“And those who do will fall in line anyway,” another fury added. “We need to put the business first.”
“Good,” said Alecto.
“But that doesn’t mean we aren’t happy here,” Frederick said. “I’ve had some disagreements with Megaira, most especially with her methods. But a lot of her ideas were spot on. Those of us who left Hexing House had our reasons. And we want to stay at Fury Unlimited.”
“Understood,” Alecto said. “Hexing House poses no threat to you. Except, of course, for a little friendly competition.”
Thea very much doubted the competition would be friendly, but for now at least, they’d gotten what they needed. Megaira was neutralized, the superhex was a thing of the past. It was a victory.
It was also time to go home.
The Bowmans were not waiting at the bottom of the mountain road. Thea found out later that they’d given up and gone home, as she’d hoped they would. Holgersen called a cab to take him to the airport, and Thea flew home with the others.
It was late at night when they got back to Hexing House. Alecto brought them all back to her residence, and sent her butler to find them some food.
“I’m going to let you keep your wings, by the way,” Alecto said to Thea. “As a thank you for warning me that Maggie was coming for me. If she’d taken me by surprise, that might have ended differently.”
“Doesn’t look like it ended so well as it is.” Thea pointed at a bandage on Alecto’s shoulder that was already soaked through with blood.
“That’s nothing we can’t take care of,” Langdon said. He was squatting beside Thea, looking at her neck where the dart had gotten her. “And neither is this, by the way. You’ll be fine.”
Thea turned to give him a pointed look. “Are you sure you have time to cure people? Not too busy making your own superhex?”
Langdon dismissed that with a wave. “Most of that pseudo-hex was Nero’s doing.”
Thea glared at Nero. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“Some people follow orders,” Alecto said dryly.
Nero gave Thea a helpless little shrug, and Thea couldn’t help but smile.
“By the way, Thea,” Alecto said. “You do have a recording of the Bowmans being offered the superhex? That wasn’t a bluff?”
“We have it.”
“Good. Find a way for Todd Caulfield to hear it. Just hear it, mind you. No leaked copies he could bring to the media.”
“Defying the peace agreement already?”
“I don’t recall the absolute protection of all their secrets being one of our terms. I believe my exact words were cease all threats from hexes or washed-up celebrities. Todd Caulfield is neither, and unlike you, he hasn’t got the power to command a reality show. Word won’t spread far. But it’ll spread far enough to get the Concerned Citizens off our backs, I would think.”
Thea shrugged. “Fine with me. As far as I’m concerned, the victims of Hemlock Heights deserve to know who made that hex.”
Half an hour later, Langdon stopped Thea as she was leaving Alecto’s house. “You missed something else today,” he said. “Dr. Forrester and I appear to have made an excellent team. We believe we have cured the Ninth Disorder for good. We’ll need to keep the doctor and Julius under observation for a week or so to be sure, but I’m confident they’ll be home soon, and with no permanent effects.”
“That’s kind of sad,” Thea said. “If Megaira had been able to do what you’ve done, Hemlock Heights would never have had to happen.”
“It’s a shame we couldn’t save the Lexingtons, or the others,” Langdon said. “But I’m glad we could do this for Julius. He deserves a long and normal life, after everything he’s been through.”
“He’s a good kid.”
“I’ve grown fond of him,” Langdon agreed.
“So this cure, is it a pill, or what?”
“A series of shots and hexes, taken over several days.”
“A series of hexes?”
“Well, not exactly hexes. Hex-like things.”
“More pseudo-hexes?” Thea asked.
“If you like. It’s a really interesting delivery mechanism. Sort of like using hex technology to introduce something other than a hex into a target’s system. Dr. Forrester and I—”
“I want to take it,” Thea interrupted. “The cure.”
Langdon frowned at her. “Thea, how many times must we go through this? You don’t have the Ninth Disorder.”
“Is it dangerous for a fury to take?”
“No, I doubt it,” he conceded. “But I’ve told you—”
“—that you don’t think I have it. And if I try this cure, and nothing changes, you’ll be proved right.”
And so she took it.
And Langdon was proved right. Nothing changed.
Thea wasn’t surprised. She’d known the truth before she took the first dose. But she’d insisted on making sure beyond all doubt, because a small part of her, a part she could only put to rest with hard proof, still hoped for something to blame. For Philip. For Mr. Fanatic.
But although she might have some regrets to face, this wasn’t really bad news. Because if it wasn’t the disease, then it was her. Her wrath. Her choice to control it, or to give in. She might be a monster, but she was a free monster.
Thea called Pete the morning after she found out.
“I want to see you, but I don’t want to come around your house,” she said. Pete’s elderly and not-terribly-healthy father lived with him. Thea had no idea how much the old man knew, but even if Pete had told him everything, there was a big difference between knowing about furies and having one in your living room. “Can you meet me at your cabin to talk?”
He agreed, but he sounded strangely distant. Thea wondered what was going on with him. Had his dad taken a turn for the worse? Was he distracted by something else?
When was the last time they’d talked?
Shit.
Not since Flannery’s wedding.
Since Thea had come back to the ruined Colony Center with a triumphant expression on her face and a corpse in her arms.
And for the first time in her life, she felt shy and uncertain about Pete.
Thea arrived at the cabin early, but rather than let herself in, she waited on the porch, on the chair beside the old lobster trap that had belonged to Pete’s mother. Pete pulled up a few minutes later, got out of his SUV, and climbed the first two porch steps. He stopped there and leaned against the railing.
“What’s up, Gumdrop?”
“I just… I kind of blew you off, that day we were packing Flannery’s things,” Thea said. “I had some things going on that I didn’t want to tell you about then. That I was afraid to tell you about. But I wanted to tell you now.”
“All right.”
Pacing back and forth as she spoke, never meeting his eye, Thea told him everything. About the Ninth Disorder, about her difficulty controlling her rage. And about how she thought—she hoped—she was past that now.
“So it turns out you never had this disease,” Pete said when she finished.
“No. I’m just a fury. But now that I know that, I can control my instincts.”
“Can you? I don’t know about that.”
“Pete!”
“Thea, the last time I saw you, you were carrying a dead body. Someone you killed yourself, with your bare hands!”
“Yeah, the man who bombed Flannery’s wedding and tried to kill us all,” Thea pointed out. “Pete, I don’t love how things went down that day, but make no mistake: Mr. Fanatic was never coming out of that situation alive.”
“That’s not the point.”
“And he attacked me!”
“And that’s not the point, either.”
“Well what is the point, Pete?”
“You looked like a goddamn cat bringing home a dead mouse to show off, that’s what!” Pete said. “Just… look at you! The last time I saw you before you got those wings, you were triple-checking your c
ar locks and had a look on your face like a prayer that nobody would notice you was playing on a constant loop in your head.”
Thea’s jaw tightened and one eyebrow stretched up, a not-quite-unconscious imitation of Alecto. “And you liked the meek and weak Thea better?”
He gave her an impatient look. “Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Thea, do you know how hard you are now?”
“Do you know how hard I’m not?” she shot back. “You have no idea how hard I could be.”
“Thea.”
He crossed the porch, put his hands on her shoulders, and kissed her.
It was the first time a man had touched her like this since Baird. Had she had time to prepare, Thea would have been afraid. Afraid she’d be repulsed, and she didn’t ever want to feel that way about Pete.
She wasn’t repulsed.
But she was sad. She squeezed her eyes closed against the tears as she kissed him harder. Whatever she might wish, she knew this moment would not just end. It would end badly.
She was right.
“I don’t want to find out,” Pete whispered.
He turned away. A few seconds later, he was backing down the driveway.
Thea cried halfway back to Hexing House, but by the time she got there, her eyes were dry. She’d gone instinctively to Pete, for comfort, for hope. For reassurance that she was okay again.
And maybe she was. But being with Pete wasn’t the answer.
Everything that had happened since Hemlock Heights, both within herself and without, had convinced Thea of the importance of humans and furies finding a better way to coexist. She could start by finding a better way for the fury and the human inside her to coexist.
Coming home to a human man every night wouldn’t help her do that. Neither, for that matter, would coming home to another fury. Thea didn’t need to learn to live with someone else. She needed to learn to live with herself—both sides.
As the only transformation in the colony, she would always be different. And that could be a good thing. After all, when every other fury in the room seemed to think escalating threats and a hex arms race were the answers to their problems, it was the once-human Thea who had put a stop to the superhex once and for all. And she’d done it by threatening to use her very human fame.
Okay, probably Cora was right, and Thea had been arrogant. Probably Alecto could have dealt with Fury Unlimited without Thea’s help.
But probably not as well, or as peacefully.
Another thing the past couple of months had taught Thea: despite how much she’d hated her life—hated herself—as a human, humanity was its own sort of virtue.
And suddenly, as she landed back on campus, Thea was inspired. She thought she knew just how to use that virtue. For peace and for profit.
She made an appointment to see Alecto the next day. Then she spent the evening preparing for that meeting very, very carefully.
Thea was already treading unstable ground with Alecto. (But then, when wasn’t she?) Alecto would reject her idea out of hand, if it wasn’t presented properly. Any suggestion that humans like the Concerned Citizens should be appeased would be met with ridicule, or even punishment.
No, this would only work if Thea sold it to her boss as a new product, one with the kind of earning potential that would make them the undisputed top brand in their business. Something that would win the adoration of the humans, yes, but that would also leave their rival colony in the dust.
So when she walked into Alecto’s office the next morning, the first thing Thea said was, “We’ve never had a competitor before. We need to up our game.”
“That’s what you came to tell me?” Alecto asked.
“Of course not. I came to tell you how to do it.”
Alecto raised an eyebrow. “Well then, by all means. Do tell.”
“They might not have wanted the humans to know they were developing a weapon of mass destruction, but Fury Unlimited is still trying to sell itself as badass,” Thea said. “They do minimal investigation on their targets. They’ll hit pretty much anybody. And look at their business cards. The word justice is nowhere to be found.”
“So?”
“So, they want to be the most vengeful ones in the vengeance business, right?”
“Right,” Alecto agreed. “But it’s a mistake. Apart from the fact that justice is part of our sacred duty, what we do involves a very delicate balance. The humans need to find us fearsome for their enemies, without being afraid for themselves. The best way to achieve that is by assuring them that we only hex those who deserve it. Nobody thinks they’re the bad guy.”
“I think you’re mostly right,” Thea said. “But you’re wrong about that last thing. Lots of people think they’re the bad guy. As a former human, I can assure you, the human capacity for self-loathing is enormous. As is their love of self-improvement. It’s an untapped market.”
“How so?” Alecto asked, then laughed. “Surely you aren’t suggesting people will hire us to hex themselves?”
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” said Thea. “It’s all a matter of how you package it. I think we should set ourselves apart from Fury Unlimited by going the opposite direction. They want to be the baddest of the bad, the worst of the worst nightmares, the go-to furies to send after your enemies. Fine. We’ll be the go-to furies to send after your friends. After yourself.”
Alecto looked at her phone, then sighed at Thea. “I have to go in twenty minutes. I’m giving you two of those to start making sense.”
“I need less than one,” said Thea. “The concept is simple: hex therapy.”
Alecto blinked at her. For once, she seemed to be speechless.
“Take cowardice, for example,” Thea said. “The hex of courage is a big seller for us, maybe not as big as the hex of honesty, but still big. Because everyone hates a coward, right?”
“Right,” Alecto agreed.
“But they hate it most in themselves,” Thea said. “Trust me, I have been there. Cowards despise that sin. And they’d pay a very high price to rid themselves of it. Hell, I transformed into a whole other being to rid myself of it. Not that I regret it, of course.”
Alecto ignored that last part. “The hex of courage is extremely difficult to weather,” she said. “And dangerous. Off the top of my head, I don’t know the exact percentage of targets who die doing reckless things, but—”
“Twelve percent,” said Thea. “It’s our highest mortality rate, actually.”
“Well, there you go. Nobody is going to pay us to inflict something that might kill them. That’s ridiculous.”
“Agreed. Which is why we need to develop these therapeutic hexes as a separate product line. Significantly milder versions, with set durations.”
Alecto’s eyes widened, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough. Thea knew she had her. All she had to do now was close the deal. She laid it out in the simplest terms possible.
“Not only will the product line be a huge moneymaker in and of itself, but it’ll practically take care of all our public relations needs on its own. It makes us look good, it sets us apart from our competition, and it’ll skyrocket our client base. We’ll have so much business, you won’t have enough furies to handle it all. You’ll have to recruit human transformations just to keep up with the demand.”
Alecto pursed her lips. “You almost had me, up until the part about more transformations. You were about all I can take for a decade or so.”
But Thea could tell she was trying not to smile, and waited her boss out.
“Okay,” Alecto said finally. “Draw up a proposal. A thorough one, with real numbers, projections, charts, focus groups, the whole package. I’ll let you have some resources to work on it. Talk to Vlad about creating a project number.”
The cherry trees had been blooming the day Thea first pitched her hex therapy idea to Alecto. By the time their leaves had turned yellow and orange, developing the product line was RDM’s main foc
us. Alecto wanted to start rolling it out before another spring came and went.
Which meant Nero was working a great deal of overtime. So when Flannery came knocking on Thea’s residence door one Saturday with a grumpy look on her face, Thea assumed her cousin was there to throw around some blame for her absentee husband.
“I’m sorry,” Thea said as she stepped aside to let Flannery in. “If I’d had any idea that hex therapy was going to ruin your Halloween, I’d have thought twice about it.”
“Very funny,” said Flannery. “But that’s not why I’m here. I’m worried.” She flopped down on Thea’s couch. “Fine, I’m not worried. I’m scared. And I would get in trouble if they knew that, wouldn’t I?”
“If who knew that?” Thea asked. “What are you scared of?”
“Stefan, mostly. And pain. Does it hurt a lot? And why does Stefan have to be such an asshole?”
“Does what hurt… Stefan… oh.” Thea blinked as she made sense of Flannery’s questions. “You’re going to start transformation training?”
“I don’t really have a choice,” Flannery said. “We want to start a family.”
“And Nero isn’t comfortable with a mixed… type?”
Flannery gave her a curious glance. “It’s not a matter of him being comfortable. It’s impossible to breed furies and humans. You didn’t know that?”
“No, I had no idea,” said Thea. “I haven’t given much thought to how fury babies are made, to tell you the truth.”
Flannery laughed. “I guess you wouldn’t.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You just seem so happy on your own, is all. I take it things never took off with Pete.” Flannery sighed. “Sorry, I know it’s a little awkward for me to bring it up.”
Thea shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. But no, things never took off, and they never will.”
“What about that police detective?” Flannery asked. “Harrison?”
“Holgersen,” Thea corrected. “He’s fine, I guess. Short.”
“But you seem like you have a connection.”
“We’re friends.” Thea held up a hand when Flannery rolled her eyes. “No, I’m not being coy when I say that. I’m just…” She trailed off, looking for the right word. Then realized Flannery had already used it. “I’m happy,” she said. “And I guess it’s the first time ever. So I don’t know that I want to mess with it.”
Lasting Fury (Hexing House Book 2) Page 20