From Bad to Cursed

  She made a disgusted noise and sneered at me. “You lied,” she said. “That was the summoning spell. If you’d just read it like you were supposed to, Aralt would be gathering all of your energy, storing it, preparing for his triumphant return to life.”

  Gathering our energy…

  “You were going to kill us all?”

  “For a good cause!” she snarled.

  “Your own grandmother tried to warn you.”

  “Warn me? Grandma’s the one who told me stories about Aralt. He makes you beautiful, he makes you popular.…then she dies and gets all holier-than-thou.” She sniffed. “If Grandma really cared, she would have left us some of her money, instead of donating it all to some stupid charity. You know what she left me? Cookbooks!”

  The matches were pressed between my sweaty hand and the edge of the book.

  “You know plenty about lying, don’t you, Alexis?” she asked. “This whole thing was just a game to you. You never cared about Aralt.”

  I had, but never in a way that would satisfy her. “But you did?” I asked. “You cared?”

  Her face crumpled. “I love him,” she sniffled. “More than anything. And he loves me.”

  “But you killed Tashi. You took her away from him.”

  “He didn’t need her anymore,” she said. “He didn’t want her. He has me now. I can be the new creatura. I can control his energy. I’m learning.”

  “Seriously,” I said. “If this week was what you call controlling his energy…”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ll get better. I’ll stay with him. He promised me we could be together.”

  “But why would you want to be with a ghost?”

  “That’s why I have to summon him. He’ll come out of the book. And he’ll take care of me,” she whispered. Her voice hardened. “You have no idea, Alexis. No idea how horrible my life is. My dad lost his job, and now he works part-time at a hardware store. He’s living in a fantasy world—he thinks he’s going to be some big rock star. The whole thing is pathetic. It makes me sick.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “And we had to move into that filthy little house, and my mom goes out and drinks every night. I haven’t seen her in two days. All they think about is themselves. It’s like I don’t even exist anymore.”

  “I’m really sorry, Lydia. I didn’t know.” I thought of all the times I’d been snide to Lydia, because I was in the habit of doing it, and all the while her whole life had been collapsing around her.

  “Do you know how I got my lunch money?” she asked. “Before Aralt? I mowed lawns, Alexis. I went around the neighborhood on Saturdays and begged lazy slobs in muumuus to let me spend the whole afternoon in the sun, pushing a freaking lawn mower, getting ant bites all over my feet. Do you know how many lawns I had to mow to buy Aralt’s book? To convince Tashi to come to Surrey? And you got it for free! No wonder you never appreciated it.”

  She seemed to be growing kind of wired—all jittery and twitchy. If she hadn’t separated herself from Aralt, then she was the only person still connected to him. That was a lot of energy to feed into one person.

  “Lydia, listen to me. You don’t want Aralt taking care of you. He’s not what you think. I met him, and—”

  Her expression, suddenly rigid with jealousy, told me it was the wrong thing to say.

  “He’s evil. Just read the abandoning spell and live your life. Things will be different.”

  “Oh, you’re going to make me your charity case?” she asked. “No thanks, Alexis. At least Aralt loves me for me. Not out of pity.”

  “He doesn’t love anyone, Lydia.”

  She stared at me through glazed eyes. Tashi’s dress, which would have cost about thirty mowed lawns, was torn and smeared with dirt and blood. “Give me the book. I’ll walk out that door, and you’ll never see me again. You have until the count of five. And then I break your neck.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Fine.”

  “Set it on the counter.”

  I turned my body halfway and set the book down. Then I raised my arms, holdup style, and took a step back.

  As Lydia rushed toward the book, I threw myself at her. We fell to the floor. She reached up, grabbed a container full of sanitizer from the counter, and swung it at my head. It didn’t shatter, but the impact stunned me, and a wave of liquid splashed my face.

  For a few seconds I felt like I was in a dream, watching this happen to someone else.

  Then I stumbled backward and fell to the ground.

  I closed my eyes and curled into a fetal position, waiting for the furious pain in my skull to subside. After a minute, I pushed myself to my hands and knees.

  I opened my burning eyes.

  My vision was hazy and gray-tinted. I held on to a chair and stared at the ceiling like a shipwreck victim staring at the distant lights of a rescue ship.

  “What’s wrong? Is it your precious eyes?” Lydia said, her voice syrupy with fake concern. “That stuff is nasty. Mom always wore goggles just to dilute it.”

  My eyes began to tear, but the tears felt different, somehow—thicker, sticky, like they were trying to hold my eyelids shut.

  A whole-body terror gripped me—

  “O-M-G—what if you go blind?” Lydia asked. “Can hotshot photographers be blind?”

  Her taunts were nothing to me, nothing at all, compared to the panic expanding in my chest. I tried to crawl toward the shampoo stations, but Lydia blocked my path.

  “I don’t know, Lexi,” she said. “Adding water might make it worse. Are you willing to take that chance?”

  She was bluffing. She had to be.

  “I think I know something that could help,” Lydia said. I swung my head toward the sound of her voice, and she laughed bitterly. “You look like a drunk sea lion.”

  I can’t be blind.

  I’d ruined everything else in my life. The only thing I had left was photography.

  “Seriously? What is it?” I said. “Help me! Lydia, please!”

  My eyes were starting to feel hot and dehydrated. They weren’t tearing anymore—even blinking was hard.

  “You know what it is, Alexis.” Her voice was suddenly dry, humorless. “It’s Aralt.”

  But I couldn’t. It was out of the question.

  Just for a couple of minutes—just until I’m healed, I told myself. And then I’ll read Tréigann again. It won’t even matter.

  But no—I couldn’t.

  “Tick-tock,” Lydia said. “Those darling corneas are blistering as we speak.”

  Blind. Never to see the so-blue-it-hurts sky on a late summer day; never to look through the viewfinder of a camera or watch a print fade to life in the darkroom; never to see Carter—even from afar.

  “Fine! I’ll do it!” I said, my voice breaking into a sob. I didn’t have the strength to pretend to be dignified. “Hurry, Lydia, please.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “It’s not a very Alexis thing to do, you know. Don’t you want some time to think it over?”

  It was starting to feel like the walls were closing in on me, panic compressing my body.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to think about it.”

  She seemed to go as slowly as possible, but she led me through the oath, phrase by phrase.

  I repeated every word.

  As soon as I spoke the final sentence, energy surged through my body, like ice water poured on a man who’s been crawling through the desert. My eyes no longer stung; my limbs no longer ached; I felt forgiven. I felt alive again. I lay down on the linoleum and stared at the ceiling, watching the tiles slowly come back into focus, tasting relief like honey in my mouth.

  From the back of the room I could hear muttering, but I was too overwhelmed to even wonder about Lydia. After a minute, I sat up and twisted my body to look at her. She was bent over the book on the counter. Her lips were moving.

  I came up behind her in time to see the word at the top of the page: TOGHRAIONN.

  “Lydia!?
?? I gasped. “What are you doing?!?”

  “I summoned him,” she said, arms crossed triumphantly. “Aralt. He’s coming for me.”

  “Why would you—you can’t,” I said. “He’s not what you think he is.”

  “You’re forgetting, Alexis. He loves me. He would never hurt me. You wouldn’t understand that kind of trust.” She shrugged. “And you know what? None of this would have happened if you’d minded your own business. I tried to summon him the very first night. But the stupid dog had to get out.…Aralt came looking for me, but Tashi got him back in the book before he could find me.”

  She had no idea. She didn’t know what he really was. She was expecting some Prince Charming to come carry her off on his white horse.

  The room, which a minute earlier had seemed so full of noise and chaos, now seemed like the inside of a chapel. The only sounds were our breathing and a strange sizzling sound in the air.

  “Lydia,” I said. “Please. Read the other spell.”

  “We’re going to be together forever,” she whispered. “I’m so happy.”

  She set the book into one of the sinks and smirked at me. “And no one else is going to try to take Aralt away from me. Stay sunny, Alexis.”

  She lit a match.

  “Lydia, no!”

  And she dropped it on the book.

  Her eyes were starry, enthralled. Her lips formed a sweet smile. Her gaze fixed on a spot over my shoulder. “I’m so happ—”

  Her eyes went wide. From behind me came a scraping sound.

  “What is that?” she cried.

  I turned just in time to see a hulking, formless black shadow slither past me.

  Lydia tried to run, but the shadow was on top of her in an instant. It knocked her to the ground and wrapped itself around her like it was melting, a thin black membrane spreading across her whole body. When she tried to scream, it filled her mouth.

  She struggled, but her flailing arms were enveloped by the black web.

  My head was filled with sound, a watered-down version of what I’d experienced in Tashi’s garage.

  Aralt didn’t love Lydia. He didn’t love anything. He was greedy, ravenous, selfish. And the chorus of smaller voices, fearful and sad, that I’d heard underneath it all—

  The women who gifted themselves didn’t die painlessly.

  They didn’t become a soft, glowing halo around the edges of their friends’ lives—

  Their spirits existed, imprisoned by Aralt’s hunger, in a state of torment. Lonely and terrified.

  “No!” I shouted, pulling at the layer that covered Lydia’s mouth. My fingers sank into its flesh, leaving oozing holes, but the thing didn’t seem to notice me.

  All it cared about was Lydia.

  When it had her in a tight cocoon, it began to pulse, like a beating heart.

  Like it was feeding.

  I kept bashing at it, but nothing I did made any difference.

  “GET OFF!” I screamed, but I could barely hear my own voice above the cacophony in my mind. “GET OFF!”

  Then, suddenly, the shadow was gone. The mix of voices, Aralt’s vicious roar with the cries of his prisoners…it all faded away.

  I looked down at Lydia. Her body, pale and bent, lay on the floor like a broken mannequin. Her eyes were wide with terror, her mouth frozen midshriek.

  I pressed my fingers to her neck, just under her ear.

  No pulse. I shifted her body so she was flat on her back, then started chest compressions.

  Count, press, wait, feel for a pulse. Count, press, wait, feel.

  Then I was being pulled away.

  “I have to save her!” I said, flailing. “Let me go! I have to save her!”

  “You can’t save her, Lexi,” Kasey said, holding me tightly. “Look at her. She’s dead.”

  She was right, of course. There wasn’t a whisper of life left in Lydia’s body. She was a shell. A corpse.

  “Come on,” said Kasey. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “No, wait,” I said, remembering the book.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kasey said. “The book is basically ashes.”

  But…if the book was destroyed, where did that leave me?

  Insane and dying, like the South McBride River girls?

  I turned to Kasey in horror.

  “I called Carter,” Kasey said. “I know you guys broke up, but…”

  Outside, a pair of headlights swung into the parking lot. Carter vaulted out of the car and ran through the door of the salon. He glanced at Lydia, then grabbed my hand.

  “Lex, what happened?”

  “We can figure that out later,” Kasey said. “We have to get out of here.” She steered me toward the door. I stepped onto the asphalt, and the pain in my half-healed feet made my knees buckle.

  Carter bent down and picked up my foot, looking at it like a blacksmith inspecting a horseshoe. The sole was a reddish-black mess of dirt, blood, and patches of sensitive pink skin.

  “Put your arms around my neck,” he said.

  “No, I’m too heavy.”

  “Alexis,” he said. “Come on. For once, I’m asking you to trust me.”

  I hesitated.

  “That’s the whole problem, isn’t it?” He turned his face toward the night sky and let out a horrible laugh, like a gasp of pain. “Why are you the only person who’s allowed to be strong?”

  I put my arms around his neck.

  As if I weighed nothing at all, he lifted me off the ground and carried me away.

  “WE’VE HANDLED THE police department, the coroner, the hospital, the EMTs, the fire department, the superintendent, the principal, and the relevant teachers.” Agent Hasan checked her notebook. “The students will have to figure out their own explanation. They always do, and it’s usually better than our story anyway.”

  I nodded.

  My parents stared at the kitchen counter.

  “We’ve done quite a patch-up job on this, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the paint peels and a few of the nails pop out,” Agent Hasan said. “But I think it’ll blow over.”

  She looked at Mom and Dad. “May I speak to the girls alone for a minute?”

  They slowly got up from their seats and walked out to the front porch.

  Agent Hasan glanced from me to Kasey and back again.

  “Normally, I’d have a lot of questions for you girls,” she said, “but seeing as how I’ve been ‘asked’ by my superior, who was ‘asked’ by his superior, who was ‘asked’ by the Senate subcommittee that handles our budget—not to ask you anything, I get to go home early today.”

  She leaned toward us conspiratorially.

  “Listen. I like you guys. I’m glad you have mysterious friends in high places who can get you out of this. But the fact is, you got lucky. Luckier than you can fathom. That book was responsible for the deaths of more than a hundred and fifty innocent women, and I’m happy it’s gone. Personally, I think you did the right thing. But listen to me.”

  Her eyes bored into mine. “To the people I work for, doing the right thing means nothing. You follow orders, or you vanish. I don’t know why you got messed up in this stuff for a second time. Once you were in it, you took care of your business. I respect that.” She narrowed her eyes. “But I’m telling you—there are no third chances. Keep your noses clean.”

  Kasey looked confused.

  “It’s an expression,” Agent Hasan said, stacking her untouched paperwork and sliding it back in her briefcase. “Stay out of trouble.”

  She walked herself to the door. We stayed seated; I’d been advised to avoid putting unnecessary weight on my bandaged feet, and Kasey had to protect her injured leg.

  I wanted to stop her, to ask her what was next for me—what would the side effects be, of taking the oath to the book just as it was destroyed. I kept waiting to feel my mind start to loosen at the seams, but so far, I didn’t feel any less sane than a person would reasonably feel after what we’d been through. But I was afraid to as
k, because—unlike Kasey—I didn’t think I was brave enough to go to a place like Harmony Valley for a year.

  “Take care, girls.” And with a curt nod, she left.

  Mom and Dad came back inside, not looking at each other or at us.

  “I guess I’ll go finish up my homework,” Kasey said, easing herself out of the chair.

  “Me too,” I said.

  She disappeared down the hall while I was still hoisting my way to a standing position. This put me in the distinctly unfortunate position of being alone with my parents. It seemed like there was something I should say. I took a breath. “Alexis,” Dad said, his voice heavy with hurt and disappointment, “please. Just go to your room.”

  * * *

  The office was in disarray.

  I wandered through the workroom, looking for Farrin, finally passing through the cylinder into the darkroom.

  The lights were on, and Farrin was on the floor in the corner, labeling a box. She didn’t look up. “I wondered when you would come.”

  I tried to hide my surprise when she looked at me. I’d never seen her look so bedraggled. Actually, I’d never seen her look less than perfect.

  She looked at me as though she knew what I was thinking. “Well, what did you think was going to happen?” she asked. “Turns out I’m bankrupt. The people I thought I could count on have disappeared, and suddenly I find that I’m an old woman.”

  “But you still have your talent,” I said. “They can’t take that away from you.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve spent my whole life watching people with talent be overlooked in favor of people who had better connections, more money, the right friends. People like me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was. Not sorry that the book was gone. But that Farrin’s life was collapsing around her like a house of cards. “Will you tell Senator Draeger I said thank you?”

  “I’ll try,” Farrin said. “She’s very busy these days. Her campaign finances are being audited. Things aren’t going terribly well for any of us. And I’m sorry about the contest. You know the magazine is folding.”

  “I understand,” I said.

  “You’re fortunate, Alexis,” she said, her voice a little wistful. “You’re young enough to start over.”