Shotgun Sorceress Read online

  I wanted to weep, too, but if we both started with the waterworks we probably wouldn’t stop for a while.

  “Hey, everyone’s waiting on us; we better get to the dining room.” I hauled him up into a sitting position and helped him pull on a black Deathmobile T-shirt.

  “This isn’t mine,” Cooper said, staring down at the flaming death’s-head-motor band logo.

  “It’s Jimmy’s,” I replied, referring to Mother Karen’s eldest foster son. There are spells to create clothing, but fewer and fewer Talents have bothered with that kind of magic since the Industrial Revolution made fabric cheap. “Your pajama pants are his, too. All our stuff is shrunk down in a safe-deposit box at the bank, so you may be wearing his hand-me-downs for a couple more days.”

  He blinked bloodshot eyes at me. “Why’s our stuff at the bank?”

  “The farmers wouldn’t pay me for the rainstorm, so I missed rent and we were getting evicted. Also that rat-bastard Jordan bugged the apartment, so I figured it was best to pack up and go underground for a while.”

  “Benedict Jordan? He bugged our place? Why?” His eyelids were starting to droop again. Mother Karen’s healing potions tended to put you right under until they’d done their work.

  “He wanted you to stay gone in the hell. You’re the secret half brother he was scared everyone would find out about. Because then everyone would find out that his father was a batshit crazy murdering son of a bitch and people would start questioning his family’s authority or some crap like that.”

  “Whoa, wait … he’s my brother?” Cooper suddenly looked wide-awake.

  “Yep. Same mother, different father. Thank God. The Warlock, sadly, is his full brother.”

  “Huh.” Cooper stared down at his knees, his eyes unfocused as if he was remembering something long forgotten. “Benny’s … Benedict Jordan. Ain’t that a kick in the head.”

  His expression abruptly changed, darkened; I could tell he’d remembered something else, whether from his childhood or hell I had no way of knowing. “That fucker.”

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, stood up, and started to pace the room, agitated and furious. “Oh, this is just great. Ol’ Benny knew what was going on right from the start. Could have kept me from going to hell, or tried to. Or he could have helped you and the Warlock out. But instead he tried to cover everything up. He screwed over my brothers and me to protect his family’s reputation. As if we weren’t his family, too.”

  I stepped toward him, concerned. “Calm down, honey—you’ll make yourself sick. You need to rest.”

  Cooper looked at me. “Please, please tell me you kicked his ass. Otherwise I’m going to have to, and I’ll probably end up killing him and anybody who tries to stop me.”

  I gently pulled his head down to mine and planted a kiss on his nose. His anger seemed to fade, his sudden burst of energy fading with it.

  “Oh yes,” I told him. “I’ll probably go to prison for it, but his ass is well and thoroughly kicked.”

  My mind flashed on Jordan lying broken on his desk, his hand a horrible burned mess. My stomach twisted into a knot, but I angrily forced my guilt back down. I would not feel bad about giving that creep a taste of his own magic.

  I helped Cooper down the hall toward Mother Karen’s dining room. The scents of garlic steak, fresh rolls, and sweet potato pie wafted through the air. Cooper’s stomach growled loudly.

  The Talents who’d helped bring Cooper’s infant brothers to Mother Karen’s house were already seated at the long cherrywood dining table. Oakbrown and Mariette sat across from Paulie at the far end. Mother Karen and Jimmy were ferrying plates of food in from the kitchen. The Warlock and Ginger sat across from each other at the near half of the table, arguing.

  “I am tolerant,” Ginger protested, twisting a lock of her red hair around her index finger. “But fundies get on my every last nerve. It’s like they think the free expression of female sexuality is going to cause the Apocalypse or something. They’re totally threatened by it, and it’s stupid. I hate stupid.”

  “Ginger-pie, it doesn’t matter what the mundanes believe, does it?” the Warlock replied. “How do their beliefs touch us? The fact is, they don’t. It’s been centuries since they were a real threat to us. We don’t have to deal with them if we don’t want to.”

  “But what about the Talented kids who get born into mundane families?” Ginger asked. “What about them? Are we just supposed to let them swing in the wind when their crazy stupid parents decide they’re possessed by Satan and go all Spanish Inquisition on them?”

  “We take care of our own,” the Warlock said, looking up at me as I helped Cooper into the empty chair beside Ginger.

  “Maybe,” I replied, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Not all Talents are in a hurry to do the right thing, not even for their own kids.” I moved around the table to sit across from Cooper in the chair to the Warlock’s left.

  “You were in a rough situation with your mundane family in Texas, right?” the Warlock said. “And your Talented relatives got you out of there, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah. My stepfather was going to have me locked up in a mental institution, but my aunt Vicky found out and brought me to Columbus. She was really cool,” I said, swallowing against a fresh swell of sorrow and guilt. No matter how much I told myself that Vicky’s suicide wasn’t my fault, my heart just wouldn’t believe it. “But for what it’s worth, my stepfather isn’t religious.”

  Or at least he hadn’t been when he sent me away; for all I knew my stepmother had finally converted him.

  “See?” the Warlock said to Ginger. “Jackasses come in all faiths.”

  Mother Karen set a platter of halved, medium-rare flame-broiled rib-eye steaks down on the table beside Cooper, who immediately perked up.

  “Oh, man, those look so good. Thanks, Karen!” He forked a half steak over onto his plate, waited for Ginger to get hers, then pushed the platter toward me and the Warlock. “Want one?”

  “Of course!” I speared one of the garlicky, buttery slabs of meat for my own plate, cut off a perfectly cooked corner of the steak, and popped it into my mouth.

  Suddenly, I was thrashing on a cold, wet floor, my mind filled with nothing but terror and the desperate desire to flee, but there was a rope around my hind leg, and a man lunged onto my head and rammed a steel restraint over my muzzle, pinning me to the concrete. The air stank of blood and offal. Oh God, I had to get up, I had to get out, but another man with a long knife brought his blade down on my exposed throat, and there was a hot, bright pain as my arteries poured out, steaming in the foul air, and the men on the other end of the rope heaved and grunted and jerked me flailing into the air as the bladesman slashed me again to finish the job—

  I spat the meat back onto my plate, holding my forehead, my mind still humming from the horror of the steer’s death. My skull felt as if the terrified beast had kicked me square between the eyes.

  The Warlock stared at me. “What’s the matter—whoa, dude, that’s just wrong.”

  I looked down at my plate. The spat-out piece of steak was twitching like an epileptic slug. It reminded me of the dead animals the Wutganger demon had reanimated.

  Ginger peered at the chunk. “Huh. Zombie cow. How’d you do that?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I stammered, looking over at Cooper. He, too, had spat out his steak, but his was unmoving, nothing more than cooked muscle. Shuddering, I scooped my twitching piece off my plate and hid it under my napkin.

  “Did you feel that?” I asked Cooper. “The men, and the knife?”

  “Yeah,” he croaked. “Anyone want the rest of this meat?”

  “What are you talking about?” the Warlock asked. He hadn’t yet started on his dinner.

  “Try your steak,” I said, then looked at Ginger. “You, too. Please.”

  They both cautiously cut off small pieces and tasted them.

  “Seems fine. Great, in fact. Better than Peter Luger’s,”
the Warlock said.

  “Mine, too,” said Ginger.

  “Try mine,” I said, pushing my plate toward the Warlock.

  He cut off a piece, sniffed it experimentally, ate it. “It’s the same. Delicious. What’s the matter?”

  “I … I felt the steer’s death,” I said. “So did Cooper, I think.”

  Cooper nodded, still looking gray.

  “You what?” Mother Karen stepped out of the kitchen with a bowl of broccoli.

  “You get your meat at a kosher butcher?” I asked. Karen nodded. “Yes, there’s a place on North High. Why?”

  “Their slaughterhouse sucks … they need better workers,” I said darkly. “That was no damn fun for the cow at all. In fact that was pretty fucking terrible.”

  Mother Karen looked horrified and helpless. “Kosher slaughter is supposed to be very quick and humane, just takes a few seconds—”

  “Three seconds of getting your throat cut is a damn long time,” I shot back. “Why the hell aren’t they using magic? It’s not like there aren’t plenty of Jewish wizards. Any decent Talent could put ’em right to sleep, no pain at all.”

  “That would still be a really crap job,” the Warlock said, sounding uncomfortable. “I don’t know anyone who’d want to do that—”

  “Moses on a moped! They could enchant the knives, the rope, the damn slaughterhouse itself!” I exclaimed, the pain in my head a buzzing sting like a wasp trapped behind my eyes. “This shit should not be going on in a world with magic. Period. The steer was born to be meat, fine, I get that, but his death shouldn’t have been like that.”

  “Nobody’s death is ever much fun,” Cooper said, rubbing his temples. “But then nobody’s birth is, either.”

  “So why did this happen? What’s going on?” I asked him.

  “We can’t expect to do a resurrection without some lingering side effects,” Cooper replied.

  “A res—…” My voice failed for a moment when I realized what he meant. “No. That’s not what we did. Your—your brothers, they were alive, we just, you know, brought them back from the hell …”

  “They were alive when they went in, yes,” Cooper said quietly. “But look at me. I was only in there a few days … they were in there for years …”

  He trailed off.

  Oh God, what had we done? A resurrection was considered one of the most taboo kinds of sorcery. The ritual demanded black magic that stained your soul like nobody’s business; or at least that’s what I’d always heard. Oh God.

  “But they’re fine now. Right?” Feeling my heart slamming in my chest, I looked from Cooper to Mother Karen. “The babies are fine now, right?”

  “Well, yes,” Mother Karen replied. “They seem fine. Ish.”

  “Ish? Fine-ish? What does that mean?” I demanded.

  “Well, you know, they clearly have a few problems we’ll need to deal with; nightmares and such—”

  “But they’re not demons, right?” I stared at the steak lump still twitching under the flower print napkin. “They’re not … undead or something, right?”

  “No, no, of course not,” Mother Karen said. “All things considered, they seem very healthy.”

  “Getting the kids out of there was the right thing to do,” Cooper said firmly. “And anyone who thinks it wasn’t can lick my left one.”

  The Warlock cleared his throat nervously, as if he was trying to change the subject. “So, well, maybe this side effect is just temporary. Maybe it’s something you just have to push through and then it’ll be over. Try the steak again, Jessie.”

  “Uh-uh, I don’t really—”

  “C’mon, try it. Can’t have your pudding if you don’t have any meat,” he wheedled.

  Maybe he was right. I cut off a half-inch piece that was mostly crispy fat—I supposed fat wouldn’t do much if it reanimated—and pressed it to my lips and tongue.

  Immediately I was hit with the same kick-to-the-head overload of terror and pain. It was utterly horrifying … but also strangely exhilarating, like riding a roller coaster or downing a shot of strong whiskey.

  No. No, no, no, I was not getting a thrill from the poor creature’s death. I quickly spat the piece out into my hand and dropped it on top of the napkin. It shuddered weakly.

  I stuck my fork in the rest of my steak and flipped it onto the Warlock’s plate. “All yours. I’m not going there again.”

  “Well,” Ginger said, “look on the bright side. You could help millions of kids with dead goldfish.”

  Something about Ginger’s whimsy grated me to my core. I glared at her. “Very funny. I’m so glad this amuses you.”

  Ginger shrank back in her chair and said precisely the wrong thing: “Maybe you’ll get used to it?”

  A sudden fury took me. I stood up, whipped off the opera glove, and shoved my fiery hand toward Ginger. “Were you asleep earlier? Did you not see what I’m capable of?”

  The others stared at me, shocked into silence.

  “Did you see or didn’t you?” I snarled.

  “I saw,” Ginger replied in a small, frightened voice, staring at the flames snapping inches from her face.

  “So do you think it’d be hilarious if I got used to this horror and got a real taste for death? Do you?”

  In my rage, my hand was losing shape, blossoming into a huge rose of fire. I could imagine scorching Ginger’s pretty face right off, burning her down to teeth and charred bone. “I think I could learn to love eating all kinds of things if they really pissed me off.”

  Ginger was quaking in her seat, looked as if she was going to burst into tears.

  “Jessie, for God’s sake stop it!” Cooper rose from his chair.

  The fire flared brighter along with my anger, the flames turning purple. I’d saved his life, and now he wouldn’t back me in a fight?

  “Set your skinny ass back down, honey,” I growled, my words thick with my long-buried Texas drawl.

  The Warlock gripped my trembling flesh arm. “C’mon. Ginger didn’t mean anything by it. We’re all friends here.”

  “Please calm down,” Mother Karen said, gripping the bowl so tightly it looked in danger of shattering.

  I went cold at the fear in Karen’s eyes.

  What the hell am I doing? I quickly dropped down into my chair, my heart pounding and cheeks hot.

  “Sorry about that … don’t know what got into me,” I muttered as I pulled on the glove.

  Ginger stammered, “Excuse me,” and fled the table, apparently heading toward the guest bathroom. Cooper shot me a look of mixed concern and irritation, then he and Mariette quickly followed the frightened girl.

  The remaining Talents all sat in silence.

  I completely jacked that up, I thought miserably. The pooch done got screwed. There didn’t seem to be any way to recover from it. Maybe I should leave the table, too, and commiserate with Pal in the backyard.

  “Well, that happened,” the Warlock finally said. He nudged my elbow. “Want some potatoes?”

  “Sure,” I sighed, taking the bowl of buttered, parsley-speckled russets from him. I spooned a few spuds onto my plate, and then cautiously forked one up and bit into it. Instead of a punch of agony, there was a slow, alien discomfort: the sting of rootlets being torn from the soil, the ache of broken eye-sprouts, the dull pain of a knife slicing through cold white flesh.

  “How is it?” Cooper emerged from the hallway and sat back down at the table, acting as if nothing had happened. Mariette and Ginger weren’t with him.

  “Unpleasant. Tolerable,” I replied. “Who knew taters felt so much pain? Meals are just going to suck all the way around for a while, I guess.”

  “There’s always fruit,” Cooper said. “The plants want something to eat those.”

  “With our luck, we’ve probably been cursed with deadly strawberry allergies,” I grumbled.

  “Then consider the wide, wonderful world of tofu,” the Warlock said. “Soybeans are fruit, too.”

  “Yay. Tofu.” I
mournfully eyed the platter of untouchable rib eyes. “Please pass the broccoli …”

  chapter

  two

  Cursed

  Ginger never came back to the table. I tried to find her after dinner to apologize, but she and Mariette were nowhere to be found. Paulie and Oakbrown made hasty good-byes after dinner and left as well. Mother Karen sent Jimmy off to check on Cooper’s brothers, then gave me cheerful excuses as she pulled Cooper and the Warlock into her upstairs study for some kind of private chat.

  Feeling frustrated and tired, I went into the guest bedroom and flopped face-first onto the homespun quilt. The “chat” was probably a prelude to Mother Karen telling me and Cooper that we had to go someplace else. Crap in a hat. We didn’t have anyplace else to go, except perhaps the Warlock’s bar, and the authorities would surely be waiting for us there.

  Of course, the agents of the governing circle surely knew we were at Mother Karen’s, yet they hadn’t sent their goon squad after us again. What could the delay mean? It wasn’t so much a matter of waiting for the second shoe to drop as waiting for a whole cargo plane full of combat boots to come crashing through the roof.

  “Crappity crap crap,” I muttered, pulling one of the poofy pillows over my head.

  “You seem tense,” Cooper said from the doorway.

  “Lemme guess … Mother Karen’s telling us to shove off, right?” I said from the darkness beneath the pillow.

  “No, that’s not it at all,” he said. “She got a courier message from Riviera Jordan. Riviera is in charge of the Governing Circle now that her nephew Benedict’s out of commission.”

  “What does she want? My severed head on a platter, I’m guessing.”

  “No, apparently not. Karen’s supposed to open a mirror to Riviera’s office tomorrow at noon, and we’re all going to talk about arranging a neutral place to meet to discuss things.”

  “Things?”

  “Like getting someone to help us take care of my brothers. And there’s the trouble you and the Warlock and Pal got into on our behalf. Karen seems to think that Riviera is willing to listen to reason, even though you’ve apparently destroyed Benedict’s mind.”