Chapter 4
He was dreaming.
Definitely dreaming.
Had to be dreaming.
If he wasn’t, then it would mean he was imagining it.
If he was imagining it, that would mean he would have to go back to therapy, and any appointment that began with, “How am I? Well, I watched a woman demolish a fucked-up moth-faced creature that threw fire. How are you?” would surely end with him on a high dose of medication and a schedule for when he could use the room with the television.
Maxim was in pain though, which wasn’t a thing that accompanied either his dreams or his imagination. Around his midsection, some deep, awful ache radiated out to the rest of his body.
The first attempt to get up resulted in him falling back into a stack of crates.
Before he could make a second attempt, Pippa Beverly’s frizz-framed face appeared in his vision.
“What . . . What was that?” he managed, even though putting forth the effort to say it made him feel like a locomotive was stabbing into his gut.
“Nothing,” Pippa said, much too fast to be believable. She crouched beside him. Her gaze landed on his stomach, right where the pain was centered, and she paled.
That couldn’t be good.
Maxim had other things to worry about.
“Was that . . . Did that thing call you a . . . a witch?” Why was speaking so difficult? “It— Magic. You did . . . magic.”
“Nope,” Pippa said, and he felt her tug his button-up out of his pants.
Buy me dinner first, Maxim thought, then mentally congratulated himself for not saying it out loud and coming across like a secondary, younger Daniel Barry.
With not a little effort, he pushed himself up onto one elbow and looked down at his stomach.
Big mistake.
As he’d watched Pippa fight the . . . thing, it had lashed out with long, barbed, whip-like knives. One of them must have caught him. In him.
That can’t be good, he thought for a second time. Those parts should be inside. Covered up. That’s an awful lot of blood. Rather inane thoughts, considering everything he’d just seen. His mind didn’t seem capable of much more at the moment.
“Stop moving,” Pippa ordered and pushed him prone on the concrete. There was panic in her voice and in the shake of her hands and the tremble of her lower lip.
Oh, he really hoped he wasn’t going to die, but with an injury like that . . .
His blood was warm and slippery where it pooled beneath him. Another deep, aching pain spread through his midsection, though this one was a bit sharper and harder than the first.
Pippa had removed most of his shirt by now. She was kneeling in blood. That would stain her skirt. She should have put something down. Wasn’t the concrete hard on her knees? Her hands hovered over his stomach and she closed her eyes in concentration. There was a long scrape along her forearm.
“You’re hurt,” Maxim said. “You should really b-bandage that.”
When she inhaled, it was shaky. What was she trying to do? Didn’t you need to apply pressure to these sorts of wounds instead of doing some weird hand-hovering shit?
Then he remembered: Oh, magic.
The air around her hands grew brighter, and little sparkles began to shimmer in the space above his stomach like a cloud of slow-moving glitter.
Whenever he’d thought of magic, he’d always imagined it would be the fire-blasting sort of magic, not the 90s music video sort of magic.
At no time in his life had he expected to learn that both were real.
Because this was real. It had to be.
His gut squirmed. It felt as if he’d become a mass of worms from his sternum to his hips.
He urged himself to move through the pain and struggled to his elbows once more.
Since Pippa was so engrossed with whatever she was doing, she didn’t chastise him, and Maxim watched as his body bubbled and writhed.
Organs sealed themselves shut, muscles re-formed, skin wriggled and spread over what was once a gaping wound.
The new scar was a pale, gnarled patch, yet it looked as if the injury had happened six months ago instead of a few minutes.
There was a small spot by his navel that hadn’t quite closed.
Pippa’s hands were shaking more now, her face scrunched with an expression that could have been exertion and could have been pain.
Maybe both. Her jaw drifted open around a tight cry, as if she was trying to lift a weight too heavy for her.
Blood from her forearm flowed faster and dripped onto his crisp white shirt and his newly healed skin. Her temple shone with sweat, and curls of her hair clung to her cheek.
The spot closed, and the writhing in his stomach ceased. There was no more pain. When he prodded at the scar with a finger, his body felt just as it had this morning.
As soon as she saw him move, Pippa let out a choking gasp and her chin dipped almost to her chest, her shoulders rising beneath her flowered cardigan in deep, panting breaths.
Maxim couldn’t decide what to say; he was filled with too many questions and too many statements of the obvious. What did you do? You saved me. I would have died. How long has motherfucking MAGIC existed?
He entertained a brief thought that he should go to the hospital, since that’s what people typically did when they were slashed open, if only temporarily. What was the ideal way to explain that he just wanted to make sure all of his organs had grown back all right?
“Thank you,” he said. The two words sounded hopelessly inadequate.
Pippa dragged her hair out of her face, then straightened and pinned him with her big brown eyes. Normally they were lovely and bright, but now they felt sharper than whatever magical blade had stabbed him.
“You can’t tell anyone about this,” she said. “No one.” She sounded exhausted. There were bruised circles beneath her lower lashes, and her lips were pale and chapped.
Maxim nodded rapidly. Of course he wouldn’t. He wished he had the faculty to tell her he’d already come to that conclusion, especially the whole bit about the medication and the room with the television.
Pippa rose to her feet and staggered. Maxim clambered upright with the intent to reach out and steady her, but he ended up reaching for the dumpster as he staggered as well. There was a lot of blood on the concrete. No wonder he was dizzy.
Pippa went toward the restaurant door. She gave her knees a hopeless look before tugging off her cardigan and using the inside to wipe off his blood, then wrapped it tightly around her injured forearm.
Beneath the cardigan she was wearing a flouncy short-sleeved blouse, the cuteness of which clashed with Maxim’s undying mental image of her roasting a demonic creature alive in its own magic.
“I have questions,” was all he managed.
“Learn to live with them.”
“But—”
“There’s a law,” she said to the door handle. “Rules. For people like me. You shouldn’t have seen any of that. I shouldn’t have . . .” She shook her head and grasped the handle, throwing her entire body into opening it.
“So?” Maxim said. “You can’t just pretend that didn’t happen. I can’t.”
The look she gave him froze his feet and a good amount of his healed midsection. “Don’t make me wish I hadn’t saved you.”
Then she went inside. The door slammed behind her.
Maxim unfroze. He nearly slipped on his own blood on the way to the restaurant’s back door.
Damn her, it couldn’t end like this, terrifying threat aside. From the hallway, he could see her moving quickly to Juliette Cohen, leaning close to say something as she grabbed her purse.
Maxim heard Juliette’s “Take you home? Thought you’d never ask!” and saw the wiggling of her eyebrows from where he stood.
He could also see how the second woman’s expression sobered when she noticed Pippa’s pale cheeks and the thin press of her lips.
Maxim took a step forward, not quite into the dining room. This didn’t escape Pippa. Her eyes flicked to connect with his, and an icy chill crunched up his spine at the threat held within them.
She had mentioned law. Rules. How many had she broken when she’d saved him from bleeding out in the alley?
Juliette followed Pippa’s glare. The witch started and ushered the other woman to the door, but not before Maxim overheard Juliette say, “Jesus, what happened?”
He glanced down, taking in the absolute wreck he had become.
The crisp ironed button-up was open below his chest, the fabric stained with blood and some purple powder the same color as the whip that had stabbed him.
His hands were coated in grime and more blood.
He didn’t even want to think about his hair.
A server turned the corner, and Maxim lunged for the bathroom door. One room, one toilet, one sink. Perfect. He spun around and threw the bolt.
The man in the mirror was a mess. An absolute, raw mess.
He did what he could with the sink and a stack of paper towels, and when he emerged, his hair looked slightly decent and he’d buttoned his suit jacket neatly over both the destroyed shirt and the large rip in his tie.
If he left soon with a good excuse, it was likely no one would notice that he was experiencing a thrilling blend of existential dread, mild panic, and overwhelming shock.
He’d almost died.
He’d seen—
He’d watched a—
Fuck.
The time to think on all of that wasn’t while walking up to Reggie Cavatappi and shaking his hand.
It wasn’t while telling him how much he deserved the new position.
It wasn’t while explaining that he’d spilled some wine and that was the reason for the stain on his cuff and jacket and pants and honestly, it was a very large glass of wine.
It wasn’t while excusing himself to the partners and the other associates saying that the meal had disagreed with him.
Not any fault of the restaurant, he assured them.
In all the excitement, he’d simply forgotten about his mild shellfish allergy.
Not until he’d slid into his car in the parking garage did he let everything pour out.