Page 174 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“Oren. You should know... Once I start, it’s going to be hard to stop. It’s very possible that I could shave years off your life expectancy.”

“Will I shrivel up? Turn into a decrepit old man?”

“No. You might just be gone three to five years earlier than you would have been.”

Oren shrugs. “An easy sacrifice for that dumbass,” he says, smiling weakly.

I exhale and nod, feeling the same way. “All the same. I’ll do my best to do it on my own.”

I release Fletcher, finding that he looks oddly guilty. “I—I want to help, but I—”

“It’s okay,” I assure him. “It’s a big ask, and I don’t blame you for being unsure. Willingness is important, though. Without it, the efforts could rebound, and he could end up worse off. I’m just glad you’ve been here, keeping watch.”

“We made a deal, didn’t we?” Fletcher gives me a crooked smile and turns to grab a beanie from where he’d been seated when I came in. He tucks it over his head, fidgeting with it to arrange his curls. “I’ll help guard the room, then,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say.

After he leaves, I approach Damien’s bed. Oren stands across from me, watching at me as I watch Damien.

The first right step. It would probably be to heal the wounds on his body. More opportunities for infection and pain there. Of course, I want to start with his face, but I know that’s just because it’s distressing to see him so swollen and unfamiliar. I take his hand in mine, the sticky dampness of it making my stomach churn again.

I need to hold a clear image of Damien in my mind. I need to will it back into existence, one little piece at a time.

I start by thinking of his fingers. I think of their strength and dexterity. The feeling of them scrubbing my scalp, the clumsy braiding while I brushed his teeth after one of our first hookups. The assuredness of his grasp as he caught the shoe I threw at him and tossed it aside. The way his fingernails looked after a fresh coat of black polish. His loose, yet confident grasp on his drumsticks.

I hear an awed breath escape Oren’s mouth, and that sticky sensation gives way to the feeling of warm, callused skin. A sheen of perspiration breaks out across my brow as I open my eyes to check my handiwork. It’s healed, but it’s not perfect. His skin is now clear of tattoos, which pulls a little curl of grief from me.

When I close my eyes again and focus on his arm, I think of the pitch-black ink that covers his arm from wrist, to elbow, to shoulder. It’s a slow process. A careful one. Any broken concentration could lead to mistake. It’s much easier when the injury is straight forward. A piercing, you close. A gash, you weave back together. But when it’s a burn that has scourged past the skin in some places and barely touched it in others, it’s a much more complex, exhausting process.

And it’s much harder when Damien is buried so deep in his unconscious state, too. I can’t tune into where the pain is worst, because he’s not consciously feeling it. He’s not aware of anything at all.

Sweat coalesces and tickles a path down the side of my throat, displaces the delicate hair at my temple. My heart thumps a little harder with exertion, despite the fact that I’m holding completely still. The room falls quiet, even the sounds of the machines and monitors fading into a muffled fog of white noise. I hear my own quickening breath flowing through my chest and my nose. I don’t know how long passes before I feel my magic snap back into me, leaving me gasping in gulps of air like I’ve just been gut-punched.

When I check my progress, Damien’s entire arm has healed. But there’s so much left to do. And I already feel so exhausted.

“How you holding up?” Oren asks softly as I pant across the bed from him.

“I’m okay.” I brush my fingers over the ridge of Damien’s blank knuckles. I frown. “I already messed up.”

“What? That stupid emo tattoo? He won’t mind,” Oren says.

I nod. “I like it though,” I mumble, embarrassed by the urge to cry.

“I’m sure he’ll go through getting it again for you,” Oren says. He offers me his hand across the bed. “Need a pick me up?”

I look at his hand and consider it as I’m starting to catch my breath again. I’m about to refuse him when we hear a little kerfuffle outside of the room. It sounds like Satoshi and Wren arguing about his arms. She’s trying to heal him. She’s not as good as it as I am, but she’s a capable healer in her own right.

Then an unfamiliar voice joins in on the chaos, asking why his arms are unbandaged. Satoshi is downright yelling. Slurring, really.

Oren shakes his head. “Fucker sounds high as a kite. I told Rox not to give him all those gummies.”

“I should do this quickly,” I say. “So, I’ll take you up on your offer. I need you to picture Damien healed and whole, like we know him. Can you do that?”

Oren nods. “Even if I wanted to forget this asshole’s face, I don’t think I could,” he says, chuckling. His energy is lighter, now. Maybe relieved by what he’s seen so far. It helps buoy my own optimism.

I take his hand. It’s warm and dry. Large like Damien’s, but slender in a way that his aren’t. He takes Damien’s less injured hand and holds it tightly, creating a circuit of energy between the three of us. Already, my magic grows more nimble—a magnifying glass being tilted in just the right way to concentrate the sunlight to a tight point of blazing heat.

This time, I don’t have to close my eyes when I return to the task at hand. I force my magic into Damien again, imagining the rapid division of skin cells, imagining their cellular junctions and nervous dendrites lining up properly with the traumatized blood vessels, fat cells and muscle tissue.