Kendare Blake - Girl of Nightmares

Thomas and Carmel show up the next day, right after school, practically peeling into our driveway in their separate cars. They burst in without knocking and find me semi-comfortably drugged on the couch, watching TV and eating microwave popcorn, clutching an ice pack in my right hand.

“See? I told you he was alive,” says Thomas. Carmel looks nonplussed.

“You shut your phone off,” she says.

“I was sick at home. Didn’t feel like talking to anybody. And I figured you were at school, where policy says you are not to be frivolously texting and making phone calls.”

Carmel sighs and drops her schoolbag onto the floor before plopping down in the wingback chair. Thomas perches on the arm of the couch and reaches for the popcorn.

“You weren’t ‘sick at home,’ Cas. I called your mom. She told us everything.”

“I was too ‘sick at home.’ Just like I’m going to be tomorrow. And the next day. And probably the day after that.” I shake more cheddar into the bowl and offer it to Thomas. My attitude is wearing on Carmel’s nerves. To be honest, it’s wearing on mine. But the pills dull the pain, and they dull my mind enough so that I don’t have to be thinking about what happened at the Dutch Ironworks. I don’t have to wonder if what I saw was real.

Carmel would like to lecture me. I can see the admonishment dancing around her lips. But she’s tired. And she’s worried. So instead she reaches for the popcorn and says she’ll pick up my homework for the next few days.

“Thanks,” I say. “I might be out part of next week too.”

“But that’s the last week of classes,” says Thomas.

“Exactly. What are they going to do? Flunk me? It’d be too big of a pain. They just want to make it to summer like we do.”

They exchange this look, like they’ve decided I’m hopeless, and Carmel stands up.

“Are you going to tell us what happened? Why didn’t you wait, like we decided to?”

There isn’t an answer for that. It was an impulse. More than an impulse, but to them it must seem like a selfish, stupid move. Like I couldn’t be patient. Whatever it was, it’s done. When I confronted that ghost, it was just like before, in the hayloft. Anna came through, and I saw her suffer. I watched her burn.

“I’ll tell you everything,” I tell them. “But later. When I’m on fewer painkillers.” I smile and rattle the orange bottle. “Want to stick around and watch a movie?”

Thomas shrugs and plops down, digging his hand into the cheddar corn without a second thought. It takes Carmel an extra minute and a couple of sighs, but she eventually drops her book bag and sits in the rocking chair.

For all their horror at the prospect of missing one of the last days of school, curiosity gets the better of them and they show up the next day around eleven thirty, just before lunch period. I thought I was ready for it but it still takes me a few times to get it right, to tell them everything. I’d already said it once, to my mom, before she left to go shopping and drop spells around town. When I’d finished, she looked like she wanted an apology. An I’m sorry, Mom, for almost getting myself killed. Again. But I couldn’t quite manage it. It didn’t seem like the important thing. So she just told me I should have waited for Gideon, and left without looking me in the eye. Now Carmel’s got the same look.

I manage to croak out, “I’m sorry that I didn’t wait for you guys. I didn’t know I was going to do it. I didn’t plan it.”

“It took you four hours to drive there. Were you in a trance the whole time?”

“Can we just focus?” Thomas interjects. He asks it carefully, with a disarming smile. “What’s done is done. Cas is alive. A little crispier than before, but he’s breathing.”

Breathing and craving a Percocet. The pain in my shoulders is like a living thing, all throbbing and heat.

“Thomas is right,” I say. “We need to figure out what to do now. We need to figure out how to help her.”

“How to help her?” Carmel repeats. “We need to figure out what’s going on first. For all we know, the whole thing might be in your head. Or an illusion.”

“You think I’m making it up? Concocting some kind of fantasy? If that were true, why would it be like this? Why would I imagine her catatonic, throwing herself into a furnace? If I’m making this up, then I need several hours of intense therapy.”

“I’m not suggesting you’re doing it on purpose,” Carmel says apologetically. “I just wonder if it’s real. And remember what Morfran said.”

Thomas and I look at each other. All we remember is Morfran spewing a bunch of crazy. I sigh.

“So what do you want from me? You want me to sit here and wait, when what I saw might be real? What if she’s really in trouble?” The image of her hand, flung up against the furnace door, floats behind my eyes. “I don’t know if I can do that. Not after yesterday.”

Carmel’s eyes are wide. I wish we hadn’t gone to Morfran, because the things he said only scared her worse. All of his posturing, his forces spinning around the athame, something wicked this way comes B.S. My shoulders tighten and I wince.

“Okay,” Thomas says. He nods to Carmel and takes her hand. “I mean, I think we’re fooling ourselves thinking we have a choice anyway. Whatever’s happening is happening, and I don’t think it’s going to stop. Unless we really do destroy the athame.”

They leave a little while later, and I spend the afternoon on painkillers, trying not to think about Anna and what might be happening to her. I keep checking my phone, waiting for Gideon to call back, but he doesn’t. And the hours tick by.

When my mom gets home, close to evening, she makes me a mug of decaf tea and spikes it with lavender to heal the burns from the inside. It’s not a potion. There are no enchantments. Witchcraft and pharmaceuticals don’t mix. But even without the mojo the tea is soothing. Plus, I’ve taken another Percocet, because my shoulders feel like they’re ready to rip clean off. It’s kicked in nicely, and I want to crawl under the covers and pass out until Saturday.

When I walk into my bedroom, I half expect Tybalt to be curled up on my navy blanket. Why not? If my dead girlfriend can cross over, then my murdered cat probably can too. But there isn’t anything there. I get into bed and try to get comfortable against my pillows. Unfortunately, burned shoulders make that pretty much impossible.

When I close my eyes, a chill creeps up my legs. The temp in the room has plummeted, like one of the windows has come open. If I were to breathe out in a huff, it would be a cloud of vapor. Under my pillow, the athame is practically singing.

“You’re not really here,” I say to convince myself. Maybe to will it into truth. “If it was really you, it wouldn’t be like this.”

How would you know, Cassio? You’ve never even been dead once. I’ve been dead lots of times.

I let my eyes drift up, just far enough to see her bare feet pressed into the corner beside my dresser. Up just a little farther, to the white hem of her skirt, below her knees. I don’t want to see any more. I don’t want to see her break her own bones, or throw herself through my window. And her damn blood can stay inside of her nose too, thank you. She’s more terrifying this way than she ever was with black veins and drifting hair. Anna Dressed in Blood I knew how to face. The empty shell of Anna Korlov … I don’t understand.

The figure in the corner is half-encased in shadow, not much more substantial than moonlight.

“You can’t be here. Not really. My mom’s barrier spell is still up on the house.”