“Xan?” The alarm on her face turns to full-out panic. “Oh dear goddess. Are you paralyzed? Are you dead?”
I shake my head, try once more to inhale. This time it works, and I suck in huge, noisy gulps of air. After a minute, I ask, “Do I look dead?”
“Kind of.” Lily sags with relief, rests her forehead on my shoulder as she takes a few deep breaths of her own. “Don’t ever do that to me again!” she says finally, her voice so high-pitched she sounds more like Alvin the chipmunk than my best friend.
Before I can answer, I feel the next wave building inside me. It’s welling up, the power growing more and more massive with every second that passes. Alarmed, I scramble backward, away from Lily. Something tells me this is going to be the worst one yet and I don’t want to hurt—
Flames break out on my arms and legs, ripple over my skin in waves. They don’t burn me—at least I don’t think they do—but I’m too busy trying not to catch anything else on fire to pay much attention to what’s happening to me.
Lily screams, then does a fast crawl across the floor to the kitchen sink. She pulls out a fire extinguisher, but before she can fumble the key out of it, I’m being lifted again—this time so high that I can touch the ceiling without much effort. Even with the fire still licking over my skin, the only thing I can think is that this time it’s really going to hurt me when this thing—whatever it is—drops me.
Sure enough, the fire winks out one second before I plummet to the ground. I try to curl myself into a ball in an effort to protect my spine, but I’m seizing before I hit the floor, my whole body jerking and convulsing in the throes of what I’m sure looks like a grand mal seizure, but it feels like something else entirely.
Even as it’s happening, I’m completely aware of everything going on around me. Lily is screaming as she launches herself at the phone to dial 911. She’s got it on speaker, so I can hear the emergency operator giving her instructions in between Lily’s terrified screeches. I want to tell her that I’m okay, that I’m in here and I’m just fine, but my body is completely out of my jurisdiction. Whatever magical force has glommed on to me has got me completely under its control and it’s not letting go until it’s good and ready.
Time passes—seconds, minutes, I can’t tell which—and then, finally, the energy flows out of me in one long, smooth wave. The seizing stops and my entire body just seems to collapse in on itself.
“Xandra?” Lily whispers, crawling back over to me. “Xandra, are you okay?”
My eyelids feel like they weigh a hundred pounds each, but somehow I manage to force them open. Lily’s face is only inches from me and she looks like hell, like she’s aged ten years in the space of the last five minutes.
I try to smile at her, but it must come out looking like a grimace because she squeaks, “Dear goddess. Is it happening again?”
“It’s over,” I assure her in a voice that sounds like I gargled with razor blades.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
She collapses, stretching out on the floor next to me. “The paramedics are on their way.”
“You should probably cancel them. I don’t think there’s anything in the medical books that covers what just happened to me.”
“No shit. The 911 operator asked if there was any sign that something was wrong before you started to seize. Somehow I didn’t think telling her you were doing a damn fine impression of the Exorcist would go over well.” She sighs. “Still, I think you should let them check you out. You hit the ground pretty fucking hard.”
“It feels like it,” I grumble. “Declan’s going to kill me. He leaves me alone for a couple of hours and I’m right back to where I was a week ago, covered in bumps and bruises and aching in places I didn’t even know it was possible to hurt.”
“Yeah, well, when he gets back, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind. This is his job, not mine.”
“I think you handled yourself pretty well.”
She snorts. “That’s ’cuz you don’t realize how damn close I came to peeing my pants. You caught on fire, Xandra.”
“Oh yeah. With the seizure and everything, I forgot.” I glance down. “Am I burned?”
“Amazingly enough, no. Like I said. Freaky. Freaky. Freaky. Exorcist. Shit.”
Just then, the doorbell rings. Lily groans but rolls to her feet. “You’re going to need to let them check you out.”
“Are you kidding me?” I gesture to my face. “They’ll drag me to the hospital for an MRI or CT scan or something.”