Page 5 of An Invocation of Monsters

Because they might explain what was wrong with me.

I tugged one of my gloves off and pressed my fingers to the headache lingering at my temples. Almost immediately, the pain receded.

My touch could heal… to an extent.

Against a headache? No problem. A cut? Like applying superglue, only faster and cleaner.

Broken bones? Might take me a few minutes, but they’d be good as new.

But cancer?

Nope.

Since I’d turned fifteen and had discovered that laying my hands on people cured them of all their ills, that was the one thing I’d come across that I couldn’t heal.

But with power came fear.

When I’d developed the healing hands, it had taken me a few months to realize that I was at the center of everyone around me suddenly becoming healthier and more vibrant, and it had happened in a bad way.

I used to volunteer at the small nursing home in Innsmouth, back when I’d been sure that I’d go to college to become a nurse after graduation. I touched people without thinking, because it was a natural part of the job.

It hadn’t occurred to me to be worried when I played a game of chess with ancient Miss Prynne, brushing her hand in the process. Or when I’d fluffed Mr. Vallejo’s pillow and patted his shoulder.

A day later, the Innsmouth local newspaper ran an article about an angel. Both Prynne and Vallejo had seemingly aged backwards overnight. It was a medical miracle.

It was Miss Prynne who had linked the so-called ‘miracle’ to me.

The next time I visited, she’d clutched at my arm, eyes wide and desperate. Her nails dug into my flesh so hard they opened wounds, and with blood streaming down my arm, the nurses had to pry her off me.

I had to go in for stitches, and I told my mother that there’d been an accident. Miss Prynne did have Alzheimer’s, after all, even if it was suddenly in remission—supposedly thanks to me.

Then my stitches healed overnight. I went to great pains to keep it hidden from my mother, pretending to go to the appointment to have them removed, while simultaneously freaking out that such a thing was possible.

After skipping two weeks of volunteering, I returned once more to find that Miss Prynne had died trying to escape the nursing home.

She’d smashed out her window and attempted to climb out, cutting herself badly enough to bleed out in the process.

Before she died, she’d been ranting my name, telling them she had to find me. The nursing home staff didn’t blame me for giving up the volunteer work after that.

Later that week, I’d done my friend Chelsea’s hair as an excuse to touch her, full of dread at the thought that Miss Prynne’s death was my fault.

Turned out it was.

Chelsea, who had endometriosis, came back with a perfect bill of health at her next appointment. She was amazed but happy.

But despite that, all I could think of was the smashed-out window in the nursing home.

Miss Prynne’s nails digging into my arm hard enough to tear flesh.

If people knew what my touch could do, I would be hounded to the ends of the earth for this power.

There would be nowhere to run to. Nowhere to hide.

I became hyper-aware of my hands and personal space bubble. At infrequent times I would touch people—usually friends or classmates who were ill. As long as I was sparing, no one would link the sudden spate of mystery healings to me.

My father… well. He had died in an accident; he was gone before I could lay hands on him. But we had never been close. I mourned as anyone would, but my father’s physical absence in death was about the same as his emotional absence in life.

But two years later, my mother had come home with a cancer diagnosis.

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