Page 34 of The Deer and the Dragon
She shook crumbs from her fingertips. “It’s in your blood, of course, but when combined with this sigil…I’m just fascinated it worked on you even while out of the house. And a piece of paper, no less! I have theories.”
When I’d left the church, I’d rejected all facets of the spiritual. Anchoring myself in reality had been a cornerstone of my psychiatry. Hundreds of hours in therapy began to unravel. I parroted what I’d trained myself to say. “Fauna, none of this is real. I—”
“Babe, all of this is real. For the love of the gods and goddesses, how did he remain patient with a nonbeliever for so long? I’ve been around you for all of three hours and I’m already tired of your repetition. Be less boring.”
“I’m batshit,” I said quietly. “Mental illness runs in my family, on my mom’s side. We’re all nuts. We—”
Fauna finished off the last of a glazed croissant, using her fingertip to clean the plate. My stomach grumbled. I hadn’t wanted to eat, but it hadn’t made it any easier to watch an entire box of chocolate, maple, and vanilla baked goods disappear between her perfect, pearly teeth. She sucked her finger clean as she nodded. “Yes, Lisbeth was one of us—is one ofus. Well, technically, it’s your great-grandmother, Aloisa. She’s the best. So much cooler than you. Way more open-minded. She would have believed anything. Speaking of anything…”
Fauna got to her feet and wandered into my kitchen. She began loudly opening and closing drawers. My eyes stung against the lateness of the hour as I watched her invade my privacy as she continued riffling through my things.
“What are you doing?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. I allowed her the chaos while I grimaced at the mention of my mother.
John and Lisbeth Thorson, the model Christian couple, pillars of the church. A woman as rigid as the ruler of judgement by which she measured the world around her, and a man as absent and forgettable as the John Does who shared his name. My mother wasn’t quite Margaret White, but she had several qualities that would have madeCarriefans proud. I spoke up to be heard over the sound of Fauna’s snooping. “My mom was—is—obsessed with angels and demons. She’s schizophrenic, Fauna. She saw and heard things that weren’t there. Eventually, she stopped talking about it. She had to. Do you know how many jobs are taken off the table when you’re diagnosed? Do you know how stigmatized it is? I couldn’t risk getting slapped with that label. I didn’t want the world to close down for me like it did for her, or for my grandma.”
She planted both palms on the kitchen island and leveled her stare before saying, “Did these voices in your mom’s head ever tell her to hurt herself?”
I frowned. I was ready to answer when the sound of papers and loose cords from my junk drawer stirred my attention. I stood at long last and crossed to the kitchen. “Can I help you find something?”
She continued her hunt as she said, “A marker. A Sharpie, preferably. Now, about these voices, did they ever tell her to do things? To hurt others? To wreak havoc? What did they say to her?”
I waved her aside and closed the kitchen drawers andcabinets as I crossed to the stand beside the couch. It housed remotes, a surround-sound manual, and a variety of writing utensils. I procured a black marker and she snatched it from my hand.
“Why do you need it?”
She bit the cap and kept it in her mouth as she crossed to my floor-to-ceiling window. Through the plastic cap, she said, “Because angels and demons aren’t the only things out there, and your warding sucks. Now, answer my question.”
I shook my head, still-damp tendrils pooling against my shirt. “No, they didn’t really talk to her. I knew she kept seeing them long after she stopped bringing them up. She saw them and heard them…but they were just there. Around. And…hey!”
The high-pitched squeak of felt on glass cut my reverie short.
“You’ll thank me later,” she said through her mouthful as she continued to draw lines, circles, curves, and curls.
“I doubt it!” I recoiled at her final product, which might as well have been slapped from a grimoire onto my living room window.
“I shouldn’t have been able to get in here. Any god or the creatures from their pantheons could stroll on in.”
I trailed after her, lips parted in horror as she headed toward my front door to continue her vandalism. I was too stunned to speak, but she continued talking as if she weren’t breaking every rule of socially acceptable behavior. Back to me, intent on her art, she said, “Schizophrenia is real, just as clairvoyance is real. Seeing through the veil can be wonderful, or it can ruin your life. The best way to tell whether you’re clairsentient is the message coming from the other side. Unless she had a parasite…well, a parasite would tell her to do terrible things. You would know. You met one of those creepy little fuckers. But it sounds like you’re all suffering from a terrible case of great-grandma Aloisa getting knocked up by the fae.”
She nodded at her handiwork and set off down the hall.
“That’s permanent marker. You can’t just—”
“I’m pretty sure you have the funds to take the hit on the deposit.” She rolled her eyes as she stepped into my guest bedroom and headed for yet another window.
I trailed her graffiti helplessly. Unsure how to intervene with her property destruction, I pressed my fingertips into my temple and asked a question instead. “My mom… You’re saying she was just seeing through the veil?” My question was underscored by the orange prescription bottles as we left the guest room and stepped into my bedroom.
“Poor clairsentient humans,” Fauna murmured, voice quick to correct my train of thought. She popped the cap onto the back of the marker, clearing her mouth as she multitasked drawing and responding. I watched, a passenger in my own apartment as she defaced my bedroom window. She looked at the medications, then answered the unspoken question. “No, the pills did not dull her, oryour, ability to see through the veil. They simply make life more bearable. Psychic abilities can be…a lot. Even if you can’t turn them off, you don’t deserve to suffer. Give yourself a tiny pinch of relief. Survive it.”
“Psychic?”
“There,” she said, satisfied. “Are there any other doors? Windows?”
I winced at the symbols she may as well have ripped from the occult. “You’ve destroyed everything in my apartment. It looks like we’re trying to summon the devil. My place now looks as crazy as I feel, so thanks for that.”
Fauna made a face that I had made countless times to my students in Colombia. She was a teacher doing her best not to throw shoes at her student. She rallied for self-restraint, leaning into the comfort of my couch against the lateness of the hour. “People have paid unspeakable prices for the kind of warding I just gave you. No one from beyond the veil can pop in without an invitation. Between these walls, you’re safe fromeveryone from the boogeyman to Zeus himself. Be grateful.”
“When you say Zeus…”
