Chapter 36
Chapter
Thirty-Six
Iwas at the paddock when Max found me, wrapped in a blanket as if it were the only thing keeping me tethered to the earth. My shoulder still ached where the duck carving had punched through.
My hands were worse—blistered black where the crucifix had burned deepest. I’d wrapped them before coming out here, but the bandages were already spotted with seepage.
It was morning, early. The sun rose over the far woods like a benediction, mists chasing away after the late-night thunderstorm. Officer Hernandez had told us not to call ambulances—off duty, out of jurisdiction, defending an exorcism. Not what she’d told her people.
We’d bundled the Grahams into cars and sent them to the hospital with the Bells. Then watched them all go.
The living room was trashed. Soot streaked across the hearth, demon ichor staining the carpet. It would need cleaning.
But it was finished. The horses nickered softly around me, nosing for treats. I’d already gone through my hoodie full of apples.
“Claire’s still asleep,” Max said, not because I’d asked but because he had to say something. “Steve’s with her. He looks like he may never sleep again.”
I grimaced. I could sympathize. “Any news from the hospital?”
He shrugged. “Mom and Dad under observation. Sam remembers nothing. Emily’s still out.” He paused. “Grandma woke up screaming right when everything went down. She hasn’t stopped talking since.”
“What’d she say?”
“She wants to go visit Carol Ann. Says she’s ready now.”
I doubted that. “Probably should hold off on that for a minute.”
We walked in silence toward the house. Max slipped his hand into mine, squeezed, let go. Like he hadn’t seen me at my worst last night. My worst and my best.
When we rounded the corner, Officer Hernandez’s car was back in the drive. And Rabbi Ethan stood on the porch.
Max kept walking—but I stopped short.
“Hello, Delia,” Rabbi Ethan said, coming out to meet me. “Let’s walk for a while.”
Max turned to watch us go, but didn’t follow.
We walked in silence to the paddock. Ethan unhooked the gate with practiced ease, gesturing me into the grassy field. The horses kept their distance. I was still staring at the horizon, feeling like there was something there that I’d lost, when he finally spoke.
“Tell me about the first day you met my uncle.”
The memory rose unbidden: Mrs. Rachtman’s dogs, a child crying inside a stranger’s house, my mother’s rules forgotten.
“I heard a yalda. A little girl, crying. I went inside and saw Mordechai standing over her. Her parents were there, terrified and hopeful at the same time. She hadn’t been sick long, but they knew this was no ordinary illness. They’d known.”
“And what did you see in the child?”
The name rose like bile. “Kasadya.”
Ethan stopped walking. “You were ten years old, Delia. How did you know that demon’s name?”
I blinked. “The same way I always know.”
“Always knew, though, correct? Even before that day?”
“I didn’t know I could do it before that day.”
“Well…I think my uncle did.”
The slight judgment sliced deep. I bristled. “Mordechai believed in what he was doing,” I said stiffly. “The people believed in him. If he saw something in me, then good. He was my friend from that day forward.”
“But why did he use you for such dark work?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought I was strong enough, even all the way back then.
” We had stopped at a break in the grassy field; over a rise I’d never really noticed before.
We were almost to the tree line, and here there was a shallow, rocky stream that poked out from the woods and into the paddock grasses, running for about thirty feet before it went through the fence line again.
Fresh water for the horses. Had they diverted the stream or diverted the fence line to include it?
The rabbi said something again, his words poking at me, and I frowned at him. “It’s done, Rabbi Ethan. I don’t need Mordechai’s help anymore. Or yours.”
Rabbi Ethan spread his hands. The stream was at my back, and he was before me. He seemed bigger than he should be. “You are no longer plagued by Palemerious.”
“I’m not, no. And I’m weaker because of it. We were one—and now we’re not.”
Ethan’s face hardened, but it was an act, I could see. His words were too, deliberately harsh and provocative. “So you really believe you’re to blame for my uncle’s death?”
“No. I mean…” I took a faltering step to the side, my stomach cramping, and I grabbed at my waist. Around my fingers, I could see the heat rising off me, the sun seeming to bake into me, causing everything around me to shimmer.
“I don’t know,” I finally said. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I’d never have hurt him deliberately.”
“And yet—you were hurt,” Ethan said, gesturing to my hands. “The burns will heal, but not entirely. You carried an incredible weight for a long time, Delia. These marks will be permanent proof of what you survived.”
“Oh.” I glanced down at them. “Will they, um, fade?”
He hesitated. “Eventually. Your possession was…certainly unusual. Mordechai tried, in the end, to free you. But now you have freed yourself.”
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, lifted his hands. I bowed beneath the words he spoke, feeling them run over me and into the water, taking some of the pain away. Some of it—but not all of it. Never all of it, I suspected.
At last, he dropped his hands to my shoulders, anchoring me back to the earth. He squeezed, then stood back. “My uncle left some items for you, in his will.”
I gaped at him. “He did? His shawl?”
That made Ethan smile. “If you want his shawl, we can definitely make that happen. But I’m the executor of his will, and I need to review everything he’s designated, make sure we can honor his wishes. You understand?”
I didn’t, but I shrugged, my mind still on my image of Mordechai in his frozen-air office, wrapped in a shawl of moss green and cinnamon. “Sure—I mean, whatever’s appropriate.”
“It will take some time to make sure everything is in order. When I can, I’ll send them to you.”
He spoke some more, then, meaningless words meant to soothe and simplify a life that no longer made any sense. I didn’t mind so much, though. I didn’t mind much of anything, anymore. He left me after a while, and I drifted.
When the day swam back into focus, I was sitting at the edge of the small stream, a blanket around me, Max by my side.
It felt—strange, to have him here. To have all of them, him and Claire on one side, Steve on the other.
I felt like if I spoke, my mouth would still have smoke and steam puffing out at the sides, like I was some kind of teakettle dragon.
I didn’t want to leave the water’s edge, though. I’d lost something in the water, and I wouldn’t leave it.
Rabbi Ethan stood talking to Officer Hernandez, who also hadn’t left.
I didn’t really remember so much when she’d come, but I thought it was a bad thing, her still being here.
I looked out over the paddock, the trees.
I remembered all of it. So I hadn’t really been possessed.
Not in the way that most people were, where they couldn’t be held accountable for their actions, not all of them.
Not the worst of them. I remembered everything. Most everything, anyway.
I didn’t quite know what to do with that.
I looked back at the stream. There’d been something of mine there.
Something I lost in the flow of the rabbi’s words. I missed it.
“Hey.” Steve finally spoke. “How, um—how do you feel?”
“Weird.” There, I could speak. I had a voice. I was still a functioning human, somehow. “How much of that—what did you see?”
“What, with you and the rabbi? Or last night?” He eyed me. “You do remember last night, don’t you?”
“You know, most of the time when people are asked that, it’s because somebody had sex.”
He barked a laugh—Claire did too. Sunny and free, her laugh. Different. “Never let it be said you did anything the easy way,” Steve said. Even Max grinned.
I reveled for a moment in the fact that I had a sense of humor.
Had I always? But Steve was clearly waiting for me to say something else, so I thought hard, for his sake.
“I think I remember most of it, last night I mean. I remember being in the front room. I remember thinking we had everything we needed. I remember Claire leaving and you and Officer Hernandez at the door.” I stiffened, peering at her. “You came back.”
She nodded quickly, her eyes oddly bright. “I came back.”
Max nudged me. “What about the rest? You were kind of impressive.”
“Was I?” I considered that and felt the ache inside my belly again.
I had been turned inside out, and while I was back to being whoever I really was, I didn’t know what that meant.
Not really. And I wasn’t sure I even liked that girl, the bits and pieces of Delia who was left behind.
There was no Rabbi Mordechai, not anymore.
There would be no more Rabbi Ethan, I was pretty sure.
He’d go back to his life and his people and his family, and I would go back to my duplex, with the Soos on the other side of the wall and Steve splitting his time between the work and the booze and the surviving.
“Yeah, you were.” Max pulled me out of the hole I was staring down. “You talked right to those—to whatever it was inside of Mom and Dad. You pulled them out just with your voice and hands.”
“And the holy water and sanctified objects.” I shook my head. “I didn’t have that much to do with it.”
“That’s not true. I couldn’t have held up those things and spoken that way, even if I had all the words.”
“You did, though. You, Steve, and Claire. Officer Hernandez too. You stood for all of them.”
“Only because of you. It was something you had, something you are.”
“Something you should still be,” Claire put in, a little forcefully. “Seriously and for real.”
I chuckled. “I think Rabbi Ethan would have a problem with that.”