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“You should go home.”
I looked up from the hospital cafeteria burger I’d been psyching myself up to eat. “You want me to leave?”
Charlie took a bite from his macaroni and cheese, scrunched his face, and promptly spat into his napkin. Shuddering, he pushed his lunch tray away. “I don’t want you to leave but you don’t have an obligation to stay here any longer. You’ve been here all night; that’s more than most people would’ve stayed. You deserve a hot shower, some real sleep, and good food.”
“I’m fine,” I said, because I honestly was. I mean, I had a headache and my body hurt, but I was glad to be there. It felt like I was helping.
Charlie sighed. “Would you just complain about something already and make me want you to leave at least a little?”
I smothered a grin. “Your breath smells like bad cheese.”
“Go home,” he deadpanned.
“Yes, sir.”
“But come back later,” he murmured, lowering his gaze.
I reached across the table to take his hand. “I will.”
Chapter 38
Jasmine
I was staring at a vending machine when Angela Smith came walking toward me. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, but I had to get a good look to believe it was really her. Her hair was pulled back in a braid. Her very practical rain boots, jeans, and jacket did nothing to distract from her beauty, subtle though it was.
What was she doing here? I was pretty sure Uncle Victor’s almost-murder had made it into the news by now, but I never thought…
“I came as soon as I heard,” she said, reaching out to take my shoulders in her hands. She peered into my face, her ancient eyes taking me all in. “How are you feeling?”
“Raw,” was the only word that came to mind. “Like my heart has major road rash.”
Without preamble, she pulled me into a hug. “I’m so sorry.”
I blinked back tears as I returned her embrace.
“How is your brother?” Angela asked, breaking the hug.
“Angry. Restless. Agonizing over what he could’ve done differently to avoid this.” I scoffed. “As if anyone could’ve seen this coming.”
“And your uncle? Has there been any improvement?” Angela gestured to the waiting room and then we walked back there together.
“None. The doctors warned us that he could be in a coma for several weeks, maybe longer.” I rubbed the tips of my fingers across the underside of my eyes as they began to water. “Even after he wakes up, he’ll have a long road to recovery.” I dropped into one of those awful plastic chairs, sighing down at my hands. “I hate just sitting here. I wish there was something I could do.”
“Have you asked…?” Angela took a cursory glance around before lowering herself into the chair next to me. “Have you asked Death to spare your uncle?”
Mr. Smith came ambling around the corner with two coffee cups in his hands. He sat next to his wife and handed her one of the cups, nodding politely in my direction. It was hard to read him. He could’ve been bored or tired or uncomfortable about being in a hospital, visiting with people he didn’t know very well. All because his wife felt a connection to me. I scrutinized him out of the corner of my eye. I was almost touched that he was here when he didn’t have to be, but I knew too much about their curse to let that feeling fully materialize.
He was here for his wife, not for us. And while the thought was sweet, it just depressed me even more. So I turned back to Angela. “Why would she listen to me?”
“You hold a certain power over Death, Jasmine,” the immortal woman said. “You realize, of the eight people she cursed, you are the only one who’s allowed to see her regularly, to speak with her and receive answers from her?”
“Receive answers?” I echoed with a bitter chuckle. “Hardly.”
Angela pointed at me with a twinkle in her eye. “But she does speak to you. She could choose not to; she has proven that with Jerald and I, who have sought her earnestly for centuries.”
She had a point there...
I shook my head. “Asking her to let my uncle live wouldn’t make any difference. She admitted she has power over the body and soul, but she doesn’t control who goes and when. That knowledge she gets from something else.” I twirled my hands in the air at the confusing impossibility of it all. “She compared it to instinct. I don’t know. It was weird.”
“And yet she spared you and your twin when you were babes,” Angela said, her thoughtful gaze shifting away from me. “She took away your ailments, made you healthy as if you’d always been. What allowed her to make the choice at that point in time?”
“I…don’t know,” I murmured, because I hadn’t thought of it, “but if she’s too afraid of draining away the rest of her power to try and undo our curses, she’s not going to exert herself trying to fix my uncle just because I say ‘pretty please.’”
Angela sipped her coffee and shook her head at her husband to communicate her befuddlement. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question.
“She exhausted some of her power once and gave the twins two recurring abilities,” Angela finally said. “Why is some of her power not taken from her every time Jasmine visits the land of the dead or when Charles gets a vision of the dying?”
Mr. Smith shrugged. “Perhaps it works like a spell that’s cast once and lasts forever?”
“I don’t know,” I was forced to say a second time. “I guess I’ll have to ask the next time I see her.”
“You forced her into your presence when you—” Angela pressed her lips together, regarding me with a squinty-eyed look of remorse.
“When I tried to commit suicide,”
