“From what Drs. Arbond and Nowston told me,” Tenneson continued, “the regeneration should begin almost immediately. It should take no more than a minute or two for us to notice it.”

But I could hardly care. I had to do something, or else Kreston’s soul would be lost forever.

Just like Rale. Just like Rale.

In my heartache, my focus lapsed. Kreston bled back into existence. Only he wasn’t a boy anymore—nor a kitsune.

Kreston had been reborn as a demon. Claws. Fangs. Blue fire burned from the tips of the fungal horns that grew from his eye-sockets—a hellish candelabra. A tail lashed behind him, lined with spikes that sprouted up all along his spine.

I tried to draw from Andalon’s power—from what I’d felt when we’d banished Frank and Joe-Bob—but I didn’t even know how to do that on my own when Andalon was with me! I didn’t stand a chance here.

I had to send him away.

I had to seal the boy away—and quickly, before the corruption spread to the other souls within me.

Closing my eyes—to focus, and to avoid the sight of my failure—I willed Kreston’s spirit away. For several seconds of dread-tinged silence, I thought that thought and no other, wishing and hoping that my hyperphantasia wouldn’t let me down.

Soon, one minute had passed. I counted the quiet ticks from the old analog clock up on the wall without even trying. Thirty shudders of the second hand, one for every other second.

Then another minute.

“And… there you go,” Dr. Tenneson said. “A perfect negative result.”

I opened my eyes.

Kreston was gone, but the sense of struggle remained. A pocket of air shivered, and I knew it was because there was a demon clawing away behind it, held back by a tarp made from my thoughts.

Dr. Tenneson unhooked the wound resin gun from its dock on the wall. The trail of warm, semi-translucent red goop the resin gun produced as Tenneson ran the gun’s tip along Dr. Derric’s arm sealed up Jonan’s cut in a matter of seconds.

Red, I thought. But mine will be blue.

Blue.

Jonan got up from the seat while Dr. Tenneson looked around.

Heggy sighed. “I’ll go next.” She sat down on the chair-pleated table.

I could feel Kreston squirming. He was like an unwanted thought at the back of my mind.

Oh God…

Now, Kreston would be joining Frank, and Joe-Bob, Esmé, and Ileene. The darkness was breaking him. The fungus was corrupting his soul, turning him into a demon to be sent off to Hell. And it was all my fault. I hadn’t protected him.

Just like I didn’t protect my son.

My eyes watered.

Heggy shook her head. “What if one of us comes up positive?”

Fudge! Angel: help me!

I wanted to scream.

“What could we do?” Ani asked.

“I dunno,” Heggy replied, “that’s why I asked.”

But there was no help. If I ran or tried to make an excuse, at best, I’d only delay it, and—at worst—I’d give my colleagues a reason to believe I was keeping secrets from them—and I was. And if I ran, I’d probably stumble across more ghosts, and I’d fail to help them, and they’d turn into demons, too.

For a moment, I found myself wishing a medical disaster would fall into my lap, something to pull my attention away from the demons at the door, and from the reckoning awaiting me at the glinting tip of Dr. Tenneson’s scalpel.

Above, the ceiling started to bulge downward, as if it was being crushed by a great weight.

No!

I didn’t want that. Why would I think that?

I banished the thought.

The melting ceiling turned back to normal.

Was I really that broken?

It wasn’t that I was broken. No: it was my oldest tormentor, come back to haunt me. I was powerless, plain and simple. What could I possibly do to stop my mutant flesh from stitching itself up after Dr. Tenneson split it open with his scalpel?

How could I ever hope to save myself if I couldn’t save other people?

I exhaled sharply. Voices echoed in the distance. If I squinted, I could see spectral forms lurking at the horizon, moving slowly across my visions like tiny flies. They were everywhere—above; below.

I sniffled as I wept. I clenched my fingers into fists to keep my hands from shaking.

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At that moment, I wanted help. I didn’t want to be alone. And, cruel irony that it was, I was surrounded by friends and trusted colleagues who I wanted to turn to, but my sinfulness had bound me in coils of hypocrisy. I wanted to ask Heggy or Ani what to do, to ask them for help. I wanted to ask Heggy or Ani what to do, to ask them for help. Wasn’t that the whole point of having a friend? It was like Brand had said: we all need somebody to lean on.

Heggy rolled up her sleeve, showing where summer tans blurred the edges of the liver-spots that had tried and failed to conquer her skin. Clenching her fist shut—her arm going taut—Heggy turned away as Dr. Tenneson brought the Stinger down onto her.

I missed Andalon. I know it was cliché, but I hadn’t appreciated her as much as I should have. I hadn’t realized what she’d been dealing with.

Some of the ghosts in the distance began their approach. A handful of the tiny lights hovering in my vision began to enlarge, taking on definite forms—and all of them were demons. Every last one of them.

I quivered beneath my PPE. I tried to mask my shaking by making a point of inhaling deeply, but that didn’t stop me from clearing my throat. To my ears, the noise was like a demolition engine revving behind my nose.

My shoulders spasmed as I heard a demolition engine rev up right behind me.

I squeezed my fists, digging my fingernails into my palms as I tried not to scream.

Quiet! Quiet! Quiet!

The demolition engine faded, but the Kreston-demon continued to flail. The barrier shroud hiding him from sight shook right in front of me, as if it would break at any moment.

The holographic curtain surrounding us seemed to flutter.

I wept.

Dana, I thought. Sis… if only the Angel would bring you back to me. If only He hadn’t chosen to take you away.

I wished she was here!

Dana, I miss you so much!

A familiar ache started building in my head: a pressure, both from within and without. But I had to bury my pain. There wasn’t any time.

Just focus on breathing. Try to stay calm.

The approaching ghosts flickered, freezing in place. It took effort to keep them there, but… maybe I could manage.

I looked up at my colleagues, looking for signs of doubt in their faces. Did they think I was short of breath? Or was I just being timorous and twitchy like always?

But then I stopped my breathing when I remembered that I might be spreading the plague that way.

Oh fudge! Oh fudge!

Dr. Tenneson swapped out for a new needle before he set the Stinger back down.

“Here we go,” he said.

There he went, cutting, cutting, cutting. There was so little blood—was that really normal? Or…

—No, please don’t tell me… don’t tell me Heggy’s infected, too…

Fudge… Fudge!!

A massive claw sliced through the air. I pressed my hand down on my hairnet and closed my eyes so hard, I thought my eyelids would tear off my face.

Go away. Go away. I’m sorry Kreston, please… go away.

I rocked back and forth on my stool, but slightly. Only slightly.

I opened my eyes. The air twitched, but the claws were gone.

The leak was sealed.

For now.

I nearly laughed. It wouldn’t have been a happy laugh, no. It would have been the laugh of a madman who knew he was going mad!

Madwyrm. Madwyrm!

I was a stress-smacked golf ball teetering at the edge of a hole beneath a sign that spelled out, “Genneth Howle Is Having A Panic Attack” in big, bold letters painted in fire and blood.

My fingers throbbed and ached.

Sword stab me… am I growing claws?

I looked and looked, and I couldn’t find any sight of them—but that didn’t mean they weren’t there!

“So far, so good, Dr. Marteneiss,” Dr. Tenneson said.

I wanted to get up, run down the hallway and jump out a freaking window. Just end it. End my misery. End it all!

For an instant, everything around me blurred as it felt like me and the stool were being launched through a railgun into the sky.

I clenched my fists again.

Stop! Please, stop!

I needed to get myself under control before it was too late.

“Just a little bit longer and we’ll know if I’m a mutant or not,” Heggy snarked.

“Don’t say that,” Ani chided. “They’re still people.”

If by people, you meant wyrms.

Wyrms with magic powers, no less.

Powers…

Could I use my powers to get myself out of this mess?

I could try jamming invisible fingertips into the incision and pry it open, and hold it that way.

But…

I’d have to be as furtive as a fly. Those ‘fingertips’ would have to be thinner than moonbeams. One wrong move, one overshoot, and…

Mentally, I shook my head.

No, I don’t want to think about it!

“Alright, Dr. Marteneiss,” Dr. Tenneson said, “you’re clean.”

Heggy got up from the shape-changed examination table.

Oh please. Oh please oh please. Please don’t pick—

“—I might as well go next.”

I snapped my head to the speaker: Dr. Horosha. He sat down on the chair-shaped table.

That—that bought me some time. Not much, but it was better than nothing.

I looked into the distance.

Fudge.

The ghosts were getting closer. They glowed in my visions like blotches of heat signatures. I could make out their features: their heads, their arms, their limbs.

They had too many limbs.

No! Focus!

I needed to use my powers. That was the only way I was going to get out of this alive.

I didn’t know if Kreston and Ileene and the others could still be saved, but I knew for certain I wouldn’t be able to save them if I was trapped in sedated unconsciousness while the rest of the world came to its end.

It’s gotta be just like playing the clarinet, I told myself. Practice makes perfect.

I slunk away from the scene even further, rolling my stool back until the holographic curtain was nearly pouring down on me like a waterfall.

I shuddered as what felt like water poured down my shoulders.

No! Stop! Stop!

I banished the unwanted daydream.

It was just like with the door in the stairwell. I needed to visualize the invisible. I needed to spin fractal webs using the music of the mind. I’d sent a bottle flying by shaping the stuff into a whip and flicking it forward; I’d crushed a bottle by imagining a glove-hand squeezing around it. I’d muffled a slamming door by trapping sound against it.

So what do I do here?

No—fudge it all!—I just needed… I just needed to do something.

The Stinger snapped, stabbing anesthetic into Dr. Horosha’s arm. I flinched at the sound.

My thoughts found their answer in a familiar aerie.

I’d use music!

The first piece that popped into my head? The Juggler Dance, from Atchikadjan’s ballet, Izmayl.

Directorate-era composers from Odensk often got the short end of fame’s stick, but—with that one piece, and a couple of others—Atchikadjan had grabbed a branch of the tree of the immortals. Even my kids would have recognized the Juggler Dance: the inimitable jackhammering of piano and celeste in a schizophrenic, syncopated rhythm-melody, only breaking for the breathless moments where the brass zoomed past like fire-trucks bounding up into the air as they rushed down Elpeck’s hilly streets.

A fire truck ran past me, mere inches from my face, sirens blaring.

Focus!

The plexus appeared, called by my thoughts. The gleaming sheet of incorporeal fiber rippled like water in the rain, jittering in time with the manic rhythm rattling my ears.

It started to rain.

No, not raindrops. Fingertips. A sheet of ever-falling fingertips I could place over my arm to push and prod pry in dozens of tiny motions.

Enough to keep a wound from healing.

The falling water turned to falling fingers.

Darn it all!

I banished it with a groan.