Nelle takes his hand. Her thumb traces the blue veins from his knuckles to his wrist to the sleeve of his gray sweatshirt. She groans to the overhead fluorescents. “It’s a long story.”
James gestures to the waiting room. “Nothing but time here.”
Nelle folds one knee over the other. “As you wish.”
And she launches into her tale, careful with her words. Describes her terrifying power. Her practice, learning how to move with just a thought, how to conjure anything by simply writing about it with her ink.
“It’s like real magic,” he says.
“No.” Her tone is cold. “Penelope was correct to call it a curse.”
She describes the flood in Barcelona. The man who slipped and died in London. How she found Quill and Penelope in Edinburgh. How he knew, because he almost shot and killed an innocent man, that he needed to end his life. That he should never have been created in the first place. She describes the wind atop Calton Hill. How Quill was solid one second and smoke the next. And how she has to do the same. But she wants to do it in Lincoln, in the ashes of the house on Blackwood Road.
“But you’ve learned from your mistakes,” James says. There has to be some way he can talk her out of thisinsanity. “You are more in control of your power than you’ve ever been, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“So think of it as a gift,” he says. Heneedsher to stay. Shesaidshe was going to stay. “Think of it—”
“James, stop,” Nelle says. She unfolds their hands and runs her fingers through her hair. “It’s not a power, it’s not magic, it’s not agift. It’s a burden I can’t get rid of. Not just to myself, but toyou. To Jessie.”
“How?” he asks, incredulous. “How have you burdened any of us, Nelle? I love you. Jessie loves you. We want you with us.”
“I caused the fire, James.”
“You ...” His voice dies. His brain stands still. Nelle’s admission feels like some sort of sick joke. “You what?”
Tears well up in her eyes. “I didn’t mean to.”
Holy shit, it’s not a joke.
“It was my dream,” she says. “I was dreaming about the night the house on Blackwood burned down, and when I woke up, the room was on fire.”
A sob rips through her, her face contorted with pain. James’s heart cracks down the center. He pulls her in as she shudders, his own body racked with tears. What can he say now? It sounds like her dreamdidcause the fire. So what can he do if she wants to end her life? What if she burns down every home they ever share? God, he can’t even listen to himself think.
“Maybe you can learn to control your dreams, like when you’re awake, so you can sort between the thoughts that start fires and the thoughts that are just thoughts.”
Nelle’s finger grazes his cheekbone. “I love you.” Her face crumples again. “But I can’t risk you.”
And there is nothing left to say.
Chapter 34
They’re put up in a four-star Midtown hotel for a couple of nights, but James finds no rest. He and Nelle sleep back-to-back like in his truck bed, though their current circumstances are a far cry from last summer’s carefree travels up the East Coast. Not only the street noise keeps him up; when he closes his eyes, he is back in the waiting room, Nelle telling him she has to end her life, that the fire was her fault.
Through the window, the city sparkles. Tragedies happen out there every day, people’s lives irrevocably changed: a drowning, a paralyzing car wreck, an unnoticed gas leak. This time it was his tragedy. Tomorrow it will be another’s.
Nelle must think he is asleep because she slowly peels back the stiff hotel sheet. At the foot of the bed, her silhouette pulls on pants, a sweater, a pair of black loafers, before tiptoeing to the door.
“Hey,” he says.
She startles, her hand on the knob. She is leaving, of course, to do exactly what she promised.
James tugs on his sweater and jeans and meets her at the door.
Nelle’s nostrils flare. “What are you doing?”
“You’re not going alone.” He says the words because he loves her, but on the inside he is fuming. How can she follow through with this? He’s angry with the world, with the universe, with God for putting him in this position. For cursing her like this.Make it go away. Make her okay.
