“No. I used to be a mess. A hot one even, but I’m only lukewarm now.”
“That too, but I was referring to this twin business. Seems it affected you as much as it did Ari.” She picked at her fruit salad, eating around the maraschino cherries. “In some ways it would have been better if he hadn’t had magic at all.”
“Why?”
“As the two of you developed, gestated, Ari’s magic must have inhibited yours. His lay dormant, waiting for the induction ritual, and that leeched onto your magic.”
“But when the ritual happened, it was my magic that burst free.”
“Because your magic is innately stronger. It overpowered his.”
I rubbed my temples. “Even so, why didn’t I get all my magic at once?”
“The induction ritual freed it, but that ritual is designed to only call out the magic bestowed upon Rasha.” She shrugged. “That’s what you got.”
“The elimination magic pertaining to killing demons. Right.”
“Give your magic time to fully manifest and stabilize.”
Sienna pushed the door open, letting in the hum from the floor polishers outside. Her scrubs were printed with teddy bears and she’d changed the beads on the ends of her dreadlocks from blue to glittery green. She saw me and groaned. “My day is complete.”
“Happy to brighten your world. Anyhow, Rabbi Abrams is totally a candy sneak which can’t be good for his diabetes.” I babbled on, while Sienna placed her hands on Dr. Gelman’s chest and closed her eyes.
“I have a nurse on this ward, you know,” Gelman said. “She’s lovely and takes very good care of me.”
Sienna finished her magic treatment before responding. She opened her eyes, shaking out her hands. “She doesn’t have my vested interest. I lose you, I lose the best rugelach around.”
I clasped my hands under my chin. “You make rugelach?”
“She does.” Sienna headed for the door. “If you want any, next time spring for something better than crappy hospital store flowers.”
Dr. Gelman frowned. “Why didn’t you want her to know?”
I made sure Sienna had disappeared down the corridor before answering. “I get the impression she hates the Brotherhood.”
Gelman snorted. “To put it mildly.”
“For all intents and purposes, I’m still Brotherhood.” My Rasha ring glinted under the lights. Was there a way to get this stupid ring off me if I wasn’t Rasha?
“You’ll need to be trained in the full extent of your infusion and elimination magic.”
“Are you offering?” Having Dr. Gelman as my mentor was my dream.
“Depends. There’s a test to verify you are a witch and not a mutant Rasha.” Gelman nudged me with her blanket-covered foot. “This is where you come in.”
“Shouldn’t this have happened before you welcomed me to the club?”
“I was trying to make you happy. You so desperately looked like you wanted to belong.”
I rolled my eyes. “What kind of a test?”
“Enough questions. There is a test. You will take it.” Gelman plucked a flower out of the vase beside her bed. Not from the bouquet I’d brought. Mine were at least all alive. “Restore the azalea to its natural beauty.”
“Is most infusion magic healing?” How boring. I exhaled in a hard “oomph” like I’d been punched in the gut. My lungs started bubbling, going at it like a pot of water on full boil, getting larger and larger, pushing everything else inside me aside. I was going to pop.
“I’m infusing your lungs with air. Blowing them up like a balloon. Does that feel very healing?”
I flailed around until she released me, then rubbed my chest. “Can I learn that?”
“We’ll see.” She squeezed my hand and warmth unfurled inside me, taking the pain away.
The azalea sprig had only a single white-tipped pink bloom, brown curling one shriveled edge. I carefully took the wilted piece of compost…
…and two of its three remaining petals fluttered to the ground.
“Brilliant start.”
Everyone was a critic. I wasn’t warm and fuzzy at the best of times so pulling some latent Mother Nature instinct out of my ass didn’t exactly come naturally. I waved my finger over the flower like a wand.
“Say ‘abracadabra’ and I’ll stab you,’” Dr. Gelman said.
“Like that plastic cutlery’s gonna inflict hella damage.” I scrambled for a different plan. “You’re not such a bad little flower. You just need a little love.” The words had worked for Linus and the Christmas tree. Thinking good vibes, I sent the tiniest spark of magic into the sprig, hoping that might jump start it back to life.
Its last petal fell off.
“Let’s table this for now.” Figuring that electricity was at the heart of all things and perhaps the flower simply needed a good long soak, I infused the sprig with a constant low-grade stream of magic. “Did you know about Lilith or what the painting implied? Any of it?”
“No.”
I peeked in at the petal. Nada. “Could Lila be the one binding demons? Even if she’s part demon or whatever now, she was a human witch at some point so she could have both red and blue magic giving us the purple. She’s got to be massively powerful.”
“She’s not a demon.”
“She has to be. Mahlat was her daughter and Asmodeus her grandson. Weird though. That would have made him only a quarter demon, but his power was immense. He was like demon royalty, not some wannabe. And he didn’t dissolve into gold dust when I killed him like other halflings do. Like his own two spawn did.”
“Lilith isn’t an ordinary human.” Gelman adjusted her blankets. “By the time she’d birthed Mahlat, she was already suffused with dark magic. If Mahlat and her sisters presented as full demons in every way that counted, then I imagine the demon and dark magic formed a genetic mutation resulting in this superbreed of creature. And remember, David already had Rasha magic when he slept with Mahlat and had Asmodeus. The mother of Asmodeus’ offspring must have been a regular human.”
“Insanely powerful mutant demons. That’s terrifying. But what about Lila feeding off my sexual memory like a succubus?”
“No, Nava.” She cut off all further protest. “Lilith is not a demon. It doesn’t work that way. There is no spell to make a person part demon. You can’t be turned or bitten. The only way she could still be alive is through magic so dark I don’t know how it hasn’t killed her.” Her brows drew together. “No one else has ever survived its practice for very long.”
I opened my fist again but there was only the same flowerless stem. “Everyone is so certain they know how this all works. Except when they don’t.”
“I do. Lilith offered to find you the witch. She never would have done so had she been the one binding those demons, and you can be sure Malik would have known if it was her.”
“But she isn’t helping me.” I glared at the azalea, frustrated with my lack of a name, a lack of answers, a giant fucking lack.
Gelman poured herself some water. “She isn’t helping you because you refused whatever price she put on the job. Yes?”