Shotgun Sorceress (2 page)

Who, based on the circles his clawed legs had torn in the turf, had spent the past half hour stalking his own posterior.

“Hey, Pal, I got your dinner,” I called.

He stopped going around in circles and blinked his four eyes at me, licking his whiskered muzzle uncertainly.

At least, I
thought
Palimpsest looked uncertain; as a ferret his emotions had been pretty easy to read. But now that his familiar form had become magically blended with his true arachnoid body … well, I didn’t exactly know what “happy” or “sad” or “puzzled” was supposed to look like on such an alien face.

“Having troubles over there?” I asked, setting the platter and bucket down on the picnic table.

“I … have an itch,” he replied gravely, his voice strange and muffled in my mind. Our telepathic connection was slowly improving, but that, too, was taking some getting used to.

“I could reach every part of my Quamo body and my ferret body,” Pal continued, “but oddly these new rear legs aren’t very flexible. I can reach my underside, but not my back.”

“Maybe you just need to do some yoga.”

Through the valved spiracles on his abdomen, he blew noisy chords that sounded like a child randomly banging on the keys of an organ. Laughter? Oh-please snorts? I’d only known Pal for a week, and already I had to get to know him all over again.

“That doesn’t help me at the moment,” he said.

“Horses back into trees and fence posts to scratch themselves,” I replied. “You’re tall enough to stand on tippytoes and scratch yourself on the low limbs of that oak over there.”

“How dreadfully undignified.”

“Or you could just roll around on the grass.”

“And that’s more dignified
how?
”

“Oh, hush. It’s not like anybody can see you back here,” I pointed out. “Otherwise you’d have flipped out the neighbors already and the cops would probably be here.”

Long ago, Mother Karen had put her house and its yards under a camouflage charm to keep her foster children’s magical practice sessions out of sight of the neighbors. So at least there would be no panicked suburbanites dialing 911 to report a monster prowling through Worthington.

I glanced up at the sky, half expecting to see a Virtus silently descending, ready to smite me like a curse from Heaven. One of the huge guardian spirits had already tried to do a little smiting earlier that evening. Mr. Jordan, the aforementioned now-comatose head of the local Governing Circle, had convinced the Virtus that I was committing some kind of grand necromancy instead of simply trying to rescue Cooper. I’d defended myself, not expecting to win the battle, but win I did.

It was still hard to believe: I had killed a Virtus.
Nobody
was supposed to be able to do that. Not with magic or luck or nuclear weapons or
anything
. It was as if I’d thrown myself naked in front of a speeding freight train in a desperate, stupid attempt to halt hundreds of hurtling tons of iron … and had somehow stopped it cold.

Miracles had abounded that evening. But I doubted the Virtus Regnum would see me as anything but a threat. They’d be coming for me, and from what I’d seen so far, they were as merciful as black holes.

I squinted up at the dark spaces between the stars, wondering what lurked there.

“Speaking of things that shouldn’t be seen by mundanes, how is that working for you?” Pal asked.

“Huh?” I looked at him, confused.

He nodded toward the gray satin opera glove on my left arm. “The gauntlet. Is it keeping your flames contained?”

“Yes, Karen and the Warlock did a good job enchanting this,” I replied, looking at the thin curls of smoke that were trailing from the cuff of the glove, as if I’d used it as a place to stash a still-smoldering cigarette. So far, that was the only sign that the lower half of my arm was a torch of hellfire, courtesy of my having to plunge my arm into the burning heart of the Goad, the pain-devouring devil that had imprisoned Cooper and his family.

“It slips down a little sometimes—I might have to find some double-sided tape or superglue to hold it in place.”

Sheathed in the glove, my arm functioned more or less normally, but still had a squishy unreliability. Fine finger movements were still difficult. And that wasn’t surprising, considering that my hand was boneless, fleshless, nothing but diabolic flame. I’d had to rely on a natural talent for spiritual extension to give it any kind of solidity; Pal had referred to the ability as “reflexive parakinesis.”

And it was pretty close to true reflex. My crysoberyl ocularis—a replacement for my left eye, which I’d lost the week before in a battle with a demon—still hurt a bit, and I was constantly aware that I had a piece of polished rock stuck in my head. But a couple of times that evening, I had completely forgotten that my left arm was no longer entirely flesh. And fortunately I hadn’t dropped anything important as a consequence.

“With luck we may be able to find someone to remove the underlying curse, and you’ll have your regular arm back,” Pal said.

I frowned. Everyone was treating my flame hand—and its power—like a curse. If I were an evil person, somebody bent on destruction and domination, my hand would have seemed almost purely a gift from the gods. With that kind of power literally at my fingertips, so what if having a fiery hand presented a few practical problems? That would be like complaining that you had to move a few boxes out of your garage to make way for the new Porsche. Or in my case, the new tank with a seemingly unlimited supply of surface-to-air missiles.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t an evil person. Though I’d certainly made some decisions I regretted—crushing a couple of Mr. Jordan’s men under the Warlock’s Land Rover was currently at the top of my growing list—I’d been trying to do the right thing at the time. Evil, certainly, was bad. But the power in my hand had saved us all from the Virtus, hadn’t it? I was getting pretty annoyed that everyone seemed to think I ought to be in a hurry to get rid of it.

“I should go back inside before they all start dinner without me,” I said. “And anyway, your ham’s getting cold over here … Did you want anything else for dinner? Karen’s got pie.”

“Let me start with the ham and see how it sits first,” he replied. “Wanting to eat something and being able to digest it are two different things.”

I looked up at him; surely he’d get bored or lonely staying out in the yard all by himself. “I could see if one of the others knows a shrinking spell so you could come inside with me and have dinner at the table.”

“Thank you, but I’m quite all right.”

“You sure? I mean,
someone
in the house has to know a good spell.”

He blew another chord and reared up on his back legs. In his ferret days the motion would have meant slight indignance, but in his new form it made him seem monstrously threatening. I had to stifle my prey-monkey instinct to run.

“
I
know a good spell, actually,” Pal told me. “The only silver lining to my current situation is that I am finally the proper size. I’d rather not be … 
diminished
again unless it’s necessary.”

“Okay, suit yourself. Let me know if you change your mind.” I left Pal to his dinner and went back inside to the guest bedroom.

Cooper lay thin and pale under the covers, dead to the world. Dark curly bangs obscured his eyes. He’d lost a scary amount of weight during his time trapped in the hell; he’d always been on the wiry side, but now I could see every rib, every bump on his sternum. I wanted to crawl into bed with him and hold him close.

Instead, I gently shook his bony shoulder. “Wake up, time to eat.”

He grunted and pushed away my hand. “Don’ wanna. Wanna sleep.”

“C’mon. Potions only go so far—we gotta get some real food into you. We can sleep after.”

“Where’s Smoky?” he mumbled. “I can’t feel him.”

My stomach dropped. I hadn’t yet told him that his white terrier familiar died the night he was pulled into the hell. Smoky had been with him for years. And the loss of a familiar wasn’t just the loss of a steadfast companion—Cooper’s magical power had taken a hit, too. Even if my boyfriend was so heartless as to want to run right out and find a new familiar, he wouldn’t be able to do any better than a dumb toad or mute alley cat. It would be another set of eyes, but nothing more: no intelligent advice, no friendship, no boost to his Talent. The Regnum controlled all access to the modern, intelligent familiars. And we were now outlaws.

I just didn’t know how to break the bad news. “He, um … he’s not with us.”

Cooper seemed confused. “You left him at the apartment?”

I took a deep breath. “He didn’t make it. The night you disappeared … he got killed. It was quick. I don’t think he suffered.”

A bit of a lie, that; being torn apart by a demon was quick but certainly not easy. I felt horrible about Smoky dying, because it was my own damn fault for not knowing what to do.

Cooper’s features twisted in pain and sorrow, and he covered his face in his hands, pressing the heels against his eyes, I guessed to try to keep himself from crying. “Dammit. Poor little guy.”

I wanted to weep, too, but if we both started with the waterworks we probably wouldn’t stop for a while.

“Hey, everyone’s waiting on us; we better get to the dining room.” I hauled him up into a sitting position and helped him pull on a black Deathmobile T-shirt.

“This isn’t mine,” Cooper said, staring down at the flaming death’s-head-motor band logo.

“It’s Jimmy’s,” I replied, referring to Mother Karen’s eldest foster son. There are spells to create clothing, but fewer and fewer Talents have bothered with that kind of magic since the Industrial Revolution made fabric cheap. “Your pajama pants are his, too. All our stuff is shrunk down in a safe-deposit box at the bank, so you may be wearing his hand-me-downs for a couple more days.”

He blinked bloodshot eyes at me. “Why’s our stuff at the bank?”

“The farmers wouldn’t pay me for the rainstorm, so I missed rent and we were getting evicted. Also that rat-bastard Jordan bugged the apartment, so I figured it was best to pack up and go underground for a while.”

“Benedict Jordan? He bugged our place? Why?” His eyelids were starting to droop again. Mother Karen’s healing potions tended to put you right under until they’d done their work.

“He wanted you to stay gone in the hell. You’re the secret half brother he was scared everyone would find out about. Because then everyone would find out that his father was a bat-shit crazy murdering son of a bitch and people would start questioning his family’s authority or some crap like that.”

“Whoa, wait … he’s my
brother?
” Cooper suddenly looked wide-awake.

“Yep. Same mother, different father. Thank God. The Warlock, sadly, is his full brother.”

“Huh.” Cooper stared down at his knees, his eyes unfocused as if he was remembering something long forgotten. “Benny’s … Benedict Jordan. Ain’t that a kick in the head.”

His expression abruptly changed, darkened; I could tell he’d remembered something else, whether from his childhood or hell I had no way of knowing. “That
fucker.
”

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, stood up, and started to pace the room, agitated and furious. “Oh, this is just
great
. Ol’ Benny knew what was going on right from the start. Could have kept me from going to hell, or tried to. Or he could have helped you and the Warlock out. But instead he tried to cover everything up. He screwed over my brothers and me to protect his family’s reputation. As if
we
weren’t his family, too.”

I stepped toward him, concerned. “Calm down, honey—you’ll make yourself sick. You need to rest.”

Cooper looked at me. “Please,
please
tell me you kicked his ass. Otherwise I’m going to have to, and I’ll probably end up killing him and anybody who tries to stop me.”

I gently pulled his head down to mine and planted a kiss on his nose. His anger seemed to fade, his sudden burst of energy fading with it.

“Oh yes,” I told him. “I’ll probably go to prison for it, but his ass is well and thoroughly kicked.”

My mind flashed on Jordan lying broken on his desk, his hand a horrible burned mess. My stomach twisted into a knot, but I angrily forced my guilt back down. I would
not
feel bad about giving that creep a taste of his own magic.

I helped Cooper down the hall toward Mother Karen’s dining room. The scents of garlic steak, fresh rolls, and sweet potato pie wafted through the air. Cooper’s stomach growled loudly.

The Talents who’d helped bring Cooper’s infant brothers to Mother Karen’s house were already seated at the long cherrywood dining table. Oakbrown and Mariette sat across from Paulie at the far end. Mother Karen and Jimmy were ferrying plates of food in from the kitchen. The Warlock and Ginger sat across from each other at the near half of the table, arguing.

“I
am
tolerant,” Ginger protested, twisting a lock of her red hair around her index finger. “But fundies get on my every last nerve. It’s like they think the free expression of female sexuality is going to cause the Apocalypse or something. They’re totally threatened by it, and it’s stupid. I hate stupid.”

“Ginger-pie, it doesn’t matter what the mundanes believe, does it?” the Warlock replied. “How do their beliefs touch us? The fact is, they don’t. It’s been centuries since they were a real threat to us. We don’t have to deal with them if we don’t want to.”

“But what about the Talented kids who get born into mundane families?” Ginger asked. “What about them? Are we just supposed to let them swing in the wind when their crazy stupid parents decide they’re possessed by Satan and go all Spanish Inquisition on them?”

“We take care of our own,” the Warlock said, looking up at me as I helped Cooper into the empty chair beside Ginger.

“Maybe,” I replied, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Not all Talents are in a hurry to do the right thing, not even for their own kids.” I moved around the table to sit across from Cooper in the chair to the Warlock’s left.