I then sliced open my hand with the nail file and strolled down the rows of sitting children, pressing a bloody thumb to their foreheads, as if blessing them with holy water, and they disappeared one by one in my wake. I didn’t understand why my blood had this effect on them, but I remembered the Brad corruptions from the fighting whorl I’d entered, and how they’d been afraid to get too close to me, and I wondered if there was a connection. The children here had the opposite reaction to me. After making a whole row disappear, they lined up in front of me, polite and organized, and took turns taking my blood until all but three, who must have been the original players in the whorl, disappeared. I permitted myself a nice thought: I had set them free.
The old woman in the hospital bed set down her tea and watched as I gave the candy dish to my second corruption, sat down between him and the first one, and rested a hand on each of their shoulders. The pain was nothing compared to holding the totems directly. I grafted to the pain itself, and the three of us sat there muttering gibberish passwords until I was back in the basement.
Seeing no scrill on my skin, Lou raised his eyebrows and said, “That’s what I’m talking about, Doughboy. Now we’re cooking.”
I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath. “It’s done. I did it.”
Lou tucked in his chin. “What do you mean?”
“I did what you asked. It’s done.”
“You grafted to both totems at once?”
“Yep.”
Lou laughed. “The quickest I ever heard of someone forging the Ghost is three days. Trust me, you didn’t do it.”
“Trust me, Lou. I did it.”
He stared at me a few moments, then said, “Okay, we’ll see.” He pointed to the desk in the corner. “There’s a lock picking kit in there, okay?” He wiggled his hips as he sat up straighter, exuding attitude. “I’m going to douse you with enough bloom to put you in season, then I’m going to lock the basement door from the outside, okay? If you get past these mirrors and pick that lock like a master thief should be able to do, then I’ll believe you forged the Ghost and Zelda Sinclair is your guide, okay?”
Lou doused me with three times the bloom I’d been using to enter whorls, and I felt throbbing behind my eyes and tingling deep inside my brain. Then the voices rushed in, and before I blacked out, I smiled, because I heard Zelda’s voice as clear as a bell, louder than the rest.
When I came to, I was sitting on the couch in the living room, Lou standing over me with his arms crossed. “How did you do it?” he said.
“I like Zelda,” Em said, sitting next to me, smiling. “She’s cool.”
I recoiled at the thought of someone occupying my body while I wasn’t there, but if I had to go into season, I’d rather Zelda was in charge than some nameless, mad throng of Kaliah’s ancestors.
“How’d you do it?” Lou said. “Tell me everything.”
I recounted to him my exploits in the candy dish whorl, excluding some of the more unpleasant parts about the children, and when I finished, he looked disgusted. He pointed at me and said, “You used your corruptions to take the pain for you? Like whipping boys? That’s a weaselly shortcut. Now it’s going to be that much harder for you to learn how to ride the Ghost. You have to take the pain at some point, Doughboy. You can’t run from it forever.” Then he stomped off before I could express my own indignation.
Chapter 11
THE ADDRESS IN THE envelope my mom had given me came with a name: Lonnie Cartwright. He lived in Willow Creek, a small mountain community thirty-five miles east of Lou’s place. People on the coast went there in the summer to get away from the fog and swim in the Trinity River. When I was a kid, my sisters would take me there sometimes with their boyfriends.
The drive over was beautiful but treacherous. The road was windy, and snow was piled up on either side. Crushed brick spattered against the wheel wells as I drove. On one of the summits, gusts of winds slapped against the side of the truck, forcing me to hold the wheel fast. Through and over the trees that lined the road, I caught views of snow-covered foothills and deep ravines.
During the forty-five-minute drive, I sorted out my plan for the coming days. I would learn all I could from Lou, and I would also train with this Lonnie guy. I couldn’t rely on Lou or Kaliah to stop the Friends of Blanche Duluth. Kaliah was imprisoned in Arampom, and Lou was acting out of a mysterious debt he owed her and might bail as soon as the debt was paid. If Lou and I managed to rescue Kaliah, she would help, but I doubted her ability now. Three of her shakas were dead, and she’d failed to anticipate this most recent plot against her.
The rekulak was my best option. I’d seen its power when it healed my own body. If I could master that power, I wouldn’t need Kaliah’s or Lou’s help ever again, or anyone else’s.
The highway ran through the middle of Willow Creek—a grocery store, a bar, two gas stations, two restaurants, and a few shops. I followed my phone’s navigation north of town, over a Trinity River swollen to the banks, into a neighborhood with modest houses packed together on small lots, bordering an icy and desolate golf course.
I parked in front of a beige, one-story, stucco house surrounded by large pine trees. The curtains were drawn, and the snow on the front walk hadn’t been shoveled in some time. It crunched beneath my feet as I took careful, deliberate, and sometimes sinking steps to the door. The air was dry and cold.
I
