Glimmer (24 page)

Chapter 34
MARSHALL

Unlike Jeremy and Ruta, unlike all the other people I’ve witnessed having heatnaps, Bill doesn’t wake up seconds later. He doesn’t wake up minutes later. I have to drag him into the house, and he stays passed out. Minutes pass, and I keep checking his vitals and reassuring myself that he’s not catatonic—not rigid and staring into space like Hazel was—he’s just sleeping. In the living room I build a ward circle around him and check his vitals again. When my screaming, empty stomach can hold on no longer I slap together a cheese sandwich in the kitchen and rush right back to check on Bill. In my heart of hearts I know that obsessively watching him isn’t going to magically cure him. But I don’t know what else to do. And whatever’s happened to him is my fault.

Night falls, and I cover him with blankets and keep a vigil in the living room, watching the TV shows and baseball games he’d been reduced to watching endlessly to pass the time without human contact.

My fault too.

Around dawn I’m dozing off in front of a hockey game when I hear a groggy voice from the floor. “Marsh, what time is it?”

“Dad!”

He’s sitting up, looking bleary-eyed, the blanket pulled up to his neck.

I sink to my knees and throw my arms around him, clapping him hard on the back. “I’m so glad you’re awake.”

He glances around the living room floor, looking sheepish. “Guess I must have been tuckered out. Your mom already up?”

At first I think I must have misheard. Then my heart sinks. He doesn’t remember Eva’s dead. That painful memory’s been wiped from his mind and turned into . . . what? A new stained-glass window for the church downtown?

“Let me guess, she went straight to her office without getting a healthy breakfast in her.”

“She’s . . . she’s not here,” I say, feeling a lump in my throat. My fault, my fault.

“Well, I feel like making pancakes.” He nods and glances at the cupboards, which I know haven’t been replenished, except for cans, for eight months. “Think she’ll be home in time to eat them hot?”

I can’t look at him. “No. She won’t be.”

“One of those manic days, huh?” He whips out his cell phone. “No problem, I’ll talk to her. Even geniuses have to eat,” he adds cheerfully. He’s such a different person, without her death. Happy-go-lucky, sweet, and mellow, the person he was in my memories. But Eva’s never coming home to eat his pancakes. How long until her continued absence starts to worry him? How long till he freaks?

“Put the phone down.”

He gives me a funny look but hits Send again. “Calling to see if she wouldn’t mind stopping at the market for blueberries.” He hangs up. “I don’t understand. Something’s wrong with her number. Did I forget to pay online?”

I feel like a monster. “Dad, hang on. I’ll go . . . look for her. You stay here in the house, okay?”

“Well, of course I’m going to stay in the house,” he says, and chuckles at my stating the obvious. “I wouldn’t want to . . .” He throws back his head and closes his eyes, mimicking a heatnap.

I hate to admit this—I mean, really, really hate it—but I’ve screwed things up bad and I’m in over my head. I need help. Magical help.

It takes me half an hour to hike to Joe’s cabin.

“Marshall, you finally came to visit!” He smiles at me, then pushes up his glasses and looks at me carefully. “Oh, I see. It’s a something’s-wrong kind of visit. I’ll make tea.”

I sit at his antique, unfinished wood table, drink the tea, tell him what happened . . . leaving out the part where Elyse left me. “How can I get my dad his memories back?”

He shakes his head sadly. “It’s impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible,” I say. “I’ll do anything. Anything it takes.”

“The only way I know of would be to free the place of power . . . but that’s too dangerous.”

“It’s not the danger I’m afraid of. It wouldn’t work. I’ve already been down there once.”

“Oh?” His face is impassive. “So you recovered memories, then?”

“Yes, well, some of them. Enough to know it would kill me to go under a second time.”

“That’s true,” he says, nodding earnestly. “Of course an occultist of your skill might have time to complete the ritual before . . . well, before. But it doesn’t bear thinking about. Because risking your life . . . well, that’s something only heroes do.”

Hero. That’s what he called me back at Mollie’s after the fire broke out.

“I don’t blame you for being scared of death, Marshall.” He ducks his head. “I’m . . . not much into danger myself. Guess we’re two of a kind.”

I pull back, repulsed by the idea of us being the same. He’s the kind who sits around drinking tea and looking worried. I’m the kind who considers grand sacrifices to make up for my grand mistakes. When it comes down to it, I’m not actually that scared of death. Maybe it should scare me how little death scares me—but after all those dreams. . . .

My whole body feels cold. The dreams, dying underwater. My dreams of being a hero. Those dreams were made in someone else’s factory. Someone who was good at influencing, not doing.
“You can’t force people to learn. You can only try to be a positive influence.”
He’d already admitted to sending Elyse dreams of California. He was trying to influence her to leave town—but whoever sent me the underwater dreams was trying to get me killed. And why? For the same reason. My palms have started to sweat. “Is that how you neutralize threats to your power?” I say. “With a dream spell? Because no offence, that’s kinda Magic 101.”

He smiles. “Did you enjoy your heroic deaths?”

“I don’t like being manipulated.”

“But you sure like the idea of being a hero, don’t you, Marshall?” His voice is soft. “Especially after you spent your whole life being a sneaky, selfish little shit. Just like your mother liked the idea of proving herself worthy to a cruel world that ignored her genius. Everybody who’s unhappy longs for
something
.” Joe takes off his Coke-bottle glasses, but this time his blue eyes are cold. Shrewd. Old.

Joe is the magician my mother worked for. The founder.

“He
is
the town. He’s the man.”

“You killed my mother.”

“Please, I admire your filial piety, never having had any myself, but let’s remember who we’re talking about. Eva Moon was a victim of her own greed.”

I shake my head. “She wanted to restore the environment. She was a hero.”

“She was a glory hound. She wanted to go under a second time and claim the treasure for herself. No one goes back for seconds. History’s a one-way street.”

“But you lured her in. And you didn’t even pay her the fifty thousand dollars, you cheap bastard.”

“Because she failed. Oh, she tried—she practically froze to death in my labyrinth, trying. But all she did was destroy my poor mill.”

“Maybe she had a better idea for what to do with it. You said she was a visionary.”

“Vision isn’t always a plus,” he says. “Eva was like a great chef who can’t boil an egg. Literally could not do magic unless it changed the world, and I was asking her to help keep things utterly the same. My spell clashed with her signature. Be like asking you to do a spell that isn’t sneaky and selfish. Face it, my boy. Your mother was a loser. A sore loser.”

Before I’ve even processed it, I’ve thrown out my left hand and cursed him. He rocks back as if I’ve punched him, laughing as bright red blood spatters from his nose. But instead of hitting the floor, the blood runs backward, flying up and vanishing into his nostrils like a horror movie on Rewind. His face looks fine, as if I’d never made contact. “Thank you, Mrs. Edna Brooks of Mulberry Street,” he says, sweeping a bow. “Who just forgot smothering her little orange kitten under a couch cushion while watching TV. His name was Charlie.” He holds up his empty teacup. “To Charlie! It’s a beautiful machine I’ve created, isn’t it?”

I back toward the open door. “You’re crazy.”

“No, son, just a hundred and twenty years ahead of you.”

The door slams shut. I’m trapped here with him.

My heart’s pounding out of my chest, but I try to stay calm. “Why did you make this place? To live forever?”

“I just wanted to be with the woman I loved,” he says, and his face becomes Joe again, nerdy, eager to please. “Elizabeth was going to die if I didn’t do something. History proved that; the cure for tuberculosis was decades away.”

“Your wife was sick?”

“She wasn’t my wife yet. Just a maid my parents dismissed when her pregnancy started to show. Our baby, Elyse’s great-grandfather. It was a scandal, you see. I was a son of a wealthy industrialist, engaged to a well-bred girl. But Elizabeth captured my heart because she saw what others couldn’t see.”

“Ghosts.” The homeless woman was Mrs. Preston?

“We just wanted to be together, somewhere we could be married and my family wouldn’t judge her for being low-class. My father thought he was punishing me by sending me out west. But the west was our ticket to freedom.

“The Indians who lived here had no concept of the resource they were sitting on, its true value. Harnessing its power was child’s play—I’m just lucky I got to it before anyone else. You may think I’m a monster,” he adds, “but compared to many occultists, I’m a goddamn philanthropist. My subjects are happy, because I made this place a perfect little nest for them too. Happiness is built into my system. A beautiful town where everyone’s content . . . and where Elizabeth and I never had to lose each other.
That’s
magic.”

“That’s bullshit. If you didn’t lose her, why isn’t she here?”

“Oh, she’s here. Hasn’t spoken to me since the sixties, but she’s bound to me still. In this long life together, we have been mayors, we’ve been police officers, we’ve been criminals, we’ve been teachers. The ghosts are our eyes and ears all over town, so she can’t escape the bitter memories any more than I can.”

“Seems pretty obvious she’s not happy being bound to you.”

“She’ll come around, by and by.” He’s slipping into older language. “She’s feisty, but I can afford to wait a hundred more years. Unlike you. You see, Elizabeth has no choice, in the end. She can’t hold out forever, and she can’t break my spell. She never had a whit of talent in the occult.”

“But Elyse does,” I say, realizing it for the first time. That’s why the unseal spell worked, even though she poured the water. “When you found out about our relationship, you pushed her out of town so she’d never be a threat.”

“She
wanted
to escape. I just helped her along. I couldn’t have made her quit town if she didn’t want to. Just as my spell on you wouldn’t have worked if you didn’t on some level want to die.” I start to tell him I didn’t want to die. But hadn’t I killed my old self, in a way? “I couldn’t even have closed that door if you didn’t still want to talk to me. I don’t force people.”

Manipulation, not force. That’s
his
signature; it’s all over his spells. I keep my face blank, but my mind is racing. With hope. Because he’s wrong: I
can
do spells that aren’t sneaky and selfish. Maybe not in the past—my old self couldn’t—but now, yes. All the time. The grease fire. Warding Elyse. Could it be that my signature has changed, since losing my memories? In which case . . . the water spirit wouldn’t remember me. It wouldn’t know I’d been there before. It wouldn’t kill me.

“How do you think I imprisoned the elemental?” he brags. “I merely suggested to it that its time had been long, that it was tired now and ready for something new to take its place. It submitted willingly. And what about you, my boy? Elyse is gone, you have no money, no future, your father’s damaged beyond repair, your mother’s trapped here for eternity . . . Isn’t it time you gave up?”

I can still be sneaky when I need to be. I look down. “No. You’re wrong. I have a lot to live for.”

“Name one thing.” He laughs.

I turn away from him, covering my face in my hands. The door opens automatically and I walk out, hunched over, copying Jeremy’s posture. I walk up the trail to the falls and duck into the cavern. I don’t care if he’s watching. I hope he is.

In front of the pool I start to tremble. This is real, not a dream. It’s finally happening—will it kill me or not? Preston’s right in a way; I’m not as scared of death, of becoming a ghost, as I probably should be. But it’s not that I want to die. I’d rather live. Even if it’s just drinking beer and eating popcorn on the couch and playing video games, life is decent. It’s just that—like in my dream—I feel like my decent life is a very small thing. Smaller than the good I could do with my death.

If this works, and Elyse ever calls her mother from California, she’ll know Liz’s different. She’ll visit home and find out what happened.

My shirt’s so baggy, it would go over my head underwater, so I take it off. I’m wearing heavy black work boots, just like in the dream. I look at the pool’s still surface, trying to push away the image of Dan’s peaceful, spinning back float in the circle of feeding ghosts, and then I can feel it. Hear it too. The low, vibrating hum of the spirit. A lullaby to its prey?

Out of nowhere, Preston appears before me. “Mind if I watch the feeding frenzy?”

“Suit yourself. I’m not doing this for you.”