Shotgun Sorceress (10 page)

“Yes. And I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since.” He beamed at me again, his slightly gap-toothed smile declaring
Aw, my widdle girl is all growed up and ain’t I proud!

I thought back on the horrible months I’d suffered through when my powers began and I didn’t know what was happening to me. My cheeks flushed hot, and I suddenly wanted to smack that smile off his face.

“That was a dozen years ago,” I said, my voice shaking from my sudden anger. “If you care so much about me, why did you wait so long to contact me?”

He blinked at me, apparently confused at my change of tone. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“No, not really.”

“I’m an outlaw,” he said. “If the authorities had any inkling that I was in contact with you, they would have used you as a pawn, made your life miserable—”

“Miserable? What, you mean like being raised by people who act like you’re some bad debt they’re stuck paying off? You mean like having your powers come on without anyone around to tell you what they are or how to handle them, so when you inevitably set shit on fire, everyone thinks you’re some kind of sociopath who belongs in the nuthouse?
That
kind of miserable?”

“You have no idea how sorry I am that you had to go through that; I contacted Victoria as soon as I could to let her know what was happening—”

“You had Vicky call my stepfather?”

Shimmer spread his hands. “She was no Talent, Jessie; she had no way of knowing what was happening to you otherwise. You thought she just miraculously decided to call your stepfather the day before you were going to be committed to a mental institution?”

I rubbed the back of my neck with my flesh hand. “Yeah, I guess I kind of did.”

He shook his head, a half-smile playing on his lips. “For a girl who claims to despise Fate, you seem to accept tremendous coincidence without much question.”

His gentle joke rankled like mockery, and I felt my blood rise again. “So why am I graced with your fatherly attention now, after all these years of not knowing you even existed?”

“Again, isn’t it obvious? You’ve gotten yourself into so much trouble that my presence in your life can’t possibly make things any worse.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’ve studied Fate and probability and chaos magic more than any human alive, so … yes, I’m very sure. Before you got the attention of the Virtii, it was best you didn’t even know about me. But now that you’ve killed one of them—oh, and well done, by the way—it’s quite a different story. I’d like to continue to help you, if you’ll let me.”

“Wait just a minute,” I said, doing a little more mental math about his previous “help” and not liking the sum. I touched the scarred flesh beneath my stone eye. “This ocularis was your doing, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “I gave it a compulsion charm tuned to you and arranged for the Warlock to find it, yes.”

“You arranged for him to find it … when I was eleven.”

He blinked. “Yes, once I realized your mother was beyond my help, I did an extensive set of probability divinations to try to see where your life might take you. I picked up on Cooper Marron’s thread, and the opportunity arose to get the ocularis into his brother’s hands, so I took it. It seemed to be the most prudent course of action.”

“The most prudent course …” My voice failed for a moment. My face felt like you could cook an egg on it. The only way he could have thought that the ocularis would be any help to me was if he’d been pretty sure I was going to be seriously mangled and lose at least one eye. “
You knew all that shit was going to happen from the beginning and you didn’t warn me?
”

“There was only a forty percent chance—”

“How hard would it be to send me a note saying, ‘Oh, hi, don’t go calling the rainstorm tonight, there’s a forty percent chance you’ll
lose your fucking eye!
’ ”

“The threads were very complex, I couldn’t risk—”

“You
couldn’t risk? You
didn’t risk
anything!
Five people died that night, you jackass!” I screamed at the mirror. I yanked the glove off and shoved my flames at the glass. “
I
nearly died.
Cooper
nearly died.
We
nearly lost everything.
You
didn’t do shit!”

Hot tears were streaming down my face. “You’re as bad as that rat-bastard Jordan.
Worse.
”

“Jessie, I can explain—”

“Save it. Oblittero.” I yanked the pointer card out of the mirror’s frame and threw it down toward the fireplace. I didn’t look to see if it burned or not.

The mirror went back to reflecting my own furious, red-eyed face. The scaly scars around my left eye socket were livid, inhuman, the ocularis a cold cat’s eye faintly reflecting the firelight. I leaned my forehead against the cool marble mantel and wept.

chapter
nine

Cooper

T
he guys stumbled through the front door as I was coming down the stairs. Cooper was leaning heavily on the Warlock’s shoulder, his eyes even more bloodshot than they’d been when he’d awoken from his potion-induced sleep the night before. I felt myself getting furious all over again.

Cooper spotted me, and at first he had an “uh-oh, busted” expression on his face, but then I guess he saw my tears and looked genuinely concerned. I was too angry to care; he
knew
I hated it when they went drinking. They could have used a pretty easy spell to get themselves sobered up after their bender, could have at least
pretended
they’d actually gone shopping, but no. That would have required a slight bit of effort and respect for my feelings.

“Jessie, whassamatter?” he slurred.

“Shitfaced and it’s not even three. You guys are so fucking predictable.”

“Jessie, we just—” the Warlock began.

I held up my hands as I strode away from them to the patio doors. “Save it. Just leave me alone.”

Pal approached me as I stomped into the backyard. “How did it go with your father?”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.” I went into the tent and flopped down on the sleeping bag.

I heard Pal nudge the tent fly aside and step into the doorway. “Was it a fraud?”

“No, it was him, he just … he … gaaah!” Rage and frustration flared in me again, and I started slugging the pillow with my flesh hand. “
Why
do people have to suck so bad? Why?”

“Oh.” I heard Pal shuffle his feet on the grass. “I’ll be out here if you feel like talking.”

I lay there, seething. A few minutes later, I heard the patio door slide open, and then a man’s heavy footsteps approached the tent.

“Jessie, I—” Cooper began.

“If you’re still drunk,
go away!
”

He retreated, and a moment later my anger turned to sadness and regret. I wept quietly into the battered pillow, and after a while I fell asleep.

    “Jessie …”

I woke up, groggy. “What?”

A moment later, I smelled grilled hamburgers, and I felt intensely hungry. Stupid inconsiderate barbecuing neighbors, making delicious food I couldn’t have anymore. The jerks.

“Can I come in?” Cooper asked. He sounded sober, and downright cheerful, but beneath the surface I thought I could hear a slight strain in his voice. “I thought you might be hungry, so I made us a snack.”

I squinted at the fading sunlight coming through the tent flap; it was already evening. I’d been asleep for hours.

“Sure, come on in, I guess.” I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the grassy bed, rubbing my sticky eyes. The flesh around my ocularis ached.

Cooper ducked into the tent carrying a plate of little hamburgers piled high with caramelized onions, melty cheddar, and crispy bacon. “Don’t worry, these sliders are all vegan. Even the cheese. And I guarantee they won’t taste like old jockey shorts.”

“There’s a fair distance on the tasty scale between ‘good’ and ‘jockstrap,’ ” I said as he set the platter down beside me.

“Just try it.”

I did. The burger patty was savory and juicy, tasted just like real beef, and the bacon was perfect and salty and crisp. The cheese was rich and tangy. I was in gustatory ecstasy.

“Dude, this is sex on a bun,” I replied around my mouthful.

Cooper grinned at me. “Ye of little faith. Have another.”

“Where did you learn to make this?”

“One of my exes ran into a necromantic side effect that made it a bad idea for her to eat animal flesh, too. It’s more common than the pointy-hats would have you believe. Anyhow, she learned how to make a good meatless bacon cheeseburger, and she passed the recipe on to me. They’re not very nutritious, so you couldn’t live on ’em, but they’re not as bad for you as the real thing, either.”

I swallowed my mouthful, then looked around for something to wash the crumbs down. “Is there anything to drink?”

“Oh. Yeah. Left them on the picnic bench while I was grilling.” He snapped his fingers, and two sturdy glass mugs of dark beer shot across the yard into his outstretched hands.

I accepted the mug he held out to me and took a sip. It was Guinness,
fresh
Guinness, not the oaky ditch-water it’s usually staled to by the time we Yanks find it in a grocery store. “Yum.”

After we’d cleaned the platter and drained our mugs, Cooper crawled onto the sleeping bag beside me. He cleared his throat. “Look, I’m really sorry about earlier. We really did intend to go shopping up at Polaris, but in the car I started talking to the Warlock about how bummed I was about Smoky dying and he said he wanted to cheer me up and before I knew it we were at Hooters—”

“You guys went to
Hooters?
What, were all the strip clubs closed or something?”

“They have pretty good chicken wings there.”

“Breasts, too, I’ve heard.” My tone was brittle as ice.

He held up his hands. “Look, I’m
sorry
. I wasn’t thinking, and things went from dumb to stupid. I’m sorry I made you mad.”

“I was already pretty mad. You just made it worse.”

He gave me comically sad puppy dog eyes. “Forgive me?”

I sighed. “I suppose I have to, seeing as you made me the most kick-ass burgers I’ve had in over a year.”

“Hug?”

I gave him a hug, and he held me close. I could feel an odd tension vibrating in his body.

“You know I love you, right?” he said.

“Yeah?” I replied slowly. He
never
asked that. First the baby talk, and now this … what the heck was going on with him? I knew spending time in a hell was bound to change a man, but I never expected it would make Cooper want to start talking about our Relationship, capital R. I worried about where this was going.

He took a deep breath. “You don’t feel that I’ve been taking advantage of you, do you? Sexually, I mean?”

I sat up and stared at him. “No, why do you think I would think that?”

“It’s just … well.” He rubbed his face. “We’ve been together almost five years now, and …”

“And?” I prompted.

“I mean, your—Some people would think we should have gotten married by now. But you don’t want that, right? I guess we haven’t really talked about it.”

True enough; we hadn’t ever discussed marriage as far as I could remember. Not that I’d really cared one way or the other. I was never one of those girls who dreamed about being a bride in a fancy white dress. The only wedding I’d ever attended was my stepfather’s, and that little soiree left me with a lasting impression of needless stress, unpleasantness, and expense. Until that weekend, Cooper and I hadn’t had any family to stand up in front of and declare our love to, and none of our Talented friends seemed to view weddings as anything other than an excuse for a party.

As far as I was concerned, being in a committed relationship was being in a committed relationship, whether a priest and a ring and a piece of paper were involved or not. And if you needed a religious contract and the symbolic equivalent of a shackle to keep you from stepping out, well, how committed could you have really been in the first place? I’d always figured that a decent person does the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because he’s expecting some kind of cookie in the afterlife.

“I guess I kind of thought we more or less already
are
married,” I replied. “I love you, you love me … how would our lives be any different after a formal wedding ceremony?”

“Things would be a lot different,” Cooper replied, that odd strain coming back into his voice.

“How?” I wondered what he was getting at. Had my outburst at dinner and the fire and my not being all gung ho about having a baby with him given him second thoughts about being with me? Was he finding the scars on my face repulsive? Dammit, I’d gotten those scars rescuing
him
. My stomach began to clench. “Wait, is this your subtle way of saying you want to break up with me?”

“No!” Cooper looked alarmed. “No, no, that’s not it at all.”

He paused, his expression smoothing into a look of mild worry. “I just … I just want you to be happy.”

“I
am
happy,” I said. “I’m happy I got you back and that we’re both in more or less one piece.”

“Okay,” he said, seeming to relax a little more. “I’m glad.” Then he grinned. “Wanna go make brownies and play Halo?”

chapter
ten

Faery

T
he next morning I got Mother Karen to try another healing poultice on my face. I sat in the rec room watching cartoons with the littler kids for close to an hour with a wet tea towel over a clammy green mudpack that stank like someone had slathered Vicks VapoRub all over a plate of anchovies. It did seem to deaden the ache around my ocularis, at least.

“Well, we’ve got to start getting ready, or we’ll run the risk of being late,” she called from the kitchen as the clock struck ten. “Come into the bathroom, please.”

I followed her into the small half bath off the downstairs guest room. She had me sit on the toilet lid as she wiped the poultice off with a hot washcloth, then turned my head from side to side, frowning.