In training with Meg, Chuck had thought he’d known pain. Every afternoon for three months, she kicked him around the hard, cold dirt of her backyard before making him run, jump, and lift until his muscles screamed in protest. There were days when he could scarcely move. Nights when he felt the exertion as an ache that reached his bones. But in truth, he hadn’t even begun to experience pain. If his training with Meg fell on a scale of one through ten, it’d be a one.

The aftermath of his talk with the fairy? That was a ten.

Whether his mana channels were actually opening or he was coming down from some pill-induced high, he didn’t know. He didn’t care. As the flaring stabs of pain wracked his body, he only had one thought: Never again. He kicked back from his desk, falling to the floor and writhing in an undignified heap, his arms slapping worthlessly against the wood. Never again. Never again.

He was done with drugs. Done with anything resembling drugs. From here on out, he was on the straight and narrow because nothing was worth this.

It felt like he’d been stung by a thousand bees, their barbed stingers ripping into his flesh with every tiny shift of his body. Like his veins had been scoured by rusty metal and packed with salt. He vomited and didn’t even have enough presence of mind to wipe the sick from his chest. A sticky effluence leaked from each pore, staining the treehouse floor as he thrashed and writhed, but he didn’t wipe that away, either. How could he? He could hardly even think.

Never again. Never again.

An invisible spike was pounded through his crown. Another went through the space between his eyes, and a third speared his throat. His heart felt like it was exploding. An unseen mallet repeatedly pounded his solar plexus, just between his ribs, making breathing impossible. He felt like his tailbone had shattered into a hundred thousand pieces, the shards of bone lodging everywhere they didn’t belong. His bladder released, and then his bowels. Ironically, the scent was welcome in comparison to that of the sticky brown sap that leaked from his pores.

The pain wasn’t just physical. As he writhed, he saw his parents, dressed as they’d been the last time he’d seen them, just before the disastrous flight that had killed them. He saw them, but they didn’t see him; they stood above him and stared into the distance, oblivious to his pain. He cried for them, begged them to help, but they ignored him. Until they didn’t—finally, they turned toward him. As they did, they became marcescent, their outer edges turning brown from a rot that worked toward their centers, burning away their features until nothing remained but withered husks.

He saw his grandparents beside them, poor Bubbe and Zayde, and the same thing happened to them. He saw Meg.

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She stood over him, the worry evident in her wide eyes. She was screaming, though he couldn’t make out the words. If he’d had any reason left within him, he would’ve prayed to any gods in heaven that she’d escape the same fate as his parents and grandparents—but not for her benefit. No, he’d gone to a primal, atavistic place. It was his own pain that occupied him; he’d want her spared if only so he didn’t have to see everyone he’d ever loved burned away like paper brought too close to a flame.

But reason had fled him. He was a slave pain, unaware of everything except that single thought: Never again. Never again. Never again.

After what seemed an eternity, the pain stopped. He didn’t know how long it’d been—only that someone was screaming in his ears. After another moment, he realized he was the one screaming. He made himself stop, though his throat still felt red and raw.

Slowly, Chuck pushed himself to sit. His eyes were still closed, the lids crusted over with the dried effluence that had leaked from his every pore. He stank. He’d never smelled anything like it, a mix of wet fur and dead animal, with a hint of rank milk and sulphuric rotten egg thrown in for good measure. He gagged, though there was nothing left in his stomach to vomit.

Chuck wiped a hand across his face, breaking the crust, and opened his eyes. He was still in his treehouse. All was quiet save for the crickets and bullfrogs; their songs joined in the forest around the treehouse. Meg stood in the entry, one hand holding her shirt over her nose. She looked worried, and why not? She’d just watched her friend go through hell.

“I was in the house when I heard you screaming,” she said. “Are you… okay?”

He wanted to kill her. She’d been the one to give him that pill—she’d taken it herself, she’d said, but she hadn’t warned him about this. Why hadn’t she warned him? What kind of friend made another friend go through that?

Only, he didn’t have the strength for a fight. Or the anger, he realized, as the emotion was replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion. Without a word, he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling.

“The feeling wears off soon,” Meg said. “You should be able to stand in a few minutes. Then you can climb out of here. We’ll need to hose you down, for obvious reasons.”

So she had known what would happen to him. Why give him the pill, then? He didn’t have the strength to ask.

But Meg knew him well enough to understand his unspoken question. “You wouldn’t have taken it, if you’d known how bad it actually was,” she said. “And I needed you to take it. Because it’s real.”

Her heard her move toward him—a daunting position, given the way he smelled. When she reached his desk, she lifted something off its surface. When she turned toward him, he saw it was a book.

Chuck had many books on the shelves in his treehouse, but none looked like the one in Meg’s hands. This was one old. Dusty. Bound in leather. It looked like…

His heart dropped. Exhaustion fled him, replaced by surging adrenaline, and his eyes widened.

This was the book from his vision. The one the fairy had given him.

He blinked, trying to wake himself from a dream, but he was already awake. He was awake, and Meg held a book he’d seen in a drug-induced vision of a well-endowed fairy who’d offered him superpowers.

“My god,” he whispered. “It’s real?”

Meg nodded. “Let’s get you hosed down,” she said. “We have a lot to talk about.”