“How are you going to rescue Kaliah by yourself? You needed help just to get your son out of Arampom before, and now the whole lodge is there. There’s got to be way more security now.”
“I didn’t have two mummers full of wanda poison before. Now I do. Simple as that. I’ll be back with Kaliah by tomorrow morning. Then you guys are on your own.” He leaned close, grabbed a hunk of scrill from my arm, and smeared it on his face and hands.
“What the hell?”
“I smelled nemaloki cackle the last time I was in Arampom. Every mobiak who’s heard a nursery rhyme knows scrill is the cure for that. Save the rest in a jar. If you need the gate code, it’s on the fridge.”
Lou herded Bruce and Pam outside like they were lobotomy patients, then he slammed the door shut.
After finding a jar and scraping the scrill into it with a rubber spatula, I started training. I burned my mouth on a few peppers. I took the trout test a handful of times without success. And I spent some time practicing foundation gestures and expressions in a mirror. Then I did my best to follow the workout tape Lou had given me. I ran. I did pushups, sit-ups, and yoga—a lot of yoga. I was attempting to maintain a pose that had me balancing sideways on one foot and one hand when my phone rang. The number belonged to my sister, but she wasn’t the one on the other end of the line: “Well hello to you too, Charlie,” a man said. “Do you recognize my voice? I’m the one who gave your niece the candy.”
I stopped breathing.
“Hello?” Warren said.
“Where’s my sister?”
“She’s here. And so is little Emily. We’re waiting for you.”
Then I heard my sister’s voice: “Charlie?”
“May? Are you guys okay?”
“Yes.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Okay,” she said. Her tone was calm and defiant, as expected from her, but I could tell by her one-word responses that she was barely holding herself together. Hearing her vulnerable like that was an assault on the most tender region of my mind. She had always protected me, always been like a mother. Now she needed my help.
Warren came back on the line: “Remember to come alone, will you? Because if you don’t, I’m going to cut Emily’s little toes off, and then I’m going to feed her soul to a mummer I know.”
Chapter 4
ITRIED TO TELL him not to hurt her, that I would be there soon, but he had already hung up.
I yelled, crouched down, and squeezed my head, breathing fast and heavy. Had Warren hurt May or Em? Was he alone? Or were the other Friends with him? If I did exactly as he asked, would he hurt them anyway? If I didn’t do what he said, what would I do? What if I paid someone to punch me again so I could reenter Kaliah’s fighting whorl and try to ride the ghost again?
I called Lou, but his phone went straight to voicemail. I called again. Voicemail. He was in the mountains already, I assumed, outside of service range. I tried to guess what he would do, what Kaliah would do. Warren had already infected Em with Ghost Heart, a dreadful and incurable disease. He was capable of anything. I couldn’t trust him. If I complied, if I followed his instructions, he could still torture Em, and I would be powerless to stop him. I agonized over the decision. Fight or comply. Fight or comply. I felt doomed either way.
Then Lou’s words came to me: “With the right spray bottles, I could conquer the world.”
I ran to my bed and grabbed the book of cackle poisons he’d given me. I took several deep breaths, calming my body so I could focus on the text. I have time, I kept telling myself, I have time. My adrenaline was flowing, and though I read quickly, I retained a remarkable amount, skimming through page after page, only lingering on poisons that seemed relevant to my current crisis.
After thirty minutes, I’d discovered two poisons I was sure could help me. I ran down to the basement, to the room of mirrors, and identified the poisons I needed by their color. I took the green and orange bottles from the Lazy Susan and ran back up the stairs. I was prepared to hitchhike if I had to but was relieved to find two cars and another truck in the garage, their keys hanging on the wall. I pressed the unlock button on one, and the truck honked.
On the way to town, I worked out a rough plan in my head and ran through it over and over, trying to think of what to do if this happened or that went wrong. The drive took five minutes. I parked behind the grocery store a block from the bakery, hopped out of the truck, and began walking. My plan was simple and straightforward, but I still kept repeating it in my mind, terrified I would forget some crucial aspect.
My fear got so bad that my legs began to periodically convulse. I decided to jog it off.
There were snow clouds, illuminated by the moon, spread high across the sky like ripples in sand at low tide. The winter air seized and released my lungs, seized and released, as I jogged down the sidewalk with the potions in my back pocket. I passed a Christmas tree lot, where a few families milled about in scarves and puffy jackets. I felt awful for what I was about to do to them.
My sister’s Rav4, Warren’s BMW, and a red BMW I didn’t recognize were the only vehicles parked in front of the bakery. I approached from the back, where there was only one window, small and frosted, that looked out from the bathroom upstairs. The bathroom light was off.
I found the green poison in my pocket and sprayed it into the air three times, careful
