True: An Elixir Novel (20 page)

Sage nods, but infinitesimally. The muscles in his jaw clench and unclench as he grips the seat and stares straight ahead.

It’s happening again, but he’s trying to fight it. My stomach clenches as I imagine him losing control in the car. I can see it like it’s real: He lashes out at Ben, who loses control of the steering wheel, and the car swerves wildly into oncoming traffic.

I squeeze my eyes against the fireball exploding in my head, then meet Ben’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Drive fast, okay?”

He does—so fast I’m amazed we don’t get pulled over. I undo my seat belt and lean forward, poised to jump on Sage if he makes any sudden movement. I spend the whole trip that way, never taking my eyes off Sage, every muscle in my body tense and ready to go, but nothing happens.

Ben doesn’t even park the car when we get to
my house, just idles long enough for us to get out, then zooms off to New Haven to hit the rare book archive. I wrap my arms around him as best I can from the backseat before I get out. “Thank you,” I say. “Good luck.”

He drives off, and the three of us blink in the early-morning sun. Rayna yawns and stretches in such an exaggerated way she looks like a cartoon of sleepiness. “I’m super tired,” she sighs. “I’m going to go lie down.”

She heads to her house and I almost stop her—something’s definitely on her mind—then Sage grips my upper arm so hard it hurts. I wheel around, ready to defend myself, but he’s not attacking. He’s deathly pale, and I can feel the vibration of his trembling muscles.

“I need help,” he says, his voice strained and tight. “Help me.”

I start to panic. “What can I do?”

“I can feel it, Clea. The rage. I feel . . . wild. I’m trying to hold it back, but I can’t much longer . . . and I don’t know what it’ll do.”

When I look into his eyes, I see flecks of green breaking through the brown irises. I don’t understand what’s happening. Is it a sign of Nico’s
body pushing out Sage’s soul for good? Is tonight already too late to save him?

“Don’t let me hurt you,” he begs.

“I won’t.”

He shakes his head, a small movement that strains against his tensed neck muscles. “Not good enough. If you won’t let me do what I should . . .”

“Don’t even talk like that. You heard Ben. You can be better by tonight. A few hours, that’s all you need.”

“Then
stop
me. Drug me. Knock me out. You have to. If you don’t . . .”

His whole body trembles violently. He tilts his face to the sky and lets out an awful scream that shakes me.

He wasn’t exaggerating. He’s being eaten alive, and it’s only a matter of time before this thing destroys him. I don’t know if knocking him out will stop his soul from being rejected while we wait for Ben, but I can’t let him go on like this. I grab Sage’s hand, and I’m grateful he lets me pull him inside. He’s still winning the battle inside him right now, but it’s hard-fought. He’s breathing heavily, hunches over as he walks, and the sweat is thick on his body. I bring him to my bed, then
run to the bathroom and rummage through my medicine cabinet.

Do I have anything that can knock him out? I sift through tubes and bottles, checking out every old prescription bottle I’ve neglected to throw away. I finally find some Vicodin, from when I had my wisdom teeth out. I shake the bottle. I didn’t take much of it; there’s still a lot left. Hopefully they’re still good; they have to be about two years old. I fill a cup with water and run back to my bedroom.

Sage lies flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling. His breath is shallow and comes in gasps. His skin has turned to parchment. His hands clench and unclench at his side.

Is he even there anymore? Can I still reach him?

He doesn’t acknowledge me as I walk to the bed. Slowly. I want to get this in him right away, but I don’t want to startle him.

I place my hand on his arm, and his whole body—the whole stiff-as-a-board horizontal expanse of him—flies up in a full body spasm, then flops back on the bed. I want to run. I’m terrified of what he could do, but I have to try and help him.

“Sage . . . I found something . . .”

He turns his head to me, those impossible flecked irises glaring, his mouth and jaw working in a silent struggle. I think he might lunge at me, and I tense up, waiting for the attack. He lashes out . . . and in a single motion sits up, grabs the medicine bottle, rips off the lid, and shakes the pills into his mouth.

“Sage!”

I pull the bottle away as he swallows them dry. How many? I look inside the bottle. I don’t know exactly how many were there, but six are left. I rattle them around in the bottle, and the sound is weak. There must have been twice as many before. Did he take six? Will that kill him?

Sage stares at the ceiling again, and his voice is little more than a hiss when he speaks.

“Leave me alone,” he says. “Just in case.”

I don’t know if he means just in case he dies, or just in case the pills don’t work and he loses control, but either way, I’m not leaving. I lean against the wall and slide down, where I watch him shake and thrash . . . then settle into an eerie calm that looks like death. I start crying, and I don’t want to get up and find out the truth, but somehow I do.

He’s not dead. He looks it, but I can feel a soft pulse in his neck, and when I lay my face next to his, I can feel the littlest puff of breath.

The tears come harder, but they’re tears of relief. Now we just have to wait for Ben. And hope that whenever Sage wakes up, his soul is still there to be saved.

RAYNA

I told Clea I was tired, and I am, but there’s no way I can sleep. From the minute I saw Sage go after Clea at the inn, I knew getting him out of Nico’s body was the right thing to do. It’s not just about giving Nico peace. That would be selfish. It’s for Clea’s own good too. Sage was like a wild animal. How could Clea ever trust him again, even if Ben could turn back the soul rejection? Maybe it would have worked before, but now Sage is too far gone. He’s not just a soul in Nico’s body anymore, he’s more like an evil
spirit. Getting him out is a good thing. It’s a service. Like an exorcism.

Ben said it could happen tonight. Nico’s soul will be freed, and Sage’s soul . . . It’ll be freed too! They’ll both move on. It’s what they both deserve. Peace, and whatever comes beyond this world.

My whole body feels fluttery, like I forgot something important and can’t figure out what it is. I can’t settle into anything. I try doing yoga in my room, but I get distracted by everything: pictures of Nico and me, pictures of Clea and me, the mess on top of my desk.

The mess on top of my desk has to go. It’s a leaning mountain of clothes, old homework assignments, books, makeup . . . Is that my black suede boot? I’ve been looking for that forever!

I dive into the mess and try to organize it, my head dancing with images of organizational nirvana. I’ll put my books in the bookshelf, put all my clothes away, maybe go through and get rid of things I never wear anymore . . .

But if I’m going to clean, I really need to listen to music.

I jump to my iPod docking station and hit shuffle, but as long as I’m here, I should really take the time to flip through and see what I have
on this iPod. I haven’t synced it with iTunes in ages. Maybe I should do that now?

Ugh!

I shake out my entire body, head to toe.

I can’t concentrate!

I grab my phone and text Ben. Whenever it is, I want to be there.

I plop down on my bed and wait for him to text back.

Done.

Relief floods over me.

That was it. If Nico’s soul is going to be freed, I need to be there to feel it. I need to reach out to him with every bit of energy in my body and let him know this is my gift to him. This will be my way to tell him I love him, thank him for everything we had, and say good-bye.

That’s better. Now I can sleep.

“Rayna!”

Did a giant cat just pounce on my bed? No, I don’t have a cat. What is that?

“Rayna, wake up!”

I open my eyes and scream before I realize it’s Ben, plopped on the side of my bead, leaning over me with a wild grin on his face. I smack him with a pillow.

“What are you doing?! Who said you could come into my room?”

“Your dad let me in. I figured it out!”

“You figured out why my dad let you in?”

“The way to release Sage’s soul. To get him out of Nico’s body for good.”

A chill races over me, and I hug the pillow tight.

“How?”

But Ben’s eyes have drifted to the Nico portion of my wall. “Is that a sugar cube?”

“Ben! I’m asking you about the exorcism!”

“The exorcism?”

“Yes! Blasting a bad spirit out of someone else’s body. That’s an exorcism, right?”

“Okay . . . sure. But an exorcism is usually connected to Christianity. Magda told us to seek the Greeks, remember? Those are the gods whose help we need.”

“So . . . we just call up Mount Olympus and ask Zeus and the gang for a solid?”

Ben raises his eyebrows.

“What? I know mythology. I saw
Clash of the Titans
. Even the old cheesy one.”

“No. ‘Zeus and the gang’ won’t help us. We need specific gods. Magda also said, ‘Appease the ancient healers.’ ” He leans down, picks up a
satchel he’d dropped next to the bed, and pulls out five small geodes—rocks bursting with colorful spiked crystals. He lays them out on the bedspread, one by one: blue, lavender, orange, pink, and green. “Agate, fluorite, wulfenite, calcite, and malachite,” he says, “the gem representatives of Panacea, Hygeia, Iaso, Aceso, and Aglaea, the sister goddesses of healing. Invoked properly, these goddesses will stop the soul rejection and secure Sage in Nico’s body.”

“Wait—I thought we were kicking Sage out of Nico’s body.”

“Tell me: In your dedicated study of Greek mythology on the IMAX screen, did you learn anything about Eris?”

“Was he played by Ralph Fiennes?”

“No.
She
is the goddess of discord. She’s not in the top pantheon, but she’s very strong—much stronger than the healing sisters.” He reaches into the satchel and pulls out one more geode. The crystals inside this one are jet-black and jut out like blades. “Magnetite. Symbol of Eris. Bring her into the mix and she’ll make sure the ritual fails.”

“Then Nico’s soul can move on and find peace?”

“I believe it can. Yes.”

I stare at the geodes, their crystals winking back the light in the room. The Eris crystal is sharpest, and I picture its daggers slicing into Nico’s body and tearing Sage’s soul away.

“Will it hurt?” I ask.

“Will it hurt Sage? I don’t know . . . but I don’t think so.”

I can’t take my eyes off the black crystal.

“Promise me we’re doing this for the right reasons. We’re doing it because it’s the only way Nico’s soul can rest, not because it hurts too much to see Clea with her soulmate . . . when neither one of us can be with ours.”

I feel Ben stiffen next to me, but when I meet his eyes, he relaxes and runs his hands through his hair. He even laughs a little. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ben, you’ve always been in love with Clea.”

“I’m over it.” His voice is cold and flat, then he takes a deep breath and lets it out in a tortured sigh. “I’m doing this for Nico. I killed him, Rayna. I think about it all the time, every day. I pushed him to the ground, and he landed on a knife that cut him open.”

“Don’t . . .”

“I have to. You need to understand. His blood
is on my hands. The least I can do is free his soul. I can’t live with the alternative.”

I’m nodding, agreeing before I’m even aware of it.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

CLEA

For the first several hours after he takes the drugs, Sage is deathly still. I stay at his side and watch him sleep. I want to check his pulse and breath constantly, but I force myself to watch the clock and wait. Every fifteen minutes I let myself check. Every time he’s alive, but I have no idea if underneath the haze he’s still himself or some soulless monster.

As the heavy dose of Vicodin wears off, Sage starts thrashing in bed. Just spasms at first—a leg or arm springing out for just a second. They’re
like missiles, and I step away from the bed so I don’t get hit.

“It’s okay, Sage,” I tell him. “You can relax. It’s okay.”

If he hears me, it doesn’t show. The thrashing gets worse until his whole body twists and turns so violently I worry he’ll dislocate his hip or shoulder. He moans, too, a horrible, agonized wail that I can’t bear to hear.

“It’s okay!” I say, shouting so he can hear me over his own cries. I feel so helpless, I’m crying too. I can’t even get near him, the thrashing is so bad. “Please be okay. Please!”

He bolts upright, eyes wide open, and we both scream.

He’s still for a moment, and I see his flecked eyes are more green than brown now. I’m in his sight line, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. I don’t know if his eyes even see.

Suddenly he bends his legs and grabs around his calves. He rocks back and forth, his voice keening a high-pitched note that doesn’t stop.

Oh my God, what is happening?

The note gets higher and higher pitched, like a teakettle ready to burst. He’s going to explode if I don’t do something. What can I do?

I lunge for the Vicodin bottle and shake it to get his attention.

“Sage? Sage, please, this will help you. Take these. It’ll calm you down. You can rest. It’ll be okay.”

I have the water I brought in before, the water he didn’t use when he spilled the pills into his mouth. I tiptoe carefully to his side, on alert in case he lashes out with an arm or leg, but it doesn’t happen. I perch on the bed right next to him and hold out the pills and water. For the first time he acknowledges me, his eyes shifting to the side to take me in.

“Take these,” I say. I force myself not to cry anymore—not right now—but I can feel the tears behind my eyes. Maybe the pills will help, or maybe they’ll put him over the edge into a coma. Or kill him. But the torture in his body is killing him too; I don’t have any other options. “Go ahead. It’ll be okay. I promise.”