Residue (21 page)

“
What’s his name, Isadora?” Jameson asked anxiously.

The room flickered and then illuminated the man. Only his head could be seen, the covers having been pulled to his chin. His head was shaved and glistening with perspiration. Beads of sweat ran across his face as he lay on his side, leaving trails from his cheek and across the bridge of his nose. His color was the same as the others. Even through his swarthy skin, he appeared green.

“
His name, Isadora,” Jameson demanded.

When she spoke, it was to the man. “Gustave…” she urged.

He didn’t flinch, didn’t open his eyes. But he did draw a breath, albeit a shallow one.

I didn’t see the point in delaying any longer so I took hold of his hand and Jameson’s simultaneously to conjure the force I was now intimately familiar with inside me.

Suddenly Gustave’s body jolted.

Taken aback, I almost released him but kept my grasp.

“
Incantatio sana,” I breathed, repeating it again and again, working my way through the barrier that the ministry, my mother had created. “Come on, Gustave!”

Then he exhaled, raspy, extended, and I knew it would be his last one. And he then went still.

Vaguely, I registered that I fell back, sitting on my folded legs, but I wouldn’t…I couldn’t release Gustave’s hand. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, apologize to him for failing, for not having gotten here sooner, for waiting too long before accepting my ability. But I couldn’t. All I could do was hold him.

“
It’s not your fault…” Jameson’s voice was in my ear, tender, coaxing. “This isn’t your fault, Jocelyn.”

His arms came around me, pulling me from behind up against the shelter of his chest, his cheek coming over my shoulder to press against mine, the warmth of him surrounding me from the cold reality of what had just happened.

“
You can’t blame yourself,” he whispered. “You tried. We both tried…”

It didn’t matter. The tears fell anyway.

Jameson held me throughout it, pacifying me until my body stopped shaking and the sobs quieted. Only then did I open my eyes and what I saw wasn’t what I expected.

Items around his home had risen a foot or more off the ground. A coffee can tilted slightly as it hovered over the table. Two pieces of firewood were suspended near the stove, knocking against each other in midair. The single chair he owned had lifted all four legs off the ground. The candle Isadora had lit hung over our heads, its flame disturbed by the breeze while it hovered unsteadily above.

“
Who here can levitate?” I asked under my breath, still keeping Jameson close. Something wasn’t quite right…

Watching our reactions closely, Isadora replied, “Gustave.”

I inhaled sharply and rotated back toward him, hoping desperately that he’d revived. But he laid as I’d left him, quiet, peaceful, lifeless.

“
Could he…Could it…I don’t understand,” I muttered, aggravated.

“
Me neither…” said Jameson examining Gustave from afar.

It was Isadora who enlightened us. She hobbled closer and placed a hand on my shoulder, her French accent coming through as she spoke.

“
Jocelyn, Gustave is gone - and you have picked up his residue.”

12 RESIDUE

Residue.

I’d heard this word used in commercials and by the cleaning staff at the academy. It had been in connection to soap scum and tire tread, so I didn’t particularly like the fact it was being applied to me now. Then I looked back at Gustave, who had died in front of me just moments earlier, and I realized how little a word describing me really meant.

There was something far more important I needed to understand.

If Isadora was correct, I now had the ability to levitate, which didn’t make sense. Vinnia had mentioned that there were only two capabilities in the witch world that could not be learned or acquired: healing and levitation. But I suddenly had both.

Throughout the time I was considering all this, Gustave’s possessions that I’d unwittingly lifted had collapsed to the floor, the coffee can spilling ground beans across the wooden planks and wood chips shedding from the logs near the stove on impact.

At that point, Jameson had jumped up and I’d thought at first that he was preparing to defend us. But I was wrong. He wasn’t concerned as much as excited.

“
She’s the one, isn’t she?” he asked, facing Isadora. When she didn’t answer, he prompted, “Isadora?”

“
The one?” I asked, pushing myself to a standing position. Jameson noticed and helped me up, reluctant to release my hand after I was on my feet again. That was just fine with me.

He looked at me, eyes wide and bright, while explaining, “The earliest channelers recorded their writings, what they foresaw, in journals.” He paused to make a comparison to something I could relate to. “Much like Homer’s “Iliad and Odyssey,” except for the channelers’ passages were dedicated to the future. They were designed to give us an understanding of what to expect. One forethought mentioned a person born with the capability to possess all of our powers - healing, levitation, channeling, and control of the elements.”

“
Wait,” I muttered, waving my free hand in front of me, trying to slow down the information coming at me. “Can’t The Sevens already do all of those things? Levitate, heal…”

He scoffed, shaking his head. “They’d like you to believe that…and have done a good job convincing a lot of people of it. But the truth is they’ve only learned to distribute their energy between each other. None of them was actually born with the capability to acquire residue. That’s why they’ve tried to destroy the belief in this one mythical person.”

Still trying to piece it all together, I stopped him again to ask, “And what exactly is residue?”

“
It’s the energy left behind when someone passes on. Gustave, for example…” he waved his hand toward the man in the bed, noticed he was still uncovered and pulled the sheet over his head before continuing. “Gustave had the ability to levitate, something you weren’t able to do just a few minutes ago. When he died, when his soul left his body, you were holding his hand and his power passed on to you.”

“
So if I’m holding the hand of someone when they die, I acquire a bit of their power?” I asked, unsure whether to laugh in denial or grimace and accept the truth.

“
Yes, that’s how it’s done. The power is sent through touch in the same way that you heal through touch. At least that’s how the channelers wrote it would be done. I remember that because when Charlotte was little she’d try to visit funeral homes to hold the hands of the deceased and see if she could acquire their abilities.”

That made Charlotte far more odd than I ever imagined.

“
And you think this person, the one able to acquire the residue, is me?” I asked dubiously.

“
Yes,” he replied, emphatically.

I glanced at Isadora, who had been watching this exchange the entire time. More precisely, she’d been evaluating my reaction. When she witnessed my wavering, she shuffled forward, stopping directly in front of me.

“
When your father died, what were you doing?” she asked pointedly without any allusion toward compassion.

I felt my body go numb, as it always did when his death was brought up. The story I’d heard only once from my mother on a flight from New York to Tahiti. She’d kept the details sparse and I didn’t push her after seeing her distress over the memory of it. What I did know was that my father had died while trying to protect me during an abduction.

I swallowed once to clear my throat and then replied, “I was in his arms. He died holding me to his chest.”

Whether in reaction or as a show of support, I felt Jameson’s hand squeeze mine.

“
And when Gustave died, what were you doing?” she persisted.

This answer I spoke much quieter. “Holding his hand.”

She waited for me to piece this together.

“
You’re saying that I picked up my ability to heal others from my father and I picked up the ability to levitate from Gustave?”

Very slowly, she nodded confirmation.

A silence fell over us then, Jameson breaking it a few long seconds later.

“
This is going to take you time to accept, too, isn’t it?” he asked, referring to my initial denial on healing. After I shrugged, he recommended, “When you do…keep it private. Don’t announce it until you know how to protect yourself.”

“
Why?” I asked innocently.

He glanced warily at Isadora before answering, which didn’t leave me all that reassured. “Because there are those who will want to take advantage of that power - or kill you because of it.”

“
Right…” I said grasping the severity of this unique asset they assumed I had. “Wonderful.”

Isadora began ambling toward the door then, seeming to have come to the conclusion for all of us that only time would allow me to understand and acknowledge this larger fate. As Jameson and I followed, his eyes never left me and as I glanced at him I could see them filled with amazement, his head shaking in disbelief.

We took Isadora back to her home where she and Jameson briefly discussed contacting the Vires. The Seven’s security forces would need to come and collect the body, for confirmation that Gustave was indeed dead and hadn’t figured a way to break the punishment they’d cast. Then we were heading back to the cars, the boat empty now that the supplies had been delivered.

“
That was a lot to be told in one night,” he said, after we’d reached land and were standing at my driver’s side door. “What can I do to make it easier?”

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I replied slowly, thinking it through.

He gave me a grim smile and then said, “Sometime, not right now because it would be suspect, but sometime soon - I’d like to kiss you, Jocelyn.”

My heart skipped a beat at his acknowledgement.

We didn’t move, didn’t breath as we stared into each other’s eyes. Then the world fell away, the crickets were muted, the sloshing of the water against the boat was silenced, and there was only him left.

For the first time since we’d met it became apparent how much we both felt for each other.

Unable to summon any other words, I replied in a whisper with the only ones that came to mind, “I’d like that.”

His face tightened then as he struggled to inhibit his own passion from swelling. Momentarily losing that fight, he brought his hand to my cheek. “Who would have thought that a Caldwell would fall for a Weatherford?”

“
Or that a Weatherford would fall for a Caldwell…”

A smile stretched across his face, brightening at my admission. His hand dropped then and he took a step back, blinking once, hard, to stifle the rest of the stimulating rush surging through him.

“
I won’t say sleep well because I know that’ll be impossible,” he said and then chuckled.

“
Yes, it will be…” I said, not looking forward to the hours I’d be spending tossing and turning.

The sun had already lightened the horizon as he opened my car door for me and I slipped inside. He told me that he’d keep me in his rearview mirror as he closed it and then we drove toward New Orleans.

Once home, I crept upstairs and fell into bed just as others started to stir awake. Soon there were footsteps on creaking floorboards, voices, and slamming doors.

No, I reminded myself again. My cousins are not the quiet kind.

Still, I didn’t move. I lay on the covers, partly speculating on what Jameson’s lips would feel like and partly judging the weight of a pencil I’d left on my nightstand, wondering if I might be able to lift it.

Simply to protect my sanity, the pencil won. I rolled over and attempted to stir the force I used when healing but didn’t feel anything. So I sat up cross legged. Again, this failed. So I swung my legs over the bed and placed my hands on the edge of the mattress. That was when I felt it stir, the force inside me. Soon I was clutching the sheets, bent forward, breathing deeply, and completely unaware of my surroundings.

“
What are you doing?” asked Estelle from the doorway.

I released my grip and started to laugh at myself, my shoulders shaking with the effort. Then she joined in until the rest of the cousins appeared in my doorway too, all of them curious.

“
Going to tell us what’s so funny?” asked Spencer over our bawling.

“
I…” I made a good attempt to calm myself but still had to explain through bursts. “I…was trying…to levitate the pencil.”

That was when Estelle’s giggles ceased and the rest of my cousin’s mouths fell open.

“
What?” I asked, wondering what I could have possibly done so wrong to warrant the expressions on their faces.

The only motion that came from that side of the room was Estelle’s finger. It lifted off the doorknob to point in my direction. Glancing around I nearly missed it and had to look back again.

The pencil was floating just above the nightstand’s lamp.

“
Vinnia…” I sighed, knowing she was playing a joke on me.

She shook her head, lips pinched closed but opening them just long enough to admit, “That’s not me.”