her bloody left hand, and an obvious smear blemished her cheek. I launched myself forward, swiveling around the end of the bed and dropping to my knees in front of my wife.
“Felicity?!” I called as I reached out and placed my hands on her trembling shoulders.
My touch proved only to elicit a new round of screams as she began flailing her arms and slapping at me blindly. Her eyes were fixed directly ahead, unblinking and dilated. Upon catching a glimpse of the glassy stare, I was convinced that she wasn’t even walking in this world.
“FELICITY!” I called again, grabbing at her wrists as I attempted to defend myself against her unconscious attack. “FELICITY! It’s me! Rowan!”
Her head snapped back, and she centered her unfocused stare on my face. Her arms stopped flailing, but she continued to tremble and rock. She sat wordlessly- looking through me more than at me.
I reached out and slowly started to brush back her hair. She flinched and I hesitated.
“It’s okay, Felicity,” I cooed softly. “It’s me. It’s Rowan.”
Slowly, I pushed my hand along the side of her cheek, lifting her auburn locks, and inspecting her milky skin. I could see no wound on her face, only the smear of crimson.
I continued whispering to her as I took her left hand in mine and turned the palm to face me. Deep gashes were cut into the tips of her index and middle fingers, and they were still oozing thick blood.
“What happened here?” I asked her softly but got no answer.
The dogs were trying to nose their way in for their own first hand inspection, and I could still feel Ben standing behind me.
I began to notice that the room seemed colder than usual, especially since at this hour of the morning the electronic thermostat would still have the air conditioner switched off in energy-saving mode.
I watched Felicity’s expression slowly change, recognition dawning in her eyes as she awakened from the dream state. She swallowed hard, and tears began to silently stream across her cheeks. I slipped my arms around my wife and pulled her close as she began to sob, rocking in harmony as I rubbed her back.
I heard Ben shuffle and then step past me into the bathroom. I didn’t pay much attention to what he was doing until I heard him slowly mutter, “Jeezus H. Christ.”
I continued slowly rocking Felicity but turned my head in his direction and looked up. He was staring at us, and we locked gazes for a moment before he turned away. When I followed his line of sight, I saw the object of his exclamation.
On the large mirror hanging above the double vanity smeared blood reflected in upon itself. Opaque red lines arced in deliberate, if smudged, patterns literally forming what appeared to be a map.
Below it, in unfamiliar, back-slanted writing were the words, FIND ME.
“You never should have done that binding…” I said, a note of sadness filling my voice.
I had just finished rinsing my wife’s wounded hand with peroxide for a second time and had now patted it dry. She was still wearing the oversized t-shirt she had been sleeping in, and it was covered with smears and spatters of blood down the left side. I had helped her pull on a pair of jeans and slip her feet into tennis shoes with the intention of taking her to the emergency room, but she would have none of that. She hated hospitals almost as much as Ben and adamantly refused to go even though I was sure she needed stitches. So, it was left up to me to play doctor.
The gashes were fairly deep and somewhat ragged, as she had made them with the sharp edge of a broken drinking glass. Even though I still felt that she should see a doctor, I had to admit that the cuts didn’t look nearly as bad as they had before they were cleaned up.
We were in the kitchen where we could both have a seat, and more importantly, I could spread out the first aid kit on the table. At the moment, I was snipping off strips of white tape from a metal spindle.
Ben was behind me, seated in the dining room and comparing a sketch of Felicity’s bloody rendering to a road atlas. Unfortunately, the image on the mirror, while obvious in its intent, was a smeary conglomeration of thick lines and devoid of any text labels, save for the ‘FIND ME’. Because of that, it was somewhat of a puzzle in and of itself.
Before getting started, he had called Agent Mandalay, catching her just as she was pulling into her driveway. She never even shut off her engine and now, was on her way back here.
“Aye,” Felicity returned, her voice surprisingly calm. “Maybe so, but I broke it.”
I nodded. “True. But it obviously wasn’t a clean break.”
I cut a final strip of the surgical tape and stuck it to the edge of the table then snapped the spindle back into its cover. I tossed it back into the box with a slight clatter. Then I reached deeper into the first aid kit and pulled out a small, brown jar then twisted off the lid. I dipped a cotton swab into the homemade comfrey and menthol salve and twirled it for a moment.
Felicity let out a short laugh that came as an abbreviated ‘hmph’, and then she said, “I wasn’t really sure that the spell would work at all if you want to know the truth.”
“It didn’t, really,” I offered. “All it did was suck you into all of this mess.”
“Aye, but you were free of the visions for a short time.”
“I’m surprised it did that much.” I shook my head. “Nothing should have happened at all.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because, I’d already tried it.”
“You did?” There was a note of surprise in her voice. “When?”
“Awhile back.” I shrugged. “I even tried a banishing.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“But if you don’t believe in the magick, Rowan, then it can’t work. You know that.”
“I know,” I told her. “But you just told me that you had your own doubts.”
“Aye.” She nodded. “I did at that. But still… You tried to do a banishing?”
“Don’t act so surprised. It’s not like I want this to keep happening to me you know.”
“That’s not true.”
I stopped twirling the swab. “Excuse me?”
“You see it as a gift as well as a curse.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” she replied. “I can feel it. You certainly don’t revel in it, but you see it as your destiny. If it were to stop, you would feel as though you had failed.”
She was touching on insights I had thought were completely hidden from view. Of course, I shouldn’t have been at all surprised by that. I really knew better than to think I could keep anything from her.
“Pretty amazing,” I offered with a sigh, returning to the original subject and hoping she would follow. “A spell that shouldn’t have worked to begin with, doomed to certain failure by your own disbelief, and yet you still managed to make magick happen anyway. Lucky you.”
I took her hand and blotted the oozing gashes once more.
“Why do you think that is, then?” she asked.
“The Ancients like your accent maybe?” I replied.
“What?” She shot me a puzzled look. “Oh, no, seriously. Why do you think it worked at all?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Maybe there’s something bigger going on here. We both know I’m probably the last guy to be able to answer that.” I pulled her hand closer and retrieved the cotton swab from the ointment. “This is probably going to sting.”
The word ‘probably’ morphed instantly into ‘absolutely’ as I touched the healing salve to the gashes. She sucked in a startled breath as her face twisted into a grimace. At the same moment, her hand jerked out of reflex, trying to pull away from the sudden burn, but I held it fast.
“I really wish you’d reconsider the stitches.”
“No,” she forced out between clenched teeth.
I continued gently dabbing the wounds until they were covered, then tossed the swab into the small trashcan next to me.
