We started walking again.  As we approached the door, Harvey stopped.  “It’s here now, isn’t it?  The thing that hunts you?  I can sense an Incarnata on the other side of that door.”

I felt my stomach drop.  I was hoping it would be gone by now.  “Yes, it’s there.  It killed my friend and took his shape.  It almost got me too.  It’s waiting for me to come out.”

Harvey sat down and looked at me, speaking in a low voice that sounded like distant thunder.  “Why doesn’t it come after you here?”

It was my turn to shrug.  “It says it can’t.  It’s bound or something and it can only get back here in my body.  By taking me over and riding me across.  Which I’m pretty sure will kill me.”  I let out a sigh.  “If it’s not lying or just fucking insane.  This is all crazy anyway.”

The bear shook its head.  “No, though I understand why it seems that way to you.  All the strange things you’ve seen, both here and in the hotel, they are governed by rules.  Rules for magic, rules for holiday lands, rules for you and rules for me.  If this thing after you is Lamark’s assassin, she would have bound it with magic from your world so it would kill for her in your world.  Magic that would likely be altered or collapse here.  She could make it where crossing over without her permission would kill it, but that is where her binding spell would end.  It sounds like it is working off a theory that if it is possessing you, it can survive the journey and break the spell.”

I nodded slowly.  “Okay.  I guess that makes sense.  But whether it worked or not, I think I’ll wind up dying.  My best bet is to wait until it leaves and then get away from it.  I can just keep trying to avoid it, and fight it off when I have to.”

Harvey stood up again.  “No.  That’s no life for you to have.  You’d be a prisoner of your own fears for however many years you had.”  He regarded me with his flickering, amber gaze.  “That is a terrible way to live and I would not wish that for you.”

“Then what should I do?”

He rose again on his hind legs, and as I watched, he began to fall apart.   Or not fall apart, but spin apart, as though some internal whirlwind was growing in his heart and sending the bits that made up the bear into the raging orbit of the maelstrom.  Within seconds a small tornado roared where Harvey had stood.

“You should open the door so I can put this creature to rest.”

****

This is how one of my family’s curses was lifted.