The twenty-minute car ride felt interminable. As soon as he pulled up to the house, he dashed out of the car and didn’t bother knocking.
“Grandmama? I’m here,” he shouted as he slipped his shoes off in the entry.
She didn’t answer back. Elliot’s heart started pounding, thethump-thumpheavy in his ears.
The prickle of his magic itched under his skin, adrenaline and fear igniting his nervous system responses. His core warmed, and tingles cascaded down his arms, energy trying to escape.
“Grandmama?” he called again as he went down the hall to her bedroom. He knocked on the door once before pushing it open.
She was sitting on the bed, wincing. “Can you open this?” Her hands shook as Elliot reached for the aspirin.
She looked okay enough. Was dressed and sitting up. Slightly pale, but the lighting in the bedroom was dark.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, undoing the safety features on the cap and giving the medicine back.
She shook her head, grabbing the bottle, but her fingers slipped and sent little pills flying everywhere.
Grandmama gasped and clutched her chest.
“What’s happening?” Elliot demanded.
“Heart,” she croaked.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No. Don’t,” she gritted out. “Magic.”
She wanted him to use his magic?
“I can’t,” he said. “You know I can’t. Damon isn’t here. I’ll call an ambulance. I’ll—”
“No. Magic is doing this. No hospital.”
The little white pills on the ground. Aspirin. Wasn’t aspirin for a heart attack? She’d overworked her powers. A build-up of congealed magic was clotting her veins.
He couldn’t call a hospital. There was nothing they could do for a magical heart attack.
The only way to dissolve the clots was with Elliot’s powers.
Nausea curled sour and thick in his stomach, but he helped Grandmama to lie down on the bed. She grabbed his wrists, tried to open her mouth to say something, but instead squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered.
The sound hit Elliot in the gut. His grandmama was never hurt, never in pain. She was invincible. She was a superhero.
Except, she wasn’t. She was human.
And she was dying.
Elliot forced himself to ignore the panic locking up his muscles and closed his eyes, hovering his hands over her chest. He took a few centering breaths and tried to focus on moving the energetic prickles from his core, through his arms, to his hands, and into Grandmama’s heart.
His palms tingled, but the magic swirling through him wouldn’t get the hell out.
“Please, please,” he murmured under his breath, mind whirling as he tried to think up a spell.
Clear her blood, remove the mud.
Nothing happened.
Strengthen my focus, clear Grandmama of this toxic hocus pocus.
