Chapter 5
She was gasping for air—
The words were bitter and acrid, and he didn’t exactly understand them, but he knew what they did.
Knew what the curse itself meant, even if each individual word was only so much gibberish.
Words that wove together threads of magic that would create channels that would draw out power from the unworthy, keeping it locked tight within the stones until a practitioner—like himself—would be able to unlock it.
It wasn’t exactly what he’d promised when they’d asked him to eliminate the senator’s bitch.
Or whatever she was. He didn’t know what she turned into, and he didn’t much care.
He’d promised Dagget that he would eliminate the bitch.
He hadn’t mentioned precisely how he intended to go about that, because he had the feeling Dagget wouldn’t like the fact that he was going to siphon off her magic.
And, thanks to the senator’s busy schedule, getting her to wear it would be easy enough.
All he had to do was address it to her from her husband.
Unlike so many politicians’ wives, this one actually seemed to be na?ve enough to expect that her husband would remain faithful to her—and she seemed also to be faithful to him.
It had made finding some reason to extort money out of her more difficult.
But threatening to expose the fact that she was a shifter while her husband was trying to push through his bullshit pro-monster agenda had done the trick.
She wanted to protect him and his political goals—which made sense, he supposed, since if he got his idiot bill through, she and her fellow monsters would benefit.
He didn’t need the money, of course. And he was obviously going to expose her shifter status once she was dead, anyway, but why not make a bit of cash on the side?
He took the necklace and placed in in a red velvet box. He couldn’t forge the man’s handwriting, but he included a small typed note on a fake jeweler’s card: ‘With love.’ It would do the trick.
A slow smile spread over his face, imagining her putting it on, completely unaware that he would slowly be draining away her magic.
Until he took all of it and then left her dead in a hotel room.
The senator would be devastated.
Too devastated to continue his work.
Dagget would be pleased with that.
And he would have her magic, a little more cash, and the world would have one fewer monster in it.
He ran his fingers over it one last time.
I came out of this one gagging, and warm hands helped me to bend over a trash can as my meager breakfast of a buttered bagel and coffee came back up.
“Would you get a damp towel or something?” I heard Raj’s deep voice say.
A few minutes passed in which my body tried to bring up more, but only managed a thin line of acid.
“Here.” This voice was Hart’s. “Shit, he doesn’t look good. You sure this was a good idea?”
A cool wetness pressed against the back of my neck, and I was grateful that Hart had used paper towels rather than one of the washcloths Mason kept in the kitchen. Paper towels were mass-machine produced and didn’t have anybody’s emotions on them. Right now, washcloths probably would.
Because almost everything did.
My chair.
My desk.
Every single damn pencil and pen in the cup.
At least the keyboard was safe, since nobody but me had touched that in quite a while.
But I’d been trying very, very hard to not touch anything.
I’d worn a pair of my gloves—thin material with little grippy dots on the palms and inside of the fingers—but I’d taken them off to touch the necklace.
Whatever I’d managed to turn on in my own head, I couldn’t figure out how to shut off, and I felt like I was riding the edge of insanity all over again.
I hadn’t said as much to anyone, though, because it would only make Ward worry and Mason call someone to try to help fix me, which would mean meetings and therapy sessions and possibly a trip back to the hospital, and I didn’t want any of that.
Besides, I needed to learn how to do this.
It had started because I’d wanted to be helpful to Hart and Raj.
It was becoming a matter of pride. And I wanted to impress Raj and Hart.
My stomach seized again, and I spat another mouthful of bile into the trash can.
A big warm hand settled between my shoulder blades, gently rubbing a small circle.
As strange as it was for anyone to be touching me—because even Ward rarely touched me—it was soothing.
I could feel the hammering of my pulse slow just a bit. My lungs fill just a bit more.
Sweat made my shirt cling to my back and beaded at my temples, but I didn’t want to move to brush it away, afraid that too much movement would bring another wave of nausea and retching.
“Nothing?” Raj asked me.
I waved a hand. Speaking wasn’t really possible just yet. Not if I wanted to keep my stomach acid where it belonged.
I heard someone—Hart, I assumed—moving around, although I wasn’t sure what he could be doing.
Then I felt something cool touch my hand.
He was worried. The kid didn’t look good at all. In fact, he looked a lot like Ward did when he’d overextended himself. Maybe he did see something more—because he definitely hadn’t looked this sick the last several times.
I jerked away from what I realized was my own mug filled with ice water.
“It’s yours,” Hart said to me, looking worried.
I nodded, then swallowed twice before I managed to reply. “But you’re touching it.”
He frowned, pale eyebrows drawing together, then quickly set it down on the low coffee table. “I’ve touched it before,” he said, sounding both confused and apologetic.
I nodded. “It’s—different now.” I stared at the mug, condensation starting to bead on the sides. I really wanted water, but I was also terrified to touch it again.
Hart crouched down so that I didn’t have to look up at him, his lavender eyes concerned. “What’s different?” he asked me, his voice oddly gentle.
“I—I talked to Sylvia. She had some… suggestions.” I swallowed. “I—took them.”
“And I take it they did something?”
I started a little, having somehow forgotten that Raj was more than just the silent warmth of his hand resting on my back. I nodded.
“But now you can’t turn it off again?” Raj asked.
I nodded again, feeling emotion choke off the back of my throat. I stared down at my hands, a little surprised—although I suppose I shouldn’t have been—to see that they were shaking.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” muttered Hart. “Not this shit again.”
I looked over at him, confused. “Again?” I repeated.
“You and fucking Campion,” came the dry response as Hart stood up again, pushing his hands against his thighs. “Getting help from the fucking dead and ending up with weird-ass shit.”
I frowned. “It’s not weird,” I protested. “It’s the same thing, just… stronger.”
“What did you do to make it stronger?” Raj asked, his voice still pitched low and gentle, although I couldn’t see his face without turning around, and I wasn’t sure I could do that without retching again.
“Pulled down the walls,” I answered. It wasn’t a good answer, but it was the truth. Not that I expected him to understand what I meant.
“Okay,” came the smooth response. “Can you stack some of the bricks back up?”
I did turn at that, surprised into motion by the fact that he seemed to understand exactly what I meant, even though most people found me deeply confusing.
He was regarding me through those golden-brown eyes, his expression thoughtful, although there were lines of tension around his jaw and in his neck. Presumably because he just wanted me to tell him what I’d found so that he could do something with it.
I looked back down, my face hot. “Sorry,” I apologized.
“No need to apologize,” he murmured, but I knew that was a thing people said, whether or not they meant it.
I tried to do as he’d suggested, imagining the pile of bricks I’d pulled down and stacking them back up in a couple rows. But even in my mind, my hands were shaky, and the lines of bricks were uneven and precarious.
“Here,” Raj said, and I reached out without thinking, my fingers closing around cool, damp pottery. I tensed, but the flash from Hart wasn’t there—or, maybe, it just didn’t come through. Maybe my shaky part-wall was enough for that, at least.
I breathed out a sigh of relief and took a long sip of the cold water, which helped to settle my stomach.
“Thanks,” I managed. Then I looked up, finding concern and expectation on both Hart’s and Raj’s faces.
So I told them what I’d felt.
“I don’t like it, Hart,” Ward said, his arms crossed over his chest. I was nursing a mug of hot chocolate—brought back by Hart, although without the espresso in it because he said I looked shaky enough, sitting on a blanket on the sofa in the lobby.
It was after hours, and Mason had locked the doors almost an hour ago.
Hart still had a key, and he’d let himself and Raj Parikh back in.
Raj was staring at me, as though waiting for me to get sick again.
I tried not to stare back, choosing instead to let my unfocused gaze skim over the milky brown of the cocoa.
“Fine, I don’t like it either,” the elf shot back. “But the kid’s the best goddamn lead we’ve gotten.” A pause. “Leads, plural. First Garraway and then fucking Dagget.”
“And I extra don’t like that,” Ward snapped.
Mason let out a soft hum, and Ward glanced over at him.
Raj finally stopped staring at me and looked over at Ward. “Does the name Dagget mean something to you?” he asked.
Mason let out a soft growl.
“He’s fucking Ordo,” Hart answered. “So of course he doesn’t fucking like that.
None of us fucking likes that.” Hart crossed his own arms over his chest, his posture imitating Ward’s, although he was standing.
“As far as I’m concerned, the Ordo can go fuck itself with the world’s longest goddamn stick, and as much as I wish they’d all just die, they apparently can’t do us that little favor, so here we are. ” Another pause. “Again.”
“Ordo?” Raj repeated. “As in—”
“The Antiquus Ordo Arcanum,” Mason supplied.