Shimmer: A Novel (29 page)

“Okay,” Logan said. “What just happened?”

Thalia stood, offered a hand to Fallon to help her up, then smiled at her brother. “Logan, you really need to start paying attention.”

“What—? I was, but—”

“It’s okay,” Fallon said, patting Logan’s shoulder. “She’s jerking your chain.”

“Thalia?”

“At least you remember my name,” Thalia said, patting his cheek. “That’s a start.”

“Curious,” Ambrose said, rubbing his jaw as if trying to decide which of a hundred questions he should ask first. “Would either of you young ladies care to enlighten us as to what has transpired here?”

“That’s what I asked,” Logan said defensively.

“Can’t you tell?” Gideon said, smiling. “She’s back.”

“While I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Ambrose said. “The actual mechanism of this… recovery fascinates me.”

“Trade secrets, Fallon,” Thalia said, chuckling. “Don’t say a thing.”

Fallon looked at Ambrose and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“But this is remarkable!” Ambrose said excitedly. “Surely you can be a little more forthcoming.”

“I just decided to go with the flow,” Fallon said, displaying a pleased grin. “Flying by the seat of my pants, I guess.”

She was telling the truth, if not the whole truth. Because she was reluctant to explain the details about what she had seen and done beneath the surface of Thalia’s troubled mind, at least not while in the woman’s presence.

Gideon cleared his throat to get their attention. He tapped his eye patch with an index finger. “Hate to be a buzz kill, guys, but could we turn our attention to the matter of my impaired visual acuity.”

“Oh, right,” Thalia said. “The artificial eye. That was quite a while ago.”  She steepled her fingers in front of her mouth as she looked down, deep in thought. Fallon had the ridiculous notion that she was about to conjure the eye out of thin air. But Thalia looked up suddenly and snapped her fingers. “Just remembered where Liana stashed it! Be right back. Wait here.”

After she left the office, Ambrose heaved a sigh and leaned against his desk. “That was remarkable, Fallon. You can’t possibly know how grateful I am. We are truly in your debt.”

“Just trying to help—”

“Nonsense,” Ambrose interrupted. “This is no time for modesty.  I never thought it was possible, never thought we would get back the old Thalia. Frankly, I’m ashamed to admit it now, in light of your stunning success… this reversal of fortune. All I can say is thank you, and—well done!”

“He’s right,” Logan said. “It’s incredible.”

“What the kid said,” Gideon added. “Sorry I doubted you.”

“That’s okay, but,” Fallon began, then sighed. “You don’t know much about what happened to her, do you?”

“It’s always been a touchy subject,” Ambrose said, “as you must have realized by your earlier interaction with her. Maybe that’s past. Maybe she can finally tell us what happened to her in that rift.”

“Probably not a good idea.”

“What do you mean?” Ambrose asked. The smile on his face almost faltered, but he seemed determined to cling to the buoyant mood created by Thalia’s recovery.

Everyone was in such good spirits about Thalia’s apparent total recovery that Fallon was loath to spoil the mood. And for what? It’s not as if they could change what happened, what would eventually happen. She decided it might be best to let them enjoy Thalia’s return, at least for a while. The fate of Liana and Barrett was on their minds. And that was more than enough for now. Fallon was hopeful that she would have another session with Thalia, more time to try to understand what plagued the woman’s psyche. In the meantime, she felt the need to warn them in some way.

“Is there something you’re not telling us?” Gideon asked.

“What she’s been through ravaged her,” Fallon said, directing her gaze at Gideon’s physical scars, hoping he would understand. “She may be better”—
for now
—“but it’s something she’ll never forget.”

“Ah,” Ambrose said, nodding. “Best not to pick at a fresh scab.”

“We need to keep her with us,” Fallon said and knew instantly that it was true. “Asking her to dig into that… pit of darkness would be the same as driving her away.”

“And back into the darkness,” Logan said, coming closest to her unspoken truth.

“Combat veterans have triggers,” Gideon said, “sensory cues that cause flashbacks.”

“Post traumatic stress is an apt analogy,” Ambrose said. “Rest assured, Fallon. We will be mindful of that. More to the point, we need her here now, in the present, more than we need to know the particulars of her rift crossing in the past.”

Fallon felt as if a weight had been removed from her shoulders. If they didn’t pressure Thalia, Fallon might have time to try again, to finish what she’d started. For now, her half-truths would have to suffice. “Could I have a glass of water,” she asked. “Suddenly I’m parched.”

“No problem,” Logan said. “I’ll go—”

At that moment, Thalia returned carrying two items: a velvet drawstring pouch and a rectangular lacquered box. After placing the wooden box on Ambrose’s desk, she loosened the drawstrings of the pouch and removed an object wrapped in white muslin. Carefully, she peeled back the layers of cloth, revealing a smooth white orb—the artificial eye—with an iris the same pale blue as Gideon’s good eye.

“Not bad,” Gideon said. “What’s in the box? The remote control?”

“Not exactly,” Thalia said, taking that as her cue to open the lacquered box. Inside, resting in a molded bed of red velvet, was a silver ritual knife.

“It’s glowing,” Fallon whispered.

“Uh-huh,” Thalia said, pleased with herself. “I performed the necessary spell upstairs. Wanted to, um, shake the rust off my technique.”

“As long as the knife isn’t rusty,” Gideon said, “I don’t care. What’s next?”

Thalia picked up the lambent knife and turned it back and forth, admiring her spell-craft. The eerie light rippled and flowed across the surface of the blade as if with a will of its own.  She looked up at Gideon with a mischievous glint in her eyes. “You need to donate some blood.”

Chapter 42

After Thalia told Gideon to roll up his sleeve and present his forearm, Fallon hastily said, “Hey, I’m feeling a little lightheaded so, if nobody minds, I’ll make my way into the kitchen for that glass of water.

“Oh, sorry, Fallon. Forgot about that,” Logan said. “But you don’t need to stay for this. Actually, I don’t need to stay for this either.”

“I only need a little blood,” Thalia assured them. “Just enough to coat the artificial eye. And that will be absorbed into the eye within moments.”

“We’ll file that under TMI,” Logan said. “For ‘too much information’ for the newbie.”

“Bye now,” Fallon said with a finger wave. She grabbed her backpack by one of its straps. “Enjoy your, um, blood ritual.”

“This is fascinating,” Ambrose said as he turned his full attention to the magical proceedings. “I was completely unaware Liana had planned this.”

“Liana and I were never sure it would work,” Thalia said, then added quickly for Gideon’s benefit, “but we were reasonably confident of success. Now, Gideon, after the eye absorbs the blood, you and only you may touch and insert the eye. It must imprint on your physiology. Otherwise it will be no better than your current artificial eye.”

“Understood,” Gideon said in a tone of nervous excitement.

“Let’s go,” Logan said to Fallon, placing his hand on her shoulder while glancing back at the others.

“I don’t need an escort,” Fallon said. “If you’d rather stay.”

“That’s not it,” Logan said. “I recently had an encounter with a disembodied eye, and, if I stick around, it’s entirely possible I’ll have an unpleasant flashback myself.”

Logan closed the office door as if he’d just managed to leave a fussy baby asleep in a nursery. Off Fallon’s quizzical look, he shrugged and said, “Common courtesy.”

Fallon had another idea. She thought that maybe Logan hadn’t adjusted to Thalia’s improved mental state and continued to see her as fragile and combustible, which might explain why he was walking on eggshells around her. Unless, that is, he suspected something. Perhaps his paranormal talent had kicked in. He doused for supernatural trouble spots. And Thalia’s psyche certainly qualified as one.

She waited until they were settled in the kitchen, each holding a chilled bottle of water from the refrigerator, before she said anything. “So…. What do you think?”

“I meant what I said. About the eye.”

“And what about Thalia?” Fallon asked, taking an extended sip from the water bottle to mask her intense interest in his response. In a way, it would almost be a relief.

Logan sighed. Slid his water bottle around the ring of condensation it had formed on the kitchen table. Spun the lazy Susan a couple times. Sighed again. “She’s better.”

“Obviously,” Fallon said, then shook her head. “Not to pat myself on the back or anything.”

“No, Ambrose is right. Don’t be modest. Her transformation is remarkable.”

“But…?”

Logan looked at her for a long time. “You were holding back.”

She arched an eyebrow; playing innocent. “I was?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “The others were so happy, and Thalia, well, she’s a completely different person. Back among the living. They—she—didn’t see it. But I did.”

“What did you see?”

“Disappointment.”

“Was I that obvious?”

“No,” Logan said. “You covered well.”

Fallon sighed. “Yeah.”

“What you’ve done for her,” Logan began, “it’s like a remission, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” Fallon said. “I tried to get rid of it, the darkness. I pushed it back. I tried to push it out of her. But…”

“But what?”

She stared at him guessing that he already knew what she was about to say. She shuddered with the memory but managed to get the words out. “The darkness pushed back.”

“Oh… wow,” Logan said, stunned. “Uh, not good.”

“No,” Fallon said. “Light years from good, actually.”

“What does this mean for her?”

“I bought her some time,” Fallon said. “Myself as well.”

“How so?”

“It was my first try,” she said, and shrugged. “I should have time to try again. You know, practice makes perfect. Better luck next time.”

“Don’t think luck has much to do with it.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but my psychic intuition was in overdrive.”

“Does she know? That it’s not completely gone?”

Now Fallon sighed. “I think she wants it to be gone so badly, that…” She shook her head. “Right now, I don’t think she knows.”

“How do we tell her? And when?”

“We wait,” Fallon said. “Until she notices the signs.”

“How much time does she have?”

“I don’t know.”

“Best guess.”

“I’m not a fortune teller,” she said defensively.

“Who knows?” Logan said with a wry grin. “Maybe you are.”

“Right,” she scoffed. “I forgot.”

“So humor me.”

“With a guesstimate? Okay… Days, maybe,” Fallon said. She tapped the bottle cap with her thumbnail as she stared down at the table. That estimate was on the optimistic side but she wanted to remain hopeful in the face of frightening adversity. After another weary sigh, she lifted the water bottle, drained it, and resealed it. “There is so much darkness in her. It’s like this malevolent fog rolling through her mind. She’s continually fighting it, but she’s not strong enough to defeat it. And that’s not the worst part.”

“What is?”

“Logan,” she whispered, pausing to glance at the doorway to make sure they were still alone, “it’s aware.”

He leaned forward, squeezing his water bottle so hard he crumpled the plastic and sloshed water on the table. “What are you saying?”

“I sensed that it was an entity separate from her,” Fallon explained. “An invading consciousness.”

“Like an evil spirit or something? Trying to possess her?”

“No,” Fallon said grimly. “I think it’s trying to destroy her.

“We have to do something!”

“No!” she whispered harshly, catching his wrist as he began to stand. She closed her eyes momentarily, riding the roller coaster rush sensation. Then she said, “We can’t do anything right now.”

“Why not?” The momentary tingling rush had dropped him back into his seat.

“Because nothing has changed,” Fallon said. “Nothing since yesterday.  No, that’s wrong; she’s much better than she was yesterday.”

“But we didn’t know about this yesterday.”

“Logan, don’t you understand? You need Thalia. You need her whole and sound and magical. She may be the only chance Liana and Barrett have. She may be the only chance any of us have. If we tell them this, if we tell
her
this, it could destroy her. And the time I’ve given her will have been wasted.”

Logan ran his fingers through his hair. “Damn! Why’d you have to tell me this?”

“Because you already suspected,” Fallon said. “You knew—or would have figured it out soon enough. You sense trouble ahead and I already tipped my hand. Blame me.”

“This isn’t your fault,” Logan said. “And you’re right. She has more time now, which means we have time to help her.”

“So we’ll keep it to ourselves? Our little secret?”

“For now,” Logan said. “But if there comes a time when our lives are at risk, we need to tell Ambrose. This information can’t die with us.”

“Never thought about it like that,” Fallon said.
Glad I’m sitting,
she thought,
because I don’t think my legs would support me right now.

“Walkers don’t worry about retirement plans.”

“Cheerful thought.”

“One other condition,” Logan said. “If—when Liana and Barrett return, we spill the beans.”

“Agreed.”

Logan’s eyes opened wide. “Uh-oh…”

“What?”

From two rooms away, they heard Gideon shout in pain.

Displaying impressive reflexes for someone lacking hyperacuity, Logan sprang from his chair and raced out of the kitchen.

Fallon was close behind him.

Chapter 43

Gideon’s first reaction was disappointment.

The four-inch-long incision in his forearm stung no more than a mild paper cut. The spelled blade had opened his flesh long enough for the necessary blood to flow, but the wound had already sealed itself. Part of the magic, he supposed. Not that he cared. The moment he witnessed the film of blood vanish within the enchanted eye as promised, he’d tossed aside his eye patch and removed the old hydroxyapatite implant. He inserted Liana’s magical orb into his eye socket, expecting nothing short of a miracle. Cupping a palm over his good eye, he stared—rather, he tried to stare—out of the enchanted sphere. But all he experienced was darkness, complete darkness. No change.