Chapter Seven
Thea tried desperately to patch things up with Elise. She texted her and called her. Every time she went to hang out with Logan, she knocked on her door. But it seemed that Elise was ignoring them both these days.
She and Logan came downstairs one morning, on their way out, and Elise was sitting in the kitchen with one of their other roommates, Steven.
“Hey, guys, there’s fresh coffee,” Steven said, waving to them.
“Thanks,” Logan said, and walked toward the kitchen. Thea followed.
“I didn’t make it for you,” Elise said, glaring at them both.
“Morning, Elise,” Thea said.
“Don’t talk to me like you’re my friend,” Elise said.
“Whoa,” Steven said. “What is going on with you guys?”
No one said anything for several minutes. Then, finally, Thea said, “She doesn’t want me with her brother.”
Steven nodded slowly. “Oh.”
“Can you blame me?” Elise said. “Steven, you’ve seen the way he is.”
Steven glanced at Logan, who shrugged. “I’m now the scum of the earth, according to her.”
“No, you’re my brother, but I’ve seen you with women and you’re a jerk. Thea, I told you what he’s done. How can you not care about any of it?”
Thea looked to Logan for help. “Elise, I think you’re making a bigger deal out of this than it is. He made a few mistakes, sure, but haven’t we all? I mean, what about that Justin guy?”
“What about him?” Elise slammed her mug on the counter.
“You totally played him! You knew he was into you and you just kept leading him on, even though you didn’t like him at all.”
Steven quietly snuck out of the room, putting a hand on Logan’s shoulder as he passed him as if to say, “Good luck.”
“Whatever,” Elise said. “One guy. When has Logan ever treated a woman right?”
“I am right here, you know,” Logan said. “I don’t really appreciate you talking about me right in front of me.”
“Feel free to leave anytime,” Elise said.
“If you would hang out with us once in a while, you’d see how Logan treats me. Which is, really, pretty much how he has for years, except now we also kiss and do other stuff.”
“Eww. I really don’t want to hear about your ‘other stuff’. I don’t need to hear anything from either of you until you come to tell me you broke up.” Elise stormed from the room, slamming open the basement door and thundering down the stairs.
“Give me a minute to talk to her alone.” Thea kissed Logan and followed Elise down the stairs.
“Elise.”
She refused to turn around from where she stood at the table, mixing something.
“Okay, look,” Thea said. “I don’t know why you’re so mad over this. You’re being kind of ridiculous, actually. But you should know that I love him. He treats me well, he really does. I appreciate you being concerned for me. I know you love me, too, and you’re my best friend. I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt, and if you were with someone I thought would hurt you, I’d be upset, too. So, I get it, I really do. But this is Logan we’re talking about. Your brother. And we’re together and nothing is going to change that. The sooner you can accept this, the happier you’ll be.” She almost told her why but waited. She didn’t want it to be something said in anger.
Elise finally turned to her, a murderous look in her eyes. “I’m not going to accept anything.” Her voice was low and steady, full of hatred. It scared Thea and she stepped back. “You’re going to break up with him. It’s that simple. You’re going to break up with him and everything is going to go back to normal. Got it?”
“Elise, I love him. I’m in love with him, and I’ve had feelings for him for years. He’s had feelings for me for a long time, too. I’m not going to break up with him.”
She swirled the contents of the test tube in her hand, watching it. “No.” She took a step closer. “You are going to break up with him.”
Thea stepped back, her heart racing with fear. She had never seen Elise like this. She was so angry, so full of hate. It was like she’d become a different person. “Relax. What is that potion?”
Elise smirked. “Do you want to see how horrible he is? How much he really cares about you?”
“Why? What is that?” Her voice shook.
Elise stepped again and shot her hand out, throwing the potion all over Thea’s face. The potion burned like fire. Thea screamed and she heard Logan’s feet on the stairs, running toward them.
“See how long he sticks around now, with your face like that.”
Thea tried to rub the potion off her face with her shirt, but it was too late. Her skin burned and, where she touched it, she could feel bubbles of puss rising across her skin. She was still screaming when Logan put his hands on her arms.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.” He turned to Elise, his hands in fists. “What did you do? What was it? Boils? What?”
Elise crossed her arms and gave them an evil smile. “Guess you’ll just have to use your awesome teamwork and figure it out. But I’ll save you some time. There is no cure. She’s permanently disfigured.”
“What?” Thea could barely see. Her tears mixed with some of the potion, making everything blurry and stinging her eyes. Her skin still felt like it was on fire. She wanted to run upstairs and throw water on it, but she didn’t know this potion. Water might make it worse. She ran through possible spells and potions in her mind, but she didn’t know what this was and couldn’t think of any way to fix it. “Logan!”
She felt him put a hand on her. “It’s okay.”
“End this, now,” Elise said. “Or next time, it’ll be your lives and not just her face. Got it?”
“Elise!” Logan shouted, but Thea heard footsteps stomping up the stairs.
“Help me,” Thea whimpered.
“Hang on.”
She heard glass clinking as he rummaged through the items on the table. After what felt like ages of her sitting there, burning, he came to her.
“Lay down and close your eyes.”
She laid on the floor and squeezed her eyes shut.
“I’m going to pour this over you. Don’t move.”
As he poured a cool liquid over her face, it put out the burning wherever it touched. He covered her whole face and the burning stopped. He wiped the liquid from her eyes.
“Okay. Sit up.”
She did, and wiped her eyes before blinking them open. She felt her face and, with horror, found that the bumps were still there. She looked at him with panicked desperation.
“I know,” he said. “I’ll figure it out, I promise. It’ll just take some time.”
“But she said—”
“No.” He shook his head. “She was lying. It might not be easy to find the cure, but there is one. There’s always a cure or an antidote.”
“But, but…” The tears flowed down her cheeks. “Do I look hideous?”
“Well, it’s different,” he said. He put a hand to her neck and kissed her. “I can still see your beauty, though.”
“Does it make you disgusted to look at me?”
“It only makes me disgusted that Elise would do something like this. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.”
Then another thought came to her and had her suddenly worried again. “Do you think it’ll hurt the baby?” she whispered.
“No, definitely not. It’s a skin thing only.” Her hand fell to her stomach. He put his hand on top of hers. “It’ll be okay.” But his expression said otherwise.
“What’s wrong? You look really scared.”
“I am.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Thea, when I heard you scream, you don’t know what it did to me. It was like someone reached into my chest and pulled my heart out. And now Elise… If she did this, I don’t know what she’ll do next. I don’t trust her. And I don’t doubt her threat was real. I would never have thought it, but after today, I think she might be capable of anything.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’m not sure. I need to call my parents, I think. Get their advice. I do know one thing. I need to keep you close. I can’t take the chance of leaving you alone.”
“What am I going to do? I can’t go to class like this, with my face all… bubbled up.” She took out her phone and used the camera to see her face. It was worse than she had thought. Red bubbles covered her skin, some oozing a yellow pus. Her face was puffy and distorted, like someone had reached their fingers into her skin and bunched it in places. Fresh tears flowed from her eyes. Logan reached over and took her phone.
“Don’t look. I’m going to call them. For today, I think it’s best if you skip class anyway so you can stay with me.”
“Okay.”
He stood and took out his phone. “I’m calling my parents.”
He began a long phone call in which he lied many times, acting like Elise was just out and this had happened by accident. They were concerned, of course, and gave him some mixtures and spells to try. He hung up and looked at her.
“Well?” she asked.
“I think we got it.” He turned and went to the table, picking up various herbs and liquids and mixing them together. After about an hour, he turned back to her. “I think we’re all set.”
He held out his hand and in it sat a dish of a greenish paste.
“That is going get rid of these boils?”
He nodded. “You kind of dab it on and let it sit.”
“Okay.”
She sat on the sofa and Logan held the dish of paste in one hand while he used a balled up napkin to dab the mixture on her face. It was cold and felt heavy, but if it worked, she didn’t care.
“Want to watch a movie and just hang out? It’ll take a while for it to work.”
“How long is a while?”
“I’m not really sure. Hours, maybe longer.” He kissed her hand as he stood. “I’ll be right back.”
Thea stared at the wall as Logan hopped up the stairs. She took out her phone to look at her face. Now the red splotches were joined by patches of green paste. Some of the bubbles seemed to be going down, but her face still looked awful.
Logan returned with his laptop and they cuddled up on the sofa, watching a movie. After the movie, she checked her face again. It looked a little better, but would likely still take several hours more.
“Do you think we should reapply it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure. We can try. Couldn’t hurt, right?”
“Oh sure.” They both turned at the sudden sound of Elise’s voice. She had come downstairs very quietly.
“What’s your problem now?” Logan asked, glaring at her.
“You found a way to cure her real fast. You couldn’t even stand a single day of being with her when she looked like that.”
Logan shook his head. “Stop this. You’re being ridiculous. You think she wants to walk around like that? It doesn’t matter much to me. I love her just the same, no matter how she looks. It doesn’t change who she is. I wish I could say the same for you. But you’ve become ugly on the inside.”
Thea’s heart had skipped when he said he loved her, but Elise’s face turned to disgust.
“Oh, so now you love her, do you?”
“I do.” He turned back to look at Thea and smile at her. “I know what I’ve said before, but all this has made me realize what losing you would do to me. I love you, Thea. I really do.”
“What did you do, slip him a love potion?” Elise huffed.
Thea’s face grew warm. But she hadn’t. Not since that first time. “No.”
“Right. Whatever.”
“I need to talk to you,” Logan said. He cast his spell, then shifted into dragon form.
“Logan, what are you doing?” Thea hoped he didn’t plan to tell her about the baby. Not yet. She wasn’t ready for that.
He moved to stand in front of the stairs, blocking Elise’s way out. She turned to glare at Thea, then shifted herself.
The two dragons faced each other. Logan’s red and orange scales glimmered bright, in contrast to Elise’s emerald-green scales. Thea couldn’t hear them talking, of course. As dragons, they could speak in their minds.
She watched, wishing she knew what they were saying. After a shorter time than she thought it would take, Elise changed back and shoved past Logan.
Logan changed back and watched her go up the stairs. “It’s obvious you’re lying.”
She gave him the middle finger and slammed the door shut.
“What happened?”
Logan came to sit beside her. “I tried to find out what was really going on with her. Why she’s freaking out like this and acting so out of character. It’s easier to tell if someone is lying when you’re speaking right to their mind. She said nothing was wrong, but she was lying. I couldn’t get her to tell me anything. But she’s madder at me than you. I could feel it. I think she’s truly just concerned for you. But she hates me.”
“Then why did she splash that stuff on me instead of you?”
“I think she wanted to show you that I would break up with you or something. But she saw today. She saw that I really love you.” He bent down and kissed her. “And our baby.”
“Did you tell her?”
He shook his head. “I thought it’d be better for us to do it together and I know you wanted to wait.”
“Thanks.”
“I have a plan for tonight.”