Magic and Loss

away from him, trying my best to stay beyond arm’s reach. “Something’s wrong with you!”

“Of course something was wrong with me, you stupid nump! But it’s all better now, see?” he said with a nasty laugh, holding up his gauntleted right hand and wiggling the fingers in parody of a wave.

“No, Hexe—that’s what’s making you act this way! The gauntlet is cursed! It’s perverted your magic and now it’s trying to do the same thing to you! You’ve got to get rid of it, Hexe!”

“You’re the one who’s crazy if you think I’m going to surrender my hand!” he snapped. “You’ve got no idea what you’re asking me to do!” Suddenly he lunged forward, his right hand moving with the speed of a striking cobra, grabbing my upper arm. For the first time since we first met, his golden eyes with their cat-slit pupils seemed genuinely inhuman. “You’re always yammering about how much you ‘belong’ in Golgotham—but the truth is you’ll never know what it really means to be Kymeran. It doesn’t rub off, no matter how hard you try.”

“Hexe, please, let go! You’re hurting me!”

“So what are you going to do about it?” He smirked, his gloved fingertips digging deeper into the flesh of my upper arm.

I don’t know who was more surprised when I punched him. My months of working as a blacksmith came in good stead as I landed a hard enough blow to his jaw to stagger him. The moment he let go of my arm I darted past him and ran out of the bedroom and headed down the hall to my studio. I closed the door behind me and I felt it shudder as he threw his weight against it, trying to force it open.

“Let me in, Tate!” he barked, rattling the doorknob like a tambourine.

“Go away!” I sobbed as I hastily secured the locks. “Just leave me alone, Hexe!”

“You can’t tell me to leave! This is my house!”

I cried out in alarm as he struck the door with his gauntleted fist, causing one of the upper panels to split. I backed away as the second blow shattered the panel entirely, allowing him to reach the lock and kick open the ruined door. I realize this might sound deluded, considering the situation I found myself in, but although I was surrounded by power tools and other equipment, I did not move to arm myself because I knew the man that I loved was still in there somewhere. If I could just say the right word or do the right thing to trigger his reemergence, to replace this angry stranger with the man I loved and who loved me in return, then everything would go back to the way it should be. . . .

As he moved to cross the threshold, there came a clattering sound from up the hall. Hexe frowned and turned his head to look in the direction of the noise, only to be sent flying beyond my field of vision.

“Leave her alone!” Octavia bleated.

I stepped out of the studio to see Hexe lying sprawled on the second floor landing. The cruel, distant look had disappeared from his eyes, to be replaced by one of dazed confusion. “What in seven hells is going on—?” he groaned.

As I moved to go to his side, Octavia blocked my way with her arm and shook her head. She then turned back to address Hexe in a stern voice. “Get out of here—go take a walk.”

“Tate—what’s going on—?” Hexe’s eyes widened and his voice trailed off as he caught sight of the livid hand-shaped bruise that now adorned my upper arm.

“I mean it,” Octavia said, stamping one of her cloven hooves in emphasis. “Or do you want me to knock some more sense into you?”

With that the look in Hexe’s eyes abruptly changed again, reverting to the previous cold, hard stare. I automatically took a step backward as he glared at me. “I could use some fresh air,” he sneered. “It smells like a barnyard in here.” He turned and headed down the stairs and, a few seconds later, we were rewarded by the sound of the front door slamming.

Octavia heaved a sigh of relief and then turned to look at me. “Good thing I switched shifts with a friend of mine, or I wouldn’t have been home for that. Did he hurt you?”

“Not really,” I replied. “The door got the worst of it. But thank you for stopping it before it could get really ugly.”

“It’s nothing I haven’t had to do for my sisters, time and again. All men are alike, at some point. It’s just that satyrs are at their worst all the time.”

“The thing is, Hexe isn’t like that. No, I mean it—truly he’s not. Something’s happening to him—I just don’t know how to explain it, but he’s genuinely not himself anymore.”

“Is it drugs?”

“Not exactly,” I replied.

“Do you have someplace where you can go?” Octavia asked gently. “Somewhere outside of Golgotham?”

I blinked in surprise, taken aback by the question. “Do you think that’s really necessary?”

“Do you trust him not to do it again?” the faun countered.

Up until that moment, the thought of leaving Hexe had not crossed my mind. But now that the subject had been broached, there was no banishing it. I went into my studio and stared out the window that overlooked the street. I could see Hexe trudging away from the house, fists jammed deep into the pockets of his coat. At this time of night there was only one place he could be headed: the Stagger Inn.

Chapter 20

As I stepped out of the elevator, the only things I noticed about the hallway were that it was very long and that there was no way to tell one doorway from another. The entire apartment building was also very quiet, which was to be expected at a quarter to four in the morning, and the sound of my footsteps and the clickity-click of Beanie’s toenails seemed incredibly loud in comparison. After a few moments’ search, I finally found the apartment I was looking for—marked by an adhesive sticker shaped like the Loch Ness Monster pasted just below the peephole drilled in the door. I set down my suitcase, tightened my hold on Beanie’s leash, and pushed the doorbell. A minute or two later a decidedly disgruntled male voice, still thick from sleep, spoke from the other side.

“Who is it? Don’t you know what goddamned time it is?”

“It’s me, Adrian—Tate,” I said, standing back so that he could see for himself through the peephole.

“Who is it?” asked an equally sleepy female voice.

“It’s Tate.”

There was a sudden rattle of locks and deadbolts being turned, followed by the door opening. Vanessa stood in the tiny foyer of her apartment dressed in a faux leopard-skin bathrobe, with her bright red hair sticking out in every direction. Standing behind her was her husband, Adrian, dressed in a pair of pajama bottoms and armed with a T-ball bat.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, already reaching out to pull me inside the apartment. “Has something happened?”

“I left Hexe.”

The control I’d held over my emotions from the moment I packed my bags and allowed Octavia to escort me to the taxi stand opposite the Gate of Skulls finally dissolved into a torrent of tears.

“Oh, sweetie—I’m so sorry!” Vanessa said as she slipped her arm about my shaking shoulders and steered me from the front door and into the living room.

As I let go of the leash, Beanie trotted ahead of me and jumped up onto their couch, making himself immediately at home by burrowing under the throw pillows and falling sound asleep. “I’m sorry. I should have called first, but I wasn’t thinking straight,” I managed to apologize between sobs. “Oh, God, Nessie, what am I going to do?”

“You’re going to sit down and tell me all about it,” she said solicitously.

“Oh, Nessie, it was so horrible—Hexe came home munted and we got into this