Switchblade Goddess (27 page)

The old witch finally returned wearing a loose blue caftan. In one hand she carried a cooler of dry ice and in the other a clean oaken bucket that held a long-handled
steel dipper and an owl-feathered rattle made from a dried gourd lashed to what appeared to be a human radius bone. After slipping off her clogs, she stepped onto the dirt circle barefoot. She set the bucket and cooler down just inside the circle’s edge, away from the heat of the fire, and spent the next couple of hours down on her hands and knees inscribing various arcane symbols in the dirt with the ceremonial knife. Some she put around the cauldron’s fire, others she drew around me and Pal.

Shanique was sitting on a log near us, watching her grandmother work with rapt interest. Madame Devereaux finished scratching the last symbol into the ground. Her knees and back popped audibly as she got to her feet and stretched, raising the muddy knife toward the still-dark morning sky.

“Have you seen her do this before?” I whispered.

The girl nodded.

“Hush! No more talking, now,” the old witch admonished me. Then she looked at Shanique. “You get on the other side of her critter—don’t mess up my marks. Y’all gots to hold him if he starts to thrash around. I reckon he’s too weak to throw the both of y’all off, so just hang on.”

Shanique and I nodded. The girl carefully stepped over the symbols and took her place beside Pal. Madame Devereaux hobbled over and pulled off a handful of Pal’s fur, some of which she threw into the pot. The rest went into the fire, flaring slightly green as it burned.

We held on to Pal as the witch got her gourd rattle and the knife and began to chant, stomp, and dance around the potion bubbling in the cauldron. The
cooler of dry ice was sending an eerie low fog across the ground beyond the fire. Her motions were practiced and utterly confident; she slashed the air with the knife as if she were cutting down every last one of the forces of evil.

I couldn’t understand much of the chant, but I caught enough of the meaning to know it was focused on Marinette, the patron loa of werewolves and shape-shifters. And Madame Devereaux wasn’t trying to appease the vicious goddess, as most witches would have done, offering up a live-plucked rooster or slaughtered goat. She was
ordering
the loa to get her damn, dirty claws off Pal. Madame Devereaux was bringing all her authority to the table here, and she was wielding an ancient, powerful magic that was downright scary. Hairs rose on my arms and the back of my neck, as if a thunderstorm was gathering above us, but the sky remained clear.

She kept dancing and chanting until the sun began to crack the horizon, and then she kicked dirt onto the fire to put out the flames. Without breaking stride, she went to the cooler, knocked the lid off, and dumped the contents straight into the pot. Immediately an impressive fog of carbon dioxide boiled over the sides of the cauldron, extinguishing the remaining live coals. Thick, spooky vapor billowed across the ground, but I realized she hadn’t dropped the dry ice in as a cheap effect—it was to quickly chill the potion without diluting it. She retrieved the oaken bucket and went back to the cauldron, gave the contents a couple of good stirs, and started ladling smoky black potion into the bucket.

“Through the power of Sap Daddy, drink this and
be healed!” Madame Devereaux carried the bucket over to us, and I got Pal’s mouth open.

“Drink this and be freed from the clutches of Marinette and her disease!” The old witch poured the potion into Pal’s open mouth, and he began to choke and thrash. Still, she got most of the bucketful down his throat.

“Close his mouth!” she ordered.

I clamped his jaws together under my arm and pulled his head up to force him to swallow, feeling terrible that I had to hurt him like this. Shanique was gray-faced with fear, but she threw herself onto Pal’s back and did her best to hold him down.

Pal scrabbled at the ground with his eight legs and began to thrash. It felt like he was having a seizure; I could feel his muscles cramping and twitching, and his body suddenly got hot, very hot, his skin beginning to steam in the morning air.

“Be healed!” Madame Devereaux shouted, and she pointed at his forehead with the knife and rattle.

The pressure in the air was abruptly relieved as a small, blinding bright lightning bolt arced from the knife into Pal’s forehead, and in my literal shock I let go and tumbled into the dirt. I lay there for just a second, stunned, trying to blink away the spots in my vision, but I sat up—

—and immediately panicked because it looked like my familiar had disappeared.

“Oh my God, Pal—” I began, but then I looked down and saw the small form of a ferret lying in the middle of Pal’s circle. For one bad moment I thought he was dead, but then I saw his sides shudder. I scrambled
over to him and scooped him up, cradling him to my chest like he was a baby.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. “Please tell me you’re okay.”

His whiskers were dusted with dirt. He squirmed, began to crack open his eyes. Sneezed.

There was a sudden pop of air being displaced and a sudden coldness of magic sucking the heat from the air and in a blink I was on my back, squashed flat by seven hundred pounds of shaggy grizzly bear.

“Whoa, I didn’t know he could do that!” Shanique exclaimed.

“Oh my, how peculiar,” Pal said inside my head.

“Crushing … spleen …” I gasped.

Pal rolled off me and sat up, blinking down at his bear body curiously. “How very odd, I never expected—”

He sneezed. Another pop and burst of cold. In a blink Pal had shrunk down again, but this time he was a cat with long black fur.

“Well, I ain’t never seen this happen before.” Madame Devereaux squinted suspiciously into the bucket, as if she expected to see a troll-faced faery shaking its booty at her from the bottom.

“Can you cycle through all your past familiar forms?” I asked Pal.

“I’m not sure,” he replied.

“Well, sneeze again and let’s see.”

“I can’t just sneeze on command!”

“Dude, you’re a
cat
. I
know
you can sneeze.”

He flicked his tail irritably, but managed another sneeze. Pop. Cold. And now he was a bright green parrot. He stretched his wings and flapped, rising a
few feet off the ground before he let himself glide to the earth again.

“It seems I can,” he replied.

“Well, I’ll be!” Madame Devereaux exclaimed. “This is a right strange cure, it is.”

“Strange? It’s freakin’
awesome
!” Feeling giddy and overwhelmed with relief and gratitude, I jumped up and gave the old witch a big hug. “
You’re
awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Surprised and apparently mortified, Madame Devereaux went stiff as a bundle of skis in my arms.

“I ain’t a hugger!” she shrilled.

“Oh. Sorry.” I quickly let her go and backed away.

Her face had gone dark with embarrassment, and she tugged at her gown to straighten it. “I don’t reckon I ever let nobody touch me but my dear departed Earl. And babies. They don’t know no better.”

“Well, maybe I could buy you a drink or something in town? Or dinner? Or … go shopping for … shoes? Auto parts?” I felt like we should do something to celebrate.

Madame Devereaux shook her head. “I don’t need no payment for this. It’s what I do. Y’all just get some breakfast and some sleep and then get going to your father’s place. Peace and quiet is the best gift you can give me.”

“Okay,” I replied, feeling a bit crestfallen.

I turned my attention back to Pal, who was preening his feathers and admiring his wings.

“I rather enjoyed being a parrot,” he told me. “Although my master then was serving aboard a pirate ship, and I must say the other crewmen weren’t a pleasant lot to be around.”

“Can birds sneeze?” I asked him.

“Hmm, good question.” He concentrated for a moment, and let out a small
achoo
.

Pop. Cold. And now Pal was back to his original shaggy spider monster form. His body looked perfectly healthy, his legs free of sores, his coat shiny. He stretched and gave himself a shake—

—and all his hair fell off with an audible
foomp!
as it hit the ground in an itchy pile.

“My fur!” he shrieked, rearing up on his back legs.

“I’m … I’m
nude
!”

He said “nude” the way most people would say “covered in leeches.”

“Ewww,” Shanique said. “An’ I thought he was ugly
before
.”

“You hush now,” her grandmother scolded. “That ain’t polite.”

“Don’t panic!” I told him. “It’ll grow back! You probably just changed too much, too quickly. Or something. But, seriously, it’ll grow back.”

He settled down, staring at his wrinkled, mottled, naked skin unhappily. “I suppose you’re right.”

His shifting feet caused some dust and ashes to waft up to his nose, and he sneezed again, his naked ferret body falling deep into one of the massive fur piles.

“I’ve
got
to learn to control this,” he complained as he fought his way to the surface of the hairball.

I picked him up, brushed him off with my flesh hand, and set him on my shoulder. “I can always take you to a vet and get you an allergy prescription.”

“Taking mundane medicine seems almost as shameful as being hairless,” he grumbled.

I wanted to say, “Pal, seriously, you just got cured
of a major fatal illness and you’re worried about your
fur
?” but then I heard his little stomach rumble with hunger. Low blood sugar could certainly cause his whininess and overreaction.

So instead I asked: “Do you want some breakfast?”

“Do you think she has any hard-boiled eggs?” he asked plaintively. “And bacon?”

“If she doesn’t, I’m sure we can make some.”

A
fter breakfast, I lay down on my cot to nap for a few hours, Pal curling up beside my head. Madame Devereaux woke us up a little after noon; she gripped a small round mirror.

“I burned a letter to your father in my fireplace to let him know I cured your familiar,” she said, and then held the mirror out to me. “And he left this for you in my mailbox.”

I sat up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, then frowning as her words sank in. “Wait a minute … you didn’t tell me you could get in touch with him that way.”

She blinked at me, looking confused and annoyed. “Well, I reckon you didn’t ask me, did you?”

I bit back on an F-bomb and took the mirror from her hand. I’d be seeing my father soon enough, and he’d be able to put me in touch with Cooper.

“Thanks,” I said, and she grunted and shuffled away.

I turned to Pal, who was still snoozing in a tight ball on the pillow. Already I could see fresh fuzz gleaming on his ferret skin in the afternoon light.

“Hey, wake up.” I gently poked him awake with my finger. “See, your fur’s already growing back in.”

“Thank Goddess for that,” he replied. “What are we doing now?”

“Well, my father apparently sent me this.” I flashed the mirror at him. “So let me check in and find out.”

I spoke my father’s name, and the mirror resolved to the familiar view of the chair in his workshop.

“Jessie, is that you?” he called from somewhere off to the side.

“Yes, it’s me … hey, do you know where Cooper is?”

“At the moment, actually, no; he’s not here at the castle, if that is what you are asking.” My father flip-flopped over and sat down in the chair, looking puzzled.

“Is he okay?”

“Well, I cannot say for certain—as I have said, he is not here—but I have no reason to think that he has been injured.” He blinked at me. “Do you?”

I bit my lip, suddenly feeling acutely ashamed of everything Miko had done to us, everything she’d gotten me to do in return, and my mouth went dry. I felt like a whore. It was all so horrible and nasty—what could I tell him?
How
could I tell him? Would he still want me as his daughter after I revealed to him what I’d done?

“Speak up, girl, what’s your concern?”

“Just curious,” I said, feeling even worse about lying. “I—I had a dream, and—I was … just wondering. If he was okay.”

“I expect he is fine.” He shrugged. “I am sure I would have heard, otherwise. I do expect him here later this evening, if that helps.”

“Okay,” I replied, my voice small.

“Are you feeling all right? You look feverish.”

“I’m—I’m fine … my brother’s potion is still mostly holding up, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Good, good. You feel ready to travel here?”

I nodded.

“And what about that familiar of yours? Madame Devereaux indicated that her cure was a rousing success.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I turned the mirror on Pal for a moment so he could see him. “He’s fine now; he can change into any of his previous familiar forms, though it looks like he loses his fur if he does it too much.”

“Most interesting.” He stroked his beard thoughtfully. “One never knows quite how shape-shifting viruses and their cures will affect magical hybrid creatures. But I’m sure his new ability will come in handy.”

My father looked at something below the mirror, and I heard the sound of papers rustling. “In fact, it will come in handy very soon. With him riding upon your shoulder in his current ferret form, I can send you through a less arduous path, and you can finish at the alpine portal outside the town. You can have your familiar transform back to his arachnoid form and fly you the rest of the way in. I’ll tell the dragon guards to give the two of you clear passage. Does this plan sound good to you?”

“Sounds good,” I said. “What do we do now?”

“Gather your things, and contact me when you’ve gotten to the portal at the end of the road there. I’ll give you further directions then.”

I said good-bye to my father and the mirror went dark. Pal crept over to me and sat up, peering into my face anxiously.

“What’s happened to Cooper?” he asked. “What haven’t you told me?”

“You were so sick, and I didn’t want to burden you with it all …” Tears began to blur my vision.

“Well, I’m all better now, so please tell me.”