Fury's Fire (21 page)

Gretchen glanced over at Will, who looked pale but calm, as if he had a new understanding of something. “So—the dead are gaining power?”

Asia nodded. “For now.”

“What does she want?” Will asked. That was one thing Gretchen loved about him—his directness, his eagerness to get to the point.

“She has one foot in our world and one foot in the Beyond. She wants to cross over fully, to regain her power.” Asia’s green eyes drifted over Gretchen’s shoulder, as if she were trying to focus on something in the Beyond—something she couldn’t quite see. “And for that, she wants to possess Gretchen. Or kill her.”

Gretchen closed her eyes, feeling a heavy weight descending over her limbs. She wasn’t surprised by this statement at all.

“Kill her?” Will demanded. “Why would she want to kill her?”

“If she kills her, Tisiphone will be reborn in flame. But that moment between life and death—”

“That’s when she could possess me,” Gretchen finished.

“She can take the shape of wind, mist, vapor. She’s been gaining power slowly. First she inhabited a dog. Then a criminal. Then Kirk …”

“So—she was in Kirk? That’s what you’re saying?” Will demanded. “But then why did he try to stab himself in the heart? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Kirk is stronger than she guessed, I suppose,” Asia said. “He thought that if he could kill himself, he would be rid of her. But by the time he had the strength—the mental strength—to try, she had already departed his body.”

“So he would have killed himself for nothing.” Gretchen shuddered at the thought that Kirk would have sacrificed himself.
Would I have done the same?
she wondered.

“Circe can affect the minds of those around her,” Asia went on. “When Odysseus arrived on her island, she turned his men into pigs. Not literally into pigs, of course, although that is how the story is told. She simply magnified the worst aspects of their personalities until they were no better than pigs, wallowing in their own muck, searching greedily for their next meal.”

“What does that have to do with Gretchen?” Will asked.

“She is the Fury. If Circe can kill her, she will obtain her powers. And if she strikes now, while Gretchen’s powers are in a weakened state, she may succeed.”

“What powers?” Angus asked. He was grinning, as if he had just stumbled in on an elaborate joke.

Nobody spoke. Nobody even looked at him.

“What powers?” Angus repeated. But this time his voice was faint, as if he was only now beginning to realize the seriousness of the situation. “Do you mean … are we talking about the fire stuff?”

Will looked at him sharply.

“I don’t have any powers,” Gretchen snapped.

Asia leaned forward. “You can be stabbed but not killed. The only way for you to die is by drowning—or being consumed by your own flame, which happens only once every five hundred years, at the end of your life cycle. And you could set this entire hospital complex on fire with your mind.”

“No, I couldn’t. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. Why would I?” Her voice was almost pleading, and Will tightened his grip on her fingers.

“If she can’t be killed, then why does Circe keep attacking?”

“She hopes to weaken Gretchen enough so that she can possess her mind,” Asia explained. “Fear can do that. Pain can do it. If she can’t accomplish that, she will drown you.”

“I never asked for this,” Gretchen whispered.

“None of us ask for the gifts we are given,” Asia replied.

“But it doesn’t really matter, does it?” Will asked. “I mean, what good is fire against mist? How do you destroy something like that?”

“I don’t know,” Asia admitted. Her eyes never left Gretchen’s. “All I know is that she won’t stop until she destroys you.”

Gretchen let her gaze drop to the floor. “I won’t fight her,” she said, lifting her eyes.

Asia and Gretchen regarded each other for a long moment. Gretchen felt as if she were reaching out to Asia over miles, or maybe across dimensions. Like it or not, Gretchen had more in common with this Siren than she did with Will. Asia was truly the only one who could understand what it was like to be a stranger among humans, an outsider.

“It’s your choice, of course,” Asia replied. “But you must understand that if you do not stop her, many will suffer. And you will die.”

Gretchen hung her head. Kill or be killed—what kind of choice was that? She had nothing to say.

Really, there was no choice at all.

She awoke, disoriented, to faded rose-patterned wallpaper. A strange room, a chipped white bureau with glass knobs, lace curtains yellowed with age, a blue-and-white-striped easy chair that sat, resigned and lumpy, in the corner. Her mind scrambled for a moment, as if skidding across a sheet of ice, then finally found a toehold: the sweet smell of her pillowcase reminded her of Will. She was in the Archers’ guest room.

The window beyond the yellowed lace was dark, although the glowing green numbers on the clock beside her bed read 6:30.
It should be lighter
, she thought, a moment later registering the soft patter of rain.

She caught the damp, dreamy smell of wet leaves, and Gretchen realized that she had left the window slightly open; raindrops splattered against the white windowsill. Gretchen sighed, reluctant to leave the cozy cave of her blankets. A chill had settled over her room, lying across her bedspread like frost.

Gretchen tucked her knees to her chest as guilt crept over her. The image of Kirk stole into her mind, and she felt stricken. Trembling, tears streamed down, dripping over the bridge of her nose and wetting her pillow. Outside, a sparrow chirped, then fell silent, discouraged by the rain.

Gretchen was just wondering how she could possibly get out of bed when she heard a crash from the room beside hers, then a muffled curse. Her room was right off the kitchen—Mrs. Archer was probably baking.

Gretchen squeezed her eyes shut, but she knew that sleep was impossible.
I don’t want this life
, she thought.

But there was no use pitying herself; she knew that. It was strange. Thinking of Tim here, in the Archer house, didn’t hurt her as much as it did elsewhere. The whole house was filled with him. His red and black plaid jacket still hung in the front closet; a photo of him and Will ages nine and seven was on the side table in the living room; even the small plate—ugly and misshapen, but cheerful in yellow—where Mrs. Archer placed her used teabags was a relic from one of Tim’s summer camps.

I’m lucky
. The thought surprised her, and a moment
later the sweet vanilla scent of baking scones crept under her blanket.
I am lucky
, she realized,
to be here with Will’s family. To have Will, who cares about me. To have had Tim in my life. In spite of everything, I’m lucky. Not everyone has that
. And she thought of Kirk and his sister, who didn’t understand him, and his mother, who never thought about him at all.

Outside, the rain drummed on. She swung her legs from beneath the blanket, placed her bare feet onto the wide painted boards, and stood up. A deep breath, and she wiped the tears from her eyes. She shut the window, silencing the rain, then pulled her fleece from beneath her pillow and yanked on some new, soft socks. Then she padded into the kitchen to help Mrs. Archer.

Later that afternoon, Gretchen lay on her back looking up at the sky through the filter of leaves. Light poured in through the irregular patchwork of scallop-edged ovals, illuminating the yellow and orange with a soft glow. A light breeze lifted a leaf and it parachuted in an uneven zigzag, finally landing on Gretchen’s neck. The air was pungent with the smell of decay and wood smoke from the fireplace at Will’s house. Overhead, strips of white clouds sat on a blue sky, as if they had no intention of going anywhere.

She stretched out, pressing the bottom of her feet against the tree’s trunk. Her hair was spread across a carpet of moss, grass, and fallen leaves and a small twig dug into her shoulder blade, but Gretchen didn’t mind it. She had lain beneath this tree countless
times, looking up through the tall branches that cascaded to the ground around her, forming a natural curtain that hid her, and a faded red canoe, from sight. “The fairy place,” she had called it the first time Will had showed it to her, when they were five years old. Tim was old enough to reject that as the name, so Gretchen and Will were careful to call it just “the tree” in front of him. But in her heart, Gretchen had always thought the place was magical.

The leaves rustled slightly and the curtain parted. “I knew I’d find you here,” Will said. He hesitated, as if waiting for an invitation to come inside.

Gretchen didn’t offer one. She just kept looking up at the distant sky.

Finally Will gave up waiting and came to sit beside her. The yellow canopy was enormous—it offered more than enough room for the boat and three or four people to stand or sit. Will sat down, half-lotus, beside Gretchen. He picked up a leaf and twisted the yellow stem. Then he looked up at the sky. Gretchen wondered what he saw there.

They sat that way for a long time, just looking at the leaves and the vast blue expanse beyond. In the distance, Gretchen could hear the high-pitched drone of a leaf blower. A bird trilled once, twice, and fell silent. A truck rumbled and rattled by on the road.

People were thinking of pumpkins and hot cider, apples and squash. Normal life.

Gretchen had always loved fall in New York City, but it was even more beautiful here. In Manhattan,
she would take a walk through Central Park to remind herself of the steady change that was going on, the progression from heat to cold reflected in the fading leaves. But she hadn’t been surrounded by the change the way she was out here. In a way, being in Walfang helped her feel like a part of it, as if the change was occurring not only all around her but within her as well.

And she
was
changing. Or, perhaps, not changing. More like realizing that she wasn’t what she thought she was. The world around her was falling asleep, and she was waking up.

“How is this going to turn out well?” Gretchen asked.

Will didn’t answer, and she rolled over to look at him. She propped her head on her hand. “I mean, forget the whole Circe thing. Just forget that for a minute. Even without that, I’m this … 
thing
now.”

“You’re the same,” Will said, but he was looking at the leaf caught in his fingers, not at her.

“I just want to be normal.” An old movie line echoed in Gretchen’s mind. “I want to be a real girl.”

Will smiled wryly. “Well, it worked out for Pinocchio.”

Gretchen laughed, but it was so weak that it sounded like its opposite. “Yeah … only he didn’t have some sea witch trying to kill him.”

“I thought we were forgetting that.”

“Now we’re remembering it.” She touched Will’s knee, and he looked at her. “What am I supposed to do?”

Will’s eyes widened slightly, and he shook his head.

“Mist, vapor, wind. How do you get rid of something like that?”

“I don’t know.” Will thought for a moment. “But it seems like … it seems like, if she wants to be in this world, she has to have some kind of corporeal form. She has to be clinging to something—human body, water molecules.”

Gretchen remembered something. “Kirk was trying to kill himself to get rid of her. Would that have worked?”

“Maybe if you can destroy the body while she’s in it, you destroy her.”

“I’d settle for sending her back to the spirit world,” Gretchen said.

“We don’t know how to do that, either,” Will pointed out.

The sound of the leaf blower died away suddenly, making their silence seem thicker. Gretchen watched as an ant crawled across the spine of an overturned leaf. She wondered about that ant. Did it have a soul? Some sort of ant essence that surpassed its bodily form? Or if she leaned over and crushed it between two fingers, would that ant cease to exist forever, snuffed out like a candle?

“So … if she was mist …” Gretchen bit her lip, trying to remember what she had learned so far in AP chemistry. “I suppose you could separate water molecules.”

“Wouldn’t that take a nuclear explosion?” Will asked. “Or something like that?”

“You don’t like my plan?” Gretchen asked dryly.

“Not if it involves bombing Walfang.” Will picked up a twig and poked at the mossy earth. “Maybe—instead of getting rid of her—maybe we could try to catch her.”

“Like how?”

“I don’t know. If she’s mist, maybe we could freeze her.”

“Like with liquid nitrogen or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Then we’d have a Circe popsicle,” Gretchen joked. “We could keep her in the freezer.”