To Have and to Hold
“You’re late,” my best man, Chris, said as I tumbled out of my truck. The backyard of Kalin’s parents’ house was golden in the June sunlight, the flower beds around the gazebo vibrant with pink and purple flowers. “Do this, and Kalin’ll skin you alive.”
“I know.” I rubbed my neck as if I’d been caught playing hooky, not running five minutes late for my own wedding rehearsal. At least Kalin hadn’t noticed--she was with her mom, fussing over our unity candle on the gazebo railing. “I wanted to get these.”
I opened my bag to show the garlic cloves, iron nails, crucifixes, and sacks of sage inside.
Chris’s bushy beard parted to reveal his lips in an O. “I thought you already put up a perimeter around the yard?”
“I did, but this morning two different people on this road reported strange burn marks on their lawns. Something uncanny is in the neighborhood.” Such calls had become common ever since creatures out of myth and legend started coming to life, but it was unfortunate they were happening now on this street.
Chris scowled. “What do you think it is?”
“Too early to tell, but I don’t want it ruining tomorrow. Tomorrow I want to be perfect.” Kalin had been through enough--the death of her first husband, her son Tyler getting kidnapped by a nixie. She could’ve had her pick of men, but she’d picked me, an expert in the uncanny, a man living with congenital heart defects. Our life together wasn’t going to be easy, but I’d do everything I could to make tomorrow perfect.
“Never been a wedding that’s perfect,” Chris said, “but better safe than sorry. I’ll help you get these up.”
We loped across the lawn, my guilt at being late sharpened when I realized I was the last to arrive. Kalin’s and my dads were setting up picnic tables for the rehearsal dinner picnic. Even our cat, Boots, who would be our ring-bearer, was in place. My soon-to-be-stepson Tyler was walking her on her leash up the grassy aisle between white folding chairs. She regarded him with haughty superiority.
Everything’s going to be fine, I told myself for the millionth time. Maybe this time it would sink in.
Kalin saw us, and her face lit up. The candle must have found an acceptable location, because she stepped out of the gazebo, headed my way.
She wore the green sundress that showed off her hips, and her mouth quirked in a way that said she had some zinger of an observation to share, something guaranteed to crack me up. God, I was a lucky man.
A flash of white zipped by her feet. I had a moment to tense, to wonder what it could be. Then she crumpled to the grass.
I dropped my bag and ran. It seemed I was running outside of myself, my body sprinting while my mind stayed behind. Because this couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not to Kalin.
In the gazebo, her mom shrieked, pointing to something that slipped into the rhododendron bushes.
I dropped to my knees beside Kalin. She sat up, blinking, her face gone white. “It bit me.”
Two puncture wounds bled right above her ankle.
“A snake?”
It wasn’t a snake. I knew that already. No snake would be as large as the thing that shook the rhododendrons. But a snake would be simpler than any uncanny alternative, and I wanted simple right then.
“I think it was a basilisk.” She dug her fingers into the grass on either side of her. “I can’t feel my foot.”
I whirled around to peer into the rhododendrons, a horrible certainty that she was right gripping my gut. Chris was ahead of me, forging his way through the greenery with the confidence of a man who regularly rescued wild animals.
“Basilisk!” he cried, confirming my worst fear. He pointed to a spot outside my perimeter. “I’ll catch it!”
He thundered off, and hope burned hot in my chest. If he caught it, it could reverse the effects of the bite. Basilisks--half snake, half chicken--were one of the few uncanny creatures that produced their own antidotes.
And yet--the basilisk shouldn’t have been able to cross the perimeter, in or out. The iron should have stopped it. I wouldn’t have messed that up, not now. Something must have weakened the perimeter, but I didn’t have a clue what.
I didn’t have long to brood, because Kalin’s mom stormed down the gazebo steps.
“Stop!” She skidded to a halt, staring at me as if I’d sworn at her. I bunched my hands into fists, because this was not what Kalin needed. She needed someone to hold her, to whisper all would be well. “Nobody touch her. The venom’s strong enough to infect us just by touching her.”
“Venom?” Her mom sucked in her lips. “Is she going to be all right?”
“I’m going to turn into stone,” Kalin said in such a flat tone that I knew she was screaming inside.
I was screaming inside, too. No, no, no. This can’t be happening. But I turned to her mom, who had gone as pale as a hospital sheet. “Call 911. Tell them a basilisk bit her. Basilisk, got it? Uncanny creature that’s half snake, half chicken. It’s venomous, just like a snake, but the venom turns people into stone.”
Her mom nodded, white-lipped.
“Tell them to call John Hopkins. It’s the only place in the country that stocks basilisk antivenom.”
Her mom whipped out her phone, stepping into the gazebo to make the call. She wrapped an arm around her stomach, giving herself comfort when she couldn’t give it to Kalin.
I couldn’t give any either. I’d never felt so helpless.
“My ankle’s already turning,” Kalin whispered, so so flat. The skin looked white and smooth as marble. “I’m not going to make it, am I?”
“You absolutely are,” I said, and I put all my belief into that statement. Because I was not going to lose her on the eve of our wedding. But really, it was what, an hour to Baltimore by helicopter? Maybe an hour and a half? And how long until the ambulance came? Already her lower leg had turned. Either the ambulance had to speed like crazy, or Chris had to catch the basilisk soon.
“Where’s Tyler?” she demanded.
Before I could answer, my dad hurried up with the emergency kit from my truck and the veterinary bag from Chris’s trunk.
“What do you need?”
Blessings upon him. “Gloves.”
He shoved a set of latex gloves at me, and I snapped them on.
“Chris have saline in there? To dilute the venom?”
He rooted around inside. “No.”
“Crap. What does he have?”
“Gauze, thermometer, syringe, blankets.”
Not what I needed. There was no saline in my kit, either. I already knew her parents didn’t keep any, and we didn’t have time to make some.
“Ambulance will be here in ten minutes,” her mom called from the gazebo. She said it as if announcing a cure for global climate change.
Ten minutes would be cutting it very close for Kalin, but her dad seized on the announcement. “I’ll go down to the end of the road, make sure the EMTs don’t follow the GPS when it says to turn left.” He bounded off to his truck, the quickness in his stride showing how relieved he was to have something helpful to do.
I wanted to be that useful. Now that I had gloves on, I took Kalin’s hand. It was cold and slick against my glove. As she watched her dad go, she squeezed so tight my bones protested.
“Tyler’s in the back,” I said. “Your mom’s gone to sit with him.”
She glanced to where they were, sitting together on the farthest row of folding chairs. “I don’t want him to watch me die.”
“I’m not going to let you die.”
She gave me her best 'don’t bullshit me' look. “This venom reaches my diaphragm, I suffocate. It’s as simple as that.”
“We could try a tourniquet, see if it slows the venom. I don’t know for sure it’ll work, but we could try.”
She glanced at Tyler. “Do it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’d rather lose a leg than my life.”
Please let this work. I grabbed the gauze and positioned it just below her knee, a few inches above the whiteness.
Stabbing pain lanced through my finger, as if I’d been jabbed by a needle.
I jerked back, dropping the gauze. The next thing I knew, I was on my side, blinking up at Kalin and my dad.
“Zane?”
“I’m okay.” It was so obviously false I’m not surprised they ignored me.
“Can you sit up?” Dad asked. He reached out to help, but I jerked away.
“Don’t touch me!”
He stared at me, horrified. I pushed myself up and examined my finger. A tiny tear in the glove showed at the tip of my index finger. It must have been just large enough and Kalin’s skin venomous enough....
“Oh, no, Zane,” Kalin whispered.
My finger was cold, so cold, and hard to the touch. Already the rest of my hand was tingling. I flexed my fingers, not sure what to make of this turn of events. I’d always thought I’d go when my heart conked out. Not like this.
“No, sweetie, stay back!” Kalin’s voice.
I looked up to see Tyler freeze a dozen steps away. He gazed wide-eyed at us, me with one glove on, Kalin knotting the tourniquet under her knee. Kalin’s mom dashed up behind him and snatched him back two more steps, clutching him from behind in a bear hug. She shot us looks both apologetic and terrified.
“Wait inside with Grammy, okay?” Kalin said. She knotted a tourniquet above my elbow.
He nodded, but he didn’t budge. He was hugging himself, rocking the way he did when he was terrified, and my throat tightened to see him so stricken. He whispered to me, “Boots ran away.”
The leash he gripped was empty. That didn’t surprise me. Boots had always been a little Houdini. It would have been nice to see her again before I died, though, and I was surprised at the anger I felt that she hadn’t stayed until the end. We’d saved each other once. She couldn’t have waited a little longer to leave?
But none of that was on Tyler, and the poor kid was frightened enough. He was only nine, and he’d already lost his dad.
“Not your fault,” I assured him. “Love you, kiddo. Now go inside like your mom asked.”
“Love you so much,” Kalin said. Not flat anymore. You could have floated the Titanic on the tears in her voice.
Tyler hesitated, and I worried he was going to make a fuss. He’d always been a good kid, but everyone had their breaking point. Instead he ran towards the house as if he could outrun whatever dark thoughts must have been building behind his wide eyes. His grandmother sprinted after him.
Kalin turned her face to my shoulder and wept, great big sobbing heaves. I wrapped my good arm around her, but what could I say? It was not okay. I couldn’t save her from this pain. Chris wasn’t back yet. The ambulance might not make it in time. My dad paced behind us, twisting his hands in desperate uselessness. I felt just as pointless. There had to be something I could use, something here at the house. But I didn’t have a spare basilisk in my pocket, and no unicorns with their cure-all horns had materialized yet. I had nothing.
Then a memory rose up inside me like water through a basement floor. I had nothing--
“Except the nixie,” I whispered.
Kalin, tear streaked, looked up at me. “What?”
“Agnes, the nixie.” Dad stared at me as if I were talking gibberish, but I spoke to Kalin. “The one in your parents’ basement, the one who left a changeling in Tyler’s bed. The water in her lake’s magical, remember? It made my heart strong when I was down there. It can cure anything temporarily.”
She straightened, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Is she even still there? It’s been two years.”
I hadn’t exorcised the nixie after she kidnapped Tyler, because she’d renounced all claims on him and I’d been too exhausted to try a second journey to her lake. But we’d covered the canals in the basement, blocking any interior entrance to her lair. She would have had to find some exterior entrance, and it was entirely possible she’d moved on to some other waterhole.
“Are you willing to risk it? She’ll probably ask for Tyler again. We’ll have to find something else she wants.”
Kalin’s face twisted, and I thought I’d asked too much of her. I shouldn’t have brought this up, not so near the end. I was the cruelest idiot on the planet. Then she straightened, and something like hope filtered into her face. “I’ll give her every first edition I own if it’ll let me stay with Tyler. But I don’t think I can make it into the basement, not with this thing.” She jabbed a finger toward her cold, dead leg.
She was right. Neither one of us should move, in case the movement caused the venom to spread faster. We had to stay put. “Maybe she’ll come to us.”
Dad was shaking his head, clearly not pleased with this turn of events, but he was a wise man. He knew this wasn’t his decision. “Want me to see about prying up the boards in the basement?” he asked.
“Please,” Kalin said, and my dad made a beeline to the house. Again I saw the relief in his shoulders at having something, anything, to do.
My chest clenched at seeing him go. I didn’t want this to be the last time I’d see my dad. But it was good for him to be useful, and I hoped that giving him a task would get me some good karma, because I needed all I could get. Bargaining with the fey is never wise, particularly when you come in with the greater need.
I waited long enough to think he’d made it to the basement before I opened my mouth to yell for Agnes.
Before I could make a sound, Agnes slunk out from behind a walnut tree. She sauntered in a way that made me suspect she’d come up minutes before to gawk at our distress, as if she’d been antsy to show herself and gloat. So she’d found some outside conduit to and from her lake.
“I was beginning to think you’d never think of me,” she said.
“You heard.” I sidestepped any niceties. There wasn’t time, and she didn’t deserve any. Not after she’d stolen Tyler and the locket that had been my mom’s last present to me. “What must we give you for some of your lake water?”
She tapped her chin, as if thinking. She looked like an old-timey country lass, fresh faced and wholesome, until you saw her pointed ears and the sly mockery in her eyes. I had no doubt she knew exactly what she wanted. Nixies lived for one thing: kidnapping, and then drowning, boys and young men.
“Not Tyler,” I said. “You released all claims on him, remember. What else do you want?”
“My ring?” Kalin asked, holding up her hand with the small diamond I’d given her.
Agnes scoffed. “I want Tyler.”
“No.” I spoke through clenched teeth. My arm was now numb to the elbow, my hand a frozen claw. Once the venom reached my shoulder, it would have a straight shot to my heart. “Ask for something else.”
Agnes shook her head, as if we were endlessly amusing. “You want your lives? Give me Tyler.”
“Never,” Kalin said. “But you can have this ring, and the wedding bands for tomorrow.”
That must have hurt. She’d already given Agnes the ring from her first husband, in order to get Tyler back.
“You can’t buy him twice. Give me Tyler.” Agnes stamped her foot, and her white apron flashed in the sunlight.
At that, I remembered the basilisk, flashing white at Kalin’s feet, and a terrible idea crossed my mind. After all, the basilisk might have found a way through my perimeter once, but to escape so easily the second time must have required help. I wondered just how long Agnes had been hiding by that tree.
“Did you break the perimeter?” I demanded. “Did you plant the basilisk? All to get Tyler?” She could have easily eavesdropped as we sat in the gazebo planning the wedding.
She scowled, her country lass aspect slipping, and Kalin sucked in her breath, a sound of anguish.
“You have no choice, miserable humans. If you want to live to have sons between the two of you, give me Tyler.”
“I’d rather die.” Kalin heaved up a decorative stone, shaped like a heart, and threw it.
“No!” But I was too late.
Agnes jumped aside. The stone thudded beside her.
“Don’t make her angry,” I hissed, but Kalin was stony faced, beyond caring.
“I should have had Zane kill you two years ago!”
“Agnes--”
The nixie cut me off with a snarl. “What do I care if you die? May water render its curse upon you both, drowning your dreams.”
She flounced away, disappearing behind the walnut.
“Dammit,” I groaned.
“That bitch!” Kalin tugged at the tourniquet around her leg. It’d done no good. Stone crept up under the edge of her dress. “Help me get up. What if she’s gone for Tyler?”
But I couldn’t untie it with one hand. “Where’s your phone? Can you text your mom?”
“Sundresses don’t have pockets!”
I fumbled in my back pocket for mine. Stupid stone hand.
“Where’s Chris?” Kalin demanded as I fumbled. “Why isn’t he back?”
“I’m back.” Chris’s tired voice said behind me.
I turned, handing my phone to Kalin as I did, but his voice told me all I needed to know.
“Didn’t find it. Lost its trail in the woods.” He squatted beside me, his eyes agog at my hand. “God, I’m sorry.”
His words hit me like kicks to the gut. “Not your fault,” I said as Kalin tapped furiously beside us. But still, I’d placed so much hope in him that I couldn’t help feeling betrayed that he’d come back empty handed. Irrational, I know, but the heart isn’t rational.
“Listen,” I said to Chris. “Go find Tyler. The nixie might be after him again. Make sure she doesn’t get him.”
“I’m not leaving you now! Where is everybody?”
“Go find Tyler,” I said, emphasizing each word.
His lips thinned out, sinking beneath his beard. But he nodded. “You’re the best friend I ever had,” he said. Then he jogged to the house. I watched him go, because I wouldn’t see him come back out.
Kalin hiccupped and grabbed the sleeve of my shirt. “Mom says Agnes came up through a canal in the basement. She has your dad and is threatening to drown him if my parents don’t turn over Tyler.” She yanked on my sleeve. “Go!”
Both Dad and Tyler? God. Still I said, “I’m not leaving you!”
“Go,” she said.
I searched for some words to change all this. According to the laws of Fairy, as trusted blood relatives, her parents could give Tyler to Agnes and it would be binding. If I didn’t find a way to stop her. If walking to the basement didn’t speed up the venom and kill me first. But Kalin was right: I had to go. Saving two lives was worth the risk.
Before I could stand to my death, my phone rang. It was Kalin’s mom’s number. Kalin shoved the phone at me. “She’ll tell you to go, too!”
Kalin’s mom’s voice was frantic. “The ambulance called. There was a freak flash flood. The bridge is out on White Deer Road. The ambulance has to come round the long way.”
My mind stuttered. “That’s thirty extra minutes.”
I met Kalin’s horrified gaze. She’d overheard.
“What do we do about the nixie?” Her mom’s panic gushed through the phone.
If I had had two good hands, I would have gladly strangled Agnes right then. Her curse had done its job.
“Tell her,” I said into the phone, “I’m coming, and I’ll give her something she can’t resist.”
The bag of nails and sage was hardly something she couldn’t resist, but maybe the shock would distract her so I could get Dad away. Still, the bluff seemed to satisfy Kalin’s mom. She shut off with a hurried, “Tell Kalin I love her!”
I put the phone in Kalin’s hands, wrapped them around it. I couldn’t bear that she would be out here all by herself. “I just wanted tomorrow to be perfect,” I said.
“I know. I wanted to live long happy years with you.”
“Me, too.”
I bent to kiss her, my long-suffering heart cleaving in my chest, because I’d have to go when the kiss was over and that might kill me before this damn venom, and then something went splat at my feet.
Boots looked at me with feline smugness. Pinned beneath her front paws was the basilisk, bloody but still breathing, and glaring at us with loathing.
Laughter bubbled in my throat, shock and relief and disbelief all mixed together. Kalin clutched my arm, rocking back and forth in elation.
“Boots, are you okay?” I asked when I could. “It didn’t bite you?”
She mewed, showing no signs of distress or petrification. She’d pinned the basilisk with its beak buried in the grass so it couldn’t bite. Truly she was a marvel.
And because of her, I had a plan.
“Basilisk, do you understand me?” I leaned over closer to its level.
It hissed, more snake than chicken. It was smaller than I’d realized, not even a foot high, with a green snake body and white chicken head and wings and feet. But there was intelligence in its eyes. It could understand, even if it couldn’t speak.
“Your tears reverse your venom, right?”
It was silent. My stomach twisted, wondering if all the stories I’d read were wrong, and then Boots growled. The basilisk shuddered, nodding its head.
“So it’s true.”
The basilisk hissed, nodding, its beak rubbing in the grass. It was a reluctant ally, but I didn’t care. It would save us.
“Then you’re about to cry buckets. You’re going to reverse both our petrifications, got it? If you do that, I’ll let you bite Agnes since she’s the one that got you into this mess, and then you’ll spend the rest of your life in a cage donating venom to Johns Hopkins. If you don’t, I’ll kill you. Understand?”
Kalin sucked in her breath at that. It was drastic, I know, but we were talking about saving both my wife and my life.
Kalin knew this; she didn’t question my extreme measures. The basilisk seemed to realize it, too. It hissed its assent, low and unhappy.
Kalin muttered in my ear. “You trust it?”
“More than Agnes. But I’ll go first, just in case.”
She might have pointed out that the basilisk could trick us. It could heal me but refuse her. But we had no other choice, so she kissed me and let me go.
I used my good hand to angle myself closer then pushed my dead hand so it rested next to the basilisk’s beak. The grass under where it lay was shriveled and scorched.
It eyed me, angry and accusing. Then, quick as you please, it licked its eye like a gecko does. Its tongue was long and forked, slithering out of its beak. I hadn’t expected that, and it took all my willpower to hold still, wondering if it had some trick in mind. It licked all over its eye then lapped at my stony finger.
I didn’t feel it. If I had, I might have jerked my hand back. But then I did feel its tongue, rough and wet, and a bit of pink skin radiated out amid the stone.
I gasped. Kalin cheered, and Boots purred.
Tears ran down the basilisk’s face. It licked its eye again and ran its tongue back over my hand. More and more pink appeared, climbing up past my wrist.
It felt glorious to flex my fingers, to dig my nails into the grass. But there wasn’t time to luxuriate. I grabbed Kalin’s sandal and pulled her ankle close.
“Here. Save her.”
The basilisk grumbled, an avian rumble in its chest, but it obeyed. Tan skin marched steadily up her leg. She sighed in relief as she wiggled her toes.
“Now--” I said to the basilisk, but it lunged, desperate to escape.
Boots pounced, grabbing it by the back of the neck. The basilisk whimpered.
“No escape,” I said, and it hissed. Boots lashed her tail.
I retrieved my shopping bag and slipped as many of the nails as I could into my pockets. Everything else I dumped on the ground. I pulled on several pairs of latex gloves, as good a protective layer as I could get, and opened the bag.
“In you go,” I told the basilisk. “You bite Agnes as hard and as many times as possible. Got it?”
If basilisks could turn people to stone with the power of their eyes, as the old stories claimed, I would have been a statue right then. But it nodded and climbed inside. I was lucky the bag was a reusable one, opaque and sturdy. And the basilisk was more chicken then snake, so lighter than it looked. Agnes would have to look inside to find out what I was offering.
“I’ll come with you,” Kalin said, but I had to tell her no.
“Agnes can’t guess the basilisk’s back.”
Kalin must have known this, because she didn’t argue. “I’ll wait here for the ambulance and my dad,” she said, as Boots curled protectively around her feet. “You bring Tyler out the minute he’s safe.”
“We’ll come running.”
I kissed her--I’d never again pass up an opportunity to kiss her--and hotfooted it to the house. Inside, it looked like a bridal catalogue had thrown up. Favor bags, LED candles, and lace ribbon covered every available inch. I swept through the front room, past the door to the kitchen, to the basement steps. I stopped only long enough to strip off my gloves and shove my hand in my pocket, to make it seem like it was still dead. Then I yanked open the door.
The stairs down were steep. Having a poorly plumbed heart meant my endurance was crappy, and exhaustion dragged at my every step. I placed my feet with care.
At the bottom, Kalin’s mom, Tyler, and Chris looked at me from one side of the stone-walled room. On the other side, in one of the open canals that drained the natural spring under the house, Agnes held my dad in a headlock. He knelt in the canal, his gray hair wet and his eyes imploring.
Agnes had played us so well. When my dad raced into the house to open the canals, Tyler and Kalin’s mom must have followed, eager to be of use. What a shock they must have had when she popped out and grabbed the first available hostage. Chris never had a chance.
“And what do you have there?” Agnes asked, tilting her head towards the bag.
“Something you can’t resist.”
“It’s not Tyler.” She curled her lips at him. “I can’t possibly be interested.”
“You won’t know until you look.”
Her gaze flicked from me to Tyler to my dad then down to the bag. Suspicion is a powerful emotion, but so is curiosity. Every eye in the room fixed on the bag. Tyler rocked as he looked. Chris placed both hands on the boy’s shoulders, ready to spring into action, even as he stared to bore holes into the bag. Kalin’s mom looked from me to the bag, trying no doubt to see how well I was doing.
Agnes couldn’t resist the collective interest. “Very well,” she said. “Bring it here. Let me see.”
Bravado can work wonders with the fae, and I wanted her to think I was overly confident in my choice of gift. But I also hunched my shoulders, implying that despite my bravado, my strength was almost gone. She knew of my heart condition, knew how easily I tired. So I dragged my feet and held the bag out one-handed, the straps at the top held tightly together in my fist.
“Open it,” Agnes said, nodding with her chin.
“I can’t,” I said, as if I were so tired I’d only just realized this. “I only have one hand.”
She had both arms locked around my dad’s neck. “You open it,” she said to him, tapping his head with her chin.
I tensed. That wasn’t the plan. The plan was to have the basilisk explode up into Agnes’s face. All would be lost if it chomped down on Dad instead.
Feigning reluctance, I reached the bag toward Dad. Only I let my arm sag at the last minute, as if my strength had finally broken. Dad’s eyes bugged, concern stark on his face, and I felt bad for worrying him. But Agnes was craning her neck, nearly tipping over in her eagerness to witness my faltering.
She was as off-guard as I could hope for. I yanked my hand from my pocket, pulled the bag open, and shoved it in Agnes’s face.
If she had been less eager, she could have escaped into the canal. As it was, she jerked back, releasing her stranglehold on Dad. But the basilisk was fast. It clamped onto her neck, worrying it like a dog would a bone, injecting venom with each bite.
“Go!” I said, but Chris was ahead of me. He scooped Tyler up, throwing him over his shoulder to dash up the stairs, Kalin’s mom behind them.
I pulled Dad over the side of the canal, dragging him as far across the basement as I could. Only then did he realize my hand wasn’t stone.
“How?” he demanded, wrapping me in a hug.
“Reluctant ally,” I said.
By then, Agnes lay still on the concrete floor beside the canal. Her face and neck and chest above her bodice were stone. Stone had already started to creep down the arm closest to where the basilisk had struck. Soon, all of her would be stone.
As I spoke, the basilisk lifted its head from the floor beside her. Blood oozed from the wounds Boots had inflicted. Despite what pain it had caused, it didn’t deserve to suffer. Dad donated his shirt as a bandage. Together we wrapped it snugly. Then I tucked it in the bag and tied the top shut.
When we were done, spots of exhaustion danced at the edge of my vision. I staggered up the stairs, wanting only to get to Kalin. That desire kept me going as I trailed Dad out of the house, across the lawn, to where Tyler and the rest had gathered by the gazebo. An ambulance sat in the driveway, lights flashing.
“Must have broken every speed limit in the county,” my dad marveled.
Fine by me, as long as it meant Kalin got any follow up care we’d need. She pushed past the EMT at her side and threw her arms around me.
“It’s done?” she asked.
“Tyler’s safe.” I hung on tight, burrowing my face in the curve of her neck, breathing in the familiar powder scent of her--still here, still alive, we’ll get those years together after all--until several EMTs went beyond clearing their throats and started gently disentangling us.
“Johns Hopkins is sending antivenom,” Kalin’s EMT said, as we allowed ourselves to be herded to the ambulance, “in case you need any more. We’ll check you over, but unless there are complications, there’s no reason not to have a wedding tomorrow. Might be a hospital wedding, but still.”
Kalin’s smile was beauteous. She looked from me to Tyler to the rest of her family, battered but safe. “That’s perfect,” she said.
“Perfect,” I echoed, and I meant it.