True: An Elixir Novel (19 page)

“We’re reporters,” he says. “Call the police and we’ll e-mail this video as the start of a huge exposé that’ll put you out of business.”

Brightley doesn’t look particularly worried, but he does give a slight nod to Spirit Bitsy, who takes her hand off the phone. “The only thing your video ‘exposes’ is your own illegal push onto my property.”

With the back of the lobby open to the grounds,
people are starting to walk over and gawk. “What’s going on?” asks an old man. He’s more wrinkled than a shar-pei and wears a tiny hot-pink Speedo. I get him on camera immediately.

Brightley gives him a smile. “Nothing, Spirit Angus. We were all just about to adjourn to my office.”

“No, we weren’t,” I say. “We like it right here.”

“This is all completely uncalled for,” Brightley says. “Spirit Charlotte signed papers entrusting us to make her decisions for her. If we don’t feel it’s in her best interest to see people, that’s our prerogative.”

“You don’t have her signature,” Ben says. “Her name isn’t Charlotte, it’s Clea. Clea Raymond.”

If that was supposed to be a bombshell, it’s an epic fail. There’s not the slightest flash of recognition on anyone’s face.

“Her mom’s a senator,” I say. “Victoria Weston. She’s a big deal. The whole family is. You can Google them.”

“And Senator Weston will be exceptionally upset if she thinks Clea’s being held against her will,” Ben says. “I’m talking check-your-tax-records, make-sure-all-your-books-get-audited . . .
that kind of upset. Plus, she’d probably look into your program, your accreditation, all those kinds of things. . . .”

The crowd of gawkers has grown, and Brightley looks severely uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable too, but that’s mainly because 90 percent of the people wear a shade of blue that should never be seen outside a baby’s room.

“Against her will?” Brightley laughs. “That’s absurd. Of course you can see her. Spirit Bitsy? Spirit Bitsy, can you get Miss Raymond? And her things?”

Spirit Bitsy is bent over the computer, but leaps up when he repeats her name. “I apologize. I was just Googling the senator. It’s true, she’s quite powerful! And to think her daughter’s a transitioner!”

I open my mouth to tell her Clea’s
not
really a transitioner, but judging by all the excited murmurs from the baby-blue-clad gawkers, that’s what they want to run with.

“Just recognize that you’re interrupting the transitioning process by seeing Miss Raymond right now, and you may well scare off her burgeoning new spirit forever.” He says it to us, but
it’s totally for the gawkers, who murmur their deep concern.

This place is freaking me out. I want to get Clea and get out of here.

It takes ages, but finally Spirit Bitsy comes back. She has one of Clea’s hands pinched between her arthritic fingers and pulls her along like an oversize toddler. A lot like an oversize toddler, since Clea totters on the balls of her feet and looks around at everything with a huge smile on her face.

I don’t know what they gave her, but Clea is blitzed.

“Sage!” she screams, and jumps into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. Then she giggles. “You caught me. I knew you could catch me!”

I’m taping her now, but not for the plan. This is torture material I’ll keep with me for the rest of our lives.

“What did you give her?” Sage asks.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brightley answers, cool as can be.

Sage looks like he’s going to eat Brightley alive, but Ben steadies him with a hand on his arm.

“Whatever it is,” Ben says, “you’d better hope it wears off without a problem, or you know who we’ll be calling.”

We pour out of the building, and I’m thrilled when the door to Transitions slams shut behind us. It’s not a place I ever want to see again.

CLEA

My head throbs. Whatever they shot me with at Transitions left me with a migraine the size of Everest.

I remember everything, though. Even things I don’t want to remember, like hurling myself on Sage and clinging to him like a tree frog. Embarrassing. I was a scrambled mess, but I kept it together long enough to tell Sage, Ben, and Rayna all about Magda and what she said.

Appease the ancient healers. Seek the Greeks.

Then I passed out for who knows how long,
and woke up in this room. The stabbing pain in my head was so bad then that I begged them to turn out all the lights and close the blackout curtains, so now I don’t know if it’s the middle of the day or nighttime.

I feel a million times better. Just a few more minutes lying here with my eyes closed and I’ll be able to get moving. We need to go back to Connecticut. Maybe with the clue, Ben can find something in Dad’s research, or in the rare books library.

I hear the door open and close. Footsteps. Then a pressure as someone sits next to me on the bed.

“Clea.”

It’s Sage. His voice soothes the last remaining throb in my head.

“Hey,” I murmur. I roll sideways, just a little closer to him, and my skin tingles in anticipation of his touch.

It doesn’t come.

He hasn’t left the room. I can feel him there next to me.

I open my eyes.

“Sage?”

It’s dark, but I can see him staring down at me.

“Hey,” I murmur.

He doesn’t answer. He’s looking at me, but it’s almost like he’s looking
past
me. He reaches toward my face, and my whole body wants to recoil. He picks up a strand of my hair and examines it . . . like a lion checking out its kill.

Where are Ben and Rayna?

He’s gotten worse. . . . I know he can be dangerous. . . . Should I scream?

He lets my hair slip through his fingers, then slides a single finger down my cheek. “Clea,” he says again, but there’s no love behind it. No emotion at all. He’s tasting the word, rolling it over on his tongue.

His finger slides down into the hollow of my throat, and he presses down the littlest bit. Just enough to hurt.

“Sage . . .” I say it softly. I want to bring him back, not set him off. “Please stop. That hurts.”

He stops the pressure, but slides his whole hand over my throat. It rests there, not pushing . . . but not lifting, either. “Why shouldn’t I hurt you? You want to hurt me.”

“I don’t. I want to help you. I want to make you better.”

“I don’t believe you. I think you want to steal my soul. You and your friends. That’s what you
want to do.” His voice is kind, which makes it worse. His hand tightens around my throat, and by the time I decide to scream, I can’t.

“Sage . . . ,” I croak.

His fingers dig deeper, squeezing my windpipe. He leans close to my face, close enough that I can make out his eyes. They’re not Sage’s rich brown or Nico’s crystal blue. They’re green and muddy.

“I can’t let you hurt me,” he whispers.

I poke him in the eye, hard. He screams, his grip slackens, and I roll off the bed. I scramble out of the room and slam the door behind me to buy a little time. I don’t know this inn. I don’t know what’s around. I turn one corner, then another, then I see a staircase and make a beeline for it. I’m halfway down, looking over my shoulder for Sage, when I slam into a worried-looking Ben and Rayna.

“We heard someone scream—what happened?” Rayna asks.

Another scream seems to answer, and Sage staggers around the corner, one pink eye swelling, the other locking on me murderously. He
growls
when he sees me, and lunges over the railing, arms straining to reach me.

“Stop!” I scream.

“Is everything okay up there?” a woman’s voice calls.

“Fine, Molly!” calls Rayna, as Ben races up the stairs and tackles Sage around the ankles. The blow comes out of the blue for Sage, and he falls like a tree. His head slams so hard on the wooden floor that it echoes through the inn.

“Are you
sure
everything’s okay up there?” the woman calls again from downstairs.

“Great, Molly!” Rayna chirps.

A soft, high-pitched moan escapes from Sage as he rolls to his side and curls into the fetal position. I scramble to him, but Ben intercepts me. He grabs my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I snap impatiently. I brush his hands off me and kneel at Sage’s head. He cradles his face in his hands, and his back lurches up and down. The sight is so foreign to me I can’t believe it’s real, but it is. He’s crying uncontrollably, and that scares me even more than his hands around my throat.

“Sage . . . Sage, it’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

He doesn’t answer. He can’t. I nod to Rayna, and of course she understands. She taps Ben on the arm and leads him downstairs. A minute later
I hear her leading a cheery conversation with everyone else in the inn.

I stay with Sage in the hall, comforting him as best I can until the sobs die down.

“Sage?”

“I remember,” he says in a voice barely above a whisper. “I know what I did.”

“It wasn’t you,” I assure him.

“It doesn’t matter . . . I could have . . .”

“You didn’t. You wouldn’t. Even if you would, you
won’t
. I saw Magda, remember? You’ll get better. Ben’s going to figure out what she meant, and you’ll get better.”

“You really think we can trust Magda?”

It’s a question I keep asking myself too. I’ve run over our conversation again and again in my mind, each time trying to look deeper into her eyes and see the truth.

“I think we’re running out of time,” I finally say, “and she’s the best chance we have.”

Sage doesn’t respond right away, and I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking. With a deep sigh he eventually sits up, but keeps his back to me.

“Could you give me a little time?” he asks. “I need to be by myself.”

Now I do know what he’s thinking. Fear ripples over my skin, but I won’t let it take over. If he’s broken, then I have to be strong enough for both of us.

“No. I know you too well.” I walk around Sage and plop myself cross-legged in front of him, then duck low so he’s forced to meet my eyes. “You think you could hurt me, and you’d rather die than let that happen. You tried that when you were much harder to kill; there’s no way I’m letting you try it now.”

He looks at me willingly now, his mottled face slack with defeat.

“I love you, Clea.”

“And I love you. Enough to tell you that killing yourself doesn’t make you noble, it makes you a fool. It spits in the face of everything we have, and the future we’re so close to getting. I don’t care if I have to handcuff myself to you, I’m not letting you do it.”

A hint of a smile curls Sage’s mouth. “Handcuffs? That could be fun.”

I lean forward and kiss him. He resists at first, then wraps his arms around me and pulls me close. His hands tangle through my hair, rub down my back, snake beneath my shirt. I hear his breath
in ragged gasps . . . and then I pull away with a smile.

“The rest comes later. Something worth living for.”

Sage gives me his sidelong smirk, then gets up and starts walking down the hall. “I’m going to go lie down for a bit. Maybe you should come with me. You know, just to make sure I don’t do something rash.”

I roll my eyes, but I do follow him into one of the bedrooms, and we lie in each other’s arms until it’s time to leave for the airport. Ben booked us on a flight home, where I have confidence we’ll figure out how to use Magda’s message to save Sage’s soul.

Soon, though. It has to be soon.

CLEA

Sage is fine the whole ride on the plane. We’re not with Ben and Rayna; the plane was pretty full when we booked, so they’re several rows behind us and way on the other side. Since the layout is two-five-two, Sage and I have a little section all to ourselves, like a love seat. An ill-conceived love seat with clunky armrests and barely any space (the upgrade I wanted was sold out), but a love seat nonetheless. We watch the same TV shows on our back-of-the-seat screen, counting down
“Three . . . two . . . one” each time we start one so we’re in sync and laugh at all the same times. We hold hands, I rest my head on his shoulder . . . It’s a bubble of normal in the middle of all our madness. At one point a white-haired woman in the row next to us leans over and asks, “College sweethearts?” Sage immediately says yes, and we spend a half hour telling her stories about our life on campus and our romantic history. We each put in random tiny details, like how we met during a Psych 101 lab, when my lab rat got loose and Sage helped me catch it. All completely fabricated, but for the few hours of the flight, it feels like real life.

It’s only after we land, in the car on the way home, that things change. I’m in the back with Rayna, and Sage is in the passenger seat. I can see him gripping the chair, white-knuckled. He’s pale, and a sheen of sweat covers his face and forehead. It reminds me of the first drive I took with him in his new body, and I wonder if he’s going to get sick.

I lean forward and reach up to rest my hand on his. “Sage . . . ?”

“I’m good, Clea,” he says. The words come out in a rush, like he needs to push them out before
he runs out of energy. I sit back in my seat and look to Rayna, asking her with my eyes if she sees what I see, and she tells me wordlessly that she does, and she doesn’t like it. Ben, on the other hand, looks so sunny I half expect him to break into song.

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” he asks as he goes ahead and does it. He whistles along with the music.

“You’re in a good mood,” I say.

“Because I have good news,” he says. “Or I think I’ll have good news. I’m not positive, but I might know what Magda meant. I need to do a little more research, but I think I know where to look. If I’m right, and I can find what I need . . . we might be able to stop the soul rejection tonight.”

“Tonight?” I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to think.

I turn to Rayna, but she looks so worried I start to wonder if tonight is too soon and something could go wrong. We need to move quickly, though, and if tonight’s even possible . . .

“Rayna?” I say. “I think this is good.”

Rayna nods, but she doesn’t look convinced. I understand. She doesn’t want me to get my
hopes up too high. But hope is all I have right now, and I need to cling to it. I lean forward and squeeze Sage’s shoulder. “Did you hear that?” I say encouragingly. “This could all be finished tonight.”