Chapter Thirty-Five

  The first thing she did the next day was call Golden Willow in Invictus and schedule an appointment for herself. Alex wasn't sure how she'd feel once she'd completed the procedure. She wanted to make sure everything was planned out to the last detail.

  The call was one of the strangest she'd ever made in her short life.

  "No, Dr. Fairlight, I do not have any medical records about my tumor. It's, uhm, a rather new development, but I assure you this is not a prank call and I am a student at the Hundred Halls, you can check with Gamemakers," she explained.

  After a long silence, the woman's voice came back. "If this is not a prank, and you really are who you say you are, then we will see you when you arrive. There's really no need to make an appointment. We're here to serve, and if you truly have a tumor of that size in your head, we can take care of it."

  "Thank you, Dr. Fairlight," said Alex. "I'll see you in a few days.

  After she hung up, Alex went through the laborious process of examining herself with the spell. She had to understand the nodes inside her own brain so she could transfer the tumor without causing damage to either herself or her mother.

  She knew it was a risky procedure. There were a million ways it could go wrong, but there was no way she was going to let her mother die without trying.

  Once she had mapped her brain, Alex spent the next two days working out the math. The tumor had disturbed the shape of her mother's brain, requiring some stretching to make them fit, but once Alex had triple-checked her calculations, she was sure she could accomplish it.

  A few times, Alex thought about trying to find someone else who would take it, but she couldn't convince herself that was the right course of action for two reasons. The first was that it would be completely unethical and the second was that she'd seen enough differences between her and her mother to guess that a non-family member would be even more difficult. She was barely convinced she could pull it off as it was, let alone if there were more complications with the node transfer.

  On the day of the procedure, Alex splurged, eating a full meal of bacon, hash browns, a cup of ramen, an orange, and a dessert of two chocolate squares.

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  "You must be hungry, dear," said her mother from the couch, her eyes like thin slits, ringed with angry red lines. "I'm glad you're eating for the two of us."

  "You'll be eating soon enough, Mom," said Alex.

  "That's nice, dear."

  Alex gave her mom an extra dose of painkillers so she would sleep through the procedure. She didn't want her moving and screwing up the transfer. The whole thing was going to take at least four hours by her calculations, which would tax her stamina for faez generation.

  In a perfect world, she would have spent the next few weeks practicing, but Alex suspected her mother was running out of time. It was now or never.

  Alex set up a mirror next to the couch, holding it in place with duct tape and broom handles, while she placed her notebook with diagrams on the nodes she would have to transfer against the wall.

  She started with her mother, slowly feeding the faez into her skull until she could see the tumor. Alex took extra time, making sure the tumor hadn't shifted since her last viewing. Once she established the nodes were the same, she kept a light amount of faez on her mother, while shifting her focus to herself.

  This part took much longer because she had to keep her mother's tumor in sight while working on her own brain. It would be much easier to work on someone other than herself, but she was the only option her mother had.

  After two painstaking hours, Alex had fully immersed both brains and the tumor in the requisite faez. Her knees trembled with the exhaustion of focus, but she was only halfway done.

  Alex risked reaching over to grab a cup and wet her lips with water, fearing a full drink would upset the precarious balance of her vision.

  Next, she started the process of connecting the nodes. The prework made this part go smoothly, despite the strain of maintaining. Once she had set the scaffolding, Alex coaxed the tumor away from her mother's brain. She wasn't really moving it, but the nodes had to be unanchored before they could transfer.

  Despite wanting to be finished, Alex took her time so she didn't cause damage. It felt like trying to tease a soap bubble away from a thorn without popping it.

  When sweat rolled into her right eye, stinging it with salt, Alex had no choice but to ignore it.

  Once she had the many nodes unhooked from her mother's brain, Alex prepared herself to finish the spell. Once she did, she didn't know what was going to happen.

  A glance to the kitchen clock revealed she was five and a half hours into the procedure. As her eyes fell back upon her mother, she realized the pain pills were wearing off, and she was beginning to stir. Too much movement would change the shape of her thoughts, upsetting the nodes, and break the spell.

  She needed another few minutes to finalize the transfer, but she was out of time. Alex refocused her energy because the final part of the spell was going to need more faez than she thought she had to give.

  The strain was like pulling a compound bow back with only one finger. The string bit into her flesh, and she found herself moaning aloud in the final efforts.

  Alex had a vague awareness that her mother's eyes were fluttering open, so she made the final push. When the tumor shifted, it felt like the moon had crashed into the earth. Alex's head snapped backwards, and her vision went black.