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white walls of the
hospital room I’d spent the last few months in were the last thing
I remembered seeing. Then I woke up and I was here. With this
strange woman in a small dirty house that smelled funny.
    “De only one dat can save dis
gurl,” she said, shuffling over to me while she stirred the smelly
concoction and began softly chanting.
    “Where is he? Do I need to go get
him?” The panic in mommy’s voice made me fight to keep my eyes
open. I knew she was scared. The doctors didn’t expect me to wake
up. I’d heard them whispering while they’d thought I was sleeping.
The disease had taken over my body. I was sick. My mommy was
sad.
    “You tink I’d do dis iffn’ he
weren’t here,” the humor in the old lady’s voice was obvious. “Dis
gris-gris I don do. Only him.”
    Before mommy could ask any more
questions the door opened and in stepped a boy not much older than
me. His eyes reminded me of a stormy sea swirling wildly as he
closed the door behind him. Blond shaggy hair hung in his eyes and
he didn’t look as if he belonged to the older dark lady. Was he
sick too? A low murmur in a language I didn’t understand tumbled
out of his mouth as the room began to darken and my eyes slowly
closed.
    “It’s time,” the familiar voice
whispered in my ear.
    I sat straight up in
bed gasping for air. Sunlight poured through my window and the
bright cheeriness of my yellow room seemed at odds with the dark
shack I’d been dreaming about. Where had that come from? And that
old woman’s accent. It had been thick and... and Cajun? Then there
had been the boy. Once again he’d been there while I was sick. I
had been sick. I’d had a miraculous recovery at the age of three.
This memory of the boy was the earliest I’d had. Who was he? And
why had the voice said “It’s time” instead of “It’s almost
time”?
    Glancing around the room I searched
for Gee.
    “Pagan,” Dank was standing in front
of my bed and bending down to pull me in his arms.
    “Gee said he got to you. She
couldn’t see him but she felt him. She can’t stop him so she came
and got me.”
    I nodded, letting him fuss over me.
It was a comfort measure I needed right now. None of this made
sense.
    “I remembered something. Another
dream. It doesn’t make sense but if it is real... then it explains
something. Something from my past.”
    Dank pulled back and stared down at
me.
    “What?” the tightness in his voice
didn’t surprise me. He was upset.
    “I was sick once. When I was
little. Really sick. I had leukemia and the doctors had given my
mom no hope... and... and then I was all better. It was a miracle.
We never really spoke about it after that. Mom never worried it
would return. The check-ups with my doctors ended a few years later
and that was the end of it.”
    Dank’s hold on me had turned into a
vice-like grip. “What did you remember in your dreams?”
    “It was so real, Dank. I could even
smell the moldy scent of the old shack.”
    “Tell me,” he encouraged, as his
fingers ran through my tangled hair gently working out the knots as
he went.
    “An old lady was there. Her accent
was thick. It was hard to understand everything she said. I’m not
even sure what kind of accent it was. But she was doing a... spell,
I think. Mom had taken me to her. She was begging her to save me.
Then the boy, the one from the other dreams, he was there. He began
chanting something and then... I woke up to the words ‘it’s time’
being repeated in my ear.”
    Dank sighed and rested his forehead
on mine. That wasn’t reassuring.
    “Do you understand this? Do you
know what’s happening to me? Is this because Leif has a claim on my
soul?”
    He didn’t respond right away.
Instead he cupped the back of my head with one hand and ducked his
head into the curve of my neck. Although I enjoyed being all
cuddled up to him on my bed his hesitancy to answer me was taking
away from the warm cozies I normally felt in