“Ooh, Berry. This is interesting. Paranormal Pine Ridge: Lore and Legends from Our Corner of the World,” Aggie cries as she heats up her leftovers. “Looks like there are all kinds of legends about this place.” She cranes her neck back, “Lucius, are you in this book?”
Aggie is so absorbed in her reading that she does something I’ve never witnessed. Her phone rings and she swipes up on the screen to answer it, face still buried in the text. “Hello?”
Normally, she reads the words on the screen first. In the first few weeks of her living here, the phone didn’t ring or buzz much at all. Now, it goes off constantly, and she smiles each time she answers.
Not tonight.
“Listen, little girl. Your mother is worried sick. You are coming home this weekend, like it or not.”
Aggie is frozen in place, her face ashen and lips trembling. “Arnie. I’m fine, thanks for checking on me. I’m going to—”
“You haven’t refilled three of your prescriptions this month.”
“What? How do you know? I—”
“I’m one of your doctors, remember?”
“Well, I have a new therapist, and we’re trying to cut back. Drug interactions and limiting the pills that are short-acting, and I— I don’t have to tell you any of this. You’re no longer my doctor. You might be listed on my insurance somehow, but I’ll have that taken care of.”
“Don’t you care about the slippery slope you’re on, Aggie? Everyone always feels good going off their medicine—until they crash and burn.” Arnie’s angry voice is oily now. “You literally almost crashed, didn’t you, sweetheart? Wasn’t that how you were going to end it all?”
Aggie is up and pacing. I want to scream that she needs to just put down the phone.Put it down, put it down, run to my arms.I know it’s too early, too risky, but I don’t care. I begin the arduous task of breaking through the mirror’s surface and into her mortal world.
“Going off of unneeded medication isn’t bad. I’m not getting off anything I shouldn’t. Oh, and guess what? My blood test markers are improving each month. Yeah, no more waiting to get labs every six months because that’s all insurance would cover. I can pay out of pocket for extra ones if I need to, but guess what? This doctor actually believes in monthly testing to determine the best regimen and suddenly, mysteriously, my insurance covers it. It’s almost like the plan I had under you, which was supposed to be so good, was actually so crappy.”
I pause in the bedroom, hiding in the shadows that I blend into so well. My Aggie is going from white to red, from tremulous to towering.
I don’t want to scare her and let her enemy see her weakness or make her think she’s unwell again.
The damn warlocks were right. If I care for her, I will have to show her the truth—eventually.
“Little girl, you are talking to a doctor!” The voice on the other end of the phone is so loud it seems to roll like thunder in the room and conjures up images of the spitting, slavering sorcerer who imprisoned me.
My Agatha fights back with her words, faster than I used to with my sword. “I’m talking to aquack! I’ve talked to real doctors since I left home. I’ve gotten a second opinion, Arnie. I no longer want yours. Tell Mom I love her and I’m fine.” She ends the call, and the phone soars across the room, landing with a thump in the Victorian-inspired wingback chair.
“Hot damn, that felt good!” she crows, spinning in a mad victory whirl.
It ends as suddenly as it began, her waving arms and smile falling as one, and her sobs pouring out as her shoulders suddenly convulse.
I don’t even know what’s happening. She was so triumphant a moment ago.
Now it’s all crashing down, and all I can do is hide?
She drags herself into the bedroom, walking right past me in my shadowy well, shedding her clothes, digging for sweatpants and a baggy shirt. Berry follows her, mewing.
The laundry, book, and food are forgotten.
Caution is forgotten, too. I slowly drift, sliding down, slinking along the floor of the darkened room. The sobs slow. Stop. Start up again.
I slither into bed, strong enough to whip her to face me and smart enough not to. I curl around her, feeling her gasp and stiffen, her rush of fear adding a new tang to the usual honey and roses perfume of her natural scent.
“Why are you crying?”
“Lucius? I’m not asleep!”
“What, a lonely friend cannot visit you in the waking world? Don’t worry, you’re not going mad—at least, not because you see me beside you.” I twine my fingers with hers and lift them to the dim light that spills through from the open bedroom door. “Now, why are you crying?”
“I... I stood up to my stepfather, and it felt so good. I’m so mad that I didn’t do it before. I’m so afraid he’ll take it out on my mother. Or that he’ll take it out on me. I’m freaked that he got my medical records somehow, that he knows if I filled my prescriptions or not. I’m not sure how... And I’m freaked because you’re not human.”
