Glimmer (15 page)

And that’s when I smell it, Jeffry’s acne-cream-and-sweat scent. A knot of fear rises in my stomach again, but he’s not here. Couldn’t be.

To reassure myself, I move the dresser and press my ear to the door. I can hear Liz and Jeffry laughing over a TV show together, scraping silverware on plates.

It’s me. His harsh antiseptic smell is all over me, in my clothes, in my hair. Whatever I do
I have to get that stink off me, now.
To wash off his aura of judgment.

My pink clock says 7:03. The show they’re watching just started. My stomach’s still queasy with fear, but I try to reason with it. I’ll take the fastest shower in the world, then I’m out of here. Forever.

I stumble into my bathroom. My face is red and blotchy in the mirror; so’s the skin on my neck and shoulders. I peel off my clothes and step into the shower. Under the hot water I hug myself and let out a sob that leads to another sob. My belly muscles are contracting, my spine curling forward, as if my body itself is telling me it’s okay to cry, to let go of this awful feeling—till a soft
thump
behind me makes me freeze.

What was that?

Peeking out from one end of the lavender shower curtain, I can see that the bottle of vanilla body lotion on the sink is still teetering back and forth. Something jostled it.

My heart’s pounding in my throat. I’m trapped.

On the other side of the curtain a handprint and the outline of a face appear; I let out a piercing scream. A long, shimmering arm reaches toward me. I feel a strange liquid pressure to open my mouth, and my knees feel weak, and I hear the thud on the padded floor, but I don’t even feel my body drop.

—

I wake up sputtering rainwater. No, not rain, it’s hot. I’m in the shower, the lavender bathroom. What happened?

I stand, feeling soreness all over my right side, where I fell. I turn the water off and tie on the white fluffy bathrobe on the door hook, willing myself to put the pieces together. I was at the pool; I jumped in after that little girl who passed out. Then I somehow got home and fell asleep in the shower? My whole body’s aching.

No, I didn’t fall asleep.

With a shiver I run to my bedroom. I’m dressing when I see the letter on my desk. I stare at the familiar angular writing.
Dear Elyse,
it says at the top, and underlined,
Remember this happened to you.

Chapter 24
MARSHALL

I pace the block four times before I can bring myself to climb the steps to Bill King’s front porch. I rap on the knocker, fighting my irrational urge to run away. Or maybe not so irrational. After all, I did jump out a second-story window to escape from him yesterday. But he’s my father. Maybe the only family I have left. And there’s a lot we need to talk about.

There’s no answer. Well, fair enough. After the whole baseball bat incident, I don’t blame him.

I jiggle the knob. Locked. What now, find a way to climb back
in
the window?

A dried-out flowerpot catches my eye. Of course I didn’t notice it yesterday, but this house is the most neglected property on the street by far. The lawn’s two feet high. I lift up the heavy ceramic bowl, where some poor houseplant died ages ago, and hear the clink and scraping on the concrete before the key comes into view. I hesitate.

This is your house, dumbass, I remind myself. Probably your own spare key.

Feeling like a criminal nonetheless, I turn the key in the lock and push the door in. “Hello?”

The living room is dim and stuffy, the only furniture a pair of scuffed IKEA couches. One is covered in piled-up mail. The place smells like tomato soup.

“Hello?” I nearly bump into a wall of cardboard boxes. Moving boxes. “Bill? Dad?”

“Marsh?” I can see the bald man in the kitchen, in his bathrobe, shivering on the floor against the closed back door. “Thank god you’re back.” He jumps up and hugs me. It’s weird to have a stranger—or someone who seems like a stranger—hug you, but I feel bad for not knowing him, so I pat his back. “I thought I’d lost you,” he says.

“Sorry about the window,” I say. “And I’m sorry I don’t remember you or anything else.”

“It’s not your fault.” His finger tugs down the stretchy collar of my T-shirt, revealing the ink eye. His brow furrows. “I don’t understand. It’s still there.”

I glance down. “Why wouldn’t it be?” It’s a tattoo. You can’t erase them.

“Because your memories are gone.”

“Wait, the tattoo is what protects me . . . from losing my memories?”

“You and your mother both had personal defense spells. But in the end something must have gone wrong with hers.”

“That must be what Joe was talking about,” I say, putting it together.

Bill’s head snaps up. “Who’s Joe?”

“You know, from the Institute.” I stand and turn on the light. Tired of sitting here in the dark. “The guy investigating her death.”

“An investigator?” He lets out a groan of annoyance. “Freakin’ typical. Those assholes at the Institute did nothing but look down on your mom while she was alive. Now that she’s gone, they finally realize what they had in her.”

“Why would they look down on her?”

“Oh, they never understood her work. They’re very traditional, conservative stuffed shirts. . . .” He pauses. “You know, I don’t exactly know the details. Wasn’t my world.”

“You mean, you’re not an occultist yourself?”

He shakes his head. “Magic tends to run in families, and it didn’t run in mine. That’s why your mother warded this house. For me. As long as I stay inside, I’m safe; ghosts can’t get in.”

I feel an ache. “Does that mean you’ve been in this house for over a year?” No wonder he’s a little batty and short-tempered. I have to get him out.

“It was fine as long as Eva was alive.”

“Tell me about her,” I say. “Then it’ll be like I remember her too, sort of.”

He points to a leather-framed photo on the counter. “That’s her.” It’s Eva and a younger Bill together in a Parisian café, croissants and giant coffee cups in front of them. He’s gazing at her adoringly. She’s gazing at the camera straight on. “Eva Moon,” he says. “She was one of those people everybody thinks of by their whole name. Even though she was physically small—I could carry her—she was somehow a big person. She just had that something.”

I look at the Eiffel Tower behind them. “You traveled a lot.”

“No,
we
traveled a lot, Marsh. You’re the one who took that picture. You were always a trooper, you just fit right into our lives.”

Did I have any choice?

“I wasn’t sure I wanted kids,” Bill says. “Eva and I had lived such an exciting, amazing life together before we had you, and I was scared of losing that. But we just kept right on traveling. This whole trip to Summer Falls, it was supposed to be a one-time gig to get money that would take us to our next big adventure, a set of New Zealand caves with—”

“Wait, what do you mean, gig?”

“Just that. She was hired. Fifty grand to do a fairly simple ritual for an occultist who needed fresh blood.”

“Blood?” I pull my head back, away from him.

“Not literal blood,” Bill says patiently. “Fresh blood just means fresh talent. Magical talent, in this case. According to Eva, nothing in the world is permanent. Once a spell—even a powerful spell—has been in place for a hundred years, it starts wearing off. It’s like the elements themselves become immune to the spell worker’s signature. So he or she hires other, younger magicians to refresh it, give it a new spin.”

“Wait a second. If it takes a hundred years, wouldn’t the original . . . um . . . person be dead?”

“Normally, yes. But occultists aren’t normal people, as you’ve probably guessed, being one. Often the more talented they are, the more twisted they are. According to Eva, the man who founded this town was downright warped.”

“Wait, Preston? Shouldn’t he be dead?”

“After a hundred and fifty years, you’d think, right?” Bill barks a laugh. “I’m not even sure if he still looks human. She did a job once for a spirit that talked to her through Tibetan crystals.”

I shudder. “How did Preston talk to her?”

“As far as I know, they communicated by text and email only—anyone could be writing those words. At any rate the gig was simple. She had to walk through his underwater labyrinth. The sacred geometry in her movements would renew the strength of the spell performed more than a hundred years ago. The spell that tied all the local spirits to him, made them his servants. Including the big one, the elemental spirit of the waterfall.”

Underwater. “That’s how she got hypothermia and died.”

“No, not then; she did the spell and she was fine. The bastard cheated us though, never paid us a cent, but it wasn’t the first occult scam we ran into. The whole story wasn’t a big deal, in the greater scheme of our lives. Except, when it was over . . . she couldn’t stop thinking about that place.” This is obviously hard for him to talk about. “She said she’s never seen such beauty in the world, felt such power. And then she confessed to me in tears that the founder of Summer Falls was exploiting this beautiful place, using it for evil. She felt so bad that she’d agreed to work for him.”

“So everything that’s screwed up about this town is because of the founder’s spell?”

“Hell, this entire town
is
the founder’s spell. He’s the man, everyone here works for him even if they don’t know it. Anyway, after she did this for him, she started hatching these ideas of how to reset things here and restore the balance. She talked me into renting a house for a month and staying longer so she could investigate. She didn’t even tell me she was planning to go under a second time. I didn’t find out until . . . until some hikers found her body. I couldn’t even go and identify her. I had to send you. That was one of the hardest things, making you be the adult because I couldn’t go out there. But your mother’s spells still worked, even after she was gone. The wards around this house, for example. Elyse can attest to that—she was over here enough.”

“Really, she was here a lot?” I lean forward, hope quickening my pulse. Had Elyse been a friend of mine after all? I explain about how we woke up and that I stayed at Preston House last night. “Were we close?”

“Honestly, Marsh, you haven’t been cluing me in that much on your personal life. After your mom passed . . . things haven’t been great between us.” He sounds so morose. “Which is rough when you’re practically the only person I ever see. After she died, I was a mess at first. Then I wanted to get us out, but you wouldn’t help me. First you kept putting off renting a moving truck or even a car, then you flat-out said you didn’t want to leave. Said we’d dragged you all over the world against your will, and now that you finally had a choice, you didn’t feel like moving.”

I shake my head, feeling my eyebrows knit in confusion . . . not just confusion. Anger. At the guy who left his grieving father to rot in Summer Falls. “Dad . . .” I can’t even say I’m sorry. I don’t feel sorry, because I can’t connect that Marshall to me. “You should have gone without me.”

“You think I haven’t thought about it?” he says. “Marsh, I built my life around this family. I’ve got nothing left but you and my memories of her. Now I’m the only one left who remembers her. When I lose it, when they catch me, then she’ll really be gone.”

I can’t stand to see someone so sad. Especially knowing it’s partly my fault. I need to fix this, but how? It seems so much bigger than me. Then I remember that the heatnaps only seem to erase bad memories, not good ones. “Hey, no matter what, you’d still remember the good times,” I say, but it comes out hollow.

He scowls at me. “I don’t want to just remember the good times,” he says. “What we had was real, and I want to remember it that way.”

“I get it,” I say, because I wouldn’t want to remember just the happy moments with Elyse. We’ve had hardly any happy moments, in fact, but I wouldn’t want to forget her. “So that’s why you’re stuck here.”

“It’s not just that,” he says. “I’m worried about you, the types of spells you’re doing lately. It’s hard to get you to come out of your room.”

“Spells?” I ignored my grieving father because I was practicing magic? But if magic works . . . “What I need is a spell to get my memory back.”

Bill points to the dusty bookcase. “Magic books are all up there,” he says, gesturing vaguely. “Oh, and you left your kit in your room the other day.” Bill picks up a velvet drawstring bag from the shelf and tosses it to me. “First time I’ve seen you without this in your pocket in five years.”

I tip the contents into my hands. It’s a pile of elliptical gold coins and a handful of crystals. Gingerly I pick up the clear crystal. Its smooth weight feels just right in my hand. I realize I’m unconsciously sticking out my bent fingers in the same fanglike gesture I made when Dan hit me. I hold the crystal out toward Bill. “Do you know what this is for?”

“Whoa.” Instantly he ducks away. “Careful with that thing. You never aim those at people.”

“Got it, sorry.” I put the velvet bag in my pocket. The instinct had felt so natural when I was attacked. Even if Bill was squeamish, I was going to need to figure out how to use these.

I walk back to the bookcase and open a dozen thick volumes before I find one called
Returnings
that’s got the right theme. The spell on page 689 is called “Unseal.” It involves doing an unpronounceable incantation over a “charged labor.” Huh? Hard to magic your memory back when you don’t remember how to understand occultist jargon.

I have to leaf through several more books before I figure out that a “labor” is an object made purely for reasons of love and to “charge” an item is to anoint it with an element from a place of power. Okay, then. That part’s actually pretty simple. Water from the falls, though it’ll involve a hike in the morning.

As for the labor of love . . . I look around the room, but I don’t know what motive people had for making anything in here. The books were probably made by bored bookbinders. Our clothes could have been made in sweatshops. The IKEA couches were probably made by robots.

Liz’s meals? But that’s at least as much obligation as love.

I could make something for Elyse . . .

Except I’d really be making it for my spell, so it wouldn’t count. Also, you can’t love someone after a day and a half. Can you? Especially not someone with a boyfriend.

Then I remember Jeremy and Ruta in the computer lab, the awkward music-box gift. There’s a school directory buried under a 10-inch pile of unopened mail in the kitchen. The only Ruta is Ruta Paulraj on Finch Street. Two blocks away from me.

When Ruta sees me at the door, she grins and claps her hands once and sort of bounces up and down on her tiny feet. “Come on in! I saved the last piece for you.”

Of what? I must come over here all the time if she saved food for me. I follow her into the kitchen and watch her open the fridge and pull out an old-fashioned crystal cake pedestal with a fitted glass cover. She transfers the single slice of cheesecake onto a plate. It’s topped with a yellow-orange glaze that I’m not so sure I’ll like. “Want to split it?”

“No, I want to watch you love every bite.”

I take a tiny bite. Creamy filling, moist graham cracker, and tart tangy mango. “Oh my god, I do love it.” I load up a second, bigger forkful and savor it on my tongue. “This is the best thing I’ve eaten in my life.”

She giggles, then covers her mouth shyly. “That’s what you said when you had it on my birthday. Orange zest,” she adds, “in the crust. Brings out the mango flavor.”

“If you made this, you are a goddess.”

“You said that on my birthday too.” She beams, flashing silver metal with no trace of self-consciousness, then—as if catching herself—shuts her mouth and blinks down at the white linoleum. My mind flashes back to Joe, the condescending way he patted that waitress’s head, like she was a cocker spaniel. He wrote off the Summer Falls folks as zombies, but it’s amazing how Ruta remembers minute details of conversations between us. She must have spent hours making this cake and she’s getting a bigger kick out of watching me feed my face with it than having some herself. Joe was wrong. People here aren’t zombies or pets—they’re just people.