The Flight of the Silvers (Silvers #1)(136)

On September 29, he staged a backyard demonstration of his new prowess. The sisters and David sat in folding chairs, eyeing the three banana bunches that dangled from the porch awning.

“Nice decorations,” Hannah teased. “Is it Monkey Day or something?”

“It’s Shut Up and Watch Day. Shall I tell you how to observe it?”

“No. I think I get it.”

Zack aimed his finger like a pistol and rotted the X-marked banana in each bunch. As a crowd-pleasing finisher, he repeated the trick while the targets spun and swung on their strings.

Hannah led the others in applause. “Wow! Very impressive, Zack!”

“Thanks. Maybe the next time someone points a gun at me, I can rust it without rifting them.”

David cynically pursed his lips. “And while you’re taking the extra time to preserve the gunman’s precious fingers, he could end your life.”

“Even rifting a finger can be fatal,” Zack countered. “If an air bubble—”

“I’m just saying you shouldn’t put your enemy’s well-being ahead of your own.”

“Well, I consider ‘not being a murderer’ to be a part of my overall well-being.”

Amanda held his arm. “I think what you’re doing is admirable, Zack. You’re a good man.”

He gave her a lazy shrug and told her the bananas would disagree.

The quiet time in Nemeth had done wonders for the cartoonist. As the pain in his chest diminished to a sporadic moan, he slowly began to resemble the man the Silvers knew and missed. And yet despite all progress, Amanda could still feel a maddening wall of space between them, as if Zack had demoted her to the status of neighbor or colleague. She stewed about it so deeply one night that she unwittingly shredded her socks with short spikes of tempis. She had no idea it could sprout from her feet.

On the last day of September, she joined Zack in the kitchen, drying the lunch plates he washed.

“I think Theo’s coming down with something,” she said, for lack of a better topic. “He’s looking a little peaked.”

“I noticed.”

“I wish he and Hannah would work out their issues already. It’s been frustrating to watch.”

“Yup.”

Scowling, Amanda rubbed a plate into a state of squealing dryness.

“Not like us,” she said, through seething black humor. “You and I are doing great.”

“Amanda—”

The back door flew open. Hannah rushed into the kitchen and seized Zack’s wrist.

“We need you! Come with me!”

She’d been exploring the woods with David, a brisk morning hike to fight their growing cabin fever. Soon they heard a soft animal whimper and traced it to a clearing. A spotted fawn had splayed itself out on the leaves, taking pained and shallow breaths. One of her legs was bent at an unnatural angle. Blood trickled from her nose and a deep gash in her chest.

Hannah returned to the scene with Zack and Amanda. David lay a calming hand on the deer’s neck.

“Poor thing staggered here from the road,” he told them. “Must have been clipped by a car.”

Hannah tugged Zack’s wrist. “You have to heal her!”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You might as well try,” David said. “She’s not getting up from this.”

Zack looked to Amanda, who remained dryly pragmatic. She’d seen children die of leukemia. Her threshold for weepiness hovered high above Bambi.

“Don’t push yourself if you’re hurting.”

Zack sighed. “No. I can do it. Everyone step back.”

He closed his eyes and concentrated, enveloping the creature with his thoughts until he could feel every hair on her pelt. The others watched with fascination as her body took on a luminescent sheen. The pool of blood at her chest began to shrink and drip upward. The deer’s leg straightened and the gash closed like a zipper.

Zack fought a delirious cackle as he felt his magic at work. Suddenly, he was more than just a helpless speck in the cosmos. He was a minor deity, the Jesus of Nemeth.

Just as the deer’s last trace of injury vanished, Zack felt a painful lurch in his mind. The fawn convulsed, squealing in agony while her chest ballooned. Before Zack could curtail his temporis, the creature exploded in a torrent of blood and organs.

The sisters gasped through their covered mouths. David balked at the carnage.

“God! What happened?”

Zack stared at the corpse in stammering shock. “I don’t know. I-I just lost control. Jesus. Hannah—”

The actress sped out of the clearing in a windy streak. Amanda held Zack’s shoulder.

“She’s not mad at you. She’s just upset.”

“I don’t get it. It was working.”

“Living creatures are complex,” David offered. “Could be one of a thousand different things. It also could be worse.”

“How could it be worse?”

“You could have done it to one of us.”

The thought of Mia lying in place of the disemboweled deer made Zack queasy. He leaned on Amanda.

“I need to get out of here.”

The mood in the house was still somber at dusk, when Theo and Mia returned from the public library. As David filled them in on the incident in the woods, they listened with dark distraction, nodding along as if he were merely talking about the coming rain.