Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Figuring it was best to postpone visiting her dad and leave Gray to his research (though she prayed he wouldn’t unearth more yearbooks or, worse, old book reports), and wanting to work off bacon calories, Amara asked for a sparring session.
Her old teacher lit up at the suggestion, so they went to the caretaker’s house on the south end of the property, where the upper floor had been converted to a gymnasium when Amara first began learning to fight.
And hadn’t that been the source of many a squabble?
Death and his Maiden, a.k.a. Hilly, could think of no reason why their daughter needed to learn a proper palm strike or master the spinning back fist. Because I won’t ever be Death, teenager Amara had wanted to shriek but didn’t. And you know that!
It had been one of the few arguments she won, and though her parents essentially oozed “It’s unnecessary but why not humor the silly darling, let her get whatever this is out of her system,” Amara took the training seriously.
A good thing, too, as Skye wasn’t just an expert in all sorts of wonderfully dangerous pastimes like underwater fighting and cooking over an open flame, she was mistress of the Gáe Bolg and passive/aggressive shit-talk during fights.
“Your friend seems nice,” Skye began pleasantly. “For a doomed mortal.”
Amara dodged the blow—barely. “Thanks, I’ll tell him.”
“And it’s nice to see you haven’t let your appetite for pastries slow you down too much.”
“Stop.” Amara blocked, then blocked again. “I’m blushing.”
“The only reason I came today was to see you.”
“Awwww.”
“No, that’s bad. You made me lose a bet with one of the Gede.” Jab. Block. “That purple-wearing shit. I was sure you’d stay in Minnesota.” Hammer fist. “Now I have to hand that smirking jackass twenty dollars.” Hook punch. Uppercut.
“You could at least pretend to be out of breath, you crone. And would it kill you to sweat just a little?”
“What’s that saying your generation loves? Cry more?”
“You leave my generation—ow!—out of it.”
“Mmmm.” Skye looked down at her onetime pupil, whom she’d just tossed to the floor, gasping like a gaffed lake trout. “And then there’s the other reason I came.”
“If it isn’t for the pleasure of my company, I will cry and cry. That’s what those tears will be. They won’t be tears of pain at all.”
“I won’t lie, I’ve always coveted your family’s land.”
“I know.”
“So I took the chance to see it again.”
“I know.”
“And that’s why—what? You do?”
“Uh, yes.” Amara propped herself up on an elbow. Argh, my bruises are going to have bruises. “You’ve told me many times. My parents too. You are not subtle, in case no one has shared that with you. It’s how we know the place reminds you of your home on the Isle of Skye.”
“Ah.”
“What I never got was, why not stay in Skye? It’s still yours.”
Skye tossed her a towel. “It’s a shadow, a scrap of a shadow of what it was,” she replied simply. “It’s almost worse than having nothing, because I can recall the former glory. I can almost see it at times. Close and far. And how are the migraines?”
Amara blinked at the subject change. “Frequent and nauseating.”
“Hmmm.”
The migraines: a twisted gift from . . .
well, she wasn’t sure. First the spots would show up in her left eye, black irregular ones she couldn’t see through.
A dime-shaped blob crackling around the edges like miniature lightning balls.
The blob would grow until she was more than half blind in that eye, and each tiny lightning strike felt like it was hitting the middle of her brain.
Then the aphasia: an utter inability to speak in coherent sentences. Not drunk incoherent: “We shhh, mmm, w’should keep in touch better. Mmm serious, we gotta hang out!”
No, the aphasia rendered her really, really incoherent: “Bllp mmtttti jabbey killy berg.”
The most maddening thing about it? She knew exactly what she was trying to say. She could see the words in her mind, there was no confusion. But there was a breakdown somewhere between brain and speech.
The only good thing about migraine-induced aphasia was that it was transient. Though when you’re trying to ask for help, or just sympathy, and all you can produce is gibberish, “transient” is relative.
Then the headache, which would start at the back of her neck and gradually swallow most of her skull, the trigeminal nerve throbbing in perfect pace with her heartbeat.
Next came the aural sensitivity. Dropped pens sounded like bowling pins falling over, then blowing up.
Then the photophobia—a night-light might as well be a spotlight. And finally, the nausea and accompanying vomiting.
But they weren’t real. Because Death doesn’t get sick. Not even a head cold. And neither does his heir.
“Everyone gets headaches,” her mother had insisted, bewildered. “Just take some ibuprofen.”
“A warehouse, a stadium full of Advil wouldn’t touch what’s in my head, Mother!”
Then, later: “Is this about getting out of your chemistry exam?”
“Mo, tz moot meh brin!” (Fuck aphasia. Seriously.)
Amara shook off the reverie. “I’m dealing.”
“Perhaps the headaches will lessen with time,” Skye suggested.
“That’s what the research says. Thank you, though.”
“Pardon?”
“When I was a teenager, you were the only one who believed my migraines were real. You were the only one who supported me when I tried to get Mom and Dad to help.”
“Well, as you know, I’ll take any excuse to visit. On your feet, Amara. I’ll help you hobble back to your tower.”
“How are you simultaneously the best and the worst?”
“Yet another superpower,” Skye began, but the horrified shrieks cut her off.