“Mother is very displeased with you.”
I tried to stand, but couldn’t work out where my legs were. I felt like I was living through the impact of having been hit by a train. I was beginning to wonder if I’d cracked more than my skull when I’d hit the wall.
“Pick up your things and let’s go, and not a word out of you until I say,” her mother ordered. The black spots became the yawning mouth of a wolf—ready to swallow me up as I fought to keep it back.
“Don’t forget that,” I heard as I was slowly swallowed up by the darkness. “We’re going to need one more.”
And out.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I knew I was conscious again because I felt the pain. It was slowly receding from the back of my head, dragging away from me reluctantly—like nails clawed into my brain. I didn’t open my eyes. As soon as I was able to think I did damage assessment. I was sitting in what felt like a chair; my wrists were bound behind the chair with tight coils of rope. I felt the same rope around my middle, holding me to the seat. I gave a tug on my wrists; it felt as though they’d been secured to the chair legs. I twisted my feet a little; they were free and unencumbered.
I opened one eye to look around me. I was sitting before the stage, as though a singular audience for the coming show. On the stage, near the back, stood a glowing vial in a tripod, gleaming lines of power filing up the legs to drip into the top. Evenly spaced around the bottom of the tripod were six hearts; there was a single gap left for a seventh heart.
Mine, no doubt.
A ruckus near one of the wings drew my attention. Trinket, surrounded by her sisters, was being pushed around, their hands shoving her and twirling her between them. My hearing came back to me in a rush of vicious taunts and accusations of betrayal, and Trinket crying out in distress.
I lifted my head, wincing at the ache in my neck. I groaned and blinked, as if trying to focus; the movement drew the attention of the group on stage. They pushed Trinket to the boards and left her lying there, as if now the real entertainment was about to begin.
“Mother,” called the tallest one, Prima. After having seen her mother, now I realized she had to have been modeled to look like her mother in her youth. “She’s waking up.”
Ember climbed down from the stage to stalk around me.
“I’m really going to enjoy this,” she snarled. The poisonous apple obviously didn’t fall far from the tree in Ember’s case, and me blowing her through a balcony wasn’t exactly going to make us friends. I couldn’t believe that the man that had made them could have ever believed they would turn out so wrong. I watched her as she returned to the stage.
Trinket was cowering where she was thrown, visibly unsure what to do. “Don’t move, Trinket,” came her mother’s commanding voice. She became like a statue, only her eyes able to move. The Madame slithered from stage right in a spangled purple evening gown. Her black hair was down now, cascading over her shoulders in black curls, not a thread of grey showing—which made me believe it wasn’t natural. Her dress would have been quite fetching on a younger woman, but on her it just looked awkward. She resembled Cruella De Ville, all sharp bony angles. The V line cut of it, slit down between her breasts, filled me with revulsion—there are just some things an older woman can’t pull off.
I had to thank a higher power that being immortal meant my breasts would never go south—hers had drastically done so, and the dress not only highlighted that, it was like playing a hideous game of peek-a-boo. Any moment she might pop free—I had a horrid fear it’d look something like the face of Benjamin Button at the beginning of the movie. I shuddered in my seat.
“Anyone get the license of the truck that hit me?” I said.
That made a creepy little smile twitch the corners of her lips. “Back with us, Miss Farbanks?”
“Regrettably,” I said, looking around me more openly. My earlier jibes about immortality aside, I was pretty sure I still needed my heart. I didn’t know if that was something I could grow back and I didn’t want to wait until she had carved it out of my chest to find out. I concentrated on my thumb—setting just the very tip of it on fire. When I felt the heat of it against my skin, I slowly started burning the ropes around my waist—just a little at a time, no smoke, no tell-tale singed smell. I had to be cautious. I knew she’d expended the spell on the bracelets she’d worn on her right wrist, but who knew what other tricks she had.
She ignored me and approached Trinket. “I have such plans for you, my disobedient child, but first,” she said, her voice sickly sweet, “on your feet.”
Trinket slowly pulled herself to her feet, trying to avoid her mother’s gaze. She was about half her mother’s height.
“Follow me,” the Madame said, leading Trinket down the steps at the side of the stage. I hoped she would trip and break that fragile looking neck, saving me—but that would have been too damn easy and convenient. They came to stand in front of the stage in line with my chair.
“Now, my girl,” she started.
Trinket, gathering courage, said, “But, Momma, I don’t want to.”
“Why ever not?” Prima asked from the stage.
“We each took our turns,” said the Seasons all together—eerie in itself.
“Don’t you want Mother to get well?” Ember snapped, more confrontational than the others.
I gave a sharp bark of laughter, which made them all turn to look at me. “Gee, are you lot a bunch of gulla bulls,” I said, making gullible two words, still secretly burning away the ropes. “She’s not sick, she’s just old. Well, not physically sick, but there might be something wrong inside the old gal’s noggin—narcissus complex.”
“Look at her,” said Prima, pointing, and I watched the Madame fall into a role of fatigued sickness. “How can you say nothing is wrong with her?”
“Because nothing is wrong—everything that’s happening to her is natural. Mortal creatures age and die.”
They looked at their mother questioningly. She shook her head. “Do not listen to her, my darlings. You know we must do this to live, my life supports yours.”
They all nodded.
“God, they really buy any crap you sell them, don’t they,” I asked. I felt the rope around my middle begin to slacken. “What can I expect from a bunch of oversized Muppets who thought nothing of killing six people?”
Trinket looked at me, seeming hurt; I mouthed a quick ‘not you’.
“This spell isn’t about life,” I went on, “it’s about vanity. It’s a youth potion she’s had you murder people for, so that she doesn’t have to look like that anymore.” It would have been really good at that moment if I could have pointed at the Madame to emphasize my point. “It won’t extend her life and won’t extend yours.”
The Madame snapped, “You’re too late to try that. We already began the spell with six hearts. Adding your heart will just be a pleasant bonus, for turning our poor innocent Trinket against her family. Ember, get the knife.”
Ember walked back to the table to retrieve a large bread knife.
“Mother?” asked Prima, questioning. The Madame was so close to completing her plan that she was getting brash and careless, when before she was trying to keep them sweet.
“Oh, do be quiet, Prima. Mother needs you to be a dutiful daughter and just shut up.”
Prima went silent and did not look happy about it. Ember brought the knife to the edge of the stage. The blade had been cleaned, but I saw brown speckles on the handle.
“Give it to your sister,” their mother directed. Then, turning to look at her youngest, she finished, “Trinket, take it.”
Trinket couldn’t stop herself from taking it, but she could complain some more. “But she’s my friend, Momma.”
“You don’t need friends like her, baby girl,” the Madame scoffed. She took a step forward and hugged her daughter, careful not to catch herself on the knife. “All you need is Mother, dear, and Mother knows best. Now bring me her heart.”
Trinket turned toward me very slowly, shuffling her feet so that she only took the tiniest of baby steps as she approached. She was fighting the only way she could, by taking as much time as she could to reach me. I had to turn the tables and I had to do it fast.
I said, “You rotten old buck-toothed hunch-backed hag, hiding behind your children because you can’t face your twilight years. Is this what your husband really made them for?”
“Daddy made us so Momma wouldn’t be lonely,” said Ember with the conviction of someone who really truly believed something. She didn’t see her mother roll her eyes, but I did.
“Lonely?” I said. “She doesn’t care about being alone. She cares about being beautiful. She’s jealous of you, of your perfectly unchanging bodies, your frozen beauty. Every day she sees you and it reminds her how far she’s fallen from grace. It drives her mad as she ages just that little bit more, day by day.”
“Shut up,” the Madame snapped at me. “You won’t understand, not until it happens to you.”
I laughed a little loudly, a little crazily; she’d given me exactly what I needed to bring her down. “You really are a very poor witch. Even if I live to be as old as you,” I said with a smirk and I was now judging that she had to be at least in her late sixties or early seventies. “Let’s face it, you’re old.” I dragged the last word out until I thought steam might start coming out of her ears. “I won’t ever look any different than I do now. See, thing about me is, I’m a humanoid non-human, and an immortal one at that.” I kept laughing at her, really yucking it up.
Trinket continued to shuffle forward, no longer quickly enough for her mother. The Madame, at this point, wanted me to shut up, wanted to hear me scream and to revel in my pain. She snatched the knife from her daughter, curling her bony fingers around the handle, and charged at me. The last rope snapped, pooling into my lap, and I rolled out of the chair to the floor. My arms were still bound to the chair; I felt a wrenching and a sickening pop as my left shoulder dislocated.
Her momentum carried her forward, the knife stabbing into the chair; I brought my feet up into her stomach. The air went out of her in a guttural rush, and I propelled her up, away from me and onto the stage. She lay there in a heap, all her children just staring at her—and dolls can really stare, they don’t need to blink.
I pulled the rope still binding my hands under the chair legs and moved to the side so I could rub the rope against the protruding knife blade. It was hard going, as one arm was now lifeless at my side. I hadn’t counted on the angle and the sudden movement popping the joint, but apart from that my plan was going… well, according to plan.
I jumped to my feet and kicked the chair as far away as I could. I needed to keep that knife safe, it was evidence. I took hold of my left wrist, hoping I would just have a fraction of time to pop my shoulder back in—I’d seen it done on TV—but my miscalculation was going to cost me. I smelled the spell only a second before it hit me, all dark bitter energy, like burnt almonds. It hit me square in the chest, just as the door had, and I went backward into a wall.
I couldn’t hit my head again, that would be the end for me. I did the only thing I could think of: I pulled my dislocated arm behind my head, trying to hold off tears through the pain, and used it to cushion my skull as I hit the concrete. I screamed with new pain as my forearm snapped, and slid to the floor, tears blurring my vision, my arm flopping beside me. The Madame sat up, displaying a second set of bracelets on her other arm—she’d used the kinetic energy once again.
“Is that all you got?” I growled. “One trick pony.”
I pulled myself up to my feet, using the wall for support. My left arm was now completely useless, even if I’d been able to pop my shoulder back in by myself. It flopped comically as I moved. The Madame had risen to her feet as well. The side of her face was scraped, which probably hurt her pride more than hitting the wooden stage had.
I glanced over at Trinket; she had stopped moving. Her mother taking the knife had obviously counteracted the command, leaving her puzzled as to what she should do.
I’d taken my eyes off Madame for only a moment, but it was long enough for her to ready another spell; I only dodged by diving onto my already injured left side. I covered my face with my good arm as the ground where I’d been standing exploded, showering me with specks of granite. She didn’t let up, firing volley after volley of explosive magic at me. I turned over a table and, biting my finger so that it bled, made the object a shield. The next volley bounced off my shield—which still felt like being punched in the ribs and blew a hole in the nearby wall, showering me with more debris.
I sat my back against the table and tried to think or wait for her to run down. The blows kept coming, each one like jabs to my spine with a lancing poker. Didn’t this woman need a break? I was sure I’d gauged her strength correctly, and she was a lot older than me—emaciated to the point of ill health because she believed a cliché waist was beautiful. Then I remembered something Truth had said, that a human soul was raw, unharnessed energy. If Madame could harness that energy thanks to her blood bond, she would have seven batteries on tap.
I peeked around the edge of my shield. The edge of her next blast felt like a giant had slapped my face. Her daughters were on their knees, faces contorted in agony. She was drawing from them, but unlike in a real coven they couldn’t stop her. They were hers; she didn’t care if she used them up. All she cared about now was beating me.
It was time I took the offensive. I wouldn’t blast away like her, my style was to use a precision attack. I called upon fire, my natural fallback, and created a ball of it in my hand. Because I had to shape the ball by will alone, rather than using my hands, it took longer than usual; she landed another solid blow against my shield while I worked at it. Once I had the fireball formed, I lurched upright and threw the fireball. I aimed not at her, nor the ground on which she stood, but at the table behind her. It caught one of the hearts, knocking it to the stage. The flames engulfed the heart, turning from orange to blue as it burned the magic away.
She hurled curses at me and ran to protect what was left. I used power to push my table-shield closer to the stage. Trinket seemed to know what I needed; she tapped her fingers on her chest and then ran into the bar.
“Traitorous whelp,” the Madame raged as she worked to build a shield over the remaining hearts. “I never should have let your father create you. His stupid quest to create an innocent soul—a real child. He was supposed to be making a way for us to live young and forever, together. Then the fool goes and dies and leaves me with nothing but you.”
She was readying to aim a blast at Trinket, who couldn’t defend herself—I had to draw her attention back to me.
I yelled, “He’s seen what you’ve done, you know. He’s seen what you’ve made of his creations, and he’s disgusted.” She aimed the blast at me instead of Trinket; the table jolted back, bruising my shoulders and ribs. “How dare you? My husband’s deceased.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not watching. I’ve seen his ghost.”
The blasting stopped. “You’re lying,” she said. “Describe him.”
I told her what Incarra had seen.
Her voice changed to a shaky, angry near-whine. “Winston? Did he have a message for me?”
When did I become the after death delivery service? I peered around the table; Trinket had made it to the bar.
“No,” I said. “He had a message for me: to help you daughter, and to stop you.” She screamed, a wordless primal sound of grief and madness—mostly madness. The blasts started coming again. I changed the angle of my shield so that I could look at Trinket but protect my back.
“Trink,” I called, “remember what I told you about possession?” Her brow creased, then she nodded. “Try to hold on as long as you can.”
I wasn’t sure if she understood what I meant to do, but I didn’t have time to check. I needed the advantage now. I sought out the tethers, the metaphysical cords that bound the dolls to thei
r mother, and with one burst of power, sliced right through them. I heard seven distinct pops and dull thuds.
The blasts stopped. I took a minute to breathe before pushing up to my feet again and taking the scene in. The six dolls on stage lay on their faces; Trinket, by the bar, lay on her back, hands on her chest. She’d understood, she’d prepared herself. I had to end this quick; I wanted to bring Trinket back. She was the only one who didn’t deserve for this to be the end.
The Madame crawled among her daughters on stage, shaking them, trying to get a response, to draw more power.
“They’re gone,” I said. “Trinket told me what I needed to know. The blood that made your bond was in their chests. I broke them.”
Her face was a mess when she looked at me, even more drawn with black and red eyes like a sunburned panda.
“Why did you kill my babies?” she wailed.
“They were your batteries, not your babies. I’ve stopped you drawing power from them, so now let’s see what you’ve really got.”
She looked exhausted and defeated. She had no juice left; on her own, she was nothing. I’d only fired a single shot and still had all my energy to go.
“No more,” she said weakly. “You win.”
She lowered her head to her arms and sobbed. What a miserable creature she was. I couldn’t feel sorry for her; She’d brought it all on herself. I walked toward the stage, aiming for the stairs furthest away from her, and mounted them slowly. My arm flapped painfully, but I ignored it.
I had one goal now: to save a life.
I headed for the elixir—the green liquid seemed to be a distillation of the envy and greed that had created it. I couldn’t save the lives of those that had died for it, I couldn’t reverse the magic that had been done to create it, but maybe I could change it just enough to give one last shot at life to someone else. The shield she’d made to protect it was easy to break; there was no power to it and it had been hastily constructed. I reached out to take the vial.
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