Quiet, now.
I stand, panting, heart thudding. Then shed my coat, my boots. Go to the couch. Fall back into my seat like a reflex, my knees giving way automatically. Stare into the stately silence that is Camlann House.
And then it hits. It all catches up. Everything I couldn’t process at Porter’s, everything that’s happened andhappening,in all its full-volume, high-definition, horrific reality.
I let out a sob.
“Gwenna?”
Lanz. At the foot of the stairs.
No,I think.Not you. Not you too.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I shake my head, nonverbal.Don’t want to talk. To you or anyone. I want to be alone to cry and scream.
Then the image of Elena’s mottled, scabbing, blood-blistered face surges into my mind, and I have to run,sprintpast Lanz to make it to the kitchen in time to vomit into the sink.
When it’s done, I clutch the edges of the stainless steel, the smell of stomach acid and old beer prickling up my nostrils, and start to cry. Hard. Ugly, snotty, selfish, spasming sobs that do nothing but suck up all the air in the room?—
Mom, did you know there’s a song on Sesame Street called It’s All Right to Cry?
Not the wayyoucry, Gwenna.
—and I have to stop, I have to stop throwing this goddamn tantrum andget a hold of myself,but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, and?—
“Gwenna?”
Fuck. Lanz.
Hand trembling, I grab a tumbler and fill it with water to rinse my mouth, but my hand is shaking so hard I almost choke while doing it and nearly break the glass as I set it on the counter.
“Gwenna?”
Closer now. At the kitchen door.
“Go away,” I cry. “Please, please, justgo away.”
Instead of answering, instead oflistening, he crosses the kitchen in three long strides and crushes his arms around me from behind.
“Hey,” he says into my hair. “Hey. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
I start crying again. Harder.
Not you, Lanz. Please.
I think of that first time he kissed me, after the fencing match, when I’d just cried my eyes raw and ripped out a chunk of my own hair—God, I’m disgusting. Unbearable. Why do you always have to find me like this, Lanz?
I tense and twist inside his embrace, swiveling so I can push my fists against his chest.
“Please, just let mego.”
But Lanz holds me firm, surprisingly so. “No, Gwenna.” He says it so sharply it actually startles me. “No. When you’re like this, absolutely not.”
No sooner has he said it than his face clenches in what looks like pain.
Binding magic. The bad kind.
