“Ray,” she said again in her funny high voice, “that’s a peer in the society you’re threatening.”
I turned back to the shrouded figure. It had turned toward me, and I saw that it was a little old woman with olive skin and gray streaks in her hair. Her face was impassive and her eyes were dreamy.
How had I mistaken her for Camo Pants? I let the table leg fall from my hands, then immediately wished I had it back so I could lean on it again. The little old woman was a peer? If so, she was probably just as powerful as Annalise—maybe more so. Hitting her with a hunk of pine wouldn’t have done more than tear some lace.
The world began to go dark.
“Talbot!” Annalise called. Her voice seemed to come from far away. Suddenly, I felt hands lift me up and steady me. I leaned against a body—not Annalise’s, a large one—and fought my way back to consciousness.
“Hey hey now,” a man beside me said. He smelled of Old Spice and dry sweat. “You shouldn’t be out of bed yet. You ain’t ready.”
I looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing his red shirt anymore, but it was Camo Pants. I was happy to see he had a fat lip. He was holding my wallet and ghost knife; I reached for them and he let me take them.
“Get off me,” I said. “You tried to kill me.”
“Is that right? Maybe I did, although most of the guys I’ve tried to kill were wearing a keffiyeh at the time.”
“You fired a rocket at me today.” Had that happened today? I had no idea how long I’d been out.
“Guess I should apologize then. Guess I should be glad I missed.” He must have guessed wrong, because the apology never came. He led me back into the small room and eased me into the bed facedown. “My name is Talbot, by the way. I’m a wooden man, just like you. Do you want some kind of painkiller?”
“No,” Annalise said from somewhere behind me, and in that moment I hated her and everything about her. “Talbot, go out to the fridge and bring the blue container.”
Talbot left the room. My face was turned toward the window. I didn’t want to look at Annalise. I was badly hurt, helpless, and ashamed of it.
“Ray, what the hell am I going to do with you?”
I almost said
“No, you don’t.” She took my wallet and ghost knife. Damn. I thought we were past that. I didn’t have the strength to object.
The door opened again. I turned my head and saw Annalise intercept Talbot and take something from him. He left, closing the door behind him. I felt my ghost knife getting farther away from me, until I could no longer sense it through my pain and misery.
Annalise pulled up a chair and sat by the bed. She looked absurdly small, but I was glad she was nearby. She held a big plastic bowl in her lap. “You know you belong to me, right, Ray?”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “I’m your wooden man, boss.” She didn’t respond. “You’re not going to sell me, are you?”
“No, I don’t want to sell you,” she said, as if it was a legitimate possibility that didn’t interest her for the moment. “But I have changed you.”
I almost laughed. Yes, a lot about me had changed since I met her.
“Ray, you’re not paying attention.” She popped open the lid on the plastic bin and held it close to me. Inside were tiny cubes of raw, red meat. Beef, probably. They smelled like blood—I’d been cooked more than they had. The smell made me dizzy and sick.
I stared into the bin and at her. She moved them closer to my face. Carefully, I reached in and picked up one of the cubes. It was cold.
“Don’t bother chewing,” she said. “It doesn’t help. Just swallow it down.”
I put it in my mouth. It felt wrong. Wrong wrong wrong, as though it were a dog turd. I spit it into my hand.
“No, Ray. Try again.”
I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. I put the cube back in my mouth. Was it poison? No, and I knew it wasn’t. Annalise would crack my skull open or throw me through a window before she’d poison me. I tried to swallow it three times, but it wouldn’t go down. The fourth time, it finally slid down my throat.
Annalise quickly set the bin down and lunged at me. She clamped one hand over my mouth and grabbed the back of my head with the other. Her strength was enormous; she held my head in place, my mouth closed, while my guts wrenched and my body bucked. My legs scraped against the sheets, bringing out a whole new level of agony— fierce and wild and utterly in control of me. Blisters burst and flooded the gauze. The pain was so overwhelming that it felt like madness.
Eventually, whatever was happening inside me eased. My body stopped writhing and I lay on the sheets, soaked in sweat and exhausted.
Annalise had a spell on her body somewhere that healed her when she ate meat, especially meat that was raw and fresh. Not only had I seen her do it, I’d saved her life once by cramming tiny slices of raw beef down her throat.
But it hadn’t been like this. She hadn’t tried to puke up what she ate. Her body had accepted it. Mine didn’t. Mine wasn’t healing. If she’d put a spell on me like the one she had, she’d screwed it up. It didn’t work.
I lay still because I didn’t have a choice. Annalise let go of me and picked up the plastic tub again.
