, he the walking dead and she who walked with the dead. But at least they had each other.
In his estimation, they were two people who belonged together.
“Please don’t walk out of my life, Eve. I’m here for you.” He wasn’t begging, and he’d abide her wishes with dignity if severance was what she wanted. But he suspected it wasn’t. In the moment of the reckoning, she spoke with hesitancy. The guarded parry of a person protecting the final vestiges of her secrets from exposure. And he wouldn’t pry, but he’d damn sure offer her the safe haven of his loyalty and trust.
“There are things you don’t know about me.”
“But I want to.” He leaned forward and spoke in a stage whisper, adding the dramatic emphasis he figured she needed. “I’m not afraid.”
Déjà vu washed over him. She’d confessed a lack of fear to him a little while back, soon after he’d shown up on her doorstep and entangled their lives into this sloppy knot.
She shook her head, pulling her touch away in a retreat that copied the distant mask slipping over her features. “You need to go, Jonnie.”
And she was right. The hourglass emptied his sand. He stood up. “I won’t forget about you, even if you want me to.”
She rose to join him. For a few perplexing seconds, her stare lingered on the bloodstained towel. “You probably should, though.” A dark laugh.
“What is it, Eve? What are you hiding?”
“Go,” she hissed, throwing the splattered cloth across the room. “Stay away from me. I’m poison.”
“Don’t you dare say that.”
“It’s true though.”
“It isn’t. It absolutely isn’t. You think I don’t have guilt and shame? Over what I am? You know I do. Goddamn, Eve, I’ve shared every corner of my darkness with you. Why can’t you do the same?”
Miserable eyes met his. “There are things I can’t tell you. Things I’m obligated to do. And if I tell, it could hurt you. And I don’t want to do that. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy—like it’s a prophecy. When you came to me and asked me to kill you. A prophecy coming true.”
Cruddy, half-formed thoughts fogged his mind. Was she in cahoots with Scarab? Had they led him to her, somehow? No. But she was right about one thing.
“I do need to go now. But I won’t forget about you, Eve. You and me, we’re special. Meaningful. And I know it’s frightening. And hard. But the most rewarding things in life are. They’re scary. And strange. Not easy. But that’s how you know it’s the good stuff.” He clasped his hands on her soft upper arms and gave a little shake for emphasis, not caring that the contact made his hurt palm throb with hot pain.
“One week. In one week, I’ll reach out to you.”
“Why one week?”
“I can’t say.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I swear to you I can’t.”
He threw up his hands, exasperated, though more intrigued by this woman than ever. He’d never met a person with such depth before, never crossed paths with someone so capable of, at once, beguiling and frustrating him. Someone whose difficult parts, the contradictions in their nature, drew him in. Made him want to figure her out, take her apart and put her back together. Find the dark spots she hid and shine light on them. Claim them for his own in a way that no other man would or could. Because he found harmony in her discord.
Jonnie pulled Eve’s body to his, cherishing the feel of her muscles relaxing in his hold, her special scent. He brushed a kiss to her forehead and mumbled, “If you think one week is all it’ll take for me to grow bored and vanish from your
life, you’re wrong.”
Breaking away, he caught a miniscule twitch on her lips. Not a smile, but perhaps the memory of one. She nodded once, the definitive yet demure gesture serving as a concession.
“One week. I’m holding you to it. Stay here as long as you like. Slide the key under the door after you lock up.” With that, Jonnie sprinted from the bathroom. He took two bottles of the thick orange drink from his fridge, shoved them in the bag, and texted his driver.
Fourteen
An acrid bite of embalming fluid and rubbing alcohol stung Eve’s nose. She swiped two streaks of coral lipstick across a dead woman’s mouth. The contrast was garish against heavy pancake foundation, but oh well. The deceased’s survivors wanted the woman to look her Sunday best, and customers had the final say in aesthetic matters.
Seven days had passed in a mundane drag. Eve worked, then returned home to binge-watch Netflix and eat takeout for one. Meg and Eve’s folks had sensed she needed to be alone and let her be, considerate and supportive people they were. So she had stewed in her loneliness and regret, regret for what she’d agreed to do while tranced out and deep in the bowels of Amazonian soil. Regret for failing to be there emotionally for Jonnie, to offer support or an ear while he faced tumult and sorrow in his personal life, plagued her.
But she’d made a pledge, and she had to quit stalling and fulfil it.
Eve fussed with the body’s brittle hair, folding its cool hands in a demure fig leaf over the midsection as she finished those final dignified touches. The steady whir of the funeral home’s central air conditioner, the only sound in the basement, calmed her some.
She took a step back and appraised her work. Imperfect, but perfection was an unobtainable platonic ideal in her line of work. Due to their very nature, corpses never looked quite right. They sagged with a peculiar deflation. Clothing refused to fit them properly. Heavy makeup and slack musculature gave their faces the appearance of uncanny rubber masks.
They looked as if they were missing something, incomplete, which of course they were.