“Calli! Wake up!”
I hear Chris’s voice. The pain in my head lingers: a slow, dull, throbbing. I open my eyes to discover his face near mine, and become aware I’m on the floor in the boys’ room. Chris has pulled my upper body into his arms. I untangle myself from his arms and sit up. “What happened?”
Chris stands and I see everyone is awake and staring at me.
“You started screaming and holding your head and fell to the floor,” Chris says.
I search the room for Jonas, and when I find his face, I search his body, only to find the tumor intact, unchanged.
Chris figures out straightaway what I had been trying to do. All he has to do is glance in the direction my eyes are looking to see who I’m focused on.
“Get up.” He holds out his hand to me. I stand, and he leads me into the bathroom and closes the door behind us.
“Why are we in here?”
“Because I don’t want everyone else freaked out by what I’m about to tell you, especially one person in particular.” He reaches over and turns on the bathtub faucet. “Background noise.” He points to the running water. “Try to avoid saying Jonas’s name, all right?”
I nod and sit on the floor with my back against the door and my knees pulled to my chest.
Chris positions himself on the edge of the tub, our knees nearly touching. “You’re on dangerous ground here, Calli. One of the first things we learn about at the compound is how to accept death, and why we should when our time comes.”
“Well, I never started my training so you can’t expect me—”
He cuts me off. “I know. This will be your first lesson about death. You told me you can’t see his future. Normally that would mean he doesn’t have one and he’s going to die. Or it could simply mean you are new to the Seer ability and just need more practice. However, at some point in his life, he’s going to die and you can’t do anything about it. Tell me, how serious is his cancer? Are you able to determine to what extent he’s suffering?”
“It’s serious. I think it has spread into different organs. He’s not in a ton of pain yet. Whatever pain he has, he brushes it off so he won’t sound weak to the rest of us. I think it’s fast developing because when I looked into his memories, he seemed healthy.” I remember hearing my father talk about a cancer patient who was fine one month and dead the next. My father told me that “sometimes cancer sneaks up and takes us by surprise.”
“Calli, consider this. If a doctor discovered his illness, do you think they would even try to fight it, or send him home to die?”
“I’m not a doctor, but I can tell the disease is widespread. If he was my father’s patient, he’d probably be set up in a hospice program where he’d be kept as comfortable as possible for the short time he has left.”
“Exactly. In the early stages, most kinds of cancer are treatable by both human and Healer alike, but when any illness is far enough advanced, both know when to pull back and let nature take its course.”
“But this is different. I’m a Healer. I can heal him.”
“Think of yourself as a glorified surgeon. You can heal wounds and broken bones. Basically your powers are limited to what a doctor can do. He or she can shock a heart to make it beat again, but if the heart has damage that will prevent it from beating on its own, the doctor’s hands are tied. Think about a patient in a coma. A doctor can’t wake them, and if the patient is brain dead . . . do you comprehend the limitations doctors have? They are not all-powerful. Everyone dies. Our bodies give out, and Jonas is going to die. Only, he doesn’t know that yet.”
“I can remove it. I know I can.”
“Do you remember falling in agony a few minutes ago? Clearly, you are trying to do something that may not be possible at this point.”
“Will it kill me to try?”
“Now this is where you’re on dangerous ground. Thinking you can defy death, cheat death, is bordering on evil. Let’s imagine for a moment you did heal him, but in five years he’s shot in the head. Oh, but wait, you fix his head and he lives. Then, when he’s sixty, he suffers a massive heart attack, but you heal that too. However, at ninety, he develops congestive heart failure, and you fix him. And when he’s one hundred and twenty his kidneys give out, but you heal him. Then he’s one hundred and fifty—”
“I get your point. When nature takes us, it’s game over. But he’s so young. He has so much life ahead of him. He shouldn’t have to die now.”
Chris put his finger up to his lips to remind me to keep my voice down. “Why do you believe his time to die is up to you?”
“I don’t, I only—”
“You do. You tread on dangerous ground.”
“Why?”
“Anyone who thinks they have the power to decide who lives or dies is going against nature and is in direct opposition to the universal order of things. They put themselves up higher than everyone around them and they all, and I mean all, turn evil. They become power hungry, obsessed with total domination and immortality. The Death Clan are Healers—were Healers. Now they are striving for immortality and ultimate control. They don’t answer to anyone. They don’t care about anyone, only themselves. Their goal is to gain all the abilities of every other clan and become invincible.”
“I’m not like that.”
“You already are.”
“No!”
“Shhh.” He puts his finger to his mouth. “There’s a natural order to life, to all forms of life, and it’s not our place to try to alter that force. Through the years, certain species have gone extinct. The world’s populations have taken drastic hits due to naturally occurring illnesses or disasters. But without those, the population today would be astronomical.”
“But—”
“But nothing. No one can live forever, Calli.”
“I’m not trying for forever with him, just a few more years.”
“In a few more years, he might be married with children, and then when he gets sick, you’ll feel his children shouldn’t be without their father, and so on. Do you follow? Do you understand the limitations and the need to learn how to accept death? You need to learn this before you wind up in a situation where someone who means a lot to you is dying. What’s going to happen when someone you deeply love is mortally wounded? It’s important you learn to recognize when nature’s taking over. If you don’t, you’ll be no better than the Death Clan, who at one time were good and kept everyone alive, kind of like you and your desires to keep him alive. But then they took nature into their own hands and began deciding when people would die. Their very existence is against nature.”
“What about the other Healers? Are they evil?”
“No, because they understand when to stop healing and let nature take over. Let me tell you a story. Several hundred years ago, a clan of Healers started down this path of overriding nature. They wanted, and discovered, a way to achieve immortality by killing others and absorbing their youth. Nature found a way to intervene, and the entire clan, in their power-hungry state, was obliterated. It’s said they became the Shadow Demons. You would know them as vampires.”
“They don’t look like vampires to me.”
“They were never called vampires except by humans. They don’t have long incisors like Hollywood would have you believe. They don’t bite their victims, and wooden stakes through the heart won’t kill them. Nothing can kill them except other members of their clan. Humans couldn’t handle the facts, so they came up with their own stories of how to kill vampires to satisfy their fears.”
“How did they absorb the youth of other people?”
“No one knows for sure because their methods died with their mortal bodies. The Death Clan hasn’t even figured out the secret, to my knowledge. Calli, what you need to accept is the Death Clan, and the ancient vampires, all started out like you, learning to heal and trying to keep people alive.”
I consider for a moment that my powers are a limited-time offer and will be removed from me once the diamond is delivered. I
simply can’t see the harm in doing one good deed while having the ultimate power. It isn’t like I’d turn evil. My mind wars with right and wrong. How wrong am I to want to help someone? Chris must sense what I’m thinking because he starts up again.
“For every change in the order of things, there’s a repercussion. Wise Healers know when not to heal, when not to help, and when to walk away. Someday you’ll be a wise Healer.”
I want to tell him, No, someday I’ll be a nobody, again, but, I can’t do that without revealing why.
The bathroom has filled with cool mist from the running water and Chris’s skin shimmers with moisture. I figure mine does too, because he moves back a little from me and takes in my appearance. I watch the expression on his face change slightly. He seems to be seeing me with different eyes, the kind that make my stomach flutter with anticipation.
Anticipation of what? Is he about to kiss me? I wish I had more experience around boys and the way they think.
He holds his hand out. I take hold, and he helps me stand. We face each other for several electrically-charged seconds. I say electrically, because the emotion in his eyes has a kind of physical energy that makes my skin prickle.
He drops my hand and shuts off the bathtub water. “Let’s get some sleep,” he says, ushering me out to my bed.
The clock on the end-table says one-thirty as I lie back down on the bed. My heart still races from being with Chris. He’s standing in the doorway between the two rooms, looking my direction with a concentrated intensity. He finally disappears into his room and shuts off the light. I let out my pent-up breath.
“What was that all about?” Lizbeth asks.
“I needed a lesson about death.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Let’s get some sleep.”
“Do you and Chris have a thing going?”
“Of course not. He’s too old for me.” I try to sound convincing, but I fail.
“Could’a fooled me.”
“And me,” Ashley’s voice sounds from the other bed.
Shanika says, “Yeah, he’s hot for you, girl! You’re all powerful, but you seem to be blind about it.” Shanika and Ashley both giggle.
“Hey, I’m not an idiot, and don’t forget I can read minds. I know about his feelings for me, and you two as well for that matter.” I get them giggling again. Then, in an effort to get them to drop the subject, I say, “Anyway, I hear he’s holding out for his special someone.”
Shanika answers, “That’s true.”
Ashley says, “When we get back to Montana, I’m going to have you look in my crush’s head to find out if he likes me.”
“We already know he doesn’t,” Shanika answers.
Chris says in a loud voice from the other room, “Go to sleep!”
Lizbeth rolls over and whispers, “Why were you on the floor screaming?”
“I tried one of my powers without knowing what it would do to me.”
“Which power?”
“Healing.”
“Who’s hurt?”
“No one,” I say, yawning.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Goodnight.” I roll away from her, hoping she won’t continue. She doesn’t.