CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

All morning I've had a sickening sense of something, once distant, now drawing inexorably closer. Since waking it's been a queasiness in my gut, a dizziness in my head, a tension in my muscles. I've felt it, like a train on rapid approach, blaring at me to move out of the way, to step off the tracks. Only my feet are glued to the ground. I am a deer in headlights, unable to do anything but stare.

Standing before the fire, stone wrapped tightly in my palm, the feeling rolls over me thicker. I know what it denotes – a nightmarish scene of blood and power and grief. The vision I fear is becoming reality. But now I know one thing that can stop it – my one last chance. I must break the curse. Today.

Now.

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

Harrison stands a little off to my left. I can't see him from this angle – my entire view is consumed by dancing, mesmeric flames – but I can feel his worry as it soaks the air. He barely knows this world of supernatural power and still he can sense this is a bad idea. I'm not foolish enough to believe it isn't – I just can't afford to do nothing. Breaking the curse is a necessary evil.

"Yeah," I reply, "I'm sure."

I open my palm and hold it out in front of me. The stone looks and feels as ordinary as it did when I found it Sunday morning. It would be impossible to know it holds power, let alone enough to fuel and maintain the most powerful curse known to both Anarkks and Avexyrs alike.

"Don't you have to say something?" Harrison, behind me, interrupts the quiet like a fly buzzing in my ear.

"Good one, Sherlock. I'm getting there."

"You don't know what to say, do you?"

I sigh. "Admittedly no." The book said to speak my desires, but to just start speaking? I'd assume a curse like this would require a certain level of formality to break it.

Taking a deep breath, I begin: "I wish to break the curse."

I hold my breath in the minute that follows, before eventually resigning myself to the idea that nothing's going to happen.

"Try something else," Harrison buzzes.

"I, Melissa – Sarah – hereby break the curse on all Anarkks."

The stone remains an ordinary stone.

"Nice embellishments. But I don't think it worked."

"You think?"

"Maybe it's not what you're saying."

I turn to him. "What do you mean?"

"Well, you're meant to speak your desires but breaking the curse isn't your desire. Your true desire is to save someone's life. I'm just saying, maybe it's not working because you don't truly mean what you're saying."

I stare at him. "That's actually a fair point."

"You look surprised."

"I'm just– You're good at this. At understanding this whole supernatural thing."

"It actually seems to follow quite logical patterns – that is, if you disregard all the obvious illogicality."

"Uh-huh. Yeah. I totally noticed that too."

He laughs. "Get on with it, then."

I turn back to the fire and close my eyes, attempting to summon up some true desire to break the curse. It's weak and hard to find but as soon as I do, I grab hold and build on it, strengthen it, focus all my attention towards it. Once again I'm struck by the bizarre sensation of the stone hot in my palm, radiating a heat it surely doesn't have. The room around me darkens and fades as I zero in on it. Then I speak.

"I desire to revoke the power of this curse and restore the true power of the Anarkks."

For a few moments following, I feel a momentous weight on the air, like something fundamental about the world has been altered. The rightness of what I've just said dwells in my bones, spreads a warmth through my blood. There is a silent exchange between myself and the universe: I put forward a change and it listens, considers and, finally, accepts.

The instant this happens, the stone in my palm bursts to life, emanating a brilliant blue glow.

"It's working," I say incredulously, caught somewhere between disbelief and apprehension. The glow brightens and expands until the whole room is bathed in blue light. I can no longer look at the stone without hurting my eyes.

Then I remember the next step: fire. Taking a deep breath, I toss the stone into the fireplace. As the flames consume it, they too turn blue, roaring bigger and brighter. For the smallest of moments, I no longer feel caught on train tracks, waiting for my vision to arrive and bowl me over. For the smallest of moments, the vision itself is gone from my mind, no more than a dream, a nightmare that never transitioned into a reality.

Then out of nowhere I feel a sharp pang, like a knife to my chest. An overwhelming amount of exhaustion rushes over me, forcing me to my knees. Every nerve in my body feels like it's being torn apart, yanked like a rope in a game of tug-o-war. My head spins. My entire body is shaking. Distantly, I'm aware that Harrison is calling out to me.

But soon enough I don't notice any of this. Soon enough I'm wrenched from reality and plunged head-first into a vision. And not just any vision. The same one I've been having for weeks. The same one that's been tormenting me every waking hour of every day.

It flashes in my mind, brighter, harder, stronger, clearer. More insistently than ever before. It's like it has a mind of it's own and it's telling me: this is inescapable.

So I see the dark room. I see Keon dressed in black. I see the receptacle and the blue light and the figure in the shadows. I hear the scream. I see the blood. I relive the pain. And then I wake.

"Hey," Harrison says as my eyes flutter open. "Are you okay?"

I'm not on my knees anymore; I'm sprawled out on the floor. He helps me into a sitting position, but my head feels full of water, sloshing this way and that with every movement. I sway. "Whoa," he says, steadying me. "What was that? You went all The Exorcist on me for a moment there."

The realisation hits me square in the chest. My heart quakes. "I'm not strong enough," I whisper. The moment in which I thought I was free of the vision has passed – we're back to square one.

"But you created this curse. If you were strong enough to create it, logic states that you have to be strong enough to break it."

"Well your logic is wrong."

"Just try again, I'm sure–"

"It's not going to work. I didn't create the curse by myself – I helped my father to do it. That's the power of two people, not one. And I'm not as strong as I used to be. This damn curse has been draining my power for years. I'm not nearly capable of doing this." I take a deep, shaky breath.

"What about–"

"Harrison. The curse I'm trying to break," I say softly, "is breaking me."

He stares. "That night at the park when we met with Lauren. You didn't have the energy to stop her. That's because of this curse, isn't it? It's – it's killing you."

I nod. "It's like they said in that book: A curse drains its creator. A powerful one drains them to death."

-:-:-:-:-

Later we're in the dining room, myself with a cup of tea, Harrison with black coffee. Every now and then I peer up at him. Neither of us have said much of anything since the heart of the matter was laid bare: I don't just need to break the curse to save Caden's life – I also need to in order to save mine.

I bring the cup to my lips and sip quietly. The silence is palpable.

"I suppose," Harrison says, sighing, "I should probably state the obvious. Your life is a fucking mess."

"You're telling me."

"You have until tomorrow, am I right? To break this thing?"

A laugh escapes me. "Yep."

"And you can't because you're not strong enough. And you're not strong enough because it's killing you. And if you don't, you and your friend will die. And if you do: war."

"I–"

"And you get visions of the future. And you can move things with your mind. And there are evil people who do evil things like killing and resurrecting people's sisters, and then endowing them with metal-flinging powers. Is there anything I'm forgetting?"

"I grew up in the wrong body," I add helpfully, "and went my whole life thinking I was someone else. I created unnatural winters everywhere I went. I can see ghosts. And spirits. And contrary to popular belief, they're not the same thing."

"They're not?" He looks genuinely shocked.

"No."

"Oh!" He hits the table, causing the tea to quiver in my cup. "And you can speak in tongues."

"I'm sorry – what?"

"You can speak this weird non-language. Except it must be a language. Just one I've never heard before. Well, actually, it's not even remotely close to any language I've ever heard. Ever."

I blink at him. "When was this again?"

"Just then. When you were breaking – or trying to break – the curse. You spoke your desire in another language."

I shake my head. "No, I don't remember that. I'm pretty certain I was speaking English."

"It sure didn't sound like English."

"But that's – that's impossible. I don't know any other languages. Especially not ones you're describing. I only know English and a few words of–" It hits me.

"A few words of...?"

"The language of the otherworld," I breathe.

Harrison looks at me like I've gone stark-raving mad. "The...otherworld?"

"Yeah, the place where the dead go."

"And it has its own language? It's basically a nation. Does it have a government? What about a President? Or is it a monarchy? I bet it has its own flag." He gasps. "Oh, is the national emblem a ghost? It is, isn't it?"

I roll my eyes. "You're a dick."

He shrugs, clearly way too happy with himself. "I was born this way."

Just then, there's a sound at the door. Before I can even react, it's thrown open. A very angry Katherine, followed by a disgruntled Ethel, Scott and David, comes barging into the room. She walks straight up to where Harrison and I are sitting and slams the fake stone down on the table.

"Where is it?"