by Debra Doxer
“You fucker,” Lucas says, pushing at him again. Shane winces and scans the room nervously, looking for help, but not finding any.
My hand goes to my mouth. The thought of Shane listening to us this whole time makes me want to throw up.
“Maturity isn’t Shane’s strong point,” Nyla comments. “Raielle?” She eyes me expectantly.
Since I want to be as far away from Shane as possible, I head toward her, looking back at Lucas to see if he’s coming with me. He shoves Shane hard once more before releasing him abruptly and walking calmly in my direction. I watch as Shane sinks to the floor, yanking down on his wrinkled shirt.
“Just Raielle,” Nyla clarifies.
“Just no,” Lucas says glibly, and I can feel the residual anger radiating off him.
She glances at me, like she’s waiting for me to convince Lucas to stay behind, but I don’t. Finally she exhales an exasperated breath and turns toward the hallway, gesturing for us to follow.
“I can’t believe he was listening to us,” I whisper to Lucas.
He takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine. “You were right about him.”
Nyla glances back at us, probably wondering what we’re whispering about. “Did you call Social Services that day Leo came here?” I ask her.
Her face falls dramatically. “I did. But you must know, they don’t work that quickly. We all feel terrible about it.” Then she turns and continues down another hallway. Lucas squeezes my hand reassuringly. When Nyla reaches the end of the hall, she opens a door that leads to a steep stairwell.
“Where are we going?” Lucas asks.
“To the clinic downstairs. There’s a patient Raielle’s father would like her to see.”
Lucas darts me a look, and I try to keep the anxiety out of my expression for him, even though I have no idea what we’re walking into. After that scene with Shane, my emotions are all over the place. So is my energy, which I can feel flowing freely inside me, barely restrained.
Holding the banister, we all descend slowly with Nyla at the front and Lucas behind me. Once we reach the bottom, bright fluorescents light up a white hallway that has several doors leading off it. The place has an antiseptic smell, and I startle when a woman dressed in hospital scrubs steps out of one of the rooms and continues past us down the hall.
As we look around, Nyla turns to me. “These are our most critical patients. They have no hope but us. Their doctors have already told them there’s nothing they can do. So we keep them here at the clinic, making them as comfortable as possible, until we’re able to help them.”
I glance sharply at her. “You mean until you find a volunteer to…”
She nods.
Eyeing all the closed doors, I ask, “How many patients are here now?”
“We have six who are waiting. Your father likes to keep them close so that when a volunteer is found, he can perform the healing as soon as possible. When a patient is too sick to travel, that causes problems. Your father prefers for them to come to him.”
My hands clasp together and I begin to feel the tension building inside me. “I told my father I couldn’t do these kinds of healings.”
Nyla smiles again, calm and serene as always. “Don’t worry. He knows. This way.”
“Ray?” Lucas asks quietly.
I shake my head at him, cutting off whatever he intends to say as my nerves sprout wings. The reason I’m here is to learn from my father, and I can’t do that if I refuse to take part in anything. At least I have to see what this is about.
Lucas’s mouth is a tight, straight line as he watches Nyla disappear into one of the rooms. I follow, my pace slowing as I approach the door.
When I peer inside, I see my father standing beside a hospital bed, looking down at what appears to be a young girl swallowed up inside the blankets. Stepping into the room, I look closer and see that it’s a child who seems close to Penelope’s age. She has dark red hair that fans across the pillow. Her face is dotted with freckles, except below her eyes, where her dusky skin hints at illness.
I pull in a breath when my stomach drops and my energy sparks.
“Try to control it, Raielle,” my father says softly.
My eyes meet his bright green ones, and he smiles at me. “Rein it in. You can do it, sweetheart.”
I recall the times my mother said something similar when I was young and just starting to learn about my ability. I concentrate on holding back the power that wants to build. But then I nearly gag as the nausea hits. My power is turning on me. It wants to be used, and I’m denying it. Keeping my breathing steady, I try to push the sensations down deep inside. Finally, my stomach settles and it passes. When my eyes focus again, I realize Lucas has his arm around me, and my father and Nyla are watching me closely.
“Very good,” my father says. “Now touch her and let it grow again.”
“No,” Lucas immediately says.
“I won’t let anything happen to her,” he assures Lucas.
“Tell me why I’m doing this?” I ask, understanding that this girl is too sick to be cured.
“Just trust me,” my father says.
But I don’t trust him, and he probably knows that.
“What’s wrong with her?” Lucas asks.
“That’s what I’d like Raielle to tell us,” he answers evenly, his calm unbothered by our reluctant attitudes and questions. “I’m not asking her to heal this girl. I simply want her to learn about her power. That’s all.”
I want the same thing. So I nod my agreement.
Beside me, Lucas’s frustration is palpable. I wait, but he says nothing. I know he understands why I need to do this, even if he doesn’t like it.
After a moment, I approach the bed, holding the energy back as my eyes travel along her tiny frame. My heart squeezes just looking at her, and I feel nervous, almost jittery, no longer sure of myself or my power. But I push past the fear, hoping the energy obeys me and if it doesn’t, that my father will step in.
Reaching out my hand, I place it on the bare skin of her wrist. Then I let go and swiftly the familiar coil unwinds. A calm settles over me as it grows and flows out into the little girl. It takes a moment for me to understand the darkness I find inside her. Breathing out, I push further. My energy is settling in her bloodstream, telling me that she has some kind of blood disease. It’s cancer, I think, and it’s advanced.
I wait for the coil to snap back, to resist my power, telling me she can’t be healed. With Penelope, I didn’t stop when that signal came, and I nearly died. But the resistance of my energy never comes. So I continue, not quite understanding what’s happening because she’s even worse off than Penelope was when the healing went so wrong.
“Raielle?” my father says.
But I don’t acknowledge him, not wanting to break this connection yet. I push on, letting my energy eat away at the cancer inside her. I fan the flame within me, growing it and sending it out to her. My skin prickles as the euphoria that suddenly hits has me gasping. The room brightens around us, and I feel her disease responding to me as it begins to retreat.
“Stop. That’s enough,” my father’s voice says from somewhere behind me.
I don’t listen to him. I have to continue healing this girl, because something tells me that I can. I feel it so strongly that I’m completely lost to the flow of energy between us, when strong arms wrap around me and pull me back, breaking the connection, and causing the room to spin out of control.
“No!” I yell, frantic to get back to her.
“Ray, stop, please. Jesus, stop.”
I blink Lucas into focus and realize I’m hitting him, pounding my fists into his chest. My eyes grow wide, and I start to shake.
My father’s hand comes beneath my arm, lifting me up. Looking dazed, Lucas keeps his hold on me, too, standing with us.
“Why did you stop me?” I demand of both of them, trying to pull out of their grasp.
My father turns me to face him and his expression stuns me. He’s t
rying to appear stern and disapproving, but what I really see there is restrained excitement. “You can’t heal her that way,” he says. “Haven’t you learned anything?”
I shake my head, trying to understand because his words and his expression are at odds. “I could cure her. I felt it.”
“You’re wrong.” His face fills with disappointment. The excitement I thought I saw there is gone now. “You don’t understand your power at all, Raielle. Going any further would have been dangerous. There’s only one way to help her. My plan for you today was to learn how it feels when someone is too far gone to save. So what happened to you before won’t happen again. But you didn’t feel it. Did you?”
Turning away from him, I try to get some clarity because I don’t think I’m wrong, and I know what I saw in his face before. But maybe I’m misreading him. Maybe I’m misreading myself, too. My power has done nothing but betray me lately. I can’t be completely sure of it or of anything it tells me.
I glance at the girl again and her eyes remain closed. There doesn’t appear to be any change.
“That’s enough for now. I was hoping this would go differently. We have a lot of work to do.” My father shakes his head solemnly.
Lucas finally loosens his hold on me as a silent Nyla walks past us to open the door and lead us out. I fight the voice inside me, telling me not to walk away because I could end her suffering right now. But then I remember the way my body started to give out in that car with Apollo, and those horrifying hours of not being able to breathe, feeling sure I was going to die. My fears give birth to doubt, and that doubt wins as I allow myself to be led from the room.
I’m shaky and lost in thought as we walk out of the clinic, up the stairs, and out into the wood-paneled hall of the main house. Soon we’re left alone, and I startle when Lucas’s furious face appears before me.
“Every time. Every fucking time!” he whisper yells at me, so the voices in the room beyond won’t hear. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stand there and watch you nearly kill yourself again. I won’t let you keep doing this. We’re getting out of here. This is over.”
I’ve seen Lucas lose his temper before, but nothing like this. His expression is dangerous. His eyes bore into mine. I don’t understand his reaction. I wasn’t going to hurt myself. They stopped me. “Nothing happened,” I say.
His jaw clenches briefly, but then his face smoothes out as he leans in close to me. “I just told you that I can’t stand by and watch you do this anymore. Did that faze you at all? Because it sure as hell doesn’t look like you give a shit about how I feel.” With that, he walks away from me, disappearing into the library.
The pressure builds behind my eyes as I stare after him. I have no idea what just happened. He can’t really believe that I don’t care about his feelings. Can he?
“I never thought I’d get you alone.”
I spin around as Grant steps out into the hallway. Pulling in a harsh breath, I rub my temples, wondering how long he’s been there and how much he heard.
“We should talk,” he says, and I vaguely remember him saying that at Crossroads, too.
I shake my head, not up for conversation.
But he doesn’t leave. His expression is characteristically serious. He looks so intense all the time, even when he’s trying to be casual. “Let’s go out back. We can have some privacy there,” he suggests, ignoring my response.
Grant cuts an imposing figure. I hardly know him, but I do know that Lucas doesn’t like him, and he could easily overpower me if he wanted to. “I don’t think so.”
At first he seems annoyed, then surprised. “I only want to talk. I would never hurt you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know what to think…about anything.” I sigh, shaking my head.
He looks up and down the hall, seeming frustrated that I’m not willing to go somewhere else with him. “Look, your father isn’t the only one who can teach you what you need to know,” he says in a low voice. “I think there’s someone else you should meet.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Who?”
After glancing around again to make sure we’re alone, he finally says, “Her name is Meera. She’s been around a long time, and she’s seen it all. She used to work with your father before he cast her out.”
“Cast her out?” I ask, mocking his word choice.
He nods, unbothered. “She was a lot like you. I think she can help you. Let me take you to see her. What have you got to lose?” His eyebrows arch up.
I transfer my weight from one foot to the other, finding it hard to shake off everything that just happened and concentrate on what he’s saying.
His expression turns strangely eager as he studies me. “Look, I couldn’t help hearing some of that. Your boyfriend wants you to walk away, but he can’t understand. It’s hard for them to be with us. We always end up hurting them.”
“Them?” I ask, curiosity focusing my attention.
“People who can’t do what we can. Especially people we love,” he says quietly.
I detect a note of regret in his voice. “You’re talking from experience?”
His fingers graze the scars on his cheeks as he nods at me.
A part of me doesn’t want to ask him what he’s talking about, mainly because I can see how badly he wants to tell me. I get the feeling he intends to teach me a lesson that I don’t want to learn. But I find myself asking anyway. “Who was she?”
He hesitates briefly. “My fiancée.” Then he breaks eye contact, focusing on a spot just behind me. “She was in a car accident. She should have died, but I couldn’t let her. John helped me. He found someone so that I could save her life.” He slowly shifts his eyes to my face, looking for my reaction.
He’s telling me that he killed a person to save his fiancée. Before I came here, I would have gasped or given him some kind of appalled and surprised response. But now I know how this works, how healers like him and my father do things. His eyes are daring me to react, though, to tell him that saving his fiancée was wrong. He wants me to think about what I’d do if it were Lucas before I judge him.
Grant’s eyes darken when my expression doesn’t change. “I didn’t tell her what I’d done,” he continues. “She knew I was a healer, but she didn’t know that part. That’s something John prefers us to keep quiet about.” His mouth tightens for a moment before a humorless smile appears. “But then John let it slip to her one day, how she was saved. She didn’t want to believe it. When she asked me, I couldn’t lie to her. Once it sank in, she couldn’t handle it. She blamed me. Eventually, she left me.”
I can see the sorrow on his face, and the anger at my father for telling her. There’s no question he told her on purpose. He’s too composed to let something like that slip accidentally. I wonder why he would do that to Grant, purposely sabotage his relationship. “I’m sorry,” I offer because he looks so upset by the memory. “And the scars?” I ask.
He absently runs his hand over them. “Fingernails. She lashed out at me before she left. I didn’t stop her. If it made her feel better to hurt me, I wasn’t going to take that away from her.”
Now my eyes do widen. I think of all the misery I’ve seen, first with my mother and then myself. We’ve all suffered as a result of our power, Shane and Grant, too.
“You remind me of her.” He eyes me with sympathy now, his gaze gently holding mine. “Your uncompromising sense of right and wrong. It’s going to make things hard for you. It already has.”
I can’t look away from him, even though I want to. His sharp eyes see too much. Right now, they seem to see everything.
“That’s why it’s better to let him go,” he says. “He’s never going to understand you. You’re going to hurt him. It’s inevitable.”
With those painful words, my eyes close, breaking the strange hold he has on me. I want to silence the nagging voice inside telling me he’s probably right. But I know Grant didn’t give life to that voice. It was already th
ere.
“It’s better to be with someone who’s like you, who understands every part of you.” My eyes open when his hand lightly touches my arm. “We could understand each other, Raielle. I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time to find you. We’d be good together.”
I shake my head. My heart goes out to him and the obvious pain he’s experienced. But I can’t let him inflame my worst fears. He doesn’t know me, and he doesn’t know Lucas. He has no idea what we’ve already overcome to be together.
He smiles sadly at my silent refusal. “I know you’re not there yet. But you will be. When that day comes, I’ll still be here.” Then he pushes his hands into his pockets and his expression changes. “In the meantime, I’d like to be a friend to you. Meera lives in Palm Springs. I can take you to see her tomorrow.”
I blink at his change of tone. I haven’t agreed to this, even though he’s making it sound as though I have.
“We’ll get an early start. Say around eight? Bring your boyfriend, if it makes you feel better. That is, if you two are speaking.” He holds out his hand. “Give me your phone. You should have my number in case you need it.”
Tilting my head at him, I try to see the sympathetic, slightly broken person that stood before me only a minute ago. But that person is gone now, replaced by the more familiar one that wears an easygoing mask, but radiates barely bridled tension from beneath it. I hesitate only a moment before pulling my phone out and giving in to my curiosity. “How do you know Meera will want to help me?” I ask.
He enters his number and bends to catch my eye as he hands the phone back. “How much has your father told you about how your power works? How much have you learned from him so far?”
I don’t reply because we both know my father has taught me nothing useful as of yet.
He nods knowingly. “I promise you, Meera’s a great lady. She’ll help you.” Then he studies me for an uncomfortable moment before painting on a smile and walking back the way he came.
Standing in the hall alone now, I know I have to make things right with Lucas. We can’t keep having this same fight. Learning about my power is not going to be like learning to swim or to ride a bike. The energy inside me can be dangerous. All I can do is try to mitigate that danger. But I can’t give up and decide to go home every time things don’t go the way I want them to, and Lucas can’t keep insisting that I do.
