I wasn’t about to defend or argue. It wasn’t open to debate. Not with her. She was the reason I was going to do it. “Of course I tried olive oil. The paint penetrated the hair shaft,” I said irritably. “It’ll come out eventually.”
“You think you can use its power without it destroying you?”
“What do you think?” I evaded.
“I think the odds are high that’s a great big no.”
“Dani would have risked it.”
“There was a time when I”—she emphasized the pronoun—“didn’t understand the price you can end up paying.”
“You mean going through the Silvers,” I said.
“Coming back,” she whispered. “That was the highest price of all.”
“Got any better ideas?” I said flatly.
Long pause, then, “No.”
I closed my eyes and reached for my inner lake. She was never paying another price. Not if I could help it, and I could. And maybe I’d be just fine.
“Mac, I need you to promise me something,” she whispered urgently.
“Anything,” I said, walking out to greet the still black waters in my mind. They didn’t try to rush up and drown me this time. The surface was serene, placid, inviting, no hint of an undertow.
“If I don’t make it out of here—”
“You will.”
“If I don’t,” she repeated, “I need you to do something for me. Promise me you’ll do it. Promise me you’ll accomplish it no matter what. Say it.”
“I promise,” I said. But whatever she wanted, she could do herself, because she was getting out of here. I was going to see to it.
“The Silver I came through that brought me home…” She told me where it was and how to find it. “I need you to go back through it for me.”
“For what?” I backed away from my lake for a moment, giving her my full attention.
“I need you to rescue Shazam.”
My brain stuttered and I just lay there a few moments, opening my mouth, reconsidering and closing it. I’d thought we were having a fairly sane conversation. She’d been composed, intelligent, rational. Showing more humor than I’d ever seen from Jada. Now we were back to the stuffed animal she nearly died trying to save from the fire.
“He’ll wait for me forever,” she said in an anguished whisper. “He’ll wait and wait and he’ll believe that I’ll come. I can’t stand the thought of him being disappointed, over and over again.”
I didn’t say anything. Because I knew that was what she had done. Waited for someone to come rescue her. And no one had.
“Every day, he’ll just keep sitting there. Thinking it’s going to be that day. The happy one.”
She started to weep then, and it set off another flood of my own tears. The happy one, she’d said. How many years had it taken for her to stop believing? To stop hoping for the happy day?
“He’s so emotional,” she whispered. “And he gets so depressed and he gives up. He was alone for so long. I promised him he’d never be alone again.”
He was? Or she had been?
“And I know he’s going to be hungry,” she fretted. “He gets so hungry.”
Oh, God, I thought, she must have starved in the Silvers, with her enormous requirements for food. And she’d passed that trait off, too, to an imaginary friend.
“Do you promise me you’ll go back and save him if I don’t get out?”
“The fish,” I said woodenly. “You were feeding the stuffed animal fish.”
“You might not be able to find him at first. He hides in other dimensions. You’ll have to talk to the air and tell him his Yi-yi sent you and it’s okay to come out. It may take a while before he believes it’s safe. Whatever you do, don’t let him lick you or try to eat you.”
“Dani,” I said brokenly. She wanted me to go through the Silvers and talk to the air.
“I knew the fish were a bad idea,” she said with some embarrassment.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m not crazy, Mac. Shazam is real,” she said.
I blinked. What did she mean? What was she saying? I’d seen “Shazam.” He was a gutted stuffed animal.
She said tightly, “I left him.”
“The stuffed animal?”
“No,” she said irritably, “that was different. I couldn’t sleep. So I pretended it was him to help me sleep while I figured out what to do. But I knew I was pretending. Then when the abbey caught fire, I felt like it was happening all over again. It was that day again, the day I really lost him. It triggered me. I went a little nuts.”
I turned my head as far to the left as I could. “Shazam is real? Really, truly real?” I said.
“He’s a cranky, furry koala bear/cat thing. I found him my first year Silverside.”
I opened my mouth, closed it. Considered what she’d just said, weighing it for clarity and conviction. Was she telling the truth? Or was she so fractured she was now convincing herself, since Ryodan had gutted her delusion, that she’d left it behind? “A koala bear/cat thing that talks and hides in the air?” I finally said.