Wednesday after school I was in Ms. Bryant’s classroom using her aerosol adhesive to mount our graphics onto the trifold display board. Marik had been right. Go figure. With every other thing falling apart in my life, somehow the assignment became of paramount importance. It made about as much sense as flossing after the Last Supper, but focusing on this one thing put me to bed late and woke me up early two days in a row.

Even with the windows open, the spray glue emitted a stinging plume of toxic haze. Burrowing my mouth and nose into the crook of my elbow, I sat back on my haunches.

At home, things were in a holding pattern. Leira was still hospitalized but had stabilized enough to be taken off the ventilator. Her doctors weren’t happy with her overall “failure to thrive,” but the little fighter was hanging in there. Afi had been discharged and was convalescing at home. The doctors hadn’t found an infection so were stumped as to the cause of the edema. Lack of oxygen didn’t keep an old cuss like Afi from grumbling, which was probably a good sign. My chart-maker mom had devised a schedule so that Afi had dinner and someone to kvetch at every night of the week. My turn had been yesterday; I’d made BLTs and split-pea soup, the latter a favorite of Afi’s, not mine.

Jack was the sandbag on my chest. On at least two occasions I’d thought I’d heard or seen his truck. I couldn’t be sure, but both times my heart had crashed to my heels.

“Whoa,” Ms. Bryant said, entering the room and fanning the air. “Maybe you should do that outside.”

I took a deep breath, reexposing my airways to the vapors. I feared almost nothing at this point. “I’m done. Sorry about the fumes.”

She picked up a file folder from her desk and waved it back and forth in front of her. “How’s your grandfather doing today?”

“Better.” I pressed my lips together, wondering how she knew he was sick. I hadn’t said anything.

“And did your dad decide to go with chili or beef stew for his meal with him tonight?”

Now I added a jaw clench to my clamped lips. I had definitely not mentioned our meals-on-wheels program. Moreover, I didn’t even know tonight was my dad’s turn, never mind menu options. This was odd. I’d just spoken to my dad last night. It wasn’t like him to keep anything from me. So if he and Ms. Bryant were conversing, he’d have told me. Unless . . .

“I’m not sure which he’s going with,” I said, playing along.

Ms. Bryant had taken a seat at her desk and tapped a pencil against a stack of papers. “He thinks the beef stew is probably the safer choice. He claims the chili is his specialty, but it packs a bit of heat.” Ms. Bryant looked up, her eyes focused on something out the window, and her index finger trailed along her bottom lip. “If it’s even half as hot as his kisses, it should only be served with a fire extinguisher handy.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said, lurching to a stand.

“The chili — your dad says it might be too hot for your grandfather.”

I was myself a fireball of confusion. With that TMI tidbit — so unlike Ms. Bryant and so inappropriate for a teacher — she’d been running her finger over her lips, her closed lips.

“I have to go,” I said, grabbing my book bag.

“Oh. OK. You and Marik are all set, then, for Friday.”

“Yep. See ya.”

If Ms. Bryant had added anything else to our parting comments, I didn’t hear it; I was probably halfway to the parking lot by then.

I found Ofelia behind the counter at the store. She was ringing up items for an elderly customer. Hoping to speed the process, I stepped in and bagged up the few groceries. My heart flatlined for a moment when I lifted a clear plastic bag of pink apples, Snjosson Farms apples, into the brown sack. The moment the woman exited the store, I turned on Ofelia.

“I need your help,” I said.

“In what way?” She moved an errant dime from the quarter compartment of the register.

“I’m not sure, but I think . . .”

Memories rushed at me like linebackers. Birta’s “as if we’d want to put any more ideas in Katla’s head” comment, for one. As well as the guy in Starbucks and his suggestive comments.

“Ofelia, I think I’m hearing what people are thinking.”

She froze for a moment and then closed the cash-register drawer, triggering its bell.

“I have always wondered —”

“Wondered what?” I asked.

“Why I was called here.”

“What? Why? I’m so confused.”

“Katla, I know Hulda has told you that your gifts are special, even among our ranks. And your most recent bestowment, it shows a power beyond what Hulda probably ever imagined.”

I exhaled. “Except those powers may get me disciplined.”

“Yes, they may, but that does not negate their existence. And if you’re tapping into people’s thoughts, your gifts are continuing to grow and expand.”

“I never asked for any of this.” I backhanded an imaginary this away from me. “Especially not this new psychic nuisance. I just want . . . I just want to be normal again.” With the admission, tears puddled in my eyes.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Ofelia said with a twitch of her eyebrows. “As to your newest gift, I imagine it will prove useful soon, if it hasn’t already.”

Something Ofelia had said earlier burbled to the surface of my consciousness. “You mentioned you’d been called here. Why do you think that is?”

“I suspect that you have the ability to draw out the special among us.”

Again with the whole lodestone concept.

“To have an individual gift is not unheard of,” Ofelia continued. “Mine you knew of, of course. Many Storks also have the power of healing.”

I thought of Hulda and Grim ministering to Jack at the portal when Wade had torched him in an attempted sacrifice. The Bleika Norn and her purported healing abilities also came to mind, as well as her Asgard counterparts: Bleik and Eyra.

“I wonder, and it’s just a theory, if you haven’t assembled — even if unwittingly — those you learn from, draw powers from.”

Now I wasn’t just a lure, I was a leech, too. My use of Jinky’s talents came to mind here.

“So this mind-reading thing, can I turn it off?” I asked with a pout. “There are some things I seriously don’t want to know.”

“You can’t turn it off, but you will eventually become inured to the distractions, the way we often don’t register background noise like traffic or mowers or barking dogs.”

When another customer entered, reciting his shopping list over and over in his head — eggs, milk, Kleenex, Nyquil, eggs, milk, Kleenex, Nyquil — I mentally overrode him with my own to-dos: Spare Leira, get Jack back, save the world. Spare Leira, get Jack back, save the world. I waved good-bye to Ofelia. At the door, I was careful to cover my hand with my sleeve so as not to get slimed by the guy’s germs.