Darren closes the binder. He almost turns toward me, but stops.
“I cried a lot with my mother after
my dad died. My brother, Brighton—you might know him from his Celestials of New York series—he kept a lot of his grief to himself. I’m not trying to tell you how to grieve, just that there’s no one right way.”
Darren looks me in the eye. “Why aren’t you dead too?”
My breath is caught in my throat.
“Darren,” Mr. Bowes says with a warning tone.
“No, he’s fine,” I say.
“I’m not fine!” Darren shouts, flinging the binder onto the floor. “I don’t care about your dad, he didn’t die because of me!” The commotion causes Xyla to come out from the back room and she looks as surprised as Wesley. “Why aren’t you dead too? Are you better than my mom?”
“No, of course not—”
“Why didn’t your neck get snapped?”
I didn’t think he knew the details of how his mother was killed. His father is telling Darren that enough is enough, but he’s not letting up.
“I thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys!”
“I tried, I’m trying—”
“Tell that to my mother!”
I turn back to Wesley, ready to ask him if we should go, but no, I deserve this. When I turn back around, Darren is gone and Dr. Bowes is sitting across from me with a broken neck.
“My son has to grow up without a mother because of you,” Dr. Bowes says in a raspy, otherworldly voice, blood spitting out of her mouth. “You should be dead!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
I know this can’t be real, I know the dead can’t come back to life, I know we can’t understand ghosts, but I know Dr. Bowes is right. I’m the one who should be dead.
“Remember this face!” Dr. Bowes screams as her eyes close and her flesh begins unraveling. She keeps repeating herself, burning this horror into my mind alongside the very real memory of Stanton snapping her neck, and through another repeat her voice becomes Darren’s and the illusion ends. “Remember this face, remember this face,” Darren cries with his eyes still closed like the short-lived illusion he cast over himself like a costume.
Mr. Bowes drags Darren by his arm, apologizes for his son’s behavior, which is nonsense because I deserve to be trapped in a horror house, haunted by illusions of everyone who has died because of me.
I watch them as they leave the shop, and Darren turns one last time before getting in the car, a threat in his eyes.
It’s safe to say that I’ll remember his face. It’s the face of someone who sees me as a villain in his story, and when he’s older and stronger, and if I’m somehow still alive, he will hunt me down, take everything I love, and kill me.
Fourteen
The Odds
BRIGHTON
These past few days have been a fevered nightmare that have taken so much from me—my blood; my steady consciousness; my time, which was already running out. The two practitioners, Dr. Swensen and Dr. Salinas, tell me all about how I’ve lost four days. Somehow even with the most sleep I’ve ever had, I’m groggy, like I might pass out again any minute, but they keep talking at me about how difficult it is to cleanse my blood.
My arm feels even stiffer than before. They must’ve failed to save me. I inspect myself, discovering that my arm is tightly wrapped in a soothing silk bandage. Dr. Salinas tells me that it’s made from basilisk cocoons. She goes over the list of antivenom serums she’s given me, as if I’m going to be familiar with any of these things. What I do know is that this medical bill is going to be unimaginably expensive. Though the chances of anyone in my family living long enough to have to worry about paying a single dollar is slim, hopefully the bill doesn’t follow Emil into his next life.
“Am I dying anytime soon?” I ask because I’m tired of them beating around the bush.
“The venom is still spreading, but we’ve managed to slow it down,” Dr. Salinas says.
“But the blood poisoning from before is another matter,” Dr. Swensen says.