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He should be apologizing to me. He should be begging.
“I know you’ve been talking to her. What did you tell her? What did you do to her?”
“Oh, sorry,” I say automatically, cold fury in every word. “I don’t remember.” I click the off button on the phone, feeling so vindictively pleased that it takes me a moment to realize how incredibly stupid I’ve just been.
Then I remember I’m not Cassel Sharpe, kid brother and general disappointment, anymore. I’m one of the most powerful practitioners of one of the rarest curses.
I’m not taking Lila and leaving town. I’m not going anywhere.
They should be afraid of me.
* * *
Grandad leaves about an hour later, asking me if I need anything from the store. I say I don’t. He tells me to put some of my clothes in a bag.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“We’re taking a road trip down to Carney,” he says.
I nod my head, cradle my ribs, and watch him go.
Lila stares at me from the center of the mounds of papers, clothes and platters on the dining room table. She’s eating something. I get closer and see a piece of bacon, the grease soaking into a scarf.
“Grandad give you that?” I ask.
She sits on her hind legs and licks her mouth.
My cell phone is ringing. The caller ID says Daneca.
“You gave her the slip,” I say. “Did you really walk all the way here?”
Lila yawns, showing her fangs.
I know I have to change her, now before Grandad returns. Before my ribs start to hurt again and I can’t concentrate.
If only I knew how.
Her eyes are shining as I walk toward her.
A curse was placed on me. A curse that only you can break.
I reach out my hand and touch her fur. Her bones feel light, fragile, like the bones of a bird. I think of the moment when the barrel of the gun began to turn to scales, try to summon the impulse that made it transform.
Nothing.
I imagine Lila, imagine the cat elongating, growing into a girl. As I picture it, I am aware that I don’t know what Lila would look like now. I push that out of my head and let myself make up some combination of the girl I knew and the girl from my dream. Close enough is close enough. I imagine her changing, imagine it until I’m shaking with concentration, but she still doesn’t change.
The cat growls deep in her throat.
I push out one of the dining room chairs and flop down on it, resting my forehead against the wood of the back.
I think about the ant Barron told me I never turned into a stick, but I don’t remember how I did it. He stripped that memory out so cleanly, there’s not even a trace.
It can’t be triggered by strong emotion. I’ve been angry lots of times and I’ve never accidentally turned my gloves into squirrels or anyone into anything. Besides, I am feeling plenty of strong emotion right at the moment.
When I changed the gun, Philip was about to get shot. Maybe it was like some kind of muscle memory or a part of my brain that I could access only when someone I cared about was in danger.
I look around the room. The sword I found when I was cleaning out the living room is right where I left it, leaning against the wall. I pick it up, feel the weight, as though I am distant from my body. I note the rust running down the blade. The sword feels heavy in my hands, not like the light fencing foils at school.
