A Fistful of Sky (29 page)

“We’ll probably still be hungry after this,” Ian said. “I bet the portions are small.”

They were small, but beautifully presented. We traded bites again, something I’d gotten in the habit of when eating out with Claire—order one dish, taste two. Ian had been a little surprised when I suggested it with the appetizers, but he put up with it then and actually seemed to like it this time. The desserts tasted great.

We both sat back after we finished eating. I remembered I had left a question on the table, and he had never answered, so I asked it again.

“Who would you curse if you could curse anyone, and how?”

“A long time ago, when I was in sixth grade, there was this bully at school who beat me up. He beat up a bunch of us. We could never figure out why. If there’s anyone in the world I want to kill, it would be that guy. Only now, I think if I had known more about it, I might be able to forgive him. Like, who was he and where did he come from? It might have made a difference. Or maybe not. He never broke any bones, but he split my lip and gave me black eyes and bruises, and he made my life a living hell. See this scar?” Ian pointed to a streak of white across his forehead. “He pounded my head against a brick.”

Curse energy simmered around my heart. Just hearing this story made me hungry to curse someone. “Where is he now?” I asked. I wondered if I could do long-distance cursing.

“I think he’s in law school at the University of Idaho.”

“So what would you have done to him if you could have done something?”

“Well, in my fantasies, I grew muscles like Superman and squashed him into jelly in front of everybody else in school. Maybe it would have been enough if he had to wake up one morning and feel every bruise the way we did. Maybe not.” Ian shook his head. “I bet somebody else beat him up, and that’s why he did it to us. ‘Course, I didn’t have any perspective back then. I wished he would die.”

My hand tingled. I felt the flow of energy in my arm, up and down, dipping into the red pool in my chest, waiting for me to flex my fingers and send it somewhere. I made a fist to hold it in.

“Ian?” I said in a low voice. “I’ve got to get out of here right now.”

“Check!”

I clenched my fist tight, wished and coaxed the power back inside, though I felt it growing. I handed him my wallet and asked him to take out enough money to cover my meal and tip. He managed with a minimum of fumbling, and we rushed outside.

Fog lay over the harbor and the breakwater. The air was damp, soft, and salty. Masts of ships tied up at the marinas poked up above the fog into the clear sky you could see if you looked up. The sun had gone down earlier, but there was still some blue in the sky above. Streetlights were on. The palm trees lining the harbor and the boulevard beside it made shaggy-headed silhouettes in the clouded orange light.

“What do you need me to do?” Ian asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s get away from people, anyway. Maybe you should stay here.”

“Forget it.”

We headed for the breakwater, but where the concrete walkway along the top of it veered left, I climbed over the wall and dropped to Speare Beach. Maybe I could send curse energy down into the sand and not hurt anybody.

The yardlights on the yacht club lightened the fog enough so I could see, though not very far.

Twenty feet away, the ocean pulsed small waves against the sand, inhale, gasp, inhale, gasp. Something lay under the sea’s breathing, but my curse energy was too loud for me to hear it.

Ian thudded down beside me. My energy pool swirled and stretched in response to the presence of another person. Look, it whispered, an outlet.

“I cursed a rock,” I said in a low voice, “and it turned into a person who had power over me.” I had put my protection stone into my pocket before I left for work. Altria didn’t need it to manifest; I didn’t know what I wanted it for. Maybe I liked it because it gave me a false sense of safety. I closed one hand around it now. There was no heat in it.

If I cast curse energy into the sand, would something like Altria manifest? Of course, I had said foolish words in my rock curse. Maybe I could be wiser this time, watch my words. But I needed to think fast. The energy was restless. I needed to pick an aim, a direction—something to curse, something to curse it with.

If I didn’t send the energy out as something nasty, it would twist to get there.

Though how nasty was UFS? Ian was right. Some of my curses weren’t too awful. The worst ones were the ones I tried to make nice.

So choose something nasty to start with.

Or call Altria.

Or repeat myself.

What was I most afraid of?

Losing my mind. Losing myself. Losing my family and friends. Losing control. Being weak. Being noticed. Being ignored. Being hideous. Being hated. Being feared. Being stupid. Being alone. Being—

“After this, no matter what happens, will you take me home?”

“Of course.”

I pressed my hand against my chest. The heat in my palm made sweat break out on my forehead. “Cast it out and keep it in. Power go. I’m normal again.”

The heat flared hot, then exploded through me. I felt like I was blowing into bits. I screamed.

After a long throat-scraping while, the heat left me— left me empty and sick and shattered. While I was in the grasp of the curse’s working, everything had been hot and white, but now I saw that it was dark. The fog had closed over us, and the sand I lay on had lost the day’s heat and felt cold.

Distant voices sounded through the muffling fog. “What was that?”

“Somebody’s being murdered!”

“Call the cops!”

Warmth entered my world when someone took my hand. “Gyp?” “Ian,” I whispered and reached for him. He leaned closer and I closed my arms around him. This curse wasn’t one of the easy ones.

He hugged me. He was warm, and his breath smelled like chocolate. His chest was hard against my cheek. He felt solid and safe. I held him tight.

Lights, long white lines in the mist, stabbed to where we were. “What are you doing to that girl?”

“Get away from her!”

Ian tried to straighten, but I couldn’t let him go.

“Hey! You!” Someone grabbed lan’s shoulder and jerked him up, away from me.

“No,” I tried to say, but I had screamed my voice out. I reached for him.

“She’s hurt,” Ian said. “I’ve got to take her home.”

“Well take care of her. You, come with me.”

One of the men had a uniform. It wasn’t a police uniform, but something with some sort of badge. Harbor security, maybe. He took some plastic handcuffs out of his belt.

“No. No.” I pushed myself up. Nobody could hear me. My voice was like wind-blown sand. I managed to get to my feet, even though I still felt shaky and sick. I pulled on the guard’s sleeve.

“Miss, what happened to you? Did he hurt you? Are you all right?”

asked the other man. “We’ll keep you safe.”

I shook my head. I gripped the guard’s sleeve, grabbed the handcuffs. He shone his flashlight in my face.

“I was scared,” I whispered as loudly as I could.

“What was that?” Now that the light was on my mouth, he could tell I was trying to talk.

“I was scared. Ian didn’t hurt me. I was scared. Please let him go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you two come to the security office with me, and we’ll write up a report, and then I’ll let you both go? How about that?”

“Okay.”

The harbor security office was small and warm, and the guard wrapped me in a yellow blanket, let me gargle with salt water, and gave us both hot tea. He took our driver’s licenses and photocopied them. “If anybody asks, I need this information.” He watched me covertly, watched Ian the same way. He let me write my account of what happened because, though the salt water helped, I still didn’t have much voice.

“I scared myself,” I wrote, “and I screamed. My boyfriend tried to help me. He didn’t do anything wrong.” Boyfriend. Should I cross that out and say “friend” instead? Finally I left it. It wasn’t Harbor Security’s business what our relationship was or wasn’t. Anyway, I didn’t know.

After the guard went in the back room and talked to some people on the phone, he let us go.

“Are you all right?” Ian asked me. “I mean, I know you can’t talk. What did you do to yourself? You hurt yourself. That was awful.”

I grabbed his hand and squeezed.

We walked to the car in silence.

I should have phoned the family right after dinner to let them know I was bringing over a stranger, but I had needed to curse something too urgently to make the call. Now what? They wouldn’t be able to hear me if I called now. Should I ask Ian to bring me home? Or to take me to the club where Jasper was playing tonight? But it was early. Jasper wouldn’t even be there for sound check yet.

I just wanted to go home and hole up.

I handed Ian my driver’s license so he could check my address.

He looked at it a while, then nodded and gave it back. He started the car and pulled out of the lot. “You cursed yourself back to normal?”

I nodded.

“And it hurt terribly.”

“God,” I whispered. I had never imagined such pain.

He sighed and drove me home.

When he pulled up in front of the house and turned off the engine, I took his hand. He leaned toward me.

“Maybe you better just leave me here,” I whispered.

“I don’t think so. I can explain this to your family much faster than you can.”

I shook my head.

“Do you really want me to leave now?”

“No,” I whispered.

“I’ll walk you in.”

We both sat there.

“Sorry the curse kind of blew our date,” I whispered eventually.

“Will you go out with me again?”

“Do you want to try this again?” Some of my hesitation must have showed, even in a hoarse whisper.

“Oh, yes,” he said.

“Good. Then, yes.”

He got out, came around the car, opened my door, and helped me out.

The front lights turned on. “About time,” said Mama. “If you sat there any longer I was going to come knocking on your window and see what you were up to.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered, mortified.

“Hi, I’m Ian Bennett. Gyp lost her voice.”

“Good evening. I’m Anise LaZelle, Gyp’s mother. Gyp lost her voice? How on Earth did that happen?”

“You’re Gyp’s mother? Aren’t you on TV?”

“Of course.” She smiled, full charisma mode.

Damn! I’d forgotten Mama’s high profile.

“You’re really great with the news,” Ian said in just the kind of admiring tone that Mama liked.

Beryl swept up behind Mama and cackled.

Mama jumped a foot. “Don’t do that!” she shrieked. “Go back to your room!”

Beryl cackled some more. How could she be so foolhardy? She had just made Mama look silly in front of a guest, one of the things Mama hated most. And she wasn’t presenting a very attractive picture to a guest, either. Mama always said if we couldn’t be pleasant in behavior and appearance, we should hide while we had company. I often hid.

“Hi, there, Sonny!” Beryl said. She looked incredibly ancient, and she was still wearing the magenta/acid green outfit she’d had on when I left earlier that afternoon.

Ian glanced at me, then back at Beryl. “Hello,” he said.

“Cute!” She patted his cheek.

“Uh,” said Ian. He looked at me again.

“Beryl. My little sister,” I whispered. Heat bloomed in my cheeks.

He stared at me as though I was crazy, then swallowed so that his Adam’s apple bobbed, collected himself, and turned to Beryl. “Uh, hi. I’m Ian.”

“Hi there!” She shook his hand. “Why is Gyp whispering?”

I leaned close to lan’s ear and whispered, “Say brownies.”

“Brownies,” he said. He looked confused.

“You’ve come for dessert?” Beryl asked. “Lovely. Follow me.”

“Beryl,” said Mama ominously.

Beryl smiled and shrugged. “All right, follow Mama, then.”

Ian looked at me, his eyebrows peaked in confusion. I nodded. As we followed Mama through the great hall toward the kitchen hall, he whispered, “What happened to Beryl?”

“Cursed,” I whispered.

He glanced at Beryl. She smiled at him, introducing hundreds of wrinkles into her cheeks. She looked cheerful.

“Cursed! That’s right,” she said. Maybe she was having trouble with her

eyesight, but her hearing worked just fine. “Gyp cursed me. It was my idea.”

Mama swept the kitchen door open and held it. We pushed past her into the kitchen. She said, “Will someone arrange a tray? Is there any coffee made? Let’s retire to the dining room when the preparations are complete.”

“Do we have to?” I whispered.

“Mama, couldn’t we eat in the kitchen? The light’s better here. I’m having trouble seeing,” Beryl said.

“Child. We have company.”

Beryl and I sighed simultaneous sighs. Ian smiled.

I got down one of the cookie tins and a platter and went to work arranging brownies. Beryl poured coffee into a white thermos pitcher, put it and cups, spoons, a sugar bowl, and a cream pitcher on a tray.

“While you’re setting the table, I’ll find Miles.” Mama swept out of the room.

Beryl watched until the door flapped shut behind her, then turned to me and said, “So what happened?”

Suddenly exhaustion overwhelmed me. I tapped lan’s hand.

“She cursed herself back to normal,” he said. “It hurt so much she screamed herself hoarse.”

“Oh, no!” Beryl rushed around the table and hugged me. “How could you?” she cried. Then she straightened, gripped my shoulders. “How could you?” she asked in a puzzled voice. “You were never normal to begin with.”

Was that right? But I had always thought I was normal. Wouldn’t the curse work through my beliefs? Or maybe that was why this curse hurt so much more than the others had. It had to twist even more to make my words work.

“So your throat hurts?” Beryl put her frail, gnarled hand up to my throat and murmured something squeaky. Warmth flowed from her palm into my throat.

“Ahh,” I said. I sounded like me again. “Thank you. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“There are lots of things you don’t know about me, young lady,” she said. “You stopped studying way too soon! But never mind that. Normal! How horrible!”