Thirty minutes had passed since I’d entered the first whorl. I felt exhausted and exhilarated, like I was eighteen and had just finished pulling a double shift waiting tables. I gathered the totems, stuffed them into my coat pockets, and walked back to the house. The cold air was crisp and refreshing on my face.
Something black was lying in the snow in the front yard. As I came closer, I saw that it was a burnt dress, a burnt Victorian dress. Kaliah? I rushed into the house, minding the icy stoop steps along the way, and found her in the kitchen.
Chapter 25
SHE TURNED, WEARING THE men’s clothes from my closet. They were much too big for her. I smiled wide and felt joy when her eyes lit up. I wanted to hug her, but I wasn’t sure if she wanted that. She’d been abused, tortured by Brad for weeks. Maybe she wanted space. Then I thought of what Lou had said, that Kaliah was in love with me, and I became shy. I tried leaning against the wall, but that didn’t feel right, so I put my hands on my waist, which felt worse. “You feel better,” I said.
She smiled at me like she knew something I didn’t. “Almost. Your mom brought me here. She seems sweet.”
“Really? I don’t trust her. She’s . . . . Where’s Brad?”
“At his house, stewing, cursing your mom, cursing Blanche.”
“Why are they helping us all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know.” Kaliah crossed her arms over her chest, the sleeves of her brown sweater hanging down, and she took four, slow, rhythmic steps toward me in the style of a bride walking down the aisle. She stood in front of me, looked up into my eyes, her face inches from mine, and parted her lips slightly. “I need to punch you in the face,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Now?” She was so beautiful and serious.
“I need you to graft to the punch, to clear one more whorl for me. As long as Brad is in my cackle, I’m vulnerable to him. He’ll do it again if he gets the chance. And I won’t be able to stop him. There’s too much of him inside me still.”
For whatever reason, I didn’t see the obvious until right then. Of course, the punch whorl was part of Kaliah’s torture, most likely the beginning, a foul seed Brad had planted while he and Kaliah were still dating.
What had she ever seen in him?
I admonished myself even as I thought it. I knew better. I knew from my sister people could rarely be blamed for the partner they chose. Partners were experts at hiding their monsters.
I couldn’t think about what Kaliah might have endured from Brad or rage would overwhelm me, and I might do something stupid, unhelpful. This monster would be waiting for an opening like that, and he would take advantage of her again, with pleasure, without remorse. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t make any more mistakes.
I stepped back from Kaliah, took the bloom from my pocket, and dabbed some on my finger. “Fire away,” I said as the voices rushed through my body.
Kaliah smiled. “Thank you.” Then she launched her fist into my mouth.
The voices exploded. I grafted to the pain, sharp, dull, and otherwise, and the voices took shape around me. I was back in the Lodge, a young girl in an old dress, the gallery of Brads watching me from beyond the crown molding. I found a letter opener, sliced my hand open like an old pro, and began chasing the corruptions around. I took satisfaction from the fear on the Brads’ faces just before I eradicated them from Kaliah’s life forever.
When the graft failed, my bloody lip healed, which amazed Kaliah. I told her I would explain later, although there wasn’t much to explain, and she punched me again, this time with a shirt wrapped around her hand to protect her knuckles.
On the third time reentering the whorl, I chased the remaining six Brad corruptions down a hallway, where they disappeared, swallowed by air. When the graft broke, I told Kaliah what had happened, and her face fell like an over-leavened cake. “I’m going to bed,” she said, and stood.
“What? No. Punch me again. I’ll catch them.”
“There are places you can’t go. Even as my shaka. To follow those last corruptions you would have to mix your blood with mine. And you wouldn’t like what that turned you into.”
“Are you talking about the Dirge?”
She nodded.
Lou had told me about the Dirge, a cackle disease he’d contracted from his first wife, who was also his shanika. Whenever he touched something with his skin, a song unique to that thing played in his head. Everything had a song, his clothes, even the air. Otalith cackle silenced the songs, and when he ran out of that, he had methods, honed over the years, of coping. But not everyone with the Dirge was as lucky or as strong as him. Some heard the songs and were never themselves again. Left alone, they would go around touching things until they starved.
I tried to imagine what that would be like. If Lou could handle it, I thought, then so could I, for the sake of Kaliah, to rid her of Brad forever. “I’ll do it,” I said, and swallowed hard. My tone wasn’t very convincing, and I’d paused too long before committing.
Kaliah tried to smile. “Thank you, but no. I’m tired.
