A Flash of Hex

by Battis, Jes

  I smiled weakly. “Yeah. They thought I was going to be a pushover. The girl called me a skinny little bitch.”

  “You’re anything but.” He gently placed his hand on my shoulder. “You’ve done this before, right?”

  I nodded.

  “It hurts. But it’s over fast. So I’m going to do it on the count of three.”

  “Okay, but, like, really on three. Don’t count to two and then surprise me, like they always do at the clinic.” My eyes narrowed. “I don’t like surprises.”

  “No more surprises. Promise.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ready? Take a deep breath.”

  I inhaled.

  “One. Two . . .”

  He wrenched my arm upward. I screamed. It felt like hot fangs biting into my shoulder, tearing it apart. The bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down.

  “Done,” he said.

  I gasped for air. “You lied—you didn’t count all the way—”

  “I promised not to surprise you. Were you surprised?”

  I shook my head, laughing softly. “No.”

  “No.” He smiled. “Now let’s see your face.” He gently probed my swollen cheek. “Man, they really belted you one.”

  “They threw me on the tracks.”

  “But your athame grounded you?”

  “Yeah.” I frowned. “How did you know that?”

  “I do actually understand how materia works, Tess. Just because I don’t channel the same kind as you doesn’t mean that I don’t get it theoretically.”

  “Huh.”

  “I’m going to do a little something here. Don’t freak out.”

  His fingers moved along the surface of my face, just barely touching me. I felt something—like a tiny shock. My eyes widened, and I saw faint currents of light arcing from Lucian’s fingertips. Like he was a living plasma globe.

  “What are you—”

  “Just debriding your wounds. Necroid materia can be used to kill dead skin and tissue. It strips away the first dermal layer and speeds the healing process.”

  “Wow. You should become a dermatologist. You’d make a fortune.” I laughed and squirmed. “It tickles a bit.”

  “It’ll help. Trust me.”

  He took his hands away, but the warmth remained. My face tingled. I looked at his tub and sighed.

  “Damn. You’ve got a Pretty Woman tub.”

  “Yeah. I like taking baths.”

  “You don’t hear a guy say that very often.”

  “Well, I’m not really normal. Not by any stretch of the term.”

  He dabbed a washcloth over my face. Always gentle. I didn’t flinch. His eyes were very brown as he concentrated. I could smell something on his fingertips. Was it the residual necroid materia? It smelled almost like sage and burnt oil.

  “Do you want to have a shower?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I have the energy. I’d pass out under the hot water, and then you’d have to drag me out of here like a drowned rat.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Maybe we should just get you to bed.”

  “Oh God.” I rubbed my forehead. “Mia’s going to freak if I don’t come home tonight. I’m such a shitty parent—fuck—”

  “Shhh.” He shook his head. “You live with Derrick, right? He’ll handle things. And if I remember correctly, Mia’s a pretty tough kid.”

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  “I take good notes.” He smiled. “Let me get you a pain-killer.”

  He reached into the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle.

  “Is it Valium?”

  “No. I don’t stock anything stronger than aspirin. But it’ll keep the swelling down. Your body should take care of the rest.”

  He poured me a glass of water from the bathroom sink. I felt like I was six years old again, and almost expected him to feed me a spoonful of cough syrup. I swallowed the pills down.

  “Thanks.”

  “All right. Follow me.”

  He led me up the stairs, one hand always on my back. It almost made me want to cry, but I bit my lip and didn’t say anything.

  “I can sleep on the couch—”

  “Shut up. It’s a big bed.”

  It was indeed. And very, very inviting. He pulled back the comforter. We undressed in silence. Not awkward, though. I watched him slip off his shirt and wrangle out of his jeans. He watched me kick off my boots and pants. It wasn’t voyeuristic. There was something oddly comfortable about it.

  “Wait,” he said as I got to my blouse. “Let me.”

  Gently, he slipped the blouse over my head. His hand rested on my hip. I made a small noise when he touched my shoulder, and he sucked in his breath, like he might break me. His fingertips brushed my arm.

  “Okay?”

  Lucian was looking expectantly at me. He stood there in a tank top and fitted—very fitted—boxers, looking frozen, as if waiting for further orders. I noticed a new tattoo creeping out from under his thigh, partially obscured by the hem of the fabric. It was text. I couldn’t read it, but I wanted to. Oh boy, did I want to.

  “Okay,” I said simply.

  I crawled onto my side of the bed, and he crawled onto his.

  He flipped the light off, and the room was blanketed in cool semidarkness. The Noma lights coiled around the stairs gleamed like snowflakes, casting a dotted brilliance over both of our faces.

  We were silent for a while. There didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about.

  Finally, I shifted. “Lucian?”

  “Yes?”

  I hesitated. Oh God.

  “Could you . . .” I swallowed. “I mean, I don’t want to—you know—at least not right now. But it’s been a long day. And I feel . . .” I sighed. “Could you just . . .”

  Silently, he rolled over.

  I felt his arms encircle me from behind. His legs curled into mine. The soles of his feet rubbed warmly against my ankles. I felt his breath on the back of my neck, sweet and even. His hands rested lightly beneath my breasts. I felt his chest expand against my back, breathing, in and out, in and out. He didn’t pull me tight. But he held on.

  I let my fingers curl around his. My hands were freezing; his were warm and surprisingly soft. I drew his arm up to my chin.

  I fell asleep a few seconds later.

  I didn’t dream.

  10

  Lucian was gone when I woke up. I’m not really sure why I’d expected him to stay, like we might go out for breakfast and chat. He left me a polite note telling me that I could stay as long as I liked. A spare key sat on top of the note. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the reality of that. I told myself that he was just being pragmatic, and left immediately without snooping around the warehouse. The key felt like a grenade in my pocket. I kept it separate from my house keys, as if there might be some form of cross-contamination otherwise.

  Mia was still asleep when I got home. Derrick, however, was very awake. And pissed. But his anger dissolved as soon as he saw my face. I told him what happened, and then, at his gentle urging, I called Selena and repeated the whole story again. She’d just pulled a double shift, so she was still at the lab and slightly wired from coffee. Her voice sounded brittle with exhaustion when she told me to stay home. Normally I would have protested, but the thought of not going to work filled me with such a warm sense of relief that all I could do was thank her and collapse into bed. My own bed, this time.

  I wasn’t sure what Derrick had told Mia. Something practical. He was much better at defusing her anger than I’d ever been. I think our relations were always more volatile because we were both girls, and I was the closest thing to a mom that she had anymore. Derrick was the one who always got to be silly and make her laugh. I was the one who told her to clean up her room before the mold on the dinner plates started growing toxic fuzz. Sometimes it scared me how much I sounded like my own mother.

  Now it was 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday—my impromptu day off—and so far I’d manag
ed to put on an old pair of tear-away track pants and Derrick’s Food Not Bombs T-shirt, which was about three sizes too big. Derrick was doing my paperwork like an angel, so all I had to do was pick up Mia from school. I couldn’t wait to freak out all the soccer moms when I pulled up in the Festiva, my face looking like I’d gone a few rounds with Miguel Cotto.

  My left cheek was a blotch of purple with greenish edges, my split lip stung like hell whenever I took a drink, and my shoulder still made popping noises when I moved my arm. A Demerol cocktail would have helped the situation, but stoicism seemed like the right way to go. So I dragged my ass around the house, grimacing and halfheartedly cleaning while I tried not to think about how many more vampires might knock on my door tonight.

  The TV was on without sound. I caught sight of a tall, skinny blond girl, and for a moment my heart skipped. I thought it was Sabine.

  Jesus, it’s just some model. Or that annoying chick from The Hills. Simmer down, Tess.

  I flipped the CD player on. Mia had obviously been using it, since she’d left her Modern Life Is War CD in there, and I wasn’t in the mood for epic punk. I dug through a stack of jewel cases, pulled out Night Flares by Greg MacPherson, and popped it in. His sweet, gravelly voice was soothing, like a compress made of warm tea and whiskey.

  I eased myself back onto the couch, trying to move my shoulder as little as possible. My eyes had trouble focusing on the silent TV, but it was also soothing in a way, so I left it on.

  I reached behind the couch with my good arm, pulling out a small, intricately carved wooden box with Celtic knotwork on the lid. It was barely hidden, but I didn’t think Mia would be rooting behind our sofa anytime soon. It would be a miracle of housecleaning if she did, and if her room was any indication, that miracle was about as far away as the Rapture.

  I opened the box, withdrawing a small plastic screw-top container and a ceramic pipe, still chipped from the time Derrick accidentally dropped it on the counter. Gently, I tapped some of the contents of the bag into the pipe, making sure not to spill, and dabbing at the excess with my thumb and forefinger. I drew a lighter from the box and placed it on the table. Then I closed the curtains to satisfy my own paranoia.

  I stared at the pipe.

  My stance on drugs has always been complicated. I’d seen firsthand what heroin, crack, PCP, cocaine, crystal—and now Hex—could do to a person’s body and soul. I’d seen addicts rotting from the inside, their lives complete shit, spending each day searching for the next hit. But then there were gray areas. I went to college with this amazing artist who built room-sized sculptures made of brass, steel, and fiber optics. He had an appalling coke habit, but still managed to work every day. I don’t know where his money came from. He was definitely an addict, but his life seemed to work just fine.

  Would I ever let Mia try ecstasy or LSD? You bet your ass I wouldn’t. But how could I control her every second of the day? A small, persistent, maybe wrongheaded part of me thought, hell, maybe she should try them once. Maybe everyone should. But I might have been full of shit. What did I know about anything? What did I know about being a parent? I almost cried when I had to fill out her school paperwork for the first time, and my dad still did my taxes every year. Otherwise I’d never get a refund.

  What would Miles say? He specializes in solving drug crimes. What would he say if he knew you were puffing on a pipe in the middle of the afternoon?

  Luckily, Miles wasn’t about to be installed as my new superego. For all I knew, he was mixing up a batch of crystal in his hotel room, whistling happily as he added the drain cleaner and the sodium. You never really know people, even when you know them, even when you see them every hour of every day. That’s why houses have rooms with doors. To keep us all from killing each other.

  It’s not like you’re some crazy smokehound. This bag is probably stale, it’s been sitting underneath your bed for so long.

  Derrick would be annoyed if he found out, since he enjoyed getting silly and watching cartoons with me in the middle of the day. He’d managed to get the eighth of an ounce from this guy called “Extreme Jeff” who knew his sister’s roommate. It was all very classy, like debutantes getting stoned in Brides-head Revisited.

  I lit the pipe and drew in a few breaths. It was a bit old, sure, but the stuff never really went bad. I started coughing immediately, since I hadn’t smoked in so long, and had to reach for a glass of water on the end table. A part of me felt like I’d just regressed back to college.

  It was always very different from smoking cigarettes. Nicotine is a stimulant. It burns all the way down, but there’s a mellow honey to the burning, like a chili on your tongue. It wakes you up almost immediately, and the smoke itself seems eager as it escapes through your nose and mouth, curling above your head. If you’re a former smoker, getting a whiff of nicotine is like smelling barbecue. You may not be hungry enough for a full meal, but just the scent of it makes your mouth water in anticipation.

  This was the opposite. The smoke lingered in my mouth and lungs, heavy and floral. I stretched out on the couch and sighed. The shift was very gradual as I took another few puffs, then wisely set the pipe down. Very subtly, I felt my body loosen up. The cramps in my stomach eased off—a side effect of the coffee I’d guzzled earlier this morning. I closed my eyes. There was a light, pleasant tingling in my forehead, as if a very small orchestra had just set up their instruments and started playing in there.

  Thinking about music, I grabbed the remote for the CD player and turned the volume up. Greg McPherson’s voice was so tactile and vivid as he sang about flying over Reno, I wanted to invite him into my living room and slow-dance with him. I’ll bet he smelled good, like a proper Nova Scotia boy, fresh from the sea. I’ll bet he could waltz.

  The next few hours were a pleasing blur of activity, some of it practical but most of it completely disorganized. I hunted through my CD collection for an album whose name I couldn’t precisely remember. I straightened and aligned everything on the coffee table, since its air of crookedness suddenly seemed insulting. I folded the newspaper and placed it in Derrick’s chair, for when he came home. Then I laughed at the gesture for what seemed like twenty minutes, since I couldn’t imagine myself being more like June Cleaver. June Cleaver if she was mildly baked in the middle of the day.

  After that, everything got lost in a maelstrom of cleaning and creative design. I was just wiping streaks off the sliding glass door with Windex, wearing my orange kitchen gloves, when I heard the doorbell.

  Shit.

  I did a quick mental diagnostic. How bad was I? Could I answer the door? Could I be trusted to entertain a guest? I silently recited all the capital cities of Canada. I tried to recall the last e-mail I sent. It was to Derrick. Something about picking up spray cheese from the supermarket on his way home.

  I walked over to the bookshelf and scanned the titles. Happily, I was able to read each one without getting distracted by the color, shape, or spatial positioning of each book. Okay. It’d been two hours, I think I was good to go.

  As I passed the table, I spied the pipe sitting there, looking innocuous. I replaced it in the box for good measure, then slid the box under the couch. The doorbell rang again. It was either a very persistent Girl Scout, or someone who knew me. Actually, the thought of mint cookies didn’t sound too bad right now. I jogged over to the foyer, rummaging in my pockets for stray money. How much did those cookies cost again? Maybe they took Visa now.

  I opened the door, about to say “Sorry,” but the apology died on my lips.

  “Tess!”

  It was my mother.

  We were dressed almost exactly the same, except that she wore jeans instead of track pants, and an old T-shirt from the record store she used to work at years ago. Back when they were still called record stores, even if they sold CDs. She took off her prescription sunglasses and beamed at me. But the smile died when she saw my face.

  “Jesus! What happened to you?” Her hands flew to my cheek. They were c
ool and soft, like always. “Did you get hit by a truck? Oh baby—”

  “I’m fine, Mom.” I beckoned for her to come in. “It was a work thing. It’s really not as bad as it looks.”

  “You know I hate your job. I’ve told you that a million times. I hate it. You shouldn’t be putting yourself in these kinds of situations. And now you’ve got a family!”

  “It’s not like I got knocked up and moved to Surrey, Mom. Derrick and I are like co-parents, and Mia’s already fourteen.”

  She swept past me and up the stairs. “But she still needs you to take care of her, and how are you going to do that if you’re stuck in some alley somewhere, getting kicked and punched by some crazy bastard who’s high on PCP? Oh, Tess.” She’d already disappeared into my kitchen. Not a good sign. “You don’t know how much I worry about you. I worry every day. I barely sleep a wink at night, just thinking about you and Derrick. And Mia . . .”

  Ah, I see we’d come back around to that again. My mother’s arguments had a certain rhetorical circularity to them.

  “Mia’s fine, Mom. We’re all fine.”

  She was digging around in my cupboards now. Probably reorganizing my soup tins and instant noodle packages. “Lord knows that child is resilient, after what she’s been through. I’m not disputing that. But she doesn’t need any more surprises. Oh—for goodness’ sake, Tessa, where’s your Earl Gray? Should I look in the basement?”

  I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall.

  It would be impossible to tell my mother what I actually do—what I actually am. And even if I could find the proper words, the CORE expressly forbids it. I signed papers that were notarized. Once you become a registered mage, psionic, or lab technician, you agree to absolute nondisclosure. Only people involved in our world can really know who we are and what we do.

  When I was twelve, my life changed forever. Strange things started happening whenever I was around. Broken objects mysteriously fixed themselves. Dead plants came back to life. Dogs and cats followed me home from school, even when I cried and screamed at them to just go away. It’s called materia overflow. Your body becomes an open receiver for all different kinds of energy flows, and you just sort of—emit. All the time, in all directions. It happens until the power settles down and becomes more structured, more stable. Until then, you’re like a walking battery.