“What are you doing?!” May said.
I hissed, pulled my thumb back, and displayed the already trickling blood for my sister. In moments, the scrill gathered over the blood and dissipated, leaving the skin smooth and unmarked.
“Wow,” Em said.
May opened her mouth but didn’t say anything.
“This is what a rekulak can do,” I said. “My training’s been going great. I really think I can do this. I can cure Em.”
“Did you see that, Mom?” Em said. “That was crazy. Do it again.”
“No, Em,” I said. “It’s not fun. It hurts.”
“You’re like a superhero. This is crazy.”
“You can’t tell anyone about this. Not your friends or anyone.”
“Oh my God. Who am I going to tell? I sit in a house all day and don’t talk to anyone.”
“Life’s going to be back to normal soon. I promise.”
May was solemn when she finally spoke. “Okay. Let’s do it. Do you want me to tell Lou?”
“Sure,” I said.
Then the guilt clamped onto my brain. Tonight was maybe the only opportunity to free Kaliah from her torturous confinement. She needed my help, and I was turning my back on her. I told myself that Em needed me more, that Lou could rescue Kaliah on his own, that I could help later if he failed, but still the guilt wouldn’t let go. That was the price of the choice. I imagined my rekulak was gorging himself on this one.
Mom and Lonnie were held up at the Mad River Inn on the northern edge of Arcata, just off the highway, across from a shopping center. Fallen hail carpeted the ground and crunched beneath our feet as we walked through the parking lot between cloud bursts. We’d bought dry clothes at a thrift store and changed in the truck, but still, I was cold, and I could tell May and Em were too by how high they held their shoulders.
Em didn’t have a relationship with her grandmothers. She’d met my mom twice since she was five. And she was too young when she met her dad’s mom to remember. Though I didn’t have a grandma growing up either—one was dead and the other was attached to an unknown father—I’d tried, based on what I’d heard from friends and seen in movies, to fill in that role for Em, to give her the grandma experience, spoiling her, lavishing her with treats and gifts on birthdays, holidays, and random occasions. So when we passed a vending machine in the lobby of the inn, and Em proclaimed in that kingly way that children do, “I’m hungry,” I naturally bought her peanut M&Ms. And when May gave me a look, I naturally said, “What? They have protein in them.”
We found the elevator around the corner from the lobby bar, which was half-full of loud men watching football. Mom’s room was on the third floor, the top floor. Em insisted on pressing the button. Even though she was eleven now, she still got a little excited about elevators. There weren’t many in Humboldt County.
As we walked down the hallway, searching for the right room number, I had a little hop in my step, despite the guilt I felt over Kaliah. I was finally taking some control over our situation. Once Em was healed, I would get my hands on a typewriter and manufacture an arsenal of Homunculus Totems. If Blanche or Warren, or any other Friends came after me and my family again, I’d destroy them with a thousand tiny cuts, a thousand unnoticeable cracks in my rekulak’s mirror. My enemies would start waking up with minor ailments and major inconveniences: a rash and car trouble, vertigo and a dispute over property lines. I’d attack their bank accounts, their credit scores, their vital records, and expose them to identity theft. I’d bury their cult in bad luck and make sure they knew I was responsible. They’d learn to fear me.
Mom answered the door and hugged each of us as we went in. She’d rented a suite with a small kitchen and living space. Hanging on the wall was a painting of a cottage with flowering trees and shrubs in the front yard. It reminded me of the painting we’d had when I was a kid before my mom was declared unfit by the state.
Mom was nervous. I could tell by her smile and all the extra breath that came out when she talked. She commented on May’s weight, and May nodded and managed a tight-lipped smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Em offered her grandma an M&M, and Mom accepted it with a gleeful chortle.
“Where’s Lonnie?” I said.
“In the adjoining room,” Mom said. “I’ll get him in a minute. I just want to talk to my kids alone first.”
I wondered where Lonnie and Mom had gotten the money for two adjoining suites in the Mad River Inn, which wasn’t a shabby place for the area, but I didn’t ask. She told us to sit on the couch, and we did, and she sat in one of the chairs, on the edge, elbows on knees, hands pressed together, pointing downward as if she were praying to the floor. Her legs vibrated, and I realized she wasn’t nervous at all. She was excited, giddy.
“I know you don’t think I was a good mother,” she said, “but . . . . Are you familiar with the mobiak concept of grace?”
“I am,” I said.
May shook her head.
“Basically,” Mom said, giving herself the wrap-it-up signal, “it’s the belief that the more perspectives you have, the closer you’ll be to the truth, the closer you’ll be to grace.” Her words poured out at a high clip. “And it ties into Arawok and the seven stomachs and how we may or may not be digestive enzymes, and on and
