Brightly (Flicker #2) (12 page)

Panic rose in Filo. His heart was bouncing frantically against his ribs, and the burning in his lungs was unbearable. Above him, the glimmer of moonlight through the dark water grew fainter.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Filo attempted to gather his magic into his hands, but between the terror leaping in his veins and the swirling water, he couldn’t force his magic together.

Pressure was building inside Filo’s head. Strength drained steadily from his limbs, and bubbles of air escaped his mouth. He inhaled a small amount of water and tried vainly to cough it back up as fiery pain blossomed in his lungs. As if from far away, Filo felt his body go limp.

A flash of green caught his unfocused eyes. A dark shape was moving toward them with swift, steady strokes. The mermaid slowed, turned, and Filo stared uncomprehendingly at the shape. It was clearer, more obvious, now that he could make out the figure’s eyes: green and magic-lit. Those were Henry’s eyes.

Another green flash lit the water, and Filo felt the mermaid’s hand release him. More green light slicing through the water. The mermaid recoiled, then swished her tail, turned, and began to swim away.

The moment she released him, Filo began to sink. This time, he didn’t even try to save himself. There was no strength left in his limbs.

A hand grabbed him and hauled him upward, through the darkness, though Filo couldn’t say for how long. Cold air stung his face, and for a moment, he was confused. Then his mouth opened, and he began to cough violently, trying to expel the water from his lungs.

Even as he coughed, Filo became dimly aware of his surroundings: He was in the sea. His mind reeled, still unable to focus. He was in water. Deep water. Panic seized him. He floundered.

“Filo!” a voice snapped. “Filo!”

And there was Henry, grabbing Filo by the back of his shirt and holding firmly, treading water like it was nothing at all.

“Calm down,” Henry panted. His dark hair was plastered to his face and his eyes were still magic-bright. “I’ve got you, okay? Just calm the hell down or you’ll drown us both!”

For a moment, Filo’s mind struggled to align itself with his body. A moment passed, though, and he managed to stop struggling. Heart still pounding, lungs still burning, Filo allowed himself to be more or less towed back to the shore.

As soon as he felt something solid beneath his feet, he stumbled the last few yards through the shallows and onto the beach and was promptly doubled over on the sand by another coughing fit. He retched, spewing up salt water.

Footsteps pounded the sand, and suddenly he was surrounded by the others.

“Give him some air,” he heard Henry caution.

Eyes squeezed shut, Filo coughed up the last of the water. Each breath stung like needles piercing the insides of his lungs, but at least he could breathe. The air felt extraordinarily cold against his wet skin.

The merfolk weren’t singing anymore, he realized, glancing over his shoulder toward the water. The only sound was the rush of waves against the shore.

“They’ve called it a night,” Clementine said. In the moonlight, her blond hair looked almost white, and her skin was incredibly pale. Her eyes were the only spots of color in her face. “I think we probably should, too.”

“You’re back!” Lee was standing in the kitchen doorway, dressed in the tank top and shorts in which she usually slept. Her hair was pulled up into a loose bun.

“What happened?” Nasser asked immediately. The sight of her took the slightest edge off his panic, but he couldn’t relax.

When Nasser had snapped back into consciousness, sprawled on the sand and gasping like a fish, Davis had been crouching nervously over him, asking what was wrong. For a moment, while Nasser’s head was hazy with residual energy, he wasn’t sure. Even after his mind had cleared, he couldn’t quite articulate what had happened. All he’d told Davis was that he needed to get back to Brightly—immediately.

Now the two of them stepped into the living room, lit by warm lamplight that couldn’t quite chase away the shadows that lingered in Nasser’s mind. His hands were still shaking.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lee said. “It’s all taken care of.”

“I need to know what happened,” he insisted, striding toward her. “Filo—”

She touched his arm. “It’s all right.
He’s okay
.”

Those two words were exactly what he needed to hear. The nervous buzzing in his skull began to dull. “What happened?”

“He… sort of got pulled into the water by a mermaid, but—”

“He
what?
”

“
But
,” Lee said, “he is
fine.
Henry fished him out of the water. He’s downstairs, asleep. He’s completely fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Easy for you to say,” Nasser muttered, rubbing his eyes. His head was starting to pulse uncomfortably. No stinging spots of light flashed across his vision, so he knew it wasn’t the beginning of a migraine. It was a garden-variety stress headache.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Davis stood near the stairs, eyeing Nasser warily.

“I’m all right. I am now, anyway.”

Davis pressed his mouth into a thin, determined line. “You had a
seizure
.”

Lee’s gaze flickered to Nasser, uneasy, but she turned to Davis. “I’ll take care of him. Get some sleep. You look like you need it.”

For a moment, Davis just looked between them. Then he nodded and headed upstairs.

“Where is everyone?” Nasser asked.

“In bed. I was waiting for you to get back, so you’d know what happened.” Her eyes darkened and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “You had a seizure?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t that bad,” he added immediately, but she shook her head and grabbed the front of his shirt.

“Don’t say that. Don’t pretend like it’s not a big deal.”

“It’s not.”

But that was a lie, and they both knew it. Lee didn’t press the subject further, but he knew what she was thinking:
Normal people don’t physically feel when their loved ones are in danger, and they definitely don’t have seizures because of it.

Nasser didn’t know what caused the seizures. When the shaking stopped and his head cleared, he felt about as normal as he ever did—and that was what scared him. That feeling of normalcy could easily be masking some other condition. As far as he knew, each seizure was damaging his brain or body in some way that might not be apparent for years.

“One second.” Lee slipped into the kitchen and returned with a mug of tea, which he accepted gratefully. Then she took him by the hand and led him over to the couch. Tucking her legs beneath her, she turned to him. “Okay. Tell me what happened.”

He took several deep drinks so he wouldn’t have to answer right away. “About the seizure?”

“If you want. But that’s not the only thing bothering you, is it?”

He shook his head. “Davis and I were supposed to go from house to house, checking on the people still on the island. I took two steps into the first house, and I lost it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not a sickness. That’s how it’s manifesting, but it’s not a normal illness. There’s no bacteria or virus making this happen.
Magic
is doing this. It’s some kind of curse.”

She froze. “Are you sure?”

“I could feel it. Once I was inside the first house, I ran straight into that magic. It’s overwhelming. It’s no wonder none of the treatments Davis came up with had any effect. It’s not that there’s something wrong with the victims’ bodies. They’re not sick. They’re being manipulated by magic.”

“So it’s not a matter of curing the people, is it?”

“No. It’s a matter of studying the curse, figuring out how it’s constructed, then breaking it into pieces.”

“Can you do that?”

“Between all of us? I think we can manage it.”

But he wasn’t fully convinced. Nasser had never felt dark energy like that before, never encountered a curse so thick and heavy. The weight of it had almost crushed him. How could he break it apart?

“We’ll figure it out in the morning. The others will have some ideas,” Lee said. She took the mug from him and set it on the coffee table. “Come here.”

Nasser lowered himself onto the couch, laid his head in her lap, and shut his eyes. She ran her hands slowly through his hair, speaking quietly—not about tonight or tomorrow, but about her plans for when they returned home. The sound of her voice was soothing, the touch of her hands familiar.

She paused. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he murmured.

“Not just your head. How are
you
?”

At that, he cracked one eye open and looked up at her. Strands of coppery hair had come loose from her bun, and he could see the concern in her eyes. She was already worried about him. He didn’t want to make her worry any more.

“Better,” he repeated. “I’m just tired.”

She smiled softly. “Welcome to the club.”

His gaze flicked toward the ceiling. “It’s strange, being in this house. It’s really old, just like Henry said. I could feel it the second I crossed the threshold.”

“Really?”

“Houses have a special kind of magic. Well,
homes
do,” he corrected himself. “Threshold magic. It’s a sort of defensive magic that homes develop naturally over time, a buildup of energy. Has Filo told you about it?”

Nodding, she said, “Threshold magic can hold out negative energy, and sometimes even people who mean harm. Even if the threshold doesn’t keep you out, crossing it without permission can strip you of most of your power. You leave it at the door.” She frowned. “How did Byrony get into the apartment with her magic intact?”

He was a little surprised to hear her speak the name. Since last fall, Lee had mostly avoided talking about the dryad who had terrorized them. It brought back too many memories, he figured.

“Flicker didn’t have much of a threshold,” Nasser explained. “It’s a business downstairs, but a dwelling upstairs, which blurs the lines a bit. Besides, Filo had been living there alone, and he was miserable. That affects the magic. Happy homes have the strongest thresholds, but Flicker’s was eroding. Filo was relying on wards, protective spells, not threshold magic. That’s how Byrony got in. She cracked the wards on the door.”

“But this house,” Lee wondered. “It has a strong threshold?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Even now, he could feel that warm defensive magic pulsing faintly around him. “I’ve never felt anything like it. This house remembers so much.”

“Like what?”

Closing his eyes, Nasser extended his senses. All day, he’d been holding back the house’s memories, trying to keep them at arm’s length, but now he let them wash over him. He caught the scent of baking bread wafting through the kitchen. Small feet pattered across the floor, and he heard children laughing—a distant sound, an echo that the house remembered.

Men chatted on the porch, loosing orbs of sparkling magic into the summer evening that the children chased over the grass, while the windows watched. In the living room, a girl played the piano. He heard the thwack of wood being chopped in the yard, and voices floating up from the basement, where potions simmered. He saw mud tracked in on boots.

But the house held other memories, memories of pain. Nasser saw a young man laid out on the dining room table, the closest they had to an operating table, pale and semiconscious, his abdomen torn open. The metallic scent of blood was overpowering. Family members rushed around the table, carrying scarlet-stained washcloths. Blood dripped onto the floor, and the house remembered the heat of it.

A fever swept across the island and took with it the sound of little footsteps. Nasser felt a deep ache in his chest at that memory, like it pained the house, too. An old woman collapsed at the top of the stairs.

Nasser tried to relate the impressions as they came to him, but they were heartbeats long, brushing against him and moving on. His magic would remember. Some secret place in his bones would keep these images, but it was too much for his mind to take in all at once.

One memory stuck out: another death, so recent he could almost reach back and touch it. But it hadn’t happened here. The person hadn’t died in this house, but the other occupants had carried the weight of it back with them, and the house had absorbed it into the threshold.
“Nasser? Nasser, can you hear me?”

Lee’s voice snapped him back into the present. He blinked.

“Yeah,” he said, sitting up and shaking his head to clear it. “It’s just so much. So many people. Generations. This house has a great memory.”

For a moment, she gazed around the living room, like she was waiting for the ghosts of the family that had passed through these rooms. Then she turned to him. “It’s late.”

“You’re right.”

But neither of them moved to get up. They sat in silence for a long time, and in the end, Nasser fell asleep on the couch, with Lee’s head on his shoulder.

Chapter Seven: