The Cure for Dreaming(45)

A hot tear escaped my left eye before I knew it was even coming.

“I promise, Olivia.” He squeezed my hand. “I won’t leave you like this. We’re partners, not enemies. Oui?”

I nodded and wiped my cheek with the back of my hand, tasting salt on my lips. “Yes. Oui. Partners.”

He turned the key in the lock and led me into a small room with amber curtains pulled back to expose the dwindling late-afternoon sun. The flowery burgundy paper peeling off the walls soaked up most of the light, but the place wasn’t quite the woeful retreat of a dying girl I was expecting. A twin bed, a lime-green sofa made up as a second bed, and an elegant ivory washbasin lent the room a homelike atmosphere. The smell of lilac soap, not fever, sweetened the air.

Something on the far corner of the bed caught my attention: a short blink of candlelight that faded the second after I spotted it, as if someone had snuffed out a flame. I tensed, for I saw a pair of eyes watching from the darkness.

Before I could ask Henry what I’d just seen, the light brightened again, illuminating the face of a girl. A moment later, it flickered away, and the bed lay empty.

“Olivia, this is my sister, Genevieve.” Henry came around my side and walked toward the waxing and waning figure on the sheets. “Genevieve, I present to you Olivia Mead.”

I couldn’t move. One moment, she was clear and vibrant—a golden-haired girl in a white nightgown, crawling toward me across the covers—the next, she was sputtering out, and the bed looked abandoned, save for the indentations of hands and knees on the mattress.

“What’s wrong?” asked Henry, his face paling. “What does she look like?”

I gave a shiver. “I see things the way they are, but I can’t predict the future.”

“What does she look like?” he asked again, his voice taking on a tinny phonograph quality as his sister consumed my attention.

I swallowed. “A candle flame that can’t decide if it has the strength to keep burning.” I shifted my eyes away from her.

Henry’s bottom lip trembled. His arms hung by his sides like two useless extensions of his body. I felt compelled to hug him, but Genevieve spoke before I gathered the courage to do so.

“Henry told me what he was paid to do, Miss Mead,” she said. “Please come sit by me so I may talk to you. Don’t be afraid to look at me.”

I turned and ventured over to the bed while clutching the sides of my skirt. Genevieve continued to flicker and fade, as if she were sitting in a blackened room, illuminated every few seconds by a soundless flash of lightning. My brain went dizzy and fuzzy from watching her come and go like that, and I half expected crashes of thunder to rumble across the walls and make sense of the phenomenon—yet none ever arrived. I sat beside her and steadied my breathing.

“Henry told me you’re not allowed to speak your anger anymore,” she said during a moment of illumination that revealed the concerned arc of her eyebrows, “and you can see people’s true selves, sometimes in frightening forms.”

I nodded, still speechless. I discovered that blinking a few times in a row almost made her stay in place. “Are you in pain, Genevieve?” I asked her.

“No.” She placed her hand over her upper chest. “The tumor is simply something I know shouldn’t be there, which, I admit, does make me feel a little sick. And tired.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“And what about you?” she asked, scooting closer with a rustle of sheets. “Are you staying safe?”

“I’m healthy, so I can’t complain.”

“No, be honest with me. Are you suffering because of Henry’s hypnosis?”

“Well . . .” I averted my eyes from hers again, choosing to gaze instead at the wrinkles in my black skirt and the spots of dirt flecked across the hem. “I’ve just asked him to alter the part about . . .” I shook my head and sighed. “I can wait, Genevieve. It’s just three more days. You’re a little bit younger than me, aren’t you?”

“I’m almost sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” I clasped my hand over my eyes. “No, I’ll just keep saying that all is well.”

“You hinted you weren’t safe,” she said. “What’s happened to you?”

“Someone bit her,” said Henry.

Genevieve gasped. “Bit her? Why?”

“It was the boy—the cocky one—who escorted her to that party last night.” Henry sank down on the sofa with an uncomfortable sigh. “That type of behavior happens sometimes . . . when, um, gentlemen get . . . romantic.”

“I assure you, I’m not a loose girl,” I said to Genevieve. “I tried to tell Percy to stop, but all I could say was—”

“‘All is well,’” Henry finished for me.

Genevieve flickered into view with greater wattage. “Where did he bite you?”

“On my neck.”

“Like Dracula?” she asked.

I smiled. “You’ve read Dracula?”

“Of course. It was magnifique.”

“When did you read it?” asked Henry.

“I borrowed it from the library last year, when you were so busy reading your hypnotism books and fussing over your hair for the girls.” She brightened even further, remaining solid and steady for seconds at a time. “How bad of a bite was it, Miss Mead?”