“How do
you know it’s poison?”
“Oh, not
to kill. No, to debilitate.” The doctor stopped, mouth open as if about to say
something else. He narrowed his eyes at me, then held out both hands to me,
palms up. “Indulge me?”
I
hesitated, then glanced at Angela. She frowned at the doctor, but she glanced at
me and nodded. I put my hands in his. Again, that singing feeling. The numb
patches in my legs and my back woke up to tingles that burned for a few seconds,
then faded entirely. I felt like I could walk up the stairs to Angela’s
apartment without holding onto the railing.
That sporadic
sense of being whole, of my legs being reliable, had been missing since fall.
When the doctor asked how I felt now, I told him that.
“All
right, you want to fill the rest of us in?” Kurt said.
Sometimes
I really loved it when he slid into his protective big brother role.
“Angela’s
theory is correct. Something has been slowly draining the defensive energy
enclosing the town and supporting the wellbeing of its defenders. The same
parasite, if you will permit such a crude term—the same parasite also taints the
energy that remains.”
“Meaning
Lanie should have been healed, but the taint is having the opposite effect?”
Hayward said.
It struck me as odd, a violation of some unspoken natural laws, that this stern military man understood what I suspected came under the heading of magic.
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