Brightly (Flicker #2) (17 page)

Little girls danced in a clearing, surrounded by tiny green creatures clothed in leaves and moss. Three teenage boys who looked like brothers stood on the beach, grinning, their arms draped around one another’s shoulders. In the background, on a rocky outcropping, several mermaids sunned themselves. A human woman with flowers braided into her hair sat in the grass beside a summer-colored dryad who stared into the camera with an unreadable expression.

One late afternoon, Lee spread the photos across the kitchen table. She tried to organize them, to piece together some kind of narrative, but it was no use. These photos were isolated moments, cherry-picked, spanning decades. She was missing so much. The island knew the story of these people, but she doubted an outsider ever would.

“So you like them?” Henry asked, his voice making her jump. He stood behind her, surveying the array of photos.

“They’re unreal,” she said. “And there’s so
much
—the photos, the journals. You Brightlys keep great records.”

Henry picked up one photo, holding it carefully by the edges. In the photo, two teenage girls hugged and smiled at the camera, the wind tangling their hair. One girl was blond, freckled and sunburned; the other was black-haired and brown-skinned, a pair of sunglasses pushed up onto her head. On the back, someone had written:
Anna and Maggie waiting for the ferry.

“This is Siren,” Henry said at last, still looking down at the photo. “It’s what we do.”

“Where were you?” Lee asked, as Nasser shut the screen door behind him. The house was silent and dark. The only light was the one above the kitchen table.

“Have you been waiting up?” Nasser stood just beyond the circle of light, his face shadowed. “I didn’t mean for you to do that.”

“I couldn’t sleep anyway.” Lee paused, then asked again, “Where were you?”

“Just walking. Clearing my head.”

It had been a rather long walk. He’d slipped out of the house after dinner, while Lee and Davis were scrubbing dishes. One by one, everyone else had wandered off to bed, but Nasser didn’t return. Jason had assured Lee it was nothing to be overly concerned about—he needed some space, that was all—but she’d waited anyway.

“I haven’t seen you all day, except for dinner,” she said. “I hardly ever see you. And when I do, it’s like you don’t want to be here.”

When Nasser was at the house, he was either conferring with Davis in the basement workshop or entrenched in the office that served as the Brightly library, scribbling notes and diagrams of spell bases. None of the materials he and Davis had tried so far had proved able to contain the curse, and they were swiftly running out of ideas. It was driving Nasser to distraction. He reappeared if someone fetched him for a meal and he joined the others when they gathered in the living room in the evenings, but he always brought his notebooks.

It wasn’t the silence she minded; it was how far away Nasser felt. His mind was always somewhere else. Filo was easier to talk to these days, and he was more distracted than Lee had ever seen him, his head filled with the workings of another language.

Nasser shook his head. “I know. I’m just not thinking straight.”

“You’re exhausted, aren’t you?”

“We all are.”

“Not like you. You’re running yourself completely ragged. This isn’t even your burden.”

He stiffened. “How can you say that?”

She felt herself flush. “I just mean…”

“I’m here to help these people,” he said. “Whatever it takes. I care about what happens to them. I can’t just turn that off.”

Lee stood and walked around the table to where Nasser stood. Looking up at him, she could see the shadows under his eyes, the tightness in his jaw. She slid her arms around him.

“I know you can’t,” she said gently. “But I care about what happens to
you
, too. That’s all I meant.”

“Lee…”

“Listen,” she said, bunching her hands in the fabric of the back of his shirt. “We’re living with a curse that we don’t understand all around us. I can see you getting deeper and deeper into this, like you’re not thinking about anything else… and it scares me. You need to think about yourself, too. You understand that, right?”

Nasser shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I can’t help it,” she muttered, leaning her head against his chest. “I love you, you know. It comes with the territory.”

He wrapped his arms around Lee, gathering her against him. Her head fit neatly under his chin. She had always loved being held by him. In the circle of his arms, she felt safe. She felt
right.
But now, as she stood gripping the back of his shirt with both hands and counting his heartbeats, she felt as if she were trying to keep him from drifting away.

Nasser kept his eyes closed for a long minute after he woke. His head was already pounding, a throbbing ache centered in his forehead. Sunlight turned the backs of his eyelids scarlet. The moment he opened his eyes, the light would drive into them like a knife.

Nearby, he could just barely hear Jason’s quiet, steady breathing. His brother was sound asleep on the inflatable mattress beside the bed. They’d been trading spots every night.

At last, Nasser cracked his eyes open, wincing as pain lanced through his head. He raised a hand to shade his eyes as he climbed out of bed.

He stepped carefully around the mattress where Jason was sprawled, his face half-buried in a pillow. For a moment, Jason didn’t look so different than he had when they were children, sleeping in the same bed. Back then, Nasser woke each morning to the sound of his father’s work boots pacing the linoleum in the kitchen. The rhythm of it was familiar. He could anticipate the moment the screen door would fall shut and when the truck engine would grumble to life in the driveway under the bedroom window.

But that was a long time ago, before the night Ethan Rew drove off in his truck and never returned, before the fire, before Flicker. Nasser hadn’t seen his father since he was eleven years old. He could hardly remember his face anymore, not that it mattered. Ethan Rew’s sons burned to death years ago. He could pass Jason or Nasser on the street any day and never know them.

He had never really cared to know them in the first place.

Nasser got dressed and made his way downstairs. His eyes still hurt and his head still throbbed, at least he could see straight.

Clementine sat on the porch swing. A big gray cat dozed in her lap. She looked at him when he stepped outside, pale hair spilling across her shoulder when she moved her head.

“Good morning,” he said.

Her mouth lifted into a smile that showed her teeth. “Here’s hoping,” she replied. “Are you looking for Davis?”

“Yeah.”

She jerked her chin toward the woods. “He’s out there. Target practice. Be careful if you go. Make some noise so he knows you’re there.”

Nasser paused, following her gaze. “What kind of target practice?”

“Archery. He’s got a bunch of targets set up in the woods.”

“Does he practice out there often?” Nasser asked. A dartboard hung on the wall in the bedroom he and Jason were borrowing—Davis’ bedroom. He hadn’t paid it much mind before.

“All the time. Well, he used to,” she amended. “It’s been a while since he’s done anything but work on this curse and dig around in the garden. I was surprised to see him head out this morning.”

“Is it just archery?”

Clementine shrugged, absently running her fingers through the cat’s fur. “He started with darts when we were kids. Then it was a slingshot, then a bow. I think it’s a focus thing. It takes a lot of concentration and it helps him think.”

For a moment, Nasser stared out at the dense woods. “Thanks,” he said finally, trotting down the steps. Clementine just smiled again, a thin smile he couldn’t decipher, and watched him go.

It didn’t take long to find Davis. Nasser glimpsed him standing among the trees, facing a circular target hanging on a tree trunk. He held a bow in one hand; a quiver was slung across his back. As he approached Davis, picking his way carefully through the undergrowth, Nasser saw that several arrows were already embedded in the target, clustered around the center.

Davis nocked an arrow, drew back the bowstring and took aim. The feather fletching at the end of the shaft brushed his cheek. When he loosed the arrow, it struck the target with a solid
thwack,
just left of the bull’s eye.

“Nice shot,” Nasser said.

Davis’ head whipped around. “It was all right,” he shrugged. “I’m a little off today. What brings you out here?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that potion.”

Above them, branches rocked gently in the wind. Each shaft of sunlight falling through the swaying branches was like a needle sliding into Nasser’s brain, making his eyes water.

“Gotcha,” said Davis. “How’d it work out for you?”

“It… didn’t.”

“Not at all?”

“It barely made a dent,” Nasser admitted. “My head’s still killing me.”

At that, Davis pressed his mouth into a thin line. “Well, it shouldn’t be.”

“I kind of figured.”

Nasser was a hypocrite and he knew it. Though he was forever chastising Filo for downplaying his injuries and illnesses, Nasser did the same thing. Filo did it because Neman and Morgan had given him a complex about showing weakness; Nasser did it because he didn’t want to worry anyone unduly. If he could handle it himself, he did.

Lately, though, he’d started to get desperate. Since the first night on Siren, the pain in his head had been constant, an ache that often hovered on the edge of a migraine. It dulled at times, but it never went away. He needed something that would deaden the pain without incapacitating him. At last, he’d gone to Davis.

Davis began to pull the arrows from the target. He asked, somewhat delicately, “Have you considered the possibility that your headaches might not be… purely physiological?”

Nasser raised his eyebrows. “Are you saying I’m making it up?”

“No, no,” Davis said quickly. “I just mean—well, you’re really sensitive to energy, and you’ve been hanging around curse magic for days. The island is crawling with it, even where it hasn’t taken hold. It’s in the air. I think it might be getting to you, like you’re reacting to the disturbance. Regular medicine might not have an effect on that sort of headache. And,” he added, “it doesn’t help that you’re stressing yourself out so much.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t get me wrong.” As Davis spoke, he gestured vaguely with the arrow in his hand, waving it around. “We’re all stressed. But you’ve practically been beating yourself over the head about the curse. I just think you might be compounding your problem. Have you been sleeping?”

“Not really.” In truth, he’d slept no more than a few hours a night since they arrived. Even when his headaches dulled enough for him to doze off, he was left open to the impressions of the Brightly threshold, an endless stream of magic and memory flowing through the house that triggered weird, disjointed dreams filled with people he didn’t know.

“See?” Davis said, pointing at Nasser with the arrow. “That’s exactly what I mean. Sleep deprivation isn’t going to help your head.”

Nasser rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I can’t sleep
because
of my head.”

Davis yanked the last arrow from the target and slid it into his quiver. “Well, that was my strongest headache remedy. I started you on the good stuff, so if that’s not working, we need a different approach.”

“Such as?”

“First, you need to sleep. Actually
sleep.
When we get back to the house, I’ll give you something to knock you out.” He raised his hands in a placating gesture before Nasser could protest. “Trust me. Seven or eight hours will do you good. You look like hell.”

“And who’ll work with you while I’m unconscious?” Nasser challenged.

“Clem will,” Davis replied easily. “Look, I know you want to keep working, but you’re no good to anyone like this. Just get some sleep and see if that helps. I always like to start with the simplest solution. Okay?”

Exhaling through his nose, Nasser nodded. “Fine,” he groused. “But only if you have something for dreamless sleep.”

Alice stood on the beach, the cool water washing over her bare feet. It was a warm night, the sky crowded with rivers of stars and a shining moon.

“Filo,” she called, raising her voice to be heard over the rushing of the sea. “What’re you doing out there?”

He was standing calf-deep in the water, his pant legs rolled up, his back to her. When he looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes were bright. The wind ruffled his hair. For once, he seemed unbothered by the pull of the sea.

A familiar ache settled in Alice’s chest. He was so beautiful. Sometimes she thought she could never look at him enough. Other times, the sight of him was more than she could bear.

“Come here, Alice,” he beckoned, not in English, but in the Old Faerie they’d spoken as children, the language Alice still turned to when she had something important to say. When he said her name, he sounded like the Filo of long ago, when it was just the two of them and it seemed like the world would never change.