Afraid she’d calm down before Lou and I absorbed enough of her cackle, I goaded her again: “Accept Jehovah into your heart and you will be forgiven this transgression. Say it now. Say, ‘I accept Jehovah into my heart.’”
The otalith growled and bucked back, then forward. Lou lost his grip and was flipped over her head onto the ground. I found the Bible in the grass and winged it at the woman, hitting her in the head. “Fun fact: The Greek titan Cyclops was a cheese maker.” She growled again and turned from Lou to come after me. This time she was tired, and I was faster. I managed to stay out of her reach long enough for Lou to get up and grab her shirt.
“Run,” Lou said as I heard the shirt tear. “We’ve got enough. Run.”
I bolted down the street as fast as I could, my mind now completely clear of Naomi’s metaphors. When I looked over my shoulder a half-block later, Lou was right behind me, and I was relieved to see the otalith ten paces back from him, already slowing. At the end of the block, she stopped and yelled, “If you ever come back I’ll kill you!”
We kept running and didn’t slow down until we turned the second corner and the truck was in sight. Lou had grass stains on his pants and shirt, and his lip was bleeding. We were both breathing heavily. I vibrated with adrenaline.
“What the hell was that?” Lou said. “It’s going to be ten times harder to harvest from her now. I’m going to have to use a disguise.”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” He nodded with a patronizing expression on his face.
“Whatever it takes.”
When we got back to the truck, Lou grabbed four lice cages from a box in the bed and attached them to his arms and legs. I asked where my cages were, and he said I didn’t get any this time. I needed all the otalith cackle that was inside me to combat the wanda poison. He promised the cages on him would produce enough to keep Em’s nightmares away for at least six months.
Chapter 2
LOU WAS UPSET AFTER our fight with the otalith. As he drove, his curses and complaints about my lack of respect and professionalism mingled alternately with the clicking turn signal, roaring gas pedal, and screeching brakes.
I had never met my father, and never had a father figure in my life—the closest thing had been May’s high school sweetheart, who liked to get me in headlocks and let me punch his palms. I had been yelled at and even beaten by my mom’s boyfriends, and by my two foster-dads, but I’d never experienced anything like this. There was genuine concern in Lou’s voice and even fear for me and my family. He was scolding me. I’d never been scolded by an older man. Truthfully, it warmed my heart.
Then he gave me an ultimatum, which wasn’t so heartwarming, but I understood it all the same: If I didn’t agree to be his pupil and obey his orders, within reason, from here on out, he didn’t care what agreement he’d made with Kaliah, he would drop me off on the side of the road right now and wish me good luck.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew he was my lifeline. I accepted his conditions, and right away he began giving his orders. He insisted I move in with him so that my training could start immediately after breakfast each day. He told me that no one—not me, not him, not my sister—under any circumstances, could ever go back to my apartment to collect my things. And I especially couldn’t go back to Naomi’s. Even with otalith cackle as a defense, she was too dangerous. If I saw her on the street, I was to run the other way.
“I have to go back,” I said. “My family’s sourdough starter is there.”
“What?” Lou squawked. “You’re kiddin’ me right?”
“One of the prisoners that were with your son told me it was important. They said, ‘The secret to defeating the Memoirist lies beyond the cheese danish in the whorl of the sourdough starter.’”
“You can’t trust that. Are you crazy? Even if that’s true, it’s too dangerous. You’re lucky your wanda didn’t poison you with Shakespeare metaphors. You get the Death-is-an-undiscovered-country routine and before you know what hit you, you’re slicing your wrists up like they’re onions. It’s too dangerous, Doughboy.”
Despite the risks, going back to Naomi’s was one order I had to disobey. What the prisoner had told me was true. I knew it. But I didn’t try to explain that to Lou. He wouldn’t understand. The sourdough starter had been in my family for over two hundred years. The bread made from it was unique. Generation after generation had kept it alive, replenishing it, feeding it flour and water after each use. In the 1800s, when it was taken in a stagecoach robbery, my great-great-grandfather formed a posse of his cousins to retrieve it. He killed a man for it. Or so I was told. I always thought it was strange how much importance my mom put on the starter, but now it made sense—kind of.
In hindsight, I wished I had done more to convince my sister to keep her portion of the starter alive. She and I had been a little complacent with the family heirloom for
