A Spell for Heartsickness (The Rune Tithe #1)

CHAPTER 18

W ith nothing more the hospital could do, Briar was discharged and sent home.

He climbed the stairs of his flat as if going to the gallows and only got halfway before he had to sit and rest, head between his knees, a bag of potion bottles set at his feet.

His new prescription came with further bad news. It cost more than five months’ worth of his previous supply. Connor kindly informed him the hospital in Coill Darragh had a loaning policy that would cover him. He hadn’t extrapolated on how Briar would go about repaying that loan, but it seemed clear he didn’t expect Briar would survive long enough to do so.

This debt, added to the loans he’d taken out for his mother’s funeral, was another stressor. He could hope Linden would brew him the new dosage, or continue digging himself a financial grave. All this, and he’d been told to relax. Don’t work so hard, it will worsen your symptoms . How could he afford to survive if he didn’t work?

And Rowan…

Briar squeezed his eyes shut. Rowan had stayed with him. He’d more or less carried Briar home. At the door, Briar insisted he would be fine the rest of the way. Rowan reluctantly left, though he clearly didn’t want to leave Briar alone on Christmas. He hadn’t spoken much the whole way, and Briar felt like he’d ruined something precious.

His legs trembled too much to hold him, so he crawled the rest of the way up the stairs and across the floor of his flat. Vatii hopped along beside him. At the edge of his bed, he tried to pull himself up but found himself too weak. The seizure had taken everything out of him. He managed to sit up and lean against the bed.

Only then did he notice Gretchen. She sat cross-legged in the center of his kitchen table, arms folded. Her sour expression spoke volumes.

“Good night?”

He snorted. It was almost funny. She thought he was hungover. “I wish.”

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Gretchen said. “No, actually, I’m not.

Know why? I’m still stuck here.”

Briar closed his eyes. He hadn’t forgotten. Things had just piled up. “I’ve been a bit busy.”

“Yeah. I noticed. Busy sucking Rowan’s beard off. How very nice for you! Do you know what I’ve been doing?”

The mention of Rowan made him flinch. “I—”

“Nothing! Surprise, I’ve been doing nothing, because the only person who can let me out of ghost prison is too busy flirting his way up the class ladder.”

Briar felt sorry, but the longer she railed, the more his sympathy curdled. He’d gotten the ghost orchid pollen, finally. He’d planned to tell her, well… today. Christmas Day. “I’m trying.”

“You haven’t tried anything new! You’ve used all your money on fancy things for Linden’s project instead of calling Niamh. And then there’s all those potions you’re taking, and that seizure you had—”

Briar stiffened. He hadn’t realized Gretchen saw that.

“It’s as if I don’t even exist! You didn’t even tell me you had a bloody curse.”

The guilt in Briar went flinty and sharp. He kept thinking, I’m dying, I’m dying, I don’t have time. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” Gretchen’s specter crackled like the sparks of a roaring bonfire when the kindling finally broke apart in blazing heat. “You don’t sound very sorry, but you don’t sound like anything much anymore because you never talk to me!”

“I am sorry!” The volume of his shout surprised her into silence. “I’m sorry I haven’t figured out what’s tethered you here, and I’m sorry I haven’t had time to look, but I’ve had my hands fairly full with—”

“With Rowan’s dick?!”

“With staying alive!”

She gave him an incredulous look.

“I’m dying.” He said it as much to her as to stop the cycle of it repeating in his head. “The curse is killing me fast, and there’s little I can do to stop it, but I’m going to do what I can, and I’m sorry if that means your imprisonment is lower priority, but I can’t—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know how.

For a moment, he thought it had gotten through to her. She sat stock still, mouth half-open.

Then she said, “I keep telling you, death is no big deal. Figure out how to get me out of here, and we can just be dead together.”

Briar stared in mute disbelief. The news of his impending doom was a grievous wound. Splitting up with Rowan had left it open and raw. Now Gretchen was throwing salt on it, sounding delighted that his life would end soon.

It took all his energy, but he stood. His legs wobbled, so he used the furniture to support himself.

“Where are you going?” Gretchen demanded.

He made his painstaking way to the kitchen and grabbed the salt shaker.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

He unscrewed the cap and started distributing salt. On the floor, on the counters. It scattered in a hissing stream.

Gretchen’s image flickered worse than when she’d been angry. “What—Briar? You can’t be serious!”

Exhausted as he was, fury made for potent fuel. He poured salt into his open palm and threw it over the kitchen table where Gretchen stood. It dissolved her apparition like an acidic rain, passing through her in tiny holes that grew and stretched. Her betrayed expression and garbled shout of alarm were the last he saw or heard of her before she vanished altogether.

The flat went silent. Briar held himself up on the wall. After a moment, he dropped the saltshaker to the ground. It clattered and rolled away. With the last dregs of energy available to him, he shuffled to the bed and collapsed into it.

Vatii fluttered across the room to settle on the pillow beside his head and nuzzle his cheek. She’d been uncharacteristically silent in the hospital and the whole way home. Now she finally spoke.

“It’ll be okay. There’s hope. Linden’s looking for something.”

Briar clenched his eyes shut. It was somehow worse that she sought to comfort him when, under normal circumstances, he’d be bracing for her reproach. For banishing Gretchen. For his foolish behavior with Rowan. For all his terrible choices.

Instead, she preened his hair.

He stayed in bed for hours. Connor had recommended rest, and Briar couldn’t move if he wanted to. At some point, there was a knock at the door, but he couldn’t muster the energy to go downstairs. He stayed in bed and drank his potion at the times instructed. He dragged himself out of bed on two occasions to make toast. The potion tasted even worse at this potency, but he couldn’t stand long enough to cook something without collapsing.

Christmas Day passed this way. By morning, he felt cold to his bones and wanted to soak in a bath, but his tiny flat had no such luxury, so a shower would have to do.

He managed the trip to his bathroom and turned on the showerhead. He removed his clothes and sat on the toilet while waiting for the water to heat. It took only two minutes of standing under the spray for his legs to shiver so precariously he had to sit. The water was hot, though, and it helped to ease the aches spreading through his limbs.

How had it gotten so bad so quickly?

He tipped his head back and waited for the heat to soak into his bones, but it didn’t quite penetrate, and as time wore on, the water cooled. When it reached lukewarm temperature, he tried to stand. The slippery bottom of the shower and his tottering lamb legs prevented it. He tried grabbing hold of the faucet handle, but his arms couldn’t lift his weight. Concluding that he would have to crawl out and partially flood his bathroom, he pulled on the sliding door, only to find it had come off its tread. He tried to force it open, but after all his attempts to stand, his arms were too weak for this as well.

A steadily rising hysteria threatened. He had been eating and laughing and sledging and kissing only a day ago. How had one episode left him so incapacitated?

After a few more pathetic attempts, he curled up against the shower wall, as far out of the cooling spray as he could get, and let out a mournful wail. It was very theatrical and on brand for him.

Vatii came to perch on the edge of the shower door. “Do you want me to get someone?”

“No!” Briar howled. He was committed to having a well-deserved meltdown.

Fate, twisted in its machinations, had other ideas, because there came another knock at the door. Briar whipped his head up and regretted it. His vision swam.

Vatii flapped away. Briar heard her winging down the stairs, then the manic scrabbling of talons against a window. She couldn’t open the door, but she could alarm someone enough they might break in to see what was wrong. Humiliated as he felt, trapped naked in a cold shower, he hoped it was Rowan.

It was not Rowan. Moments after he heard the door open—not with a crash, but a click and jingle—Linden appeared on the other side of the shower glass.

He whipped around at the sight of Briar naked, sputtering. “Oh, pardon me, I’m sorry! Vatii seemed distressed, and I thought you might have been ill again.”

“I am,” Briar said. “The door’s stuck. Don’t look at the mushrooms!” The bathroom still had a fungus problem.

Briar appreciated the irony that, a year ago, if someone had told him Linden Fairchild would burst into his bathroom to rescue him dripping naked from a locked shower, he would have tithed the skin off his left leg to fast-forward in time and arrive at that exact moment.

Now, he lived in a mirror world where everything he’d seen as decadent and delicious had spoiled. He couldn’t even think of a teasing repartee to deflect from his embarrassment as Linden picked the door up out of the tread to wiggle it aside. He looked stricken at the sight of Briar. Without hesitation, he leaned through the spray and pulled Briar to his feet. Drops of water speckled his glasses, and a sheen of water soaked through his hair and clothes. He lowered Briar onto the toilet seat and wrapped a towel around his shoulders, then turned off the shower, something he should have done first.

They looked at one another, neither sure what to do.

Briar broke the silence. “This is not as sexy as I hoped it would be.”

And Linden responded with a gust of indignant laughter.

Briar almost laughed too. “No, seriously, please wipe our memories of this moment. This isn’t how I imagined you seeing me naked.”

“Nor I, but I’m afraid memory spells are quite outside my ability.”

“Shame,” said Briar. “I’ll have to use the traditional method.” He leaned over the counter and knocked his head against it. Gently.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t. Come, let’s get you dried and dressed.”

Linden found and brought him clothes. He allowed Briar to lean on him as they hobbled back into his flat. A plastic bag sat on the salt-covered kitchen table, which hadn’t been there before.

“Someone left it at your door,” Linden explained.

Briar detached from him and put a stabilizing hand on the table. With the other, he peeled open the plastic bag. Inside were several clear containers filled with leftover Christmas dinner. His stomach growled looking at it, even though it was cold.

A note stuck to the top read: I’ll be by with more later —Rowan

“The alderman?” said Linden, looking over his shoulder. “Are you two close?”

“I don’t know anymore,” Briar answered with honest melancholy.

Linden raised an immaculate eyebrow but made no further comment.

He took one of the containers, snapped his fingers, and opened the lid to a puff of steam. The smell made Briar’s mouth water. He sat at the table and hardly waited for Linden to fetch a fork before eating.

Linden watched in contemplative silence. Under other circumstances, Briar would be mortified by anyone seeing him like this, let alone Linden, but the past twenty-four hours had left him devoid of superficial worries like how grotty he looked.

“What’s happened, Briar? You’ve been taking my potions, haven’t you?”

It took less effort to summon an explanation this time. He’d already told Rowan and Gretchen. Between bites of food, Briar summarized his episode and the trip to the clinic. Linden listened, tight-lipped, his features pinched. When Briar told him the prognosis, he rose from his chair and began to pace. The salt crunched under his shoes. By now, Briar understood Linden paced when thinking. The leftovers restored some of his vigor, but looking at the various projects strewn around, he didn’t know how he’d get back to work.

“I might be a little late with our collaboration.”

Linden stopped pacing. “Pardon?”

“Our project. I’ll get to it as soon as I can, but—”

“Absolutely not. You’re not to strain yourself, do you understand? This is very serious, what you’ve told me. It’s abnormal how quickly this has progressed, and if you continue to overextend yourself, it will only worsen. I want you to rest.”

He said all of this very fast, in his usual clipped annunciation, but the note of panic was new. Briar might have been touched, but he felt like a fried circuit board, all emotions numbed from a power surge.

Linden looked around the flat. He’d tidied it magically a week prior, but it was back to a state best described as an invitation for rats. “Did you have an accident with the salt?”

“I had a fight with my roommate.” When Linden continued to look confused, Briar added, “She’s a ghost.”

Linden’s eyes narrowed. “I see. I’ve trained in performing exorcisms, if you wanted a more permanent solution.”

“No! No, we just had a falling out. We’ll sort it eventually. I just needed space.”

Linden still looked dubious. It was unusual, entertaining the presence of a restless spirit, but Briar was adamant. Angry as he was with Gretchen, he still hoped to salvage their friendship. She’d kept him company when he first arrived, a stranger in this town, and besides… it felt important, given the proximity of his own death, to help her find closure in hers.

Maybe. When he was feeling less bruised.

“Very well,” Linden said. “I have an enchantment that will work in place of salt. I will return shortly. Do you need anything at present?”

Briar said he didn’t. To his surprise, Linden came forward and cupped the back of his head before pressing a kiss to the top of his hair. It happened so quickly Briar thought he’d dizzily imagined it.

“What is happening in here on this day?” he said to the room after Linden left.

Vatii replied, “Your destiny is being put to rights?”

Briar didn’t know how to feel about that.

Linden came back soon after. He used magic to tidy up again. In place of salt to keep Gretchen at bay, he tied a charmed ribbon to a desk lamp, ward runes shining along its length. Incredibly, he transfigured Briar’s old, single bed into a double, piled with fluffy pillows and comforters, a feat of magic that required tithes aplenty, the pouches at his belt shrinking with the expenditure. It made Briar ache for the time when his own magic had risen to his call with spirit.

In minutes, Linden transformed the flat into a comfortable oasis, easier to navigate for someone in Briar’s state.

Linden vanished into the bathroom. Light glowed from within, and several sounds like fireworks went off. Briar waited, bewildered. Linden emerged and helped him over to see his work. The bathroom, magically expanded, now contained a bathtub with a seat and detachable showerhead, along with several fluffy white towels, plush mats, and renovated fixtures that shone brand new. No more mold or mushrooms.

Briar wished he felt gratitude. Instead, he felt sick. This was precisely what he’d feared—becoming a charity case incapable of making his own success, dependent on someone else’s. Plus, he’d needed those mushrooms. They made good tithes.

“You didn’t have to do all this.”

“If there’s anything else that could make you more comfortable, you have only to ask.”

“More comfortable.” The phrasing bothered Briar. It sounded too much like it could end with before your time comes.

“No, not like that,” Linden said.

Briar leaned on his shoulder for support, so their faces were very close. He could make out every crystalline eddy of Linden’s blue eyes, every fine, flyaway hair from his plait.

“I told you before. I will find you that cure.”