BACK IN HIS BEDROOM, JESSE INSPECTED THE KERIS. The scabbard had cracked and the glossy varnish was starting to peel. The wooden handle had a loose hilt. Rust spots dotted the wavy eight-inch blade, but the edges and the point were sharp enough.
He held the blade straight up. “Okay, old man, got it. Where are you? Tune in, channel WTF.”
Nothing happened.
He examined the knife again, a cheap mass-produced souvenir item. Use this to heal Volt? In his bright bedroom, that now seemed as silly as a Road Runner cartoon. Besides, people could get allergies year round. Hay fever in October wasn’t unheard of.
His bedside alarm clock read a few minutes to nine. He went out to the hall phone, gathered some courage, and dialed the Volter house. Mrs. Volter answered.
“It’s me, Jesse,” he said. “I just want to say I’m really sorry about what happened. I won’t let something like that happen again.”
She was silent for a moment. “I should certainly hope not.”
“Can I talk to Vo—August?”
“He’s in bed. Coming down with the flu.” She blew some air. “That boy. One moment he’s complaining why he can’t get sick on a school night, and the next moment he’s worrying he’s going to die. It’s enough to drive me crazy.”
Her voice was suddenly coming from a long way away. Jesse’s arms and legs were all tingly, as though his blood had gone stale. After he hung up, he took several long deep breaths to clear his head.
Well, he knew what he had to do. He had no idea if it was going to work, but he couldn’t not do it.
There wasn’t much time before the town’s eighteen-and-under curfew.
He stuck his head into the living room and told Mrs. Mindell that the steam room was keeping him wide-awake, and he was going for a quick stroll around the block.
Just a short while ago he’d been walking underneath the exact same starlight to Anderson Hall, but now it seemed a different night. Not another night, but a different night, as though a thief had slipped into the shadows and rearranged things a little. To the east, a thin moon sliced through the sky. Jesse kept an eye out for things with pawed feet. For police cars too, and good thing he did, because he saw Officer Jenk’s squad car coming around the corner at the bottom of Twelfth. He trotted up the back lane and across the college campus and back down to Volt’s street.
Huddling furtive as a thief by the hedge, he could see Mrs. Volter in the kitchen, seated at the counter and writing on a yellow pad. He hoped she’d stay right there for the next ten minutes or so. The panes of Volt’s ground-floor bedroom window were pricked by the light of a night light. Even before Jesse tapped on the glass, he could hear Volt sneezing.
Volt swung out of bed and peeked through the glass. Jesse put his finger to his lips and then gestured for Volt to open the window. If Volt was surprised to see him, he didn’t show it, perhaps because his batteries had finally run out of juice.
Jesse swung over the windowsill. “How you doing?” he whispered.
“Not so hot.” Volt’s whisper was all clogged and cracked. “My mom says it’s flu and she prayed for me. I’ll get over it, won’t I? It’s not, you know—” He broke off with another lung-blasting sneeze and wiped the top edge of the blanket across his red nose.
“Sit down,” Jesse said. “I’m going to do something that might seem weird, but just trust me, okay?”
Volt’s bleary eyes widened as Jesse pulled the dagger out of the scabbard.
“Trust me,” Jesse repeated. “Keep still.”
Volt held still as Jesse pressed the flat of the blade against his forehead. Jesse wasn’t sure if there was anything else he was supposed to be doing so he concentrated hard, imagining the blade vacuuming up all the viruses and all the darkness in Volt’s blood.
But there was a part of him, a faint ghostlike Jesse, that stood watching to the side. This is really dumb, that other Jesse said. What Volt needs is a doctor.
Jesse lifted the blade. “How do you feel now?”
Volt wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sure.” He touched his forehead. “Better, I guess. Cooler.”
“Like water flowed through your body?”
“Yeah. Kinda like that.” He sneezed again, but it seemed less moist than before.
The door swung open. Mrs. Volter halted in surprise. “Jesse? What on earth are you doing here?” Her gaze fell to the dagger in Jesse’s hand. She stiffened with a little intake of breath.
“I was praying for Volt,” he said quickly.
“With a knife?” she said, glancing quickly at the open window.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Volt said, rubbing his nose, snot trailing onto the back of his hand. “He touched it to my forehead to heal me.”
Mrs. Volter pointed a finger at Jesse. “You stay right there,” she said and backed out to the hallway phone. She kept an alert eye on him as she dialed 911. “Is this you, Lizzie? Jane Volter. I have an intruder—”
Volt sprang out of bed and ran out to push down the phone cradle, cutting off the call.
“Augustine Jonathan Volter,” Mrs. Volter said in rising anger but he was already talking right over her, pleading with her.
“Mom, please don’t. Jesse was here to help me, honest he was, and if you report him he’ll get into trouble and get kicked out of America. Please. He was just trying to help me get better.”
Mrs. Volter was still staring at her son, still angry, but listening.
The phone rang. Mrs. Volter pried Volt’s fingers off the cradle and answered. “I’m sorry, Lizzie. False alarm. One of Volt’s friends. Yes, it’s okay.” She carefully placed the phone back on its hook and then turned to Jesse, her expression settling into hard lines. “I want you to leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jesse was so nervous that he headed for the window.
“The front door, please.” She marched him out of the room and down the hall and flung open the door as wide as it would go. “I want you to stay away from Volt. I don’t want you sneaking into this house ever again. Next time I’ll call the police, no matter what are the consequences to you.”
She might have been small, but the way she seemed to fill that doorway in dark silhouette, with the light shining behind her and filtering through her hair to give her a reddish halo, she looked like a grim larger-than-life being.