Episode 9 Hex-Breaker

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  Awareness seeped in. I rested in my new bedroom in the housing assigned to Kettle agents. It was night. Who knew how much time had passed between Nicholas Wraithbane reading The Great Gatsby and me waking up in a real bed.

  A plastic band wrapped around my wrist, too thick to snip off without wire cutters. An iridescent DISCHARGED was written over the top of a list of quantities and spell abbreviations. My entire body glowed with spell traces like a cartoon vision of radioactivity. A cottony sensation filled my mouth.

  “It's all we can do for now,” the attendant had told Doc Mike upon my release. “Here's a list of symptoms. If she starts to display three or more of them, it may mean that they got into the bloodstream. Incubation period is ten to fourteen days. They will attach to the liver at twenty-one days, so it is important to catch any complications as quickly as possible.”

  Complications meaning eggs? I assumed so.

  Lovely.

  I snorted. As if I was going to fall back asleep after that. And it was a decent night out, by the looks of things. By dumb luck or a fortune of the hour, I didn't awaken Kayla as I left the house using her the light from her phone to navigate the hallway.

  Moonlight showed me the central courtyard. It was a crisp, frigid night which was softer on my skin than the nights before had been, a sign that winter's fingers were leaving the land and spring was thawing her way into existence. Flowers later than the snow-parting crocus brushed their way out of the soil; the first leaves of a tulip, the narrow stem of a daffodil. Tree branches formed nubs awaiting a sun-kissed day to open in pinks and whites.

  Suddenly, I wondered what on earth I was doing walking around the courtyard at night. What would they say if someone found me like this? What would I say? “Don't mind me, I'm just enjoying being alive for another day?” Not a concerning comment at all.

  At Wraithbane's door, the moonlight cast a cool sheen upon the doorknob and revealed a shaking shadow as I reached for that door. It was a hand I didn't recognize as my own, with its broad palm and short fingers, hands accustomed to physical work and unblemished with chemical burn speckles or blots of ink. Yet these hands were the ones I had known all my life until last night. I felt conflicted. These stories were crazy, and yet they also felt true.

  He'd promised to tell me about Thaimon. Perhaps not tonight, but when he woke up, maybe... In any case, he'd be least likely to think I'd gone crazy.

  Without disturbing Wraithbane by knocking, and guided by a sense of familiarity, I entered his home. Just as he'd said before, nothing was locked. Open-door policy. That didn't stop him from having spells on every door and window, spells formed like a string of bells made in his floral green signature.

  His furniture called to the old world; large, wooden, and way too heavy for any thieves to be interested in. His wealth proved to be invested in the kitchen. A copper set of pots and pans; antler-handled Damascus steel knife set attached to a magnetic strip above an antique enamel oven; an abundance of produce hanging from netted cotton bags from the ceiling; a set of red willow china. Finally, a row of antique books whose shelf ran along the top of the wall, stretching from room to room with no beginning and no end. I found a fridge stocked with cured meats and prime cuts. A cabinet with a rainbow of unopened liquors shimmered under a whisper of gas light.

  “Didn't take you long to seek me out.”

  Wraithbane's voice startled me. The round of cheese I'd been handling dropped to the floor.

  “Sorry. I think it's still good.” I bent to pick it up, blushing. A zing of pain raced down my back as the movement tugged stitches. I stood upright to find him watching me. The way the moonlight illuminated his hazel eyes made them appear lambent and green, an exact match to the hue of his magic.

  Rough callouses brushed my hands. I jerked away a fraction and instantly regretted it. Even more embarrassed than before, I gave him the cheese and rubbed my tired eyes. Then I saw him. Really saw him. He looked horrid, dark hollows in his cheeks and under his eyes, shoulders slumped, movements sluggish and without their usual grace. The Bliss was taking its toll.

  “I shouldn't bother you. It's so late.”

  Though I wanted to nudge by him and make my escape, what I found instead was that he blocked the entire doorway by the simple virtue of possessing a wide set of shoulders.

  “You haven't eaten in too long,” he said and entered the kitchen. When his palm slid off the doorjamb, a spell sprouted there, interlacing its ivy-like arms to form an impenetrable mesh. While he polished the wax of the cheese off on a tea towel, I pressed a hesitant hand against the ivy spell. It pushed back against me.

  Wraithbane said, “You can run off again once you've had a meal.”

  “Alright, if I'm not bothering you.” I watched him for any indication that I wasn't welcome. He gave none. I asked, tracing one of the stems barring my exit, “What's this one called?”

  “Carriger's Blockade.”

  “Oh.” I didn't know anything about it.

  “What does it look like?”

  “Have you seen those strangle vines which climb trees and when the tree dies, there's the hollowed skeleton of the vines still living there in the shape of the tree?”

  Wraithbane paused from his quest of seeking out meats and cheeses. From a drawer he withdrew a pencil and pad of paper, tore out the grocery list, and gave the rest to me. “Draw it.”

  “The lights are a bit low.”

  He shrugged, reached around me so close we nearly touched, and adjusted a lever to brighten the faint blue of gas lights. As he made short work of a pear and tomato, I began a sketch. I regained my motor skills as I drew. It was too large for the paper. I hadn't scaled it down accordingly. I made the best of it by turning it into a botanical illustration, marking the jagged shape of the leaf and the prominent veins. I lost myself in the feel of pencil sliding over paper, the way the lines smudged at the slightest touch.

  When I finished, Wraithbane stood still and silent with a platter of bread slices, buttermilk crackers and saltwater wafers; wedges and crumbles of cheese; salamis and pancetta and meats I couldn't identify; sliced pear, tomato; a dipping bowl of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, a pat of butter. Grabbing a small, stemmed glass, he asked, “What's your poison, moscato or port?”

  “Moscato's my favorite.”

  He nodded, as if he'd anticipated the answer. The bottle popped open, trailing a soft spiral of bubbles in my glass. He took some port.

  Wraithbane traded me the moscato for the drawing. He smiled and held it up to the doorway, as if comparing the rendition to the original. I was about to say that it wasn't the best—but I stopped. He wasn't comparing. He was imagining what it was to see Carriager's Blockade through my eyes.

  “It's elaborate,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Are they all like this?”

  I gave the question consideration. “I suppose they are, but the bigger ones are easier to see the details on. Others are like snowflakes. You can get the overall shape at a glance, but to see everything about it, you'd need to magnify it a lot.” I hesitated. “Everyone seems surprised by my ability.”

  “There aren't very many people like you.”

  “Huh.” I considered his reply and decided it was fair. “Do you remember what you said to me in the containment center?”

  “Yes.”

  For an instant, I didn't know if I should pursue the topic. Carriger's Blockade remained in the doorway, which would surely prevent him from running, too, if he thought I was a nutjob. “I need answers.”

  He was quiet, but listening.

  I continued, “I'm so confused and turned around, I don't know if I've lost my sanity.”

  “It's taken you this long to question it? You have a high tolerance.”

  While I was reasonably certain he was teasing me, I didn't appreciate it. “Will you tell me or not?”

  “I'll tell you if you eat while I explain.”

  “Fine.” I paused, pick
ing my first question. “You said some people have multiple lives. How many have I had?”

  “I'm not sure. That's your history, not mine.” He held up a hand, his arm quivering ever so slightly, a reminder of the Bliss aftermath and a testament to what he was enduring for my sake. “Before you get frustrated, hear me out. Our triad tends to find one another, so I can say that this is the fourth time I've known you. I've known you in Queen Victoria's reign, I've known you at the eve of the Black Death, and I've known you before the Romans conquered the earth.”

  “If Thaimon became Thaimon after the oath, does it still apply?”

  “I've often wondered if Thaimon is still tied to us, but he seems to be. Losing your identity is part of the price of becoming a wraith, and no doubt why the medieval lifetime is such a touchy subject for him.” Wraithbane chuckled. “I've found that out the hard way.”

  I snorted, letting a bit of anger flare. “At least Thaimon had the honesty to say he knew me from before.”

  “I didn't know you at first. My own recollection of you came a bit later. Thaimon's mind and memories have been intact since the Black Death. He hasn't died since he became a wraith. He recognizes people and things far faster than someone who has died twice between then and now, which gives him an advantage over both of us.”

  “So, there was a time you didn't know about your past lives?” That made me feel less naive and stupid.

  “During adolescence. When I was a child, I had memories. My parents dismissed it as an active