Chương 34: Chapter 33 - Ghost Light

The next morning was rough. The painkillers had worn off, I felt more stiff and sore than I had the night before, and Kappa woke me up by licking my face. I let out a disgusted yelp. Conrad swore. A second later, the weight of the bog-monster was removed from the mattress. Kappa wailed at his loss of autonomy. I opened the only eye I could open easily. Conrad was standing over my bed with Kappa in one hand. The bog-monster was still struggling to get to me.

"Sorry about that," Conrad said.

"I told him not to lick you, but he was upset when he saw you this morning." I pushed myself back so I could sit up in bed. It took a while." He was upset? You know he refuses to use toothpaste when he brushes, right?" Kappa grabbed his webbed feet with his webbed hands and yowled, "Mera!" I blinked and looked up at him. His whole face was twisted with heart-wrenching concern. Conrad said, "He didn't like the fact that you smelled like you but didn't look like you." For a moment there was only silence.

Then I laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It made my ribs ache, my bad eye teared up, and pain shot through my face, but it felt good anyway.

Conrad smiled.

"Yeah, I think you'll live." I put my hands up.

"Come here, buddy." Conrad lowered Kappa so I could hold him, but he didn't let go of the bog-monster until Kappa was standing on the bed in front of my crossed legs. Kappa tilted his head and gazed at me.

"What do you think?" I said.

"Am I me?"

"Your face!" Kappa cried.

"I know, right?" I drawled.

"What do you think? Is it an improvement?" Kappa's dissatisfied hum was so loud, it was nearly a growl. Conrad went back over to the TV stand where his breakfast of peanut butter sandwiches and canned chicken breast was waiting. Disgusting, I know, but that was the best we could do when there was no kitchen to cook with. Wolf-boy needed a lot more calories than I did. He turned the desk chair he'd been sitting in so that he could face me and Kappa. As he sat down, he said, "I called Dr. Belliston this morning."

"Why?" My eyes flew over to Kappa, but he seemed fine. Conrad stopped in the act of picking up his sandwich and gave me a look.

"Because I had an injured human on my hands, and I didn't know how to treat her." My cheeks flushed." I know how to treat me."

"You were unconscious and sleeping a hell of a lot later than normal." I glanced at the squat black and brown motel clock beside me. It was only nine-thirty. I smiled as I looked back at Conrad. His ears started doing the limbo dance of embarrassment. He'd been worried about me. I knew it, and he knew I knew it. What a silly dope.

"Did you check on me during the night too?" I teased. Conrad's ears stopped moving.

"You were talking in your sleep."

"Oh, geez." I put a hand to my face to cover up as much of my embarrassment as I could.

"What did I say?"

"I don't know. I've never heard a language like that before." My smile faded. Kappa looked back and forth between Conrad's face and mine, trying to understand why we'd gone silent. He crawled into my lap.

"Mera?" I forced myself to smile at him.

"It's okay, buddy. I'm just plumbing for new depths of weirdness." I put my finger on his nose.

"I'll be sprouting tentacles any day now." Conrad chuffed.

"It'd be interesting to know what Belliston makes of that. In the meantime, he wants you to go easy on the leg for a few days, and he gave me some extra instructions for your ear."

"Is it going to hurt?"

"Probably." I sighed and gave Kappa a hug.

"Come on, little guy. I think I'm going to need some breakfast if I'm going to take on today's challenges." Kappa let out a joyful cry and leapt toward the mini-fridge where I kept the slop that Igor had prepared for him. Worrying about his friend was important—but breakfast was breakfast. When we were done, I showered, then Conrad helped me redress my wounds and take care of my ear. I tried not to wince too much since Kappa was standing on my lap, observing the whole ordeal with suspicious black eyes.

It was clear he did not like the idea of first aid—no, not one bit. Conrad asked me some questions while he worked. Their oddly specific nature made me think that his conversation with Dr. Belliston had been a long one. The answers boiled down to, no, I don't think I have a concussion, and there were no signs of infection in any of the places where the skin had broken. At least, not yet. Then Conrad told me that he'd already ordered some magnets using one-day delivery.

"Magnets?" I said.

"Do they have some kind of weird magical properties that I don't know about?" I saw the edge of Conrad's lips lift in a barely-there smile, but he had enough decency to stop himself from laughing at my ignorance.

"They're for your ear. You put one here"—he pointed to the inside rim of my injured ear. He'd drained it again and was currently trying to cram half a box of gauze pads over the injury—"and here"—he pointed to the back of my ear on the other side.

"They're supposed to help your ear keep its shape." He went back to cramming gauze. My cheeks turned pink. I don't know why I was embarrassed; only wrestlers and boxers knew that kind of information.

"Oh," I said.

"For my ear. Good. I thought you were going to stick them on either side of my head to make it so I could think straight for once." Another barely-there smile appeared on his face.

"I don't think they're that powerful." When he was done, he said that he would take Kappa out to the swamp to play so I could get the rest that Dr. Belliston had insisted I needed. It was a good idea. I hated it, but I was forced to admit that it was a good idea. Conrad must have smelled my frustration.

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked. I told him his nose needed to mind its own business and shooed him out the door. I was left alone in the ugliest room in all of Louisiana. I wanted to be out there, doing something—talking to people, finding that lamp and getting it back to where it belonged. I kept picturing that poor lurker stuck in the trap, his wide eyes shining with fear. Like Gladwyn had said, it was only a matter of time. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent.

Report sightings. But even through the Advil, I could feel a haze of pain hounding my abused body. I had done what research I could, and the official Torr team would be there in a day or two. I sighed and picked up the journal I'd bought the day before. Writing down everything that had happened sounded like worthless busywork to me, but it could count as both resting and doing something, so I figured it was my best option.

I stole Conrad's pillow so I'd be more comfortable sitting up in bed, then I tried to settle down for some writing. An hour later I had X-ed out four paragraphs and filled two other pages with random notes that only lined up with the ruling on the page by accident. I had tried to start at the beginning but got overwhelmed by my crowd of thoughts arguing over what order they went in.

I decided it might be easier to put them in order if I wrote them all down on paper first so I could see them—but so much had happened! And the past wasn't as interesting as the questions that were currently plaguing my brain. Who could have taken the lamp? The only people who were in the swamp regularly were Brodie, Vance, Ayla… and maybe the person who'd hidden that ghillie suit. Thinking of the ghillie suit pulled the edges of my mouth down. We still had no leads on who owned it.

For all I knew, it could've been Jessie—the enraged guy—or some other like-minded citizen of Fort Rive who was determined to find out what the conspiracy was hiding from them. God help them if they ever did find out. Gladwyn and Carver had limited permission to go into the swamp, but they didn't do it often— Olene said that Carver came by a lot. My small scowl was there and gone in an instant. Yes, there might be a discrepancy between what Gladwyn and Durand had said, but Ms.

Durand had never specified what "a lot" meant, and Gladwyn had said Carver talked to Vance about what the preserve needed. Maybe her coming by the swamp to do that qualified as "a lot" to Durand. Or maybe Carver made the trip specifically to see Ms. Durand and had been too polite or shy to mention it to her. Maybe Olene Durand was right, and Carver was lonely. Aren't you supposed to be writing a journal entry? Right!

The first thing that had happened was Gladwyn showing up at the Noctis mansion, being a pompous, bigoted jerk. He was a man in distress. Someone desperate for help. Someone who saved you when you needed it most. Yeah. That annoyed me. It was a lot easier to dislike Gladwyn when I could picture him as a one-dimensional bad guy. He may have resented the Torr and hated the lurkers, but he cared about Fort Rive, and he had stepped in when he saw a need.

His declaration echoed in my head:"If you could prove to me that lamp was theirs by right, I'd do everything in my power to see that it was returned. That's only justice." I believed him. He probably would. But he didn't believe it was theirs, and he wants the lurkers gone. He thinks that this might be his ticket to getting them kicked out of the Sauvage Preserve. Could he have stolen the lamp specifically to agitate the lurkers and get them moved? I scowled at the messy pages of notes in front of me.

That didn't make any sense. If Gladwyn didn't think the lamp belonged to the lurkers, why would he assume they'd search for it? But who did he think it belonged to, if not the lurkers? They were the only ones who lived in the swamp! My right hand scrawled in illegible print— the cabin. That's right. There was the priest.

"Gilles Bourdin," I said, doing my best to imitate Lily Carver's careful pronunciation. The only reason I knew that the lamp didn't belong to Bourdin was because of my vision. It had been there too long to belong to some eighteenth-century upstart, but if I hadn't had that vision, it'd be easy to assume the lamp was another magic relic that belonged with all the others—property of a religious nut and his nutty followers.

Had Bourdin really believed in the religion he'd created, or had he used it to hide his work as a magician? And what, if anything, did he have to do with this mess? The lurkers won't go in his cabin. They say it's dangerous. That was true. But I'd said something similar to Kappa when we found the attic. There was a reason you didn't touch the relics, and there was a reason Iset had asked me to stay away; unknown magic was dangerous.

Aside from his role as the seed for a story about a mad cannibalistic hermit, there was a good chance that Bourdin had nothing to do with the current problem. I smiled and circled the words crazy old hermit on my notes. So many stories! Below crazy old hermit, I'd written rougarou, then ghosts. Beside ghosts was the phrase lost children. I'd doodled a heart next to that because someone needed to love those little guys, so it might as well be me.

Under ghosts was living swamp —referring to the legend that Carver had told me about the swamp having a soul. It wasn't much of a story, but it was spooky enough to belong on the list. Below that was fifola— which was my best attempt to spell "feu follet." The will-o'-the-wisps. Ghost lights. The first story I'd heard about the Sauvage Preserve. I was starting to think that Vance was right; every story had a seed.

Thoughts swam together in my head, brushing up against each other: Bourdin, the lurkers, the swamp where everything collected—water and magic alike. A place so turned around that only a lurker could find their way through it. I wondered what seed had created the story of the feu follet. I rejected the idea of chemical-luminescent swamp gas because it was entirely too boring. If that was the kind of stuff that science was coming up with, I had no need for it. And the journal entry?

I groaned and let my head drop back against the wall. Thunk. All the injuries on my face throbbed, and I cursed myself under my breath. The pain lingered in my black eye for a few seconds longer than anywhere else.

"You're a genius, Emerra Cole," I said to myself.

"A genius." A genius who couldn't focus on the task at hand if her life depended on it. How powerful would the magnets have to be to line up all my scattered thoughts into orderly rows? I was never going to get to that journal entry. My hand—no doubt desperate for further distraction—wandered over to the nightstand to grab my phone. I didn't realize I had picked it up until I was staring at its black screen, wondering why it wouldn't turn on. Because you were waiting for it to dry.

It had been three days since its initial dunking. At that point, I was only delaying the moment I would learn if it was ruined or not. I crossed my fingers and held down the power button. It came on! I laughed, kissed the screen, and cradled the thing to my chest. It had been a hard few days. Any miracle, no matter how small, was welcome. A notification banner spawned on my lock screen. I had an email. Before I had time to fully register my confusion—who even had my email address? —I saw who'd sent it. Iset. Ah.

Yes. She did have my email address, and she'd promised to send me that information about magic poisoning—or whatever the heck the Torr called it. I opened the email. Emerra, I've attached the latest report regarding the tav lines and the coalescing natural magic of Sauvage Preserve. It's fascinating stuff, but I know that you're probably too busy to read it all, so I can sum up the important parts.

The levels are higher than average, but you and Conrad should be in no danger unless you spend several weeks in the places with the greatest accumulation of magic— Ugh. Ayla had been right. How irritating. Because the actual safe limits have never been proved and may depend on the individual, the Torr's recommendations lean toward caution. I've already contacted the Torr in charge of the preserve, and the team they're sending will bring down an extra protective charm for you, just in case— Me… but not Conrad?

His natural protection must have been more impressive than I realized. I hope you're staying out of trouble— My grimace tugged on the stiff muscles of my black and blue face. — and remember that you're always welcome to call me. My heart glowed with fondness. As I carefully wiped away the tiny tears that had sprung to the edges of my eyes, I told myself, firmly, that being in pain was no excuse for being a crybaby.

"If you go on like this, you're going to run out of tears," I murmured. I opened the email attachment with some nebulous idea about earning Iset's kindness by being a responsible adult and reading through it. That intention lasted for a whopping total of two paragraphs. Some merciless scholar had constructed the most tedious, wordy, incomprehensible pile of sentences that I'd ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on. And they'd tried to force me to read The Scarlet Letter in high school!

As I was slogging through the text, I latched onto a small paragraph that I could actually understand, but it turned out to be a block quote from a "draoidh philosopher" that the author was using to help explain why plants grew so much faster in the preserve.

"Where there is magic, there is life. Where there is life, there is magic. The relationship between the two is absolute. By definition and nature, too much life cannot bring death, and neither does too much magic. But both can overwhelm." Everything else registered as nothing but pompous nonsense until I ran across "a list of potential symptoms historically affiliated with overexposure to amassed natural magic."

Listlessness Despondency Depression Giddiness or hysteria Nervousness Paranoia Irritability Aggression Unreliable sensory experiences… The list went on, but the words blurred as my thoughts tangled around each other. I picked up my pen. In front of the word fifola, I wrote eternal, then underlined it twice. What was the seed for the story of the eternal feu follet? A light in the swamp that never faded. It led you astray, but only some people could see it.

I thought about the strange pale flame at the top of the stone lamp. What would be the point of a flame that only some people could see? I heard Iset's voice in my head:"… why would they hide it in the middle of the swamp where no one would be able to use it?" With the hand holding the phone, I closed my email, used speed dial to place a call, and raised my phone to my ear.

"Hey, Iset? Yeah. I'm glad it's working too. Look, I had a weird idea. Can I run it past you to make sure I'm not being stupid?"