Feversong (Fever #9)(143)

Still nothing.

I called for him. I said his name over and over. I crooned and cajoled and finally burst into our theme song. “Shaz the mighty fur-beast lived up in the air…”

When I glanced at Ryodan, his shoulders were shaking and he was doing his best not to laugh.

“I was a teenager,” I said with a scowl. “It’s a great song. The meter works, it rhymes, and the melody is indisputably catchy.”

“I’ll take it over Animaniacs,” he said, quickly turning away to stare out over the lake. His shoulders were still shaking. Bastard was still laughing.

I whirled away and resumed singing.

I spent hours calling him. Talking, bribing, flattering. Trying everything. I’d brought raw fish in my backpack and offered them to the air, waving them around, making a complete ass of myself and inciting a fresh wave of nausea. If he was up there, forcing me to enact such dramatic shenanigans, there was going to be hell to pay.

Finally, I turned to the others and said, “You have to go back home. He may never come out with you on the island.” I refused to believe he wasn’t here. It might take weeks, maybe even months, to convince me of that.

None of them liked the idea.

“I’m not leaving you alone here,” Ryodan said. “I’ll make myself unseen.”

“Shazam won’t be fooled,” I replied irritably. “He’s far more brilliant than you. He’s a hundred times the super you are. He’s evolved beyond anything we’ve ever seen.”

“Why don’t you tell me about him?” Mac invited. “I brought food and blankets in case we needed to spend the night. We’ll eat and you can tell me about your time together.”

In my head, she said, If he’s here, and he’s as sensitive as you told me he was, his feelings are hurt. Hearing you tell us stories about him may coax him down.

I conceded the wisdom of her plan.

Mac made a fire and I discovered I wasn’t the only one who’d brought fish, but hers were on ice in her backpack. She wrapped them in foil and tucked them into the embers to roast. As the aroma filled the air, I dropped down cross-legged by the fire and told Mac how we’d met on Olean, how he’d taught me to freeze-frame better, and the story about the edible planet. I even told her some of the tales I’d not told anyone about the less dangerous jams we’d gotten ourselves into, and how Shazam had rescued me, time and time again. As I reminisced, some of the grief over Dancer that was eating me alive was met by yet more grief as the realization settled in that Shazam really might not have waited or survived.

Did I have to lose everything? Both of them? Was this the harsh life lesson I had to learn now? Did some people just not get an easy life? I would never say it wasn’t a good one but, bloody hell, sometimes I wondered why mine was so rocky all the time!

Eventually my stories made me miss him so keenly that, combined with my fresh, hot grief over Dancer, I did something I’d never done in front of Shazam because he was so vulnerable and prone to manic fits of depression. No matter how bad our circumstances had gotten, I’d never cried.

I did now.

Bloody hell, all I did anymore was cry! It was ridiculous. I despised being this person. Mac started to cry, too, and I looked at her through my tears and said impatiently, “You don’t have anything to cry about. What’s wrong with you?”

“Your pain is mine. When you hurt, I hurt. If someone who truly loves you sees you in pain, they share it.” She tipped her head back, staring up at the air. “And they’d certainly step in to stop it. To comfort you. No matter how much of a pissy mood they were in. They would see that their Yi-yi was devastated and do anything to make her feel better. Even if they didn’t feel like it,” she practically snarled.

The fire exploded in a tower of sparks and was instantly extinguished.

The foil wrapped fish vanished.

Bones tumbled out of the sky, showering down on me, bouncing off my head.

I scrambled to my feet, rubbing at my eyes. “Shazam! Are you there?”

Violet eyes materialized in the sky above me, narrowed to slits. “You said wait. Your expects, bars on my cage. Did you come? No. Not then. Not the next day. Not ever.”

Holy hell, he was here! He was alive!

He vanished.

Another bone exploded out of the sky and bounced off my head. “Ow!” I clapped a hand to it. “Ever is now! I’m sorry. I’ll tell you I’m sorry every day for the rest of my life if it makes you feel better.”

“It will take much more than that,” came the bodiless sniff. “My knots have sprouted an entire civilization of knots that have been reproducing with the ferocity and fertility of a band of mating Ka-lyrras! I’m one big tangle!” came his anguished wail. “And I’m fat.”

“I’ll brush you. You’re not fat. Just come out. Let me see you!”

“Am, too!” he wailed. “You may only see parts of me. The slender ones.” Eyes materialized ten feet above me. “You will leave me again,” he said tearfully.

“I won’t. I’ll never leave you again.” I said something I’d never said before. A thing I’d learned to say with Dancer. “I love you, Shazam. I can’t stand living without you. I missed you so much that I went a little crazy for a time. But I couldn’t come back because the Silver took me back to Dublin—”