Jesse struggled through the doorway with Mack, who was large and heavy and had been unconscious for more than an hour. When he tried to lay him near the fireplace, his arms seemed to give out and he mostly dropped him.
Mack’s head hit the wood floor with a thud, and Jesse looked horrified.
“It’s okay. He can’t feel it,” she muttered. She pulled Mack onto the rug and stuffed a straw pillow beneath his head. “I have to stop the bleeding,” she murmured.
The fire grew hungry, burning through the sticks and catching hold of the larger logs she’d place on top. The cold in the room backed away.
She stood and handed Jesse a rag. “Put it on the wound and press down. He’s already lost too much blood.”
As Jesse pressed his hand over the spreading red blur on Mack’s chest, Liv went to the little counter. George’s cabin was unchanged, the jars of herbs set in their same locations, dried herbs hanging from a string in front of the window, though they’d hung for so long that some had crumbled away and left piles of brown dust on the wood counter below. In the corner of the room she saw George’s staff, and her own next to it.
She started to drift back to the day he’d given it to her, immediately swallowed by her shame at having left it — and him — behind.
“I can’t find his pulse,” Jesse called.
Liv looked up, knowing she’d wasted precious seconds getting caught in the web of memories. Tearing a piece of linen from a swath of fabric George had hung near the water drum, she filled it with ground yarrow. A spicy cabbage smell drifted up from the dried herb as she hurried it across the room.
“Move your hands,” she told Jesse, kneeling.
As he slid his hands back, more blood gurgled up from the wound. Liv pushed the sack of yarrow onto Mack’s chest. His face looked pale and gaunt, his lips turning blue.
“Hold this,” she said, her hands trembling as she pulled them away.
She went to George’s bed, trying not to look at the indentation there, the space where his body laid for so many years, and grabbed a drum from the floor.
Jesse looked at her strangely when she returned.
“You’re going to play music?”
“I need you to be quiet, okay? Not a word. I don’t know if I can do this, but I have to try.”
She sat down and started beating her hands against the drum. The motion felt awkward; she could not find a rhythm, and the strangeness tore at her. She wanted to cry, to hang her head and give up, but she couldn’t.
Her hands continued their pounding, her mind insisting the spirits had abandoned her, but the room had begun to fade. The crackling fire gave way to another sound: water rushing down a river, carrying away rocks and twigs and sand. The Dead Stream rushed above and below her. Liv struggled against it, the current pushing her lower, holding her captive as she thrashed against the branches snaking around her ankle.
“He’s dying.” Jesse’s voice broke through her dream, and she hurtled across the veil back into the cabin.
Smoke billowed from the fire, as if someone had thrown water over the flames.
Jesse held the yarrow pouch over Mack’s wounds, but blood gushed through his fingers, turning his pale hands red.
He looked at Liv desperately, but she could do nothing but watch as the man who had tried to save her faded, his lips opening to release a bubble of blood that popped and trailed down his cheek.
Mack’s eyes fluttered open and locked on Liv’s.
“Tell Diane…” Mack choked on the words. Another spurt of blood exploded from his mouth and splattered Liv in the face. “Tell Diane I love her.”
His eyes closed.
Liv rocked away from him, a sob and snarl combining in her belly and tearing across the silent room. She howled and ripped the hag stone from her chest, flinging it into the smoky hearth.
As she opened her mouth wider, a flood of water rushed in. The river surrounded her once more, pushing, ravaging her. Her hair was pulled and wrenched, forcing her head forward, deeper. She saw the watery green death down there, shadows darting, but then voices from above drew her back. The spirits called, begging that she turn and look into the light.
She twisted around and looked up through the clear, watery void. She expected to see Stephen there, as she must have twenty years before, but it was not his face that peered down.
George’s strong hands reached into the river. She felt their fingers intertwine; their palms meet.
George pulled her from the river and held her close. She rocked and sobbed against him.
Further down the stream, a trunk floated, half-open, a dark dress billowing out.
The steady beat of her drum brought her back into the cabin.
When she opened her eyes, fire still blazed in the hearth, and Jesse sat perfectly still, his hands pressed against Mack’s wound.
“I think he’s waking up,” he whispered when he saw Liv watching him.
Liv looked down.
Jesse’s hands were clean.
Mack, too, was clear of blood. He had not spit up. He had not died.
Mack blinked, his face contorting with pain.
“Ugh, fuck-all. That bastard stabbed me,” he groaned.
Liv’s hands slowed, her breath catching.
“Mack?” she whispered.
He turned his head, offered her a weak smile.
“I saw George, Liv. He said you’d come through.”
Chapter 40
Liv
She stood in the doorway watching Stephen and Veronica in his room.
He winked at her.
“I have a gift for you,” he told Veronica, carefully holding the curse in his left hand. “But you can’t open it until you get home.”
Veronica giggled and took the folded present, unaware that she was holding her own yellow scarf wrapped around a curse that would bring her nightmares for months.
“I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask me out, Stephen Kaiser,” she flirted. “Pity you waited until you went off to college.”
Liv rolled her eyes, tempted to dash Veronica’s fun, but footsteps sounded in the hall behind her.
“What are you doing?” a woman hissed, and Liv recognized the voice of Adele Kaiser.
When Liv turned, Adele stood in the hall, her mask clutched in her hands, her eyes dark and furious.
“Umm… I…” Liv ducked into Stephen’s room, barely aware of Veronica’s look of surprise.
“Liv!” Stephen laughed, but the sound was cut off as Adele stormed in behind her.
The color drained from Stephen’s face.
Veronica looked confused, her eyes shifting to Liv and then to Adele.
“You sneaky, disgusting little bastard,” Adele seethed. She lifted an accusatory finger at Stephen, her hand shaking with rage.
Stephen walked to the bureau beside his bed.
No one spoke. The very air seemed sucked from the room.
He reached down, and when his hand emerged, Liv tried to make sense of the leathery thing he clutched.
“I curse you,” he spat, lifting a silver candlestick from his table and slamming it into his mother’s temple.
His mask had fallen away. In one hand he clutched the flap of cat’s skin, the blood writing blurred in the dim light.
His mother’s face sagged, and she collapsed to the floor.
Liv stared in frozen horror at the gaping wound, blood pouring down the woman’s pale cheek.
Veronica shrieked and fled through the bedroom door.
Liv tried to follow, but Stephen reached out and grabbed her wrist as she turned for the door. His grip felt hot and slick. She could pull her arm away. She had to, but her brain couldn’t seem to send the signal.