Roni shot across the room and slammed onto her knees beside Gram. “Hold on. I’m here now. I’m going to call for help. Just hold on.”
She fumbled out her phone. Under trembling fingers, she dialed 9-1-1. This couldn’t be happening. After all she had learned in the last day, after her world had been upended, it would be the cruelest joke to rip apart her family again. Salty tears flowed into her mouth.
“Why aren’t they answering?” she yelled.
She looked at the phone and saw that she had forgotten to press SEND. Before she could raise her thumb toward the green icon, Gram’s hand batted at the phone.
“No,” Gram said.
“You need an ambulance and the paramedics. I don’t know any first aid to help you.”
“They can’t help me.” Straining through her pain, she added, “Get ... Elliot.”
“But —”
“Get Elliot!”
The urgency of Gram’s voice cut straight through Roni’s brain. Nodding like a bobble-head, she pressed the phone into Gram’s hand and dashed to the stairwell. The elevator would be too slow.
She bolted up flight after flight until she reached the top floor. Both the stairs and the elevator opened into a tiny lobby big enough for the doors to the two apartments and two chairs to sit while waiting for the elevator. Roni went to the right — Elliot and Sully’s apartment — and banged on the door.
“Elliot! Elliot!” Why wasn’t he answering? He always spent the early evening in prayer and almost always in his apartment. At least, she always thought he was praying. But then, she never saw him being observant of the Muslim traditions. Still, he should have been in his apartment. Did something different happen today or was he asleep? She slammed her fist against the door over and over. “Wake up! Elliot! Gram needs you!”
She heard a muffled sound from inside followed by the locks on the doors clicking. Elliot opened the door looking confused. “What are you doing making all this fuss when I’m trying —”
“Gram’s having a heart attack!”
She had never seen Elliot move so fast. He dashed back into his apartment and returned seconds later with his cane — though he never let it touch the ground. He rushed down the stairs faster than Roni could keep up, pivoting on the landings like a youthful athlete, and sometimes skipping a stair.
At the bottom, he soared to Gram’s side. When Roni caught up, she saw that perspiration covered his face. He had pushed himself harder than he should have, and Roni worried he might have a heart attack as well.
He held his cane parallel over Gram’s body, closed his eyes, and murmured words Roni could not identify. His free hand caressed the air between Gram and the cane. Roni watched — unable to breathe, unable to move. Elliot continued to pass his hand back and forth at a steady pace.
A golden light appeared in the air around Elliot’s moving hand. At first, it looked like sunshine cutting in on a summer day — light, breezy, and warm. But then Roni spotted pinpoints of light that moved within the general glow. Fireflies of energy that swarmed around Elliot’s hand.
Elliot shifted his side-to-side motion to an up-and-down one as if fanning the air. The energy descended like glowing ash. When it touched Gram’s skin, it disappeared within her, absorbed like water droplets on a dry cloth. As fast as it happened, Gram’s color returned to her skin, her breathing eased, and all impressions of pain left her face.
Sitting back, Elliot sighed. “She’s going to be okay.”
Roni stared at these two people like they were aliens. “How?”
“I heal people. That is my main gift. I thought I told you that.”
“Maybe you did. But there’s a big difference between hearing something like that and seeing it actually happen.”
Dabbing at his forehead with his sleeve, he said, “I’m surprised you look so astounded — after what you saw last night.”
“Me, too. But I am.” She crouched next to Elliot and wrapped her arms around him. “Thank you.” He had a comforting, smoky aroma as if he had a wood-burning stove in his apartment. “Thank you for saving her.”
Gram sat up and rolled her shoulders. “It isn’t the first time.”
Roni tried to ease Gram back down. “Lord woman, lay down. You’ve got to rest.”
“I’ve lived more decades than you. I think I know what my body needs and doesn’t need.” Gram shoved Roni’s arms away. “Elliot’s been bringing me back from near-death more times than I care to remember. So, if you want to be a help, then quit pushing me and start helping up to my feet.”
Elliot took one arm and Roni the other. Together, they lifted Gram up and placed her in a seat at the big table. “She will be fine,” Elliot said.
“It goes with the territory,” Gram said. “After you put in a few dozen years or so on the job, you’ll have been exposed to all sorts of stuff.”
“Exposed?” Roni didn’t like the sound of that. “Like radiation?”
“Sure. Maybe. I don’t know. Each one of those books in the cavern contains a rip into another universe. You think that’s benign? Every single universe is going to have its own unique bacteria, unique air mixture, unique properties of everything. There’s no way you can do this work and not inhale a bit of another universe. That has lasting consequences.”
“You’re saying you had a heart attack because of germs from another universe.”
Gram drummed her fingers on the table. “Now you’re starting to see. Except in this case, no. I had a heart attack because I’m in my seventies and I’ve had a bad ticker for a long time. Partly old age. Mostly bad genes. If it weren’t for Elliot, I’d have died ten, maybe twenty years ago. He’s also saved Sully’s life a few times.”
Roni kissed the side of Elliot’s head. “Thank you.”
He leaned on his cane, wincing but trying to hide it. “Nothing to thank me for. Keeping us healthy and running is part of my job. But there are limits to what I can do.” He leveled his eyes on Gram. “And how often.”
Gram waved him off. “I know, I know. He’s implying that soon he won’t be able to stop the natural order of things. Nobody gets to cheat Death, after all. Elliot can stop me from croaking to a heart attack, but he can’t stop old age. Eventually, my body’s going to have had enough.”
“My body, too.” He shifted on his feet, once more tightening his face with the movements. To Roni, he said, “I can summon a lot of energy from the air to give myself a boost, but as I get older, it takes more and more from me.”
Roni said, “Is that how you ran down the stairs like a twenty year old?”
“That’s right. But my body doesn’t like it. If I die before I have a successor, this group will be in serious trouble for a while. Eventually, you’ll find somebody, but that doesn’t mean you won’t suffer in the meantime.”
“Are you suggesting that I —”
Both Elliot and Gram laughed. “Not at all,” he said. “You’ve gotten your job. But this team of four needs more youth than just you. Eventually, that is.”
“That’s right.” Gram used the table to prop herself up to a standing position. “Eventually means later — much later. Let’s deal with right now. We’ve got work to do. Roni? Did you get what you were assigned to find?”
Without intending to do so, Roni stepped forward with her chest puffed up. She lifted her head like a Greek warrior returning from battle under the cheers of the people, and she pulled the ticket stub from her pocket. Adding a final flick to the stub, she presented it with a reverent nod.
Gram picked it up and checked over both sides. “It’s rather small.”
“You never said anything about the object having to be large.”
Elliot snickered. “Come on, give the girl a break. You know very well size doesn’t matter. Not for this.”
“Don’t get saucy,” Gram said without any mirth. “Particularly in front of my granddaughter.”
Roni didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. She opted for a third choice. She snatched the ticket stub back and asked in a firm voice, “Will it do or won’t it?”
“As long as it is a deeply personal object to Darin, it’ll do fine.”
“Then this will be perfect.”
Gram weighed Roni’s confident words. “I hope you’re right.”
Apparently almost dying did nothing to quell Gram’s rough side. As Roni pocketed the stub, she said, “Is there anything else you need from me?”
“Oh, yes.” Gram’s eyes blazed and her voice uttered words with dark intent. “Endless things.” Then she rubbed her back like an accountant stretching from a long day pouring over financial statements, and in a pleasant tone, she said, “But for tonight’s work, this will do. Sully should be ready. Elliot and I will go downstairs to prepare. Please be a dear and help Sully. He sometimes needs a hand.”
Threading her arm around Elliot’s arm, Gram rested her head on his shoulder. She hoisted her big bag, and the two ambled off toward the elevator with all the warmth and closeness decades of friendship could create. For a fleeting moment, Roni’s tension evaporated under that warmth.
Until Gram circled her finger in the air. “Hup, hup. I don’t want to be awake all night waiting for you and Sully to get downstairs.”
As Roni trudged up the stairs, she muttered, “Almost dying sure has made you cranky.” Thankfully, Gram did not respond.
On the third floor, Roni walked back into Sully’s workshop. The Golem stood in the center of the room. It appeared like a giant figure made of simple shapes — a square block head, a cylinder body, cylinder arms, and thick rectangular legs. The head had two divots for eyes and a carved outline for a mouth. Sully ate a turkey sandwich at one of his desks.
“Are we ready?” he asked as Roni entered.
“Gram and Elliot are preparing things downstairs. She asked that I come help you.”
“Not much left to do. I have to wake him up, and then we’ll all go down together.”
She gazed up at the clay thing. “Are they always so plain looking? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound like an insult.”
Wiping his hands on his shirt, Sully said, “You’re wondering why, if I’ve been working all day on this, doesn’t it look better.”
“That’s horrible of me. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s a valid question.” Sipping from a straw stuck in a soda can, he pulled over a thin strip of white paper and a pen. After stifling a soda belch, he started to write in Hebrew. “It all has to do with the purpose of the Golem. Some purposes require more time than others. This one needs to be able to withstand some powerful forces. It doesn’t need to look pretty. So, I put my efforts into the things you can’t really see on the outside.”
He adjusted his glasses, looked over what he had written, and seemed satisfied with the result. He then rolled the paper into a tight tube about the length of his fingernail. Scooting off a metal stool, he walked toward the ladder beside the Golem.
“Can I help you?” Roni asked.
“Wait there,” he said and climbed the ladder. At the top, standing next to the Golem’s head, he leaned out, holding onto the ladder with one hand.
Roni rushed over and steadied the ladder with her body. She arched her head back to watch, ready to attempt to catch Sully if he fell. Of course, if he fell, she figured they would both end up in the ER getting stitches, but what else could she do?
Sully placed the rolled up paper with Hebrew writing into the Golem’s mouth. Then he swung over to the side and whispered into the thing’s ear — not that he had made an ear, but that was the position where an ear should have been. When he finished, he climbed down.
“Don’t dawdle now,” he said, taking Roni’s arm and guiding her toward the entrance.
As she walked away, she chanced a glance back and froze. The Golem moved. The giant, barely-sculpted chunk of clay stepped forward and thudded toward them.
Sully gave a short wave. “Good evening, there. You should take the elevator down. Much easier than the stairs. We’ll meet you in the Specials Room. Did I write that part down for you?” The Golem’s head nodded in an exaggerated up-and-down motion. “Good. We’ll see you there.”
“That’s amazing,” Roni managed.
“Far from my best work,” Sully whispered. “But don’t let him hear that. He’s going to do a great service for us.”
“W-What’s he going to do?”
“Help us with Darin, of course. Come on. Time to save your boyfriend.”
As Roni followed Sully toward the stairs, his words sunk in. “He’s not my boyfriend!”