“Oh, nonsense, of course they didn’t want you dead,” Karen said lightly, casting a quick, irritated glance at Pal. “It was all a huge misunderstanding, and… well, you haven’t done a thing wrong, and so you shouldn’t worry about anything.”
Karen came to the side of the bed and helped me sit up a little. “Drink this,” she said, bringing the mug to my lips, “and when you wake up, you’ll be feeling much better.”
The healing potion tasted like frosted mint brownies. I just had time to think that Karen made the best-tasting potions in probably the entire country before I fell fast asleep.
I woke with a mighty need to pee. I sat up, and a nauseating wave of dizziness made me immediately wish I hadn’t.
“Right on time,” Karen said. She was knitting a long blue scarf in a wooden rocking chair by the bed.
“I’m gonna burst,” I said as Karen set aside her needles and helped me get out of bed.
“No you’re not. The toilet is just over here.” Karen led me out into the guest bath.
“Sorry can’t be polite gotta go.” I fumbled down my pajama pants with my free right hand — when did I get into pajamas? __ and plunked down on the toilet.
“No problem, covering my eyes, won’t look,” Karen replied.
Sweet relief. “Thank God. Hey, nice ducks,” I said, noticing the cute blue-and-white duck-patterned wallpaper for the first time.
“Oh, thanks,” said Karen. “We put that up last month.”
An awkward silence as my cascade continued unabated.
“By the way,” Karen said, “did you know that the human bladder can hold nearly a liter of urine?”
“Oh, well that would explain a lot right now,” I replied. “Not to be a nitpickei but why didn’t you magic some of this out of me while I was asleep?”
“I did. Twice.”
“Oh.” I finally finished, wiped, and pulled on the flannel pants.
“You had a lot of poison in you. You’re lucky to be alive.” Karen helped me wobble to the sink.
“So Pal says. Speaking of, where is he?”
“Curled up with one of the cats, I think.”
“No, I’m here.” Pal humped into the doorway. “I felt you wake up, but Snoogums was sleeping on my tail.”
I gave Karen a look. “You have a familiar named ‘Snoogums’?”
“Oh goodness no, it’s just a pet. The five-year-old named him. I had nothing to do with it.”
I paused. “Is there any news about Cooper?”
Mother Karen shook her head.
“So who’s gone looking for him?”
“Nobody, as far as I know.”
A swell of fear and frustration rose in a hot tide inside me. “Someone’s got to go after him, he could be—”
“Wait.” Karen held up a hand, took a deep breath. “Listen. Worry about Cooper later; we need to take care of you first. I need to take off your bandages to make sure you’re healing up properly. I… couldn’t fix as much as I wanted to. There were some complications with the governing circle.”
“The men came back again,” Pal said. “With a scroll from a different Virtus.”
I felt sick all over again.
“I don’t want you to worry, no matter what you see, okay?” Karen said quickly. “It can all be fixed. Later, when things are sorted out.”
Karen got a pair of scissors out of the drawer under the sink. She cut the sling-like bandage binding my left arm to my body, then unwound the wrapping on my arm.
Five inches below my elbow, my forearm ended in a stub of puckered, purple scar tissue. My knees went rubbery.
“My hand. But I … I can still feel it,” I stammered.
“That’s normal. Your nerves are still inflamed, and so your brain doesn’t know it’s gone yet,” Karen said gently.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do without my hand?”
“Listen!” Karen’s tone was worried, but stern. “I wanted to give you your hand back, but right now I can’t. The representatives from the governing circle came here last night; they summoned the Virtus to put me under a geas. I am forbidden under pain of death from doing more than necessary to get you healthy again until the head of the governing circle says I can.”
“Mr. Jordan did this? Why? What the fuck did I ever do to him?” Tears streamed hot and bitter down my right cheek to my lips.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I think this has to do with Cooper. Where is he? What happened to you two down there?”
“We were calling the storm, and—and something went wrong. Cooper accidentally opened a portal; I think it sucked him in. A demon came out. A Wutganger. Someone put an isolation sphere on us, and—”
I broke down sobbing. “Oh God, it got so fucked up. Cooper’s gone, and I don’t know how to get him back. These poor guys got killed by the demon, and I got poor Smoky killed and he was just trying to help us oh God I didn’t know what I was doing and i-just made it worse—”
Karen hugged me. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, it’s all over—”
“No it’s not, if it was all over, I’d have my hand back. I’d have Cooper back.” I took a shuddering breath and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop myself from crying.
“This is maybe not the best time, but unfortunately it can’t wait. I need to take the bandages off your face,” Karen said.
I stood still and miserable. Karen carefully cut the gauze away and peeled it off. Her own face went pale.
“I think maybe we should put you back to bed for a little while no honey please don’t look in the mirror—”
I stepped past Karen. And looked. And wished the demon had killed me after all.
My left eye was not still covered by a patch, as I’d hoped. My eyeball had been eaten out of my head by the Wutganger’s blood; a white plastic ball held my lidless socket open. The flesh of my left cheek had been melted practically down to the bone; the skin and muscle Karen’s potion had regrown was thin, red-streaked, and pitted.
“It’s fixable!” Karen said. “Please don’t freak out, it’s fixable. Really. This didn’t turn out like I hoped; that tissue will sunburn like crazy, maybe they’ll let me do a bit more under the terms of the geas …“
“I—I’m a monster,” I whispered. The Wutganger had made me into a version of itself after all.
“No you’re not, you’ve just got a bit of a scar—”
“A bit of a scar?” I began to laugh hysterically. “Oh yes, and I am just the Princess of Luck, too, aren’t I? I am just soaking in luck! Sweet Jesus on a pogo stick, I can’t go out in public like this.” I shook my stump at my reflection. “I can’t go to work like this.”
Oh God. Work.
I turned to Karen, my heart pounding. “What day is it? ‘What time is it?”
“It’s Wednesday, a little shy of seven AM.”
“Crap in a hat, I was supposed to work yesterday. You didn’t call me off, did you?”
Karen shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”
“Oh hell, rent was due yesterday, I am so boned—”
“Please, Jessica, calm down. You’ll make yourself sick.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Look, your supervisor and landlord should understand; you’ve obviously had a bad accident.” I suddenly realized that I didn’t have enough money for rent in my checking account, and I didn’t know how to access Cooper’s account. “You wouldn’t happen to have two hundred I could borrow until I can get the rainstorm money from the farmer’s co-op, do you?”
Karen shook her head. “That would violate the terms of the geas as well.”
“Motherf—” I stopped myself and took another deep breath. There was no sense in taking my frustration out on Karen. “Could you write me a note for my boss?”
“That I think I can do.”
“So what else do you have to do—or not do— because of this geas they put you under?”
“Well, at eight AM sharp I have to c
all Benedict Jordan’s office to tell him that you’re well enough to meet with him. And then presumably he’ll be out to see you.”
“About what? About Cooper?”
“I wish I knew,” Karen replied.
chapter seven
Meeting Mr. Jordan
I didn’t feel like going back to bed. I didn’t much feel like doing anything, really, but curling into a ball of uselessness wasn’t an option. I had an hour to get a hold of myself, cowgirl up, and see what it was that Mr. Jordan wanted.
Karen brought me an old gray T-shirt and a pair of one of her older teens’ jeans to replace the clothes ruined by the demon’s blood. She taught me a simple shoelace-tying charm, then left to start breakfast. I took a shower and got dressed, and then Pal and I went into the conservatory to wait for The Man.
“What does Jordan want with me?” I asked Pal. “He can wave his pinkie finger and have a hundred guys snap to it. There’s nothing I can possibly do for him that he can’t get already.”
Mother Karen had put us in the conservatory sunroom off the formal dining room so we’d be out of the way of the kids as they got ready for school. I had a hard time keeping track of exactly how many kids Karen was fostering; it was at least twelve and maybe as many as twenty. The house was tucked away on a dead-end lane that backed up into the woods lining the Olentangy River. Anyone who saw it from the Street would just think it was a standard three-or four-bedroom Old Worthington colonial. Inside, it had been enchanted, expanded and re-expanded to give every child a bedroom, plus an enormous indoor playroom and a big fenced backyard equipped with a sound-dampening enchantment so that Karen’s elderly neighbors wouldn’t be disturbed.
“I expect he wants an explanation for what happened the other night,” Pal replied. He was perched on a chessboard on the rattan coffee table. “The man on the TV news said that the tornado destroyed the Riffe Tower and critically damaged the Ohioana Bank Building and part of the Statehouse. The heart of downtown is closed and they don’t yet know when it can be reopened. This disaster has cost a lot of people a great deal of money.”
I rubbed my good eye. “So he’s going to, what, make me pay it all off somehow? I couldn’t do that even if I lived two hundred years.”
“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” Pal replied. “Would you like to play chess while you wait for him?”
I shook my head. “You’d beat me. My concentration’s shot. I think I’ll just watch the pterodactyls and the sunrise.”
The exterior of Karen’s house couldn’t accommodate the conservatory addition, so she had it enchanted so that the windows looked eastward over the ancient, majestic Appalachians. As the sun rose above the verdant evergreen forests in the valleys, quetzals wheeled on updrafts between the peaks, large and in charge of the blue Cretaceous skies. Pteranodons dove and cried near their huge cousins, their membranous wings striped with bright blues and greens. A few drab, primitive crow-like birds flapped awkwardly in the magnolias near the windows.
“Magnificent creatures,” Pal said, watching a quetzal maneuver delicately with its twenty-foot wings, light and diaphanous as a living sail. “A pity they died out on this world.”
“Well, they lasted way longer than we’ve been around,” I said. “If humans survive another fifty million years on this planet, then we can start feeling sorry for them.”
“Your people will survive,” Pal said. “You’ll change and evolve like any species, and you might find your descendants physically unrecognizable. But the spiritual elements that make your people unique will survive.”
“You’re sure about that? We do seem to have an endless capacity for boning things up.”
And by “we” I mean “I,” I thought miserably.
“The higher entities have invested too much time in humanity to let it destroy itself. If the Virtii felt your people were doomed, familiars would be nothing more than animals, nothing more than handy vessels for wizards to extend their senses. We indentured spirits would be assigned elsewhere.”
“How did you get here?” I asked. “I mean, I sort of understand the process of a spirit entering a familiar, but how did you come to be mine?”
“Why was I assigned to you? It was purely random, as far as I know,” Pal said. “How did I become an indentured spirit? Erm. Well. Let’s just say that humanity has no particular monopoly on messing up.”
I smiled despite myself. The ruined muscles in my left cheek cramped sharply. “Ow.”
“Try not to hurt yourself,” said Pal.
I heard a small child skipping through the dining room, chanting, “Birdy lizard birdy lizard birdy lizard.”
A little girl in pink Powerpuff Girls pajamas ran into the conservatory, holding her arms out to the flying dinosaurs beyond the glass. Then she realized she wasn’t alone and stopped in her tracks. She stared openmouthed at me for two beats, then let out an ear-bleeding shriek.
“Monster lady!” the little girl yelled. She ran away wailing in terror.
“Oh good,” I said, holding my ear. “I’m scaring off little kids. I’m just all set for Halloween, aren’t I?”
Karen came in through the dining room.
“I called Mr. Jordan’s office,” Karen said. “He’ll be here very shortly.”
“Swell. Hey, could I get you to help me bandage this back up?” I gestured toward my face. “My ‘little bit of a scar’ is making me feel pretty gruesome right now.”
Karen looked pained. “He said he wanted you without bandages.”
I felt intensely uncomfortable, as if he’d demanded to see me naked. “Why?”
“He does damage assessment. He wants to see the damage.”
“That’s nice. Does he want my shirt off, too? ‘Cause I think my boobie got burned.” I angrily pulled out my collar and peeked down my shirt. “Yep, I see a new Band-Aid! More scars he’s gonna wanna see! I could totally do the Big Damage Lapdance for him. I could see if I can pop my fake eye into his waistband or something.”
“Jessica!”
“No, really, I can totally do this. It’ll be a hoot.” I pressed on my spongy left temple, and the white plastic ball popped painfully into my palm. I stared at it.
“Is this a Ping-Pong ball?” I asked.
“I washed it first!” Karen said, exasperatedly snatching it out of my hand. “Let’s get this back in, because Mr. Jordan will be here any minute. You need to straighten up and take this seriously. Believe it or not, your life could be much, much worse than it is now if Mr. Jordan decides he doesn’t like you. That means no cussing, no talking back. Hold still.”
I leaned my head back as Karen inserted the ball back in my eye socket.
“I am taking this seriously. And I can’t believe you stuck a Ping-Pong ball in my head.”
“It was what I had, and it filled the space. The eight-ball was a little too big.”
“You could’ve shrunk it. Just sayin’.”
“No, I could’ve given you the potion downtown and left you lying there on the pavement with an empty socket,” Karen replied crossly. “And I didn’t, did I?”
I sensed real anger and regret behind her words. “Whoa, what did I do?”
“It’s not what you’ve done, it’s what I’m afraid you’re about to do. Which is to make a very, very powerful wizard your enemy. I love you to death, Jessica, but I’ve got eighteen kids to worry about, and I love each and every one of them with all my life.”
“I know that, Karen… you know I’d never do anything to put your family in danger.”
“Make this man happy, Jessica. Give him whatever he wants, and we can all get on with our lives.” Karen paused, seemed to listen to something in the distance. “He’s on the front porch. I better go let him in.” She disappeared down the hall.
A few minutes later a tall man in a dark blue Armani Suit with a red silk tie strode into the sunroom. His face was smooth, his short, wavy hair dark with just the right amount of gray at the temples. He had the kind of broad white s
mile you see on presidential candidates, and he carried a glossy burgundy leather portfolio that probably cost a hundred bucks in some executive store downtown.
“You must be Jessica!” he boomed, sticking his hand out to me. I uncertainly shook his hand. His grip was dry and painful, the back of his hand furry with dark hair.
“Let’s sit down and get started, shall we?”
When Mr. Jordan spoke, Pal laid his ears back. I hoped the lawyer wouldn’t hold our entire conversation twenty decibels louder than necessary. I sat down in the wicker chair on the other side of the chessboard.
He’s trying to make you feel small, Pal said inside my head.
Mr. Jordan gave Pal a laser-like glance with his icy blue eyes. “Why don’t you run along and play with the cats?”
Had Mr. Jordan heard Pal? No, that would be fifteen shades of illegal. Not even a bigwig like Jordan was allowed to listen in on telepathy between a familiar and master.
“I’d like him to stay here,” I said, my voice shakier than I’d have liked.
“Fine.” Jordan sat down in the chair facing me. “So, tell me, what brought you to our fine midwestern city?”
“What? Urn, well, I came here to live with my aunt Vicky when I was in high school.”
“Things not going so well back home in Texas?” Mr. Jordan flipped open the portfolio.
“Things were okay, really.. . it’s just my dad remarried, and his new wife had a young daughter, and she got pregnant right away with the twins… it was just sort of… crowded, I guess. It seemed best for me to come out here.”
I tried not to think about how sour my home life had turned. Mom died suddenly, just a month after my eleventh birthday. My relationship with my father had always been a little uneasy, tainted with impatience and resentment. We never seemed to have much in common, and I would have suspected I was adopted, except that I looked so much like both my parents. I mostly resembled Mom, but nobody denied my physical resemblance to my father.
After my father met Deborah at his company, he had less and less time for me. I was thirteen when they got married; my father moved us away from our cozy Craftsman home (and the few friends I had) in Lakewood out to a cookie-cutter neighborhood in Plano so that he and my stepmother could be closer to work. By the time the twins were born, I felt like a ghost in their four-bedroom house.
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