I didn’t remember landing, but I must have. Because I was lying on the pavement, the scent of blood in my nose. It hurt but it didn’t, and everything seemed to be flashing around in quick, jerky movements. I heard someone yelling at me, something I couldn’t understand. Then a scream cut through the fog and I was there again, the pain almost unbearable.

“Call an ambulance!” Joel was yelling from above me as Declan cried. “My phone is fucking broken, call them now!”

“I thought she’d save herself. I thought she’d have to use magic to save herself.”

“She doesn’t have magic!” Joel screamed, on the edge of hysteria as I looked up at him, trying to focus on his face to keep myself awake. I had a feeling that if I fell asleep right now, I’d never wake up. “Call a fucking ambulance!”

Then there were footsteps running away. “Come back!” Joel yelled.

Was I dying? Was this what dying felt like? Joel probably knew but I couldn’t get my brain to send the question to my voice box. 

“A-ambu-” I couldn’t get the rest out.

“Dar, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Joel was whispering over and over. I could feel his hand in my hair, but I couldn’t feel much in the rest of my body. “It’s alright, I’m just going to g-”

He held me again, and I realized I was crying. “It’ll be okay,” he said.

“Please go,” I choked out.

“I’ll be right back,” Joel promised, still gripping my hand as he stood up. “I’ll- Gretel!”

“Oh my God, what happened?” Gretel demanded, and I almost sobbed with relief even as the colors of the sky and the trees above me grew less vibrant, like their life was draining too.

“He threw her off the balcony. You have your phone? Call an ambulance.”

She was beside me now, beautiful as I looked up at her. “I need help,” I choked out.

“It’s alright, I’m here.”

“Please…hospital. I need…”

Why wasn’t she calling? I was shivering now and I knew I’d never be warm again. “Gretel, please, call 911,” Joel demanded above me. “Anything I could do is way too risky, and she doesn’t want-”

“We don’t need to. Hang on, let me just-”

“God dammit! Just call the ambulance!” Joel yelled, and he was no longer by my head. There was a thud, and I realized he’d just thrown himself at her. Why? What was happening? I was so confused.

“I’ll do it if you won’t!” Joel snapped. “Just give me your fucking…no. No, please, no. I…”

Then there was silence, but maybe I just couldn’t hear anything beyond the roar in my ears. Gretel was over me again, smiling gently as she stroked my hair. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered soothingly.

“Please…” I whispered, barely able to hold on to consciousness. “I need a doctor.”

“It’s alright,” she repeated. “I’m here, it’s alright. I love you.”

There was a glow around me, and I wondered vaguely if I was dying now. Then there was nothing.

***

There was a breeze coming in the window. I stayed where I was, unwilling to get out of bed, at least for a little while longer. It was warm under the covers, and cozy. But something was wrong and I couldn’t quite…

The balcony. I’d gone over there to see Ezra. But it was Declan, and he threw me over. And I’d been dying.

I opened my eyes. I was in my bedroom. Nothing hurt, not nearly as much as it should have. Was it just a bad dream brought on by the stress of the past several days? 

But as I looked up at the ceiling, I realized I didn’t remember going to bed. The last thing I remembered was lying on the sidewalk outside, bloody and dying and begging for an ambulance. But Gretel-

I shot up in bed, heart pounding. “Hey,” Gretel said gently from where she sat beside me. “Hey, you’re okay. It’s alright.”

“I need an ambulance.”

“No, no, you don’t. You’re fine, see?”

I was. Aside from an aching body and dried blood on my arms, I was fine. But I shouldn’t have been fine. I had broken bones, at the least of it. I’d tasted blood and things were broken inside of me. Joel had been screaming, and Gretel had…

“What did you do?”

As if I didn’t already know. I flipped the covers off of myself and stood up, something that I should not have been able to do. 

“I healed you.”

Gretel was smiling, but the smile was starting to fade as she realized I was terrified. “I asked you to call me an ambulance.”

“They wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

“How do you know that?” I demanded. “I needed a doctor.”

“You didn’t need a…”

She trailed off with an irritated sigh. “You could at least say thank you.”

“Thank you?” I repeated, my functioning heart beating even faster. “Gretel, I asked you to take me to a hospital. I was begging you to call a doctor, and you ignored me?”

This couldn’t be happening right now. But underneath the fear and shock was a sense of almost inevitability. “You knew,” I said.

“So what?” Gretel demanded, sitting on the side of our bed. “Do you really hate magic that much? That you’d be willing to be in the hospital for months? Or maybe never walk again? Or die?”

“I wanted to go to a doctor.”

“You didn’t need a doctor! I fixed you.”

“But what if you couldn’t do it? You’re not God, Gretel. I would have died for your ego if it didn’t work.”

Gretel went pale under her anger. “Do you really think that?”

“You didn’t call an ambulance. You didn’t LET anyone call for one. You and… Where’s Joel?”

“Joel?”

“Was it both of you?”

“What, no. Dar, I did it to help you! I did it because I didn’t want to let you die. I love you!”

“Where’s Joel?”

I could remember it a little clearer now. He’d tried to… He’d tried to stop her. But where was he now?

“He’s sleeping downstairs.”

“Is he hurt?”

“No, he’s fine.”

No, this was very wrong. “He tried to stop you.”

“He was panicking. He’s fine, Dar, he’s just sleeping. I think he gets it though, I did it to help you in a way the doctors wouldn’t have been able to.”

“Sleeping… Gretel, did you drug Joel?”

I felt ridiculous, so wildly paranoid, just asking that question. I waited for her to laugh at me, but instead she looked down at the bed. “I didn’t drug Joel.”

“Then what…”

“He’s downstairs, he’s fine. And so are you. That’s what really matters right now, you’re fine.”

Her voice was so low and soothing, like she was comforting a terrified child. But Joel had been there. He’d been yelling at Declan to call an ambulance. And when Declan ran off, he’d been about to leave me to go call, I remembered that now. He wouldn’t have just decided Gretel was right, I remembered him yelling at her, then nothing.

“Gretel, how did you stop Joel?”

I didn’t want to know, did I? This was Gretel, my girlfriend. The one I wanted to marry. Not some supervillain laying out her plan.

“He’s fine, I swear,” Gretel said again, her voice taking on a tinge of desperation as she stood up. “He was panicking, he was scared. Sleeping would help him get better, so I just helped him sleep.”

I backed away from her, horrified. “I’m a healer!” she insisted, though she didn’t look at me.

“You weaponized your abilities?” I asked, my throat tight.

“I needed to. A doctor wasn’t going to be able to heal you. Or at least not right away, not completely. But I could! I couldn’t let you die!”

“I don’t know what…”

“And you know what?” Gretel demanded, suddenly furious again. “What the hell were you doing over there? You knew it wasn’t safe to leave the condo, of course he was going to get you over there.”

“Of course?” I repeated, glaring up at her. “Of course? First of all, Detective, you didn’t seem too worried about that when I specifically brought it up the other night. Second, are you going to look me in the eye and say your superior intellect told you that obviously he was going to take on Ezra’s appearance and break into that apartment?”

“No, but-”

“No, no fucking buts. I’ve been trying to stay on equal footing with you, but you won’t let me.”

“No, this is your whole thing with magic. You said you were going to try to be more accepting, but all you’ve done is bitch and moan about it. How can you get more accepting if you won’t even give it a fucking chance, Dar?”

I wanted to throw something, but instead, I just took a breath. “That was for everyday things and you know it,” I said. “Not this. This is you barreling over my wishes for my own body, disregarding anything I have to say about it, and just assuming you’re right. And I should have known from the night you threw the deadbolt when I tried to leave.”

“I am right.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re fucking not, Gretel. Not about everything. And right now I honestly can’t tell if this has been just you all along and you hid it from me.”

“What is just me?”

“Controlling,” I said, aware there was no going back. But there was already no going back after she healed my spinal column without my consent, wasn’t there? “It took about twenty minutes from us deciding to fix things to you deciding you knew what was best for me. I can’t live like that.”

“You wouldn’t be living at all if it weren’t for me.”

“You don’t know that.”

Now Gretel looked like she was on the verge of tears. “Fine,” she said. “I’m sorry you don’t like the way I did it. And I’m sorry you think I’m controlling, maybe I could have listened more. But I’m not sorry I saved your life.”

She turned and picked up the duffel bag she had on the floor, then started putting clothes in it. The inevitability of this felt familiar too, but I didn’t move to stop her. “No, for real,” she said, turning to me. “That wasn’t a good apology. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry about saving you, but I’m sorry if I’ve been controlling. But I’m going to go for a little while. We’re not working.”

I thought about asking her to stay, but I was too scared right now. I was scared of her, of what it would mean if I just forgave this and we moved on. She had saved me, she had a point there. But I yet again had no control over any of it. 

I thought about how I’d begged her to call an ambulance, how Joel had thrown himself at her for what I assumed was to get her phone and do it himself. I needed to find him. Gretel said he was alright, and I believed her. But everything was so confusing and I needed to see for myself.

She started out the door, and I followed her down the stairs. As we passed through the ground floor, I saw Joel lying on his side on the living room carpet. He was breathing, so I just walked with Gretel to the front door.

“I’m going to stay with my sister for a few days,” she said, as I closed the door to the neighboring condo, which still hung open.

“Alright.” I had no idea what to say.

“We’ll talk later.”

Again, not a question or asking for agreement. Just a statement. I nodded. She was beautiful, and I already missed her. Gretel looked like she wanted to say more, but then just nodded too and walked out the door.

I stayed where I was, taking deep breaths into non-punctured lungs. Part of me felt ungrateful. She’d saved me. Even if the hospital could save my life, which was likely, there would have been complications. Right now, all that was left was aching muscles. But she’d gotten lucky. I knew she had to work at healing and nothing was guaranteed. 

Maybe this was just not reconcilable.

I closed the front door and went back in, walking over to where Joel was asleep on the floor. He had a black eye, which I didn’t remember seeing before. Was that from Gretel? I hadn’t been completely out of it, but I could have missed it. I gently shook his shoulder. “Hey, Joel. Wake up.”

“Hmm?”

Joel rolled over, looked up, and smiled sleepily. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“I was just dreaming about that night we stayed out by Tanglewood,” he said, closing his eyes with a soft laugh. “When it rained and…”

He sat up so quickly that we almost collided. “You’re alive,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“So she did it.”

“Yeah.”

“She wouldn’t let me call an ambulance. I tried to take her phone, but she grabbed me and… I don’t remember.”

“She healed you.”

The words came out bitter and thick. “Huh,” said Joel, still blinking and looking around the room. “I guess it is possible to weaponise healing magic. I didn’t know that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Didn’t you get thrown off a balcony?”

“Yeah. But I guess I’m okay now.”

He took a shuddering breath. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. So instead, I pointed to his eye. “Did Gretel do that?”

“What? Oh, this?” Joel asked, reaching up to touch it. “No, it was some book in that lady’s attic. It broke my phone too. How bad is it?”

Not as bad as dying on a sidewalk, I guessed, but not great either.

Joel stood up and looked in the mirror. “Shit,” he said, gently touching the swelling bruise. “Didn’t I just have one of these? She couldn’t have healed that too?”

“I have some frozen peas,” I offered. “Unless you can…”

I didn’t want to finish that thought either and was pretty sure I’d throw up if I tried to. “I can’t,” he said softly. “Peas would be great, thanks.”

I led him toward the kitchen, then pulled out the old bag of frozen peas and passed it over. Joel pressed it to his eye with a sigh of relief.

“He got to Ezra again,” Joel said as we sat down at the kitchen table. “He called me right before my phone broke. I think that’s why the book got me, I was distracted. He said Declan compelled him to tell him about the other apartment. He knew that a house could be protected, but it would only be a single unit in a multifamily like this.”

“Do you want to call him?”

“Yeah.”

I offered him my phone, then stepped out into the garden to give him some space to call. When I got back, my phone was sitting on the table and Joel was sitting silently, staring at it.

“What happened?”

“He doesn’t want to see me anymore,” he said. “I told him what happened wasn’t his fault, and he gets it. But he knows I can compel people too. I know you guys talked about it. I should have talked to him too, but I didn’t. But he’s…fuck, he’s scared of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I sat back down across from him. “Dar?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you scared of me?”

Was I? I was currently terrified of Gretel, but I couldn’t bring myself to fear Joel. Not anymore. Not after he’d fought to get me to a regular hospital.

“No.”

He nodded, still looking at the table. Then he reached out for my hand and I let him take it.

---

Continue to Chapter 15