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But I’m stubborn. I perch on the edge of Yang’s bed and settle in for a fight. He hasn’t had an easy time of it, having to go out to work instead of finishing school, putting his own ambitions aside in order to help his family make ends meet. And Mei’s already lost two sisters to the prison ship. I won’t let her lose her brother, too.
Magic pours out of me and into Yang. His airways clear first, and then his lungs, and the rasp of his breath eases. But his skin is still too hot. I push harder and my own muscles begin to go limp. “It’s almost—Mei, can you help me?” I pant, as a bell rings downstairs.
Mei slides her hand into mine, and more magic rushes in, reinvigorating me. I heave and the fever shudders back, retreating. I yank on the last threads of magic running through me, twining through my body from head to toe, and it feels like pulling a frayed ribbon tight. Any moment now, I’ll snap. My fingers scramble for purchase on Yang’s wrist, and blackness begins to dance in the corners of my eyes as I shove the magic out of my body and into his. Yang’s heart slows, strong and steady, as I fall sideways toward the wall.
“Oh! Cate!” Mei catches me just before my temple smashes into the headboard. She tugs me away from her brother and sits me in the high-backed wooden chair beside the bed. I tuck my head down over my knees until things stop spinning.
“What’s wrong with her?” a voice demands.
I know that voice. Dimly, I hear Mei introduce her parents to Finn and Merriweather and Rilla, and then Finn impatiently asks his question again.
“There’s a cost to healing magic,” Mei explains.
“The fever’s broken,” Mrs. Zhang says from her son’s bedside, and I can hear her smile.
“So she healed him, but it made her sick?” Finn sounds angry.
“That’s how it works. She’ll be right as rain in a few minutes. Here, Cate, Baba made you some green tea. ” Mei puts her hand on my shoulder, hauling me upright.
Nausea swims over me. I jump up, searching frantically for the washbasin, a hand clapped over my mouth. Rilla shoves it at me and I turn away and am ill right there in front of everyone. Good Lord. It’s so mortifying, I’d cry if I had the strength.
“Give the poor girl a minute of privacy! This is a sickroom, not a circus!” Mrs. Zhang says, shooing them all away. Mei hands me a handkerchief, and I wipe my mouth.
“I’m not leaving until I see that she’s all right,” Finn insists.
I turn, forcing a smile that comes out like a grimace. “I’ll be fine. ”
“Are you sure? You look rather—wobbly. ” Behind his spectacles, his brown eyes are full of worry. He might not love me—but he does care, at least a little.
Merriweather charges forward from the doorway, his dark hair windblown, his olive peacoat buttoned all askew. “You were able to heal the boy completely? Can you tell me what it felt like?” He runs a hand over his jaw. “If you can heal it, though—people might see that as proof. ”
“Proof of what?” Rilla demands, glaring up at him.
Merriweather shrugs. “O’Shea’s claim that the witches created the fever, that it’s some sort of dark magic. ”
“That’s ridiculous. ” Mei stomps around me, jabbing her forefinger into Merriweather’s broad chest. “We’re helping people, not hurting them. It’s more than the Brothers are doing. They only want to help those who can pay the hospital fees. ”
“It’s true. ” Mrs. Zhang steps away from her son for a moment. “Baba went to the hospital earlier. The nurse told him all the beds were full, but then a Brother brought in a little girl and they took her right upstairs to see Brother Kenneally. ”
“See? That’s what you ought to be reporting on!” Mei insists.
Merriweather arches one eyebrow. “That the Brothers and their families are given preferential treatment? That’s hardly news, I’m afraid. ”
“Why?” I croak. “Why Kenneally?”
“He’s the director of Richmond Hospital. It’s all in who you know, isn’t it?” Merriweather’s rich baritone is full of disgust, but I shake my head, struggling to collect my thoughts.
“No. She means why would they come down to the hospital to see him, when it’s full of infection and there’s no cure?” Finn says, and I nod, relieved that someone else has caught at the heart of it. “What can Kenneally do that their private physician can’t?”
“Ah. ” Merriweather steeples his long, elegant fingers. “That’s a good question, Belastra. That might bear looking into. ”
Rilla swats at his arm. “Cate was the one pointing it out!”
I lean back against the wall, and Finn gives me his gap-toothed grin. There’s admiration in his eyes—whether for my witchery or my wits, I don’t know—but it makes my stomach flutter in an altogether different way.
Chapter 13
TESS HAS CALLED A FAMILY MEETING.
Frankly, I would have liked to refuse to come, but it is Christmas Eve.
“I think we ought to go over early for Christmas dinner,” Tess says, standing awkwardly in the middle of her bedroom. It’s the first time she and Maura and I have been alone together in weeks. “To talk to Father. ”
“Good luck to you with that. ” Still standing in the doorway, Maura rolls her blue eyes. “He doesn’t know how to talk to us. Never has. ”
She’s got a point. A month ago I would have said the same thing, in the same scornful tones.
“It’s what we have to say to him that’s important. ” Tess gulps, smoothing her green skirt. “We’re going to tell him the truth. I—I’d like it if you’d come, too. I think all three of us should be there. ”
Maura stiffens. “What truth? You can’t mean—”
“I do,” Tess interrupts, ushering Maura in. Maura eyes me warily and then sits on Vi’s bed, rumpling the fluffy white goose-down duvet. Tess shuts the door behind her. “There’s something you ought to know. Something Mother kept from us. When they were first married, Father knew about Mother’s witchery. She erased his memory. Zara told us. ”
Maura glares at us. It is not, I think, the reaction Tess was hoping for. “Tell me this—if he supported her, why would she need to erase his memory?”
Tess sits next to me on her bed. “After Zara was arrested, Mother was afraid she would be next. She thought Father might do something rash to get himself arrested right alongside her. ”
“Father?” Maura snorts. “He’s hardly the impetuous sort. What did she think he would do, shoot Brother Ishida?”
I remember Marianne Belastra’s kind brown eyes on the day she found out Finn and I were in love. He may not have said the words, but I know my son. I saw the way he looked at you. Like he’d do murder for you.
“He might,” I snap. “It seems we don’t really know what Father is. ”
“We do,” Maura insists. “The way he’s acted over the last three years says all we need to know about his character. He only cares for his books and his business. ”
“And Mother. ” I lean forward, eyes intent. “They were so in love. It never made sense to me that she kept such an enormous secret from him. When you love someone like that, with your whole heart”—the way I love Finn, the way he used to love me—“how could you not want them to know you?”