Pulling Strings (Marionette)

1. Hungover

1

Hungover

The headache pounded like a fist inside my skull. Whatever demons I’d tried to drown in liquor last night had survived and were ready for another round.

Gummy eyelids opened, first one then the other, and I peered out. I lay on the floor of a bathroom, wedged between the toilet and the wall. My legs were pinned and numb, my face was slicked with drool, and every inch of me was cold.

The lights were off—a blessing—but I could discern the shape of the pedestal sink and claw-footed bathtub, and the bare-chested man standing overhead. Nicholas Nash’s red hair was mussed, and the sheets had pressed wrinkles into his face. He must have been out as hard as I had been and was no more pleased to be awake, judging by his grimace.

“Fitch,” he groaned, “why the hell did you set an eight o’clock alarm?”

I must have missed the steady beeping with the migraine infecting my brain, but I heard it now. Growing louder and pulsing with the bright flashing of the screen Nash turned toward me.

“Shut it off and come back to bed.” He tossed the cell to land on the tile. “All I can do is snooze the damn thing.”

Squinting, I scooped up the phone from where it buzzed against the floor. Fingerprint recognition silenced the squawking alarm and restored quiet. Both Nash and I sighed relief before he wandered back into the adjoining bedroom.

Attempting to sit unfolded my knees to a flurry of fire ant bites. Blood rushed in and brought pain, and I let out a low groan. Memories of programming the alarm were distant and vague. I was supposed to be somewhere today. Early.

Checking my cell’s cracked screen showed the time: 8:22. Below that, a calendar reminder contained relevant information. East Side Tower. Floor 10. 8:40 AM.

I had an appointment in eighteen minutes, and to say it was a matter of life and death was no exaggeration.

My feet tingled with protest as I worked my way onto all fours. I half-crawled, half-dragged myself onto the scrubby carpet of the bedroom.

A sliver of sunlight cut across the floor, illuminating ornate wooden furniture including a four-poster bed. The sounds of soft snoring reminded me of the third person who had joined Nash and me in last night’s tryst. Pulling myself up to the footboard, I found Nash reposed with his arm draped across his eyes and a brunette woman sprawled beside him. Her lacy black lingerie paired nicely with the Sharpie scribble across her cleavage, barely legible as F. Farrow. My autograph.

Tempted as I was to crawl into the nest of sheets between them, I had places to be, and an appointment that wouldn’t wait for hangovers or post-coital cuddles.

Another search of the bedroom found discarded clothes in piles. Some mine; some not. I moved away from the bed on my knees, making slow progress through the garments scattered across the floor. I found my jeans first and shimmied into them, then belly-crawled to the next heap of clothing to search for my shirt. Sitting up to tug it over my head brought a wave of nausea that laid me back flat.

Get it together, Fitch. You’re a professional. Act like it.

Fumbling with my phone again, I flipped to the camera function and switched it to forward-facing. When my image appeared on the screen, I cringed. Dark shadows ringed my hazel eyes and my hair lay flat on one side from where it had been pressed against the bathroom wall. That was besides the chapped lips and days-old stubble—to most, a five o’clock shadow, but puberty passed me over in the body hair department.

A second attempt to sit brought success. I ran my tongue around my mouth. How was everything so damn dry? I’d guzzled half the bar last night. I should have been hydrated as hell.

The rustling of sheets drew my attention to Nash swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He scrubbed his hands over his bearded cheeks.

“Why are you getting dressed?” he asked.

“I’m late,” I mumbled despite my uncooperative tongue.

He frowned. “It’s too early to be late.” My weary glare served as response enough, and prompted him to ask, “Late for what?”

Awareness of my assignment filtered slowly into my mind. “There’s a meeting. With a vote. Some guy’s gonna vote yes. Grimm doesn’t want him to vote at all.” I raised both hands in a grandiose gesture to myself. “Which is where I come in.”

There was more to it, of course. Grimm had waxed poetic about the motion to open the city gates; to burst our bubble of a world and satisfy the curiosity of the human public. Witches had been billed as society’s bad guys since the Salem trials. We’d achieved an unsteady peace by giving humans every assurance and agreeing to their every demand. That was my boss’s perspective, anyway, and the platform of the terrorist group known as the Bloody Hex. Since I was a member of that elite bunch of brutes, it was my opinion, too. For official purposes, at least.

Nash folded his arms across his broad torso. With the muscles, tattoos, and a full, ginger beard, he was missing only his trademark plaid shirt to be the embodiment of my lumberjack fantasies.

He sighed. “Where are you supposed to find ‘this guy?’”

“Downtown,” I answered, rubbing my eyes. “East Side Tower.”

He let out a mad cackle. “Those snooty execs will never let you in. You’ve gotta put on shoes, at least.”

My eyes swam around the room. Velvet drapes curtained the balcony windows on the far wall, parted enough to show only a thin line of the brightness outside. Nash and the woman remained in bed, where I wished I could be and, in the corner beside the armoire, one of my boots sat upright.

Damn. Why so far away?

I rolled my shoulders, cracked my neck, and shook my hands loose, trying to stir the magic I’d put to bed along with my problems last night. I didn’t know what effect booze had on other witches’ power, but I’d learned years ago it knocked mine out cold.

Mind-centered magic—telekinesis, in my case—was best wielded by those with great mental fortitude, self-control, and the inner peace of a Buddhist monk. Having been blessed with none of those qualities, I made do with self-loathing, bouts of rage, and an impressive tolerance for pain. Running any kind of machine with the wrong fuel was bound to cause problems, and my brain was no exception. Hence the need for whiskey when I’d exhausted all my other coping mechanisms.

Rather than crawl across the room to retrieve the shoe, or God forbid walk, I stretched a hand toward it. The exertion made me grunt, grabbing the boot with all the mental power I could muster and dragging it toward me. Pain sparked in my temple like a static shock, and the boot slid forward an inch. Maybe two. Then it flopped over, the open side toward me like a mouth howling with laughter.

“Need a little help?” Nash’s deadpan expression only increased my frustration.

“No,” I muttered.

More than footwear, I needed the little glass bottles the alchemist kept in his bedside table, like a hotel minibar stocked especially for me. I assumed it was for me because Nash rarely indulged in his own products. He probably got that out of his system before he met me, burned himself out on alcohol like anyone with unlimited access to something.

Arriving at the door, I scrambled up the frame to stand at last. The headache took on a new beat, deep and steady, resounding down my brain stem.

I staggered toward where Nash perched on the bed. He didn’t budge as I stumbled toward him, almost falling into his lap as I yanked open the drawer of the table beside him and dug through the contents. I found a notepad and pens, a journal, a bottle of aspirin, and a hand that shot past mine to retrieve something from the far recesses of the drawer.

Nash pulled out a potion bottle and waggled it in my line of sight. When I reached for it, he swung his arm away.

“You sure you can’t get a raincheck on this job?” he asked.

My phone buzzed against my thigh with a reminder of the calendar event I couldn’t possibly have forgotten. “Vote today,” I replied. “If it passes, I’m fucked.”

A hitman who couldn’t kill was like a bird dog that couldn’t hunt. Both were equally likely to end up dumped in the woods with a bullet in their brain.

Nash’s eyes pinched. “Am I an enabler? Tell me the truth.”

Rather than make a fool of myself wrestling the potion away from him, I let my head loll back and groaned. “Nash, I don’t have time for your self-actualizing bullshit right now. Thanks for the fuck. Give me that go juice. I need to leave.”

We stared at each other for a long moment before Nash huffed a breath. He pushed the bottle into my chest.

Popping the cork, I raised the bottle in a one-sided toast before dumping its contents into my mouth. The immediate taste of gasoline made me gag. When I wheezed my next breath, it felt like I could spit fire.

“That’s the good shit,” I grunted. Power sputtered in my skull, gargling like a choked motor.

The flavor lingered, no less noxious than when it first hit my tongue. The headache seemed to subside, though. Less of an all-out attack on my gray matter and now a pressure that thrummed behind my eyes. Sleep called to me like a siren’s song, but all thoughts of rest took a backseat to my phone vibrating again.

Out of time.

The door to the hallway stood only a few feet away. Beyond it lay a spiral staircase I was convinced Nash put in for the sole purpose of watching me stumble down it on weekend mornings.

The upstairs hall was bordered by a wall on one side and a wrought iron railing on the other. Peering over the edge gave me immediate vertigo, and I sucked a steeling breath. My hands wrapped around the metal rail as I used it to reel myself along.

The stairs came like a roller coaster with all the feels and none of the thrills. I made it to the bottom and took a moment, clinging to the banister with both arms and one leg, before daring to stand upright.

Something dropped from above and clunked onto the floor beside me with a one-two count. I leaped backward, dodging the items as they landed: a pair of scuffed black leather boots.

“Wear your goddamned shoes!” Nash hollered from the second-floor railing.

Stepping into them, I barely took the time to wave before rushing out of the building, still hungover and getting later by the minute. I may have looked like the white rabbit frantically checking his pocket watch, but I felt more like Alice tumbling headfirst into chaos.