Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Being on fire is exactly as terrible as it sounds.
Stop, drop, and roll has been ingrained on the psyche of every American kid, so Mateo’s disappointed to find that his first instinct upon being engulfed in flames is to thrash around without much rolling.
In his defense, this awareness of being on fire is poorly timed.
It came at the moment he was most engulfed, but before the fire had burned through enough tissue and nerves for adrenaline and shock to take any edge off.
He is pain. No faculties available to think.
This useless flailing lasts a moment that also might be forever, and then he’s being doused in something frigid that’s like breathing in hairspray while spraying it directly on an open wound. It sucks but is less bad than the fire, so it’s technically an improvement.
He must’ve blacked out, because he’s suddenly staring at the ceiling, Ophelia leaning over him, expression grim. She sees he’s awake and pulls in a hard breath. “Teo? You okay?”
“Not even almost,” he rasps, voice like he gargled glass.
They get him into a seated position, and he has to double over for a long time, coughing up black—which is normal—and white globs—less normal. Eventually, he realizes he’s in the short hallway outside of the office, and he’s coughing up fire extinguisher foam.
“What happened?” he wheezes.
Her expression flickers in that way it does only when she’s really upset, like she can’t keep it neutral despite a lifetime of unshakable success.
“You were looking around, got down on hands and knees to dig under the shelf, and stopped answering me. Then you were on fire. But you kept digging like you couldn’t tell or didn’t care.
” She swallows and he realizes she’s cradling one of her hands in her lap, bright eyes wet but no tears. She doesn’t let anyone see her cry.
He reaches for her but it’s a terrible idea, every motion stretching tender flesh taught, forcing out a gasp as he crumbles down again. Makes the knife thing earlier feel like a scratch. Panting he manages: “You’re hurt?” He has to settle for being still but saying concerned things.
Her throat works for a moment, trying to tamp down whatever emotion is trying to escape, before: “It’s fine.”
“Let me see,” he demands—like that’ll help. It doesn’t help. She shows him her right hand, palm bright red and shiny. Blisters are already forming, and the surface is swollen and raw. She’d grabbed hold of his burning body and dragged him out. “Phee.”
She grimaces, lipstick smeared from heroics he’d missed. “You look way worse.”
“You’re sweet,” he says, closing his eyes, horrified at the way the lids drag against his eyeballs like bonito flakes sticking to a hot pan. “Please go deal with it. Neosporin and gauze. Do we have gauze? Fuck. I have to just sit here. For a while.”
She leaves for a time, and he swearingly manages to lie down on the floor.
Gradually, the flash-fried fingers of his left hand—a perfect replica of a cursed monkey’s paw—straighten, blackened skin unwithering.
It’s grotesque but entrancing. And it really fucking hurts, nerves screaming back to life as warped skin and bone slowly slide and pop back into proper pliability.
As far as he can tell from the minimal movement he’s willing to try, that hand got the worst of it. He suspects his face is overdone too by the way his cheek sticks to the floor when he shifts but he’d rather not confirm that one, and he’s trying not to think about his hair.
His gaze travels beyond his soon-to-be-jointed fingers and focuses on the pool of white and char in the center of the office.
Like a drunk memory, the feeling of something beneath his fingers urges him upright, gasping loudly as things pull and crack and ooze anew.
Crying doesn’t come easily to him either, but getting onto hands and knees and then crawling into the office forces a few tears to join the mess of his face, burning on their journey down his cheeks.
In the center of the liquefying fire extinguisher spray is a black book.
Not black in the traditional sense of the word, like his clothes, hair, or lipstick.
Black like the stuff he spits up and bleeds, devoid of dimension, like he’s staring at a lightless, square-shaped hole in the ground.
But he knows it has form. The tips of his utterly ruined stiletto nails scraped it, dragged it out.
It’s his mother’s spell book.
His tongue runs over dry lips, a cracked layer of skin sliding free, and he spits it onto the floor.
The black spell book is roughly the size of his open hand—would fit so nicely there—which is how he knows it’s magic compelling him.
If not for how much being on fire hurt, he’d have his fingers on it again already.
A bandaged hand descends in front of his face, and he snaps out of a daze he hadn’t realized he was in. Ophelia is squatting beside him, and he’s surprised to find they do have gauze. A competent wrap encircles her palm, and she’s removed her lipstick entirely.
“What the hell?” she asks correctly.
“No, I know,” Mateo says, having a hard time keeping his gaze focused on her. “Do you wanna touch it?”
She lifts an eyebrow critically but looks at the spell book. “No. You do?”
“So much,” he says, licking his lips again, relieved the skin stays in place. “It’s her spell book. I can’t believe it’s here.”
Leaning over the foam, she peers at it. “It kinda looks like you. Magically speaking.”
His gaze skitters to the fire extinguisher. “Is that thing empty?”
“I didn’t use the whole thing, but I don’t know how much is left. But also. Don’t.”
“I know.” The point of coming in here wasn’t to kill himself with his mom’s evil-ass spell book—though, it’s disconcerting to realize it’s been in the house the whole time. And difficult to think around. All he wants to do is press his hands to the cover, look through the pages, hold it close.
Death card.
Focus.
Shaking himself, he says, “Before I burst into flames, I saw the address book on the top shelf.” He squints at the now normally-shadowed underside of the shelves.
“I think the fire was a ward on that bottom area, not the whole thing. To keep anyone from getting the spell book out of there.” To keep him from getting the spell book out of there.
There’s a certainty in that thought that makes his head swim, gaze losing focus.
Except, this certainty makes zero sense. She wouldn’t have wanted anyone to find her spell book, not just him.
Giving the shelf a wary once-over, Ophelia gets the fire extinguisher in her good hand and braces it between bare calves so she can trigger and aim one-handed. “Try not to run around if you catch fire again. Also, I hate this.”
“Not loving it either,” he says, crawling around the foam and sitting in front of the closet shelves. The little green book is unassuming, which hopefully means no fire. “Count of three.”
“One—” she says, and he reaches for it.
Gets it.
Has it.
Neither of them moves, eyes wide and alert on each other. No fire. No nothing.
“Thank fuck,” he says, sitting back on his ass and examining the blank cover. The whole thing is less than a quarter of an inch thick. “Reading anything off it?”
“Nothing,” Ophelia says, not releasing her grip on the extinguisher.
“Count of three,” she says.
“One.” He opens the book to the middle.
And sees a name, Sven LaRue, a phone number, address, email, and the word inútil. Useless. His mother’s favorite word. He flips through a few more pages. “This is it.”
Ophelia holds out her hand for it and he passes it over. She’s abandoned the fire extinguisher to balance the book on her lap and flip through it. “Now what?”
“Check addresses. See who’s local. Maybe someone’s listed as Dagger Lady and it’ll be easy,” he says, shifting closer so he can see despite his burnt misery. Her hands are more functional, so she gets to turn the pages.
Six are local. He doesn’t recognize any names except Braulio Blanco, who is distinctly not a lady but a smarmy con-man who had a falling out with his mom years ago. Not that he expects to recognize the name of the lady who tried to stab him, as he’d never seen her before.
After a difficult balancing and agility exercise of button mashing with barely functioning fingers, they translate all of the locals’ notes.
None scream will knife you in a back alley.
As far as they can tell, they’re clients, middling witches his mom wasn’t impressed with, and one has a Metsy shop that sells incense.
All have photos readily available on the internet.
None of them have the rage-precise eyebrows of Dagger Lady.
Total dead end. And all he got for it was both of them burnt all to fuck.
He closes the book and holds it in his lap, then catches sight of his hand. Mostly whole, though covered in shedding, burnt-up skin. His nails are totally trashed, now shriveled bits of plastic he starts ripping off even though it hurts.
“Fuck,” he says quietly. And then again, much louder.
Teeth press unevenly against each other, sharp and useless as his blood buzzes in his veins.
Fixing him. Feeling hotter than usual. Like maybe getting knifed then getting badly burned tallied up two points against him in his unknowable scoreboard of demon possession.
What good is a book filled with magic people when they’re probably all assholes like every other magic person he’s ever met?
It’s not like he can call each of them and ask if they attacked him.
And now Ophelia’s hurt. That’s completely his fault.
The opposite of what he’s trying to do here.
Throwing the address book would feel good, but that’s one of those things people do in movies that’s nonsense in actuality.
Throw the book, kick the desk, knock the probably cursed finger bone off the shelf for a moment of impotent power.
Looking to the wall of books, he wonders if there’s something helpful there. And how many times he’ll set himself on fire trying to check.
Finally, he turns to the spell book on the ground like it ever left his awareness.
It’s a second heartbeat, cocooning around his own and buzzing with his blood.
He tries to feel past the thrall. His mom hadn’t taken it with her.
Had hidden it. Warded it. From him. But how did she know the book would call to him?
He’d only ever seen flashes of the spell book.
She’d kept it close, kept it closed, tucked it away if she saw him nearby.
She’d so clearly never wanted him to have it.
So, it seems extremely bad that it’s here while she’s missing. Like it means her missing wasn’t on purpose. Which is a slew of complicated feelings he doesn’t want to deal with.
His thumb finds the steady pulse beneath his jaw.
It should be galloping because his teeth are sharp.
There’s an asymmetry to his thoughts and his body’s reaction, a cold and distant terror at what it would cost him if he tried to use that spell book, being smothered by the sureness that he should.
That he’s supposed to. He tries to examine the thought, but it’s like the murderous ones that rattle though his brain.
Slippery. Impossible to grasp onto and examine.
Some part of him, or the thing in him, really thinks he should use his mother’s scary-ass magic book.
“Your aura’s freaking out,” Ophelia says softly, and Mateo rips his eyes from the spell book. Her complexion is waxy, like she’s not slept or eaten, and the image of her corpse flashes in his mind. Like it was yesterday. Like it could be today.
He can’t use that book. If the demon wants him to, it’s bad. And if he lets himself get taken over, he can’t save Ophelia.
Getting to his feet isn’t easy but he still offers her a hand and hoists her up as his re-forming nerves scream. “Let’s keep brainstorming the Dagger-Lady–tarot-pull problem. I don’t work till tomorrow night, so we’ve got time.”
Time is the one thing he doesn’t have—none of them do with the ill-omened death card in the air—but she doesn’t point that out.
As they settle in the living room for a night of research, he pretends the spell book, still on the floor of his mother’s office, isn’t pulsing gently at the edges of his awareness, keeping time with the beat of his heart.