Bulletproof (Healer) (28 page)

             
Sleep has given my body time to heal. The scars from the needles have disappeared now. My skin is glowing once again, any signs of the horror I’ve faced are completely gone. I wish the memories could fade just as quickly.

             
Waiting for Rose to call is like standing on a rooftop and staring down at the city. I look down, knowing that time is passing somewhere for some people - the day goes on for these people - but I am frozen in an eternal minute - nervous, silent, about to jump into the unknown, unsure if I’ll survive the ordeal.

             
It is Channing that comes to the door with the phone in his hand. He mouths the words, “Good luck.” Before handing it over to me, this is it. I have to jump.

             
“Rose?”

             
“Cassie,” her normally breezy voice is shaken. Bad news. “We’re with Arrow.”             

             
“And? Can she help Gabe? Can she help us?”

             
“She can...”

             
“So what’s the problem?” I ask.

             
There’s a pause, leaving nothing but the sound of our nervous breathing, before Rose says, “Arrow can perform a spell which will reverse the transformation Gabe is undergoing but she’s never done it before, there’s no way of knowing what might happen...”

             
“What? It might kill him?” I ask, gasping for a breath when I say the words aloud. I would rather Gabe was alive as a vampire than not living at all. I can’t imagine the world without him now that so much of my life is filled with him.

             
Rose gulps, “No. It won’t kill him or at least Arrow is sure it won’t.”

             
“So what is the problem then? Rose? Spit it out,” I say angrily. Being so far away is putting me in such a helpless position. I want to be with him, with a soothing hand against his feverish forehead. He’s dying right now. His human life is slowly ebbing away from him. I should be there.

             
She clears her throat hesitantly. It can’t be worse than the finality of death. “She’ll be taking away every essence of vampirism out of his body,” Rose says, “An extraction spell like we hoped but in doing so other things might be removed too.”

             
“Like what?” I ask as long as he is alive and safe I don’t care what happens.

             
“His memories...”

             
I take a moment to process what she is saying. Arrow can stop Maurice’s blood from infecting him, take away the poison which is turning him into a vampire, a monster, so Gabe can remain a human and get his life back on track. He can sober up, be happy, leave a life of vampires and witches behind him but what else does he forfeit? Any memory of Rose and her kindness. His love story with Claire. He will forget his bravery, and his ignorance and cowardice. He’ll forget me too. I will never have existed to him. He won’t know that I care about him, that I love him despite knowing the burdens he carries on his shoulders. He will have no recollection of the kiss we shared or any of our fights which have lead us both to this moment.

             
“Is he awake? Does he know what’s happening?” I ask, would this be easier if he can slip away in sleep?

             
“He’s aware, yes,” Rose says quietly.

             
“What does he want to do?” I ask.

             
“He doesn’t want to be a vampire,” Rose replies which is a tactful way to say he has made his decision. He is giving up our memories, our love, so he doesn’t have to live an immortal life as a killer. “He doesn’t want to lose you either, Cassie,” she adds as an afterthought.

             
I saw how tormented Gabe was after watching Claire, the girl  he adored, lose all her memories. It is, after all, our experiences - good and bad - that make us who we are, shape us into the people that our family and friends love and care about. To lose our memory is to become an empty vessel. Now he is forcing me to go through the same pain he endured with Claire. I can’t bear the thought.

             
“We have to do it, Cass,” Rose says sounding weepy. This is as difficult for her as it is for me if not more so. She has known Gabe for years. She’s fought to save him from the depths of depression to make him the good man I know he can be for much longer than I have. Will all of her efforts amount to nothing? If Arrow takes away his memories Rose will lose one of her best friends. She won’t have much left. “We can’t let him become a monster like Maurice.”

             
“But what if he doesn’t?” I say, convincing myself that losing his mind is equal to losing him completely. “What if he can fight it? And be good? I read about some vampires in America...”

             
“Really? After all of this you’re going to believe the bullshit the newspapers feed you about those vampires? They’re all bad; they just cover it up over there so people can sleep at night. Vampires need human blood to survive and they are going to kill to get it. He would kill you, Cassie. He won’t care about you other than for your blood.”

             
“But it’s Gabe, Rose,” I say. I sound manic, “It’s Gabe. We can’t just give up.”

             
“I would do it for you too,” Rose says solemnly and I have to force myself to understand. Losing Gabe is going to hurt badly. He won’t know I am or remember anything of the past month but at least he’ll be alive, he’ll a human who can love another, feel compassion, grow old and have a family. Those are the things I feared that, in his darkness, he would never accomplish and by giving my blessing I can give him the gift of life. But what if I don’t? Will they carry on against my will and rip Gabe cruelly from my arms before I’ve even begun to hold him?

             
“It isn’t certain though, Cass. Arrow says there’s a chance his memories could stay in tact,” Rose says but I am not convinced. She is basically asking me to say my last goodbye, Rose doesn’t believe there’s a chance that Gabe will survive the extraction spell with his memories unscathed.

             
I take a deep breath, “When will Arrow do the spell?”

             
“The sooner the better really,” she mumbles.

             
I feel fresh tears sting my worn out eyes. “Can I speak to him before then?” I ask. I am saying goodbye before I had the chance to say hello.

             
“If you want to,” Rose says. “It’ll be hard though. I wish I wasn’t here to watch it but he needs a friend while he’s still got one.”

             
“He’d want you to be there, Rose,” I say, dabbing my wet cheeks. I wonder if he wants me there too. Through his delirium, is he shouting out my name? Does he wish Claire could be holding his hand? Or is vodka his only lover for the night?

             
Rose is crying now. My only two friends in the world are hurting at the other side of the world and there’s nothing I can do about it. To make matters worse, I have to live with the guilt that it is all my fault. I’m supposed to be a Healer, I should be making their pain go away, not causing more hurt.

             
“And what about me, Rose? What do I do now?”

             
“Go home,” Rose sniffs.

             
“Just like that? Walk through the door and call ‘honey I’m home’ as if I’ve not been away for a month, as if none of this has happened? Somehow I doubt my dad will deal with that,” I say.

             
“At least you have a home to go to, Cassie,” she says. “My brother doesn’t even know who I am. My parents are dead. Roald is probably married now.”

             
“You have me,” I offer but I feel like a poor consolation prize.

             
“Thanks Cassie but maybe you should just focus on getting yourself before thinking about adopting a confused twenty-something with no prospects and a sordid past.”

             
“You’ll be fine, we all will be, right?”

             
“Yeah,” Rose perks up. “Of course we will and if Maurice comes for us, we’ll sort him out. Don’t worry, Cassie.”

             
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” my mind flickers back to Gabe, dying in a witch’s coven in the middle of nowhere.

             
“Go home, Cassie, be with your family. If I could erase your memories, I would,” Rose says.

             
Trading the past few weeks for blissful ignorance is the worst fate imaginable. I will take the fear of Maurice’s return and the endless nightmares about being chained up to a machine, drained of my blood with Maurice’s terrifying face staring down at me because I met Gabe. He has shown me that I’m kind and brave. Meeting Gabe and Rose has made me feel loved and needed. With them, I am not Miracle Girl. I’m more than just a Healer. I’m Cassie Mueller and it just so happens that I’m bulletproof.

             
“Gabe will call you when he’s ready,” Rose says but I’m afraid it will be too late. That they’ll change their mind and complete the spell without giving me a chance to say goodbye to the Gabe that I know. The boy throwing up on the floor of a hotel room. The boy basking in the sunlight on the bridge in Toulouse. The boy who snapped at me in that driving lesson. The boy in the bar.

             
Rose hangs up on me. I know, no matter what, Rose and I will remain friends. I won’t lose her. I’ll help her find a home and a family. I want to watch her make a life out of the rubble that is left. She is too beautiful, wise and brilliant to live such a sad life: running away from a powerful vampire, losing her parents, brother and now her best friend. No amount of shopping or men in the night could fill those voids. I’ll hold her hand while she fumbles through the wreckage and steps into a brighter future.

             
Justin and Channing have been given their orders. Take me home. I’m going home. It feels surreal to me that I am being handed the opportunity to hold my father’s warm, dry hands again and look into the eyes of my siblings. I will be under the covers of my own bed tonight. That just doesn’t seem possible.

             
Driving home is hideous. I can’t shake Gabe out of my head. I haven’t even got a photograph of him. In time, he will fade away from me slowly. I will forget how his scent or how his hands felt inside mine as we walked through the airport. I will forget how enthralled I was by his face and how happy it made me when our lips touched.

             
“Do you have any music?” I ask.

             
“What kind?” Justin asks.

             
“Do you have any heavy metal?” I whisper. Justin obliges and I float away into the distorted crashing sounds that blare from the speakers. Each emphatic beat is another wave drowning me. I hope that Gabe is listening to his favourite music too and it is helping him to block out all the pain before Arrow takes it away completely.

TWENTY-TWO

             
My house is like a mirage when I see it. Small white windows, neatly cut green grass, homemade birdhouse, plastic tricycle strewn by the front door. There is no sign that I am missing. No police car outside, no Missing Person posters or queues of people offering casserole dishes to my dad and Shannon to help ease their grief. Picture perfect suburbia.

             
“Are we at the right place?” Channing asks, peering out of the window.

             
“Yes,” I say, dry mouthed. It’s like time stood still while I was away. Or maybe my family moved on without me, threw away my photographs and changed the bedsheets and carried on with their lives. Maybe they were glad to finally wash out the ugly black stain on their white sheet life. No. My dad has to be looking for me. There has to be a search party, desperate to bring me home. They can’t have forgotten I existed this quickly.

             
I open the door and gulp hard. I’m not prepared to see my dad, to answer his questions then to ask him my own. Did he know about mum? Did he know about the vampires or that she was a Healer too? My head feels heavy on my shoulders.             

             
The door swings open before I even reach it. Justin and Channing drive off speedily, leaving no trace that they were ever here. I feel remorseful that I didn’t show my gratitude to them. They helped me, put themselves in danger and I’ll always be thankful to them. I hope they find happiness somewhere and maybe someday I’ll get the chance to tell them how much I appreciated them bringing me home.