“I can’t.” I yanked off my suit jacket and wrapped my sleeve tightly around the wound. “Mrs. Greer! Damn you! Wake up!”
Dayanara tried to pull her arm away, but she was too weak. “Just let me go.”
That warm liquid stained my pants and stuck to my knees as I kneeled in the puddle. “And then how will I survive it? If I let that happen?”
“You always survive.” Her eyelids fluttered as she fell back. “But no one else will when he returns.”
“Who?”
“Snyder, my love. Snyder is coming.”
“He’s dead. He’s long gone.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Mrs. Greer!”
“It doesn’t matter that he’s gone. He figured out a way to come back.”
Stomping boomed behind me.
“Oh my god!” Mrs. Greer screamed and collapsed in the doorway.
* * *
Two hours later, I paced in the living room. Blood soiled my clothes and smeared across my shoes. The day got worse and worse. Yesterday morning began with a dead girl. Today seemed to end with another almost dead woman. If I saw any more blood today, I would sink into myself and not come out. Then what would happen to everyone? Then what will become of Grandma and Hex? The host tree could die among the thick roots and strong branches of a banyan, but nothing else could rot, because then it would all be for nothing. I couldn’t let that happen, so I stomped back and forth, muddied with dry red liquid and stress that dripped from every pore on my body.
How much could I deal with today, without breaking down like all the rest?
The door opened. I paused and caught of view of Grandma lighting a bushel of green herbs and singing a chant. The earthy scent drifted out of the opening as Dr. Rosenberg left and closed a passed out Dayanara and chanting Grandma into the room.
“What’s my grandma doing?”
“A purity spell to cleanse the room of bad spirits.”
“Will the smoke bother Dayanara?”
“She’s out cold with the stuff I injected her with. She won’t wake up until tomorrow.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Don’t thank me, just take my advice.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. “Not this again.”
“Dayanara should be in a mental facility where people can treat these things.” Dr. Rosenberg yanked off his plastic gloves, stained with Dayanara’s blood, and slung them in the trash can. “There’s nothing here that will help her.”
“And a facility will? We’ve tried her being away. It didn’t work.”
He walked over to the kitchenette I’d had built in the attic and washed his hands. “She wasn’t the reason it didn’t work. Your grandma Needa’s constant group séances in front of the facility is what got her kicked out.”
“Well . . . it still didn’t do anything for the situation.”
“Every time I visit her, this gets worse.”
“I only call you when things are bad.”
Dr. Rosenberg sighed. “What does Needa say?”
“My grandma has nothing to do with where Dayanara will go or stay.”
“Then I give up.” He turned the faucet off, wiped his wet fingers with a towel, and headed out of the space. “I’ll send my bill to Reece.”
“Good.” I trailed behind him and didn’t say any more as I turned off to my own floor and made it to my bedroom. A shower couldn’t be held off any more. Clanking, banging, and booming sounded from the level below. It must’ve been the crew who showed up to decorate, cook, and fill the castle with incessant noise for the festivities being held tonight. Sometime between X-Lab’s opening and this morning, Hex had decided to hold an even bigger event than the party he’d intended.
I entered my room and drew back the curtains to see what all the noise was outside. “What the fuck?”
Men dressed in glittery wings and sequin coated leotards stepped around the yard on tall stilts. Others loaded boxes out of a big gray truck and marched into the castle. What’s in those? On the side, a man stacked long poles attached to what looked like fireworks. A woman rode an elephant through the gate.
Dear God. I’m trying to avoid a murderer from killing the people I love, as I try to stop the people I love from killing themselves, and Hex is putting on a bloody circus!
I shut the curtain and took off my clothes, button by button, with each one that I loosened a pounding headache hammered at my skull. No pain killer would fix it. The headache had been birthed long ago, in the moment I realized my family would always need me and that there was nothing I could do about it.
I’d tried to get free, but things became worse.
As soon as I turned eighteen I left for the navy. I started boot camp the day after graduation, so ready to get away from everyone that I raced into training without even a bag of clothes. Guilt hit me at times, but I could always swallow it down back, always push it to the back of my mind and think about something else.