“Your rodent appears to be hungry,” Dantaleon said.
“Tell me something I don’t know. And you’re far too intelligent to believe that Mr. Wrinkles is anything but a cat.”
“I go by what I perceive,” Dantaleon said, raising his proverbial nose. “I acknowledge that it belongs to the feline species, but all I see is a hairless rat.”
I gave up arguing with him. I’d hoped that Mr. Wrinkles would find something for himself out in the dark, maybe a field mouse or something, to stave off the hunger. It put my stomach in knots to hear him in distress. I picked him up and stroked him by the back, whispering small apologies. He didn’t quit his complaining, but the contact did get him purring a little. I couldn’t help his hunger, but if I could give him some comfort, then that was a start. First order of business, then, was to find some way to acquire cat food, perhaps a can of tuna, whether Pierce and I secured it through money, theft, or murder. Preferably not murder.
But as we stepped up to the threshold of the ruined building, something happened. Something awful. Pierce fell first, convulsing, shuddering, and gasping as he slapped at his bare arms and kicked at the earth. I dropped Mr. Wrinkles and ran over to help when it happened to me, too. My skin was crawling, not from an unseen fear, but from the dozens of hairy black spiders that had suddenly appeared there.
I screamed, falling to my knees as I scratched my arms, but the spiders weren’t dying, no matter how much I swatted at them. Worse, they were trailing from the ends of my hair. And even worse – I grabbed at my neck, my heart pounding with fear as I felt something tickling the back of my throat. Something hairy.
Then just as quickly as they came, the spiders vanished. I clawed at the grass, my eyes huge as I studied the ground for traces of them. Nothing. It was as if nothing had happened. My clothes were drenched with sweat, and Pierce was still twitching on the ground, his arms covered in reddish scratch marks left by his own fingernails. The spiders, they were gone.
But something was waiting at the threshold to the building. It was a girl, possibly in her early twenties, her hair dark, her skin pale, her lips painted blood red. She kicked at Pierce with a booted foot. Pierce whimpered, then scurried several feet away into the grass, groping at his forearms, somehow even sweatier than when we’d first arrived from our expedition into Valero.
“That’s not what I expected at all,” she said. “Wait. There were two of you. Where was the other one?”
I froze in place, keeping myself flat against the grass as she glanced around. She smiled grimly when she found me lying perfectly still, then walked over casually, somehow confident that I wasn’t a threat. Within seconds she was squatting on her haunches, her kohl-rimmed eyes peering deeply into mine.
“That spell should have gotten you guys good. You should be clawing your skin into ribbons by now.” She waddled even closer, as if pressing her face up against mine would reveal some answers.
I threw up one hand, holding it between us the way I’d hold a loaded weapon. A tiny sphere of flame rotated in my palm, ready to launch into, and if necessary, through her face. She raised both her hands, a placating gesture.
“Whoa, there. No need to get violent.”
I croaked, which was when I realized that I was trying to say something. The fear, those bizarre hallucinations had made my mouth go dry. “Those things,” I said hoarsely. “Those images. What did you do to us?”
She scoffed, laughing her psychic assault off like it had been nothing. “Oh, that? Nothing permanent. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. I’m still confused, but mostly impressed. Any old victim would have pissed themselves at least a little. You two, though? I don’t smell any piss, and you don’t appear to have gone completely insane. Not yet, at least. Very impressive.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
She tilted her head, staring pointedly at me. And as she did, her eyes turned a strange, scintillant shade of purple, like the depths of an amethyst. A crystal. “Curious,” she breathed.
“What the hell are you?” I said, the flames in my hand guttering out.
“No,” she said. “The question is – what the hell are you?”
16
“A witch,” I said, studying her with one eyebrow raised, a hot cup of something warming my hands.
“Yes,” the girl said. “Don’t look so skeptical. You know we exist. Plus, you’re magical, too. Clearly. You’re whatever you are, and me?” She did a little pirouette, her sole scraping the dusty old cement of the building, before bringing her hands down across her body in a flourish. “Witch.”
Pierce elbowed me in the ribs, muttering close to my ear. “I know a couple of words that rhyme with ‘witch.’”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Not the time, Pierce. Our host is being very cordial – for now. Speaking of which, what was your name again?”
The girl shook her finger, a purple bonfire between her and us boys, between her and the rest of the world. “Uh-uh, pretty boy. No names. At least not yet.”
“Well, fine,” I said. “Though I admit, I’m confused about why you didn’t come out to attack us earlier in the day. Pretty sure we made quite the commotion.”
She shrugged. “I was out scavenging. So sue me.”
I brought
