Invasion of the Blanche (Strange Totems Book 2) by Corey Mariani (book recommendations based on other books txt) 📗

It hurts.” She let out a deep, throaty groan, then her body went limp and hung from the bubble, like bait on a hook.

“No!” I cried out. “May! May! No no no no no.”

Blanche/Sheryl fell to the floor next, landing with a thud, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Scrill continued to churn on the surface of my skin. My clothes were sodden with it.

The green bubble disappeared.

Em’s eyes were no longer vacant . . . and they were no longer hers. She arranged her eyebrows to convey the maximum amount of empathy and stepped toward me, stopping in front of Sheryl’s lifeless body. “I know you just lost your sister,” Blanche/Em said with Em’s voice. “But you can still save your niece.”

I glanced at my sister hanging from the black bubble and jerked my head away. She was just hanging there. Gone. “Let her down,” I said, fighting back the imminent wave of sobs. I yelled, “Let her down!”

The bearded Zaditorian went to her and put his hands on her black bubble. I turned away. I couldn’t watch her drop. I couldn’t hear it either. I put one ear against the black bubble and covered the other ear with my free hand. And I wept.

When the convulsive sobs grew further apart, a faded aquamarine Tupperware bowl—my faded green Tupperware bowl—was placed on the floor in front of me. The Tupperware lid was removed, revealing the sourdough starter that had been in my family for generations.

Chapter 18

BLANCHE/EM CUPPED HER HANDS in front of her chest. “Look at all that scrill! Your rekulak’s trying to protect you from my cackle. This is why I needed Em’s body. She’s the only one who can produce enough of my cackle to get through to you. Your rekulak will block most of it, but there will be enough inside you for you to enter the whorl of the sourdough starter. There’s a typewriter inside, on the desk, along with a mortgage contract. I want you to type out that mortgage contract, just like Lonnie taught you. And that’s it. Once you’re done, Em can have her body back.”

“Where is she now?” I couldn’t look at my niece’s face knowing she wasn’t the one in control of it.

“She’s in here. She’s fine. Just waiting on you.”

“Is May dead?” I already knew the answer, but I desperately wanted to be mistaken.

“Yes, unfortunately. But you can still save Em. Don’t forget that. It’s real easy. I give you bloom. You graft to the totem, do some typing. All done. Easy as pie.”

I held out my hand for the bloom while keeping my eyes down and fixed on the sourdough starter. One of the Zaditorian’s feet shuffled into view. I felt something cold and wet drop onto my palm, then a surge of pain and voices all over my body, voices talking nonsense, Zelda’s the loudest among them.

I felt stupid grafting, saying my stupid Pictionary poems—Pillow Case Concussion, Mattress Fort Collapse . . . . But I said them for Em’s sake, and the graft took, and I found myself sitting in a large room with a vaulted ceiling and a wall of bay windows that looked out onto a turbulent ocean and a sky thick with dark clouds. A door opened behind me, and the sound of footsteps mingled with the crackling fire to my right. Not far from the fireplace was a typewriter on an ornate and imposing antique desk.

I sat in a leather chair, wearing a pink polka dot dress, a new aquamarine Tupperware on my lap, open and full of sourdough starter. The smell of yeast and fermenting flour mixed with the smell of leather from the chair.

May had always doubted I could smell the difference between our family’s sourdough starter and others. She’d always threatened to put me to the test but never had, as if she were afraid of bursting my bubble.

A young man stepped into my eye line. He wore a leather vest and jeans and Lonnie’s belt buckle. I studied the face and recognized the eyes. This was Lonnie as a young man. He still had baby fat in his cheeks.

“What’s that for?” he said, pointing to the starter.

I ignored the question and set the starter on an end table next to a plate that held a knife and fork and a cheese danish. And I remembered the words of the prisoner from Arampom, “The secret to defeating the Memoirist lies beyond the cheese danish in the whorl of the sourdough starter.” And here it was. But what had the prisoner meant by beyond? Did I have to ride this whorl, endure its pain past a certain point? Did I have to leave this room? Or did I have to wait for a server to come and take the cheese danish away? Or did I have to eat it?

Whatever the vague instructions meant, that wasn’t what I was here for. If I typed the mortgage contract, as Blanche had asked, she would let Em have her body back. So that was what I was going to do.

I left the cheese danish and the sourdough starter, and I went to sit at the typewriter. I felt the pain of the whorl slip away. This was not the path.

“What are you doing?” Lonnie said.

“Leave,” I said.

“You called me here.”

“Leave.”

Lonnie left without another word.

Usually, when I veered off course in a whorl, avoiding the pain, I would be inundated with the ancestor’s life stories. But that wasn’t happening.

In her first body, Blanche was an oshara, like Em, the rarest kind of mobiak. Maybe they had the power to create whorls where their stories were hidden from visitors.

May was dead.

I started to cry again. I felt ashamed but didn’t try to stop. May was dead because of me. I’d convinced her to trust Mom. I’d brought her to the inn. I’d made all the wrong choices. Would she still be alive now if I hadn’t rescued her that night at