Switchblade Goddess (18 page)

“You smell nice! Like a mojito. Mmm.” He gave
me a cheek smooch back and then turned my face to examine the black eye Miko had given me. “Wow, this is a heck of shiner you’ve got. Does it hurt?”

“A little.” I shrugged.

He put his hand against my eye and spoke an old word for “heal.” Instantly I felt the swelling go down.

“Better?” he asked.

“Much! Thanks, honey.”

“No problem.” He turned away to open one of the top cabinets and pulled out a box grater. “Well, after we talked, I hit Wikimagica, and I came to find out that this island was the go-to party spot in the 1920s. Who knew? So all I pretty much had to do was head downtown and look in some old buildings that used to be gin joints back in the day, and I found a portal that dropped me on the beach about a quarter mile from here.”

His energetic cheerfulness was a mask; I could tell that underneath he was feeling tremendously anxious about something.

Pal stirred on his futon and cracked open two of his eyes. “Oh! When did he get here?”

“Just a few minutes ago … are you hungry?” I asked.

My familiar nodded.

“There’s a big-ass ham in the fridge, already cooked.” Cooper began to grate coconut into a glass bowl. “It’s one of those fancy spirit-free brands you have to special order. Might be good for a sandwich if you’re hungry for more than cookies. These are gonna take a little while anyway. I can make the drinks now if you want.”

“Sweet.” I opened the refrigerator, and sure enough,
there was a huge Christmas-size ham on a wooden platter, wrapped in cellophane with a label that read “Sansâme Organic Ham—Guaranteed Free of Pesticides, Hormones, and Spiritual Residue.” On the shelf above it was a brick of lacy aged Swiss cheese, a jar of hot mustard, and a loaf of sliced brioche.

Huh. I hadn’t even known that anyone made meat products for those of us with necromantic curses. Although I supposed that powerful Talents might run into them quite a lot. I opened the wrapper and broke off a piece of the rind. Bracing myself for a death memory, I popped it into my mouth … and felt nothing. The ham itself was delicious, rich and salty, and I realized I was intensely hungry.

“Do you want a sammich, too?” I asked Cooper.

“Sure.” He set his grating aside and pulled down a big glass pitcher and a bottle of Grey Goose. “How strong do you want these?”

“Not too strong. I don’t want to get drunk.” I also didn’t want to overload my liver; it was going to be plenty unhappy with me once the potion wore off anyhow.

I set the ham and bread down on the café table; Cooper handed me a carving knife and a butter knife from the cutlery drawer without my having to ask. It had been awhile since we’d prepared a meal together, but we were slipping right back into our kitchen cooperation like it was a comfortable pair of old jeans.

After I made Cooper and myself a couple of thick sandwiches, his with mustard and mine without, I took the platter of ham over to Pal. He fell to and began to noisily gnaw the succulent meat off the bone.

“Want some mustard or mayo with that?” I asked him.

“No, thank you … I prefer my ham unadorned,” my familiar replied.

I helped Cooper mix the cookie dough and dollop the macaroons onto some baking sheets. Then we put our dessert into the oven to bake, cleared the fixings away, and sat down at the table to enjoy our sandwiches and drinks.

“So.” Cooper took a sip and set his martini glass back down on the table. He scratched his goatee, squinting anxiously. “I think I … owe you an apology. A pretty big one.”

I blinked at him. What had he done? “Why? What happened?”

“Well, all the shit that happened after I fell into the family hell.” He waved at my stone eye and flame arm. “You got seriously hurt cleaning up my mess.”

“That wasn’t your fault, honey … that was all on Benedict Jordan.
All
of it,” I insisted.

He rubbed his scalp through his curly black hair. “Well, maybe yes, but maybe no. I mean … after we took care of Blue, the Warlock and I talked about what happened to both of us when we were kids, and … he pointed out that he went to get his dreams examined, but I wouldn’t do it.”

Cooper paused, his knee bouncing nervously. “Maybe if I’d gone with him to therapy, I would have learned what had happened to me and could have figured out what was going to happen to us. Could have prevented it. Could have gone to rescue Blue and my brothers. Could have kept that horrible job from falling on you to take care of all by yourself. And you
wouldn’t have lost your eye and your hand. You wouldn’t be … cursed.”

“Honey, you can’t know that,” I said. “And what happened to me
wasn’t
your fault.”

“It feels like it was.” He put his hand over his heart. “I am touched and forever grateful that you came to hell to rescue me, but … you should
not
have had to do that. And I didn’t make your job any easier, did I? I was just barely keeping my shit together, and the nightmares were making me absolutely crazy, and …”

He trailed off, frowning, and took another drink.

“And what?” I prompted.

“And I underestimated you,” he replied quietly, shifting in his chair as if it had grown too small for him. “I didn’t mean to … I just … oh jeez. I was such a jerk. I guess I still saw you as this little college freshman I’d fallen madly in love with, saw you as part of The Crazy that I thought was the source of my happy-go-lucky je ne sais quoi. When in reality The Crazy was a really fucking huge problem that was hurting me and the people I love … and it hurt you worst of all.”

He took a deep breath and shifted in his seat again, gripping the sides of his chair seat tightly, the muscles in his forearms trembling.

“I didn’t realize that you’d grown into your powers,” he admitted. “I didn’t see that I should have been giving you better instruction, that I should have been treating you like a full partner. I didn’t even think to write you into the contracts for the jobs we did together, and you got evicted because of that. That should
never
have happened.”

“No, it shouldn’t have.” I had to agree with him there. Coming home from Mother Karen’s still crippled from the demon attack and finding the notice on the front door of our apartment … yeah. Losing our home on top of everything else made a tough job a lot tougher.

“I felt like it was all I could do just to maintain a semblance of sanity,” he said. “And I was letting important stuff slide left and right. But I look back now and I realize that there were steps I could have taken to keep things from getting that bad. I guess part of me still thought I was bulletproof, that I was this big wizard gonna take care of my cute little girlfriend, and I generally had my head firmly wedged up my ass. And I am so, so sorry about that.”

He took my flesh hand in his. “Can you ever forgive me for being such a tremendous dipshit?”

I stood up and went around the table so I could hug him from behind, my chin resting in the hollow of his neck and shoulder. He smelled faintly of garlic, as he often did; he was always getting linguine lunches at Villa Nova or Kung Pao chicken takeout from the Panda Inn. I like the smell, probably because it reminds me of my favorite foods and sweaty nights between the sheets with him. Other women might want their men to stink of fancy dude perfume, but that stuff just makes me sneeze. And have you ever nibbled the neck of a guy who just doused himself in CK One? Nasty. I’ll take a lick of authentic spice over cologne any day.

“You’re not a dipshit,” I said. “Seriously, would I fall in love with a dipshit? You disparage my taste, sir! And of course I forgive you.”

He squeezed my flesh arm affectionately. “I owe you my life, so my life is yours. From here on out, I’m going to be the man you deserved in the first place.”

“Okay. You better be,” I replied playfully, trying to cover the nervous quiver that wanted to creep into my voice. Cooper had traveled thousands of miles to open his heart to me, declare his dedication to our relationship, do all the things a good, supportive, loving boyfriend should do … and as his words sank in, they were freaking me out. My heart was beating faster, not from passion but from anxiety.

What was going on with me? I loved him, I was sure of that … but had I stopped wanting a committed relationship with him? Or had I stopped feeling like I
deserved
one? He acknowledged I wasn’t the same girl he’d fallen in love with—but did he truly realize the depth of my change? Even
I
wasn’t sure what I was becoming, but it sure as hell didn’t involve much sugar and spice.

When I imagined love’s endurance in the face of adversity, I pictured Bob galloping away on his fantasy horse, leaving me standing there flat-footed on the garden path. When I thought of making love to Cooper, I immediately remembered the doppelgangers, and I felt dirty. Tainted.

My boyfriend certainly had his own issues; heck, he probably had a whole subscription. But I believed him when he said he would do better,
be
better. He was a good man, and he deserved a good woman. And I … I couldn’t even give him a decent kiss because I kept getting drenched in other people’s gore yet couldn’t summon the magic to avoid blood-borne infections. Good women didn’t eat human flesh, even
accidentally. Good women didn’t rule over hells, not even little ones. Good women didn’t violently fuck their boyfriends’ brothers. Period. For all my trying to do the right thing, it felt like I kept slipping further and further away from it.

I made myself smile again, gave him a kiss on the cheek, and went back to my seat to finish my meal. The timer dinged. Cooper got up, put on the oven mitt, and pulled out the macaroons. He set them to cool on the stovetop and sat back down.

“So, how’s Randall’s energy potion holding up?” he asked, seeming to realize I wanted a change in subject.

“Pretty well,” I replied. “Better than I thought it would. I’m probably going to feel like mud on an old combat boot come sunrise, though.”

“You have another one to take, right?”

I nodded. “But only one. No more.”

Pal was starting to snore again. I retrieved the remains of his ham and put it back into the fridge.

Cooper stood up and smiled at me. “Then I’ll do my damnedest to get you to a good healer before it wears off.”

“
S
eriously. Are you okay?” Cooper asked, squeezing my flesh hand. We had decided to take a walk along the beach after we’d had our fill of warm coconut cookies. “You seem really distracted this evening.”

I took a deep breath, briefly considered a polite no-nothing’s-wrong-honey lie. And then decided to dip a toe into the cold waters of honesty. “Things went bad with Miko, and it’s all bugging me a whole lot.”

“What happened?”

“I fought her out at this shack, things didn’t go so well, so I took the fight into my hellement, and—”

“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Cooper asked.

“What’s up with what?” I blinked at him.

“Your hellement?”

“Oh. Right.” I realized I’d never really explained it to him. “Remember how I killed your Goad by sticking my hand into its lava heart?”

“It’s a
little
hard to forget considering you’re still on fire,” he replied.

“Good point. Well, remember how the hell the Goad created for y’all collapsed down into its heart when it was dying?”

“Yes, that’s also hard to forget.”

“Some of the lava stuck to me when the monster was dying, and I guess it’s stuck there for good. It’s kept my hand on fire, and it links me to the remains of the hell spiritually.”

Cooper gave me an alarmed look. “So you’re carrying my hell around with you wherever you go?”

I shrugged, feeling more than a little freakish. “Well, yeah. I mean, it’s not the same now. I made it nice in there. Sorta.”

“How do you get into it?” he asked.

“Just by concentrating. It’s not hard.”

“And you took Miko in there?”

I nodded. “I’m a lot stronger in there than I am in the real world. She was about to slice my face off, so it was pretty much the only thing I
could
do at that point.”

Cooper frowned, looking worried. “She didn’t resist you?”

“No … I guess I caught her off guard with it.”

Although now that I was thinking about it, maybe
nothing
I’d done had been a surprise to her. Maybe she’d wanted me to take her into my hellement all along. Because … why? Was it the easiest way for me to get into her hell? No, that didn’t scan; bringing souls into her dominion was as easy to her as breathing. Once again, I was itchy at the feeling that she’d tricked me. I could feel the breeze of Something Very Important whooshing over my head at supersonic speeds.

“So what happened then?” he asked, and I realized I’d gone silent, lost in my thoughts.

“Well, we fought, and finally I convinced her that I
would kill my devil in exchange for her releasing any of the souls that wanted to leave her.” I was starting to feel sick all over again.

“So you killed the Goad?”

I nodded. “It was a whole lot bigger than I expected, but yeah, I got it. It’s good and dead now.”

“And then what happened?”

I could feel the burn of tears welling up in my eyes. “One little kid wanted to leave, and … he was the only one. The others all wanted to stay.”

My legs went wobbly, and I let myself drop down cross-legged on the soft beach sand. I covered my eyes with my flesh hand, trying to will myself not to start sobbing like an idiot.

“Hey, hey, it’s all right.” Cooper knelt beside me and hugged my shoulders. “C’mon, you saved a kid … that’s supergood! You should be proud of that.”

“Bob … Sara’s husband. Dammit.” My efforts at not weeping were failing miserably. “He wouldn’t come with me. Sara’s crazy, yeah, and she’s done a lot of horrible stuff, but I think she only got really bad after Miko took him away from her. She loved him just as much as I love you. She would have done anything to get him home safe and sound, and … he didn’t care. He just blew her off.”

“Hey.” Cooper tugged gently on my tear-damp fingers. “Look at me.”