Switchblade Goddess (22 page)

“What about him? You … you’ve got him gagged, he
can’t
consent to this.” I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking.

She smiled and patted his stubbled cheek. “Oh, he made me certain promises when we were alone together. I have all the consent from him I’ll ever need.”

Cooper’s stared at me, his eyes pleading:
Don’t do it
.

I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, opened them again. “Leave him alone. Take me instead.”

My lover gave an anguished groan and hit his head back against the stones in frustration. Miko grinned like a kid at Christmas.

“Well then.” She made a small gesture, and the straps on my wrists unbuckled themselves and slithered away. I still couldn’t move my arms because of the leather binding me across my biceps. She walked over to my chair, wiping her blade off on her naked thigh, and reached down to take hold of my left hand with her right.

“Blood promises must be kept.” In a quick, practiced motion, she carved the blade around my forearm in a perfect circle. The knife was sharper than I imagined, and it took a moment for the pain to register. I gasped as my blood rose around the sharp steel. She dragged the edge down the underside of my arm
from the cut to the base of my palm, not deep enough to slit the veins, just enough to slice through every layer of my skin.

“W-what are you doing?” I stammered as she made the same cuts on my right forearm.

“All will be revealed soon enough.” She dropped her blade to the floor, put her hands gently on mine, as though she were a lover. She slid her hands up the tops of my forearms and dug her fingers deep into the cuts she’d made.

I twitched and gasped, biting back a cry.

“Make a wish, Jessie.” Her face was just inches from mine. Suddenly she jerked her hands down like a magician doing a parlor trick with a tablecloth, ripping the skin cleanly from my wrists and hands.

For a half heartbeat, I stared down in shock at my raw scarlet fingers gleaming in the dim light, the sights of yellow tendons, filmy ligaments, sliding muscles, and pulsing bluish veins burning themselves into my memory. And then the agony slammed into me, strong and bright as a nuclear explosion, and I was screaming out every particle of air in my lungs, my vision going black at the edges, blood roaring in my ears. All the other assaults I’d suffered—my arm bitten off, my eye melted from my skull, my flesh burned away with fire and acid—seemed like paper cuts compared to this.

“Isn’t the pain just amazing?” Miko whispered, sounding envious. “You’ll never feel it like you’re feeling it now. There’s
nothing
like your first flaying.”

She shook my damp hand skins out by the fingers, admiring them. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination
or not, but I thought I could faintly feel the movement of my severed flesh.

“Nice strong dermis,” she remarked, “not much fat to scrape away—I think I can make some rather fashionable accessories out of these. Can’t use them in the living world, but I have the feeling I’ll be spending a lot of play-time in here with you and your little friend.”

I tried to curse her but all that came out was garbled blubbering. Bile rose in my throat, and my eyes stung with sweat and tears. I could dimly see Cooper weeping on his cross, his head drooping forward on his chest as if his heart was broken.

Smiling, Miko hung my skins on one of the iron rings set in the wall.

“I’ll have you know I’m being merciful.” She paused to lick my blood off her fingers. “In my moment of anger, I did swear to skin you alive, and there’s nothing to do about that but to skin you. But most anyone else who is bound to fulfill such a promise would this very minute be peeling the rest of your pretty hide from your flesh. And I’m not doing that, am I? You’ve still got your face. You’ve still got your feet. And I won’t do anything else to you tonight unless you give me a reason.”

She reached far into the back of her mouth and pulled out a shiny silver key. And then she let it fall to the floor with a soft clink amid the glass shards and splinters and droplets of blood.

“You can go now. I’m sure you can figure out how to get the door open.” She retrieved her knife and made another shooing motion. The straps binding me began to unbuckle themselves. “But unless you want
me to pay a real-life visit to you and your ailing familiar, don’t try to interfere with the man.”

I sat there, breathing hard, trying to get past the crippling pain. Trying to keep from screaming again. Trying to keep from throwing up. I tried to imagine fresh skin flowing over my hands, tried to speak a word for “heal,” but the words were blocked, my powers still dim.

My hands were trembling red claws in the unforgiving air. I couldn’t bear to look at Cooper. Whatever happened next, I was helpless to save him from our captor. She leaned against the slick stone wall, watching me impassively. Curiously, as though I were a lab mouse she’d set down in a maze.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked. “Don’t bore me; I’ll find ways of entertaining myself. You probably won’t like them.”

I tried to stand up on rubbery legs and immediately fell to my knees on the floor, the broken glass jabbing right through my jeans. The new pain was actually a welcome distraction from my hands. I stared down at the key, now just a few feet away from my right knee, then at my bony fingers. Even if I could bear the thought of trying to pick something up with them, they were thoroughly greased in clotting blood and weeping lymph. I couldn’t hold so much as a thought with them.

So I leaned forward, painfully, carefully, onto my elbows in the glass until my face was over the key. I tried a few times to pick it up with my lips, then finally got it into my mouth with my tongue.

“Well done!” Miko golf-clapped behind me.

Rolling back onto my heels, I slowly stood up, my
head swimming from the pain. I tottered over to the portal door and shifted the gritty key in my mouth until I had it clenched between my front teeth.

“Careful, now; the next part may be a little tricky,” she said.

Ignoring her, I leaned down and pushed the key into the lock. Tried to turn it. The lock was stiff. I bit down, twisting the key as hard as I could, teeth aching, threatening to crack. Finally, I felt the mechanism turn and click, the bolt retracting.

“See you tomorrow!” Miko called as I pushed the portal door open with my head and fell through.

W
hen I found myself back on the guest room cot, my flesh intact—well, as intact as it had ever been since my encounter with Blue’s demon—all I could do was lie there, breathing hard and shuddering. Yet my hands still ached as if they had truly been flayed.

Sleep was lost to me, and I was desperate to talk to Cooper. I’d left him to Miko’s mercy—was he okay in the living world? Did any of the others know he was in trouble? I went into the bathroom and tried and tried to make the mundane mirror open with ancient words and my own blood, but nothing worked.

I was reluctant to awaken Madame Devereaux, but when I heard her go into the kitchen to make her morning chicory, I anxiously approached her.

“Something’s happened,” I said. “Can I borrow your mirror?”

“Mirror?” she replied. “I don’t keep them things around; never know who might be trying to listen in.”

I almost swore. “How did you talk to my father, then?”

“I didn’t talk to him; he dropped a letter straight into my mailbox.”

“Do you at least have a phone?” I did my damnedest to not sound impatient. I didn’t succeed.

She frowned at my tone. “There’s one in the living room. Help y’self; long distance don’t cost me none extra.”

“Thank you.”

I found an old-fashioned black Bakelite rotary dial phone on a lace doily on the reading table beside the sofa. Cooper had lost his cellphone the night he got dragged into his hell, so I tried the numbers at the Warlock’s bar.

“Lingham Liquors Lounge, whaddaya want?” answered an impatient twenty-something guy with a Brooklyn accent. A new bartender? I didn’t recognize his voice. Somewhere behind him, I could hear angry drunken shouting.

“Are Opal or the Warlock there?” I asked.

“Nope. Call back later.”

Click
.

I stared down at the disconnected phone, then redialed the number.

“Lingham Liquors Lounge, whaddaya want?”

“Dude, did you just hang up on me? Seriously?” I asked.

“They ain’t here.” He enunciated each word as if he thought I was brain damaged.

“Well, do you know where they are? It’s kind of an emergency.”

“No, I don’t, and if it’s an emergency, call 911.”

Click
.

Shanique was in earshot, and I only barely managed to keep from dropping a dozen F-bombs. I made a mental note to find out who the bartender was, and to soundly kick his ass when I finally met him in person. But calling him back to chew him out wasn’t
going to get me what I needed. So I dialed Mother Karen’s house.

Her eldest foster son answered after two rings: “Sebastián residence, this is Jimmy.”

“Hey, this is Jessie … is Mother Karen around?”

“No, she’s mostly been in Clintonville the past two days,” he replied. “I guess something bad happened there yesterday? She called in some emergency babysitters to help me with the little kids while she’s away.”

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

“No, sorry, I really don’t. Probably tonight, though.”

“Does she have a cell with her?”

“Maybe …” I heard the sound of papers rustling. “No, sorry, she forgot it here under the mail. Can I take a message or have her call you back?”

“Sure.” I gave him the number printed on the front of the phone.

“I’ll give it to her as soon as she comes in,” he promised.

I thanked him, hung up the phone, and rubbed my temples. Why couldn’t Madame Devereaux just have a mirror? I had to find one, somewhere. Maybe the old witch knew of some Talents in the area who could hook me up. I left the living room and found her spooning something that looked like greenish black molasses into a cored Granny Smith apple. It was stinky and sweet, smelling something like a cross between watermelon and Thai fish sauce.

“What’s that?” I asked her.

“Medicine for your critter; it won’t fix what ails him but it’ll stop it getting worse.” She corked the holes in
the apple with a couple of mini marshmallows. “Sour apples cover up the taste of the sap some, but he’s big enough he can maybe just swallow this whole.”

“I’ll give it to him, thank you.” I took the apple from her. “Do you know of any other witches or wizards who live near here? I really need to find a working mirror. It’s important.”

“Well.” She pushed her bifocals up her nose. “I ’spect Hank Wrycroft might have one o’ them fool things. He’s over by Bramble Lake, ’bout five miles from here. Just head up the road here till you get to Harker’s Grocery, hang a left, go three more miles till you see the pesthouse yeller shack with the gargoyle out front.”

“Do you have a car I could borrow?”

She looked me up and down, and at first I expected her to make a sarcastic comment about my legs being broke or something. But I guess I looked about as bad as I felt, and she didn’t give me a hard time.

She shook her head. “My Beetle threw a rod, and I’m waitin’ for the new ’un to come mail-order. Dang krauts takin’ their sweet time sending it to me. If you can round up a couple of the goats, I can hook ’em up to the cart in the barn I ’spose, but they don’t mind real well.”

Goats? I didn’t know the first thing about catching a goat, much less making it follow directions. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t come with a turn signal or emergency brake.

“That’s okay; I’ll just walk it, thanks,” I told her.

Besides, five miles surely wasn’t that hard, was it?

* * *

Forty minutes later, I was kneeling in the thick kudzu vines by the side of the road, dry-heaving, half blind with tears and sweat. My guts were on fire, and my chest and back felt tight and sharply ached as if my major internal organs had decided to swell up like balloons. It was hard to take a full breath. Worse, the phantom pain of the flaying had my hands crabbed and trembling and generally useless.

Once I was sure I wasn’t actually going to vomit and choke myself, I let myself collapse sideways into the dusty green kudzu and indulged in a few minutes of helpless coughing and weak profanity. Jesus. I hadn’t even made it as far as the grocery store.

You’re not going to die by the side of the road like a gut-shot possum
, I scolded myself.
Get up and go back to the house. Do an Elvis on the toilet if you have to, but don’t die out here
.

After about fifty repeats of that internal pep talk, I finally got back up on my knees, then got to my feet and began to totter toward Madame Devereaux’s, one painful step after the other.

Eventually I got back to the house, staggered into the bathroom, and spent the next hour lying on the cool floor tiles and taking shots of Pepto-Bismol until my innards settled. Once I had some strength back, I went to keep Pal company in the barn until Shanique yelled at me that I had a phone call.

“Hello?” I said into the receiver.

“Jimmy told me you called,” Mother Karen replied. “What’s going on?”

“Have you seen Cooper?” I asked.

“Not since yesterday,” she replied.

“Do you know where he went?”

“No, I don’t—what’s going on?”

“I’m worried he’s in trouble.” I paused, thinking hard. Even if Randall wasn’t with Cooper, surely our father could figure out where my boyfriend was.

“Could you try to open a mirror to my brother?” I asked.

“Oh.” Mother Karen sounded surprised. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Me neither, until a few days ago … but that doesn’t matter. Do you think you could try?”

“Well, I don’t have a pointer. Do you know his personal information?”

“Just his name, and our father’s name.”

“Hmm. I can try. Hang on, let me go upstairs.”

She picked up the extension in her office a minute later. “All right, I’m putting you on speaker. What’s your brother’s name?”