Shotgun Sorceress

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.”

I set the pillow aside and sat up on the bed. “So Karen isn’t throwing us out?”

Cooper smiled at me; a bit of tea and food had seemed to do him a world of good. “Of course not; my brothers can’t go anywhere right now, and if nothing else, she needs us for diaper duty.”

He closed the door behind him and sat down beside me on the bed, an eyebrow cocked. “I thought the news would cheer you up more than this. What’s the matter?”

“What’s the matter?” I was incredulous. “I’m zombifying stuff with my tongue. I taste death. I went DEFCON 1 on poor Ginger for no good reason, and for the briefest second there I was thinking of killing her. For real.”

Cooper scratched his goatee thoughtfully. “But if you killed her, then you could lick her … people would probably pay good money to see that.”

I smacked his arm. “This is serious!”

“Honey, seriously, it’s just garden-variety necromancy blowback. You absorbed a lot of spiritual energy from the Goad, even more from the Virtus, and it’s bound to leak out in all kinds of weird ways. We’ll figure it out, don’t worry. And Ginger will forgive you, once she stops whimpering quietly in the corner, muttering ‘Rosebud …’ ”

I laughed despite my worry. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fine. Ginger’s cool, she knows you’ve been through a lot and you’re not yourself right now.”

“No, I mean about this being garden-variety stuff. Because …” I trailed off.

“Because what?” He butted my shoulder playfully with his forehead as if he were a big house cat. “C’mon, talk to me.”

I took a deep breath. “I didn’t lose my hand in your hell. I got the diabolic fire, yes—but I lost my hand the night you got sucked through the portal. Your little brother Blue sloughed all his bad emotions off into a soul-shard that turned into a demon when it escaped the hell and came to Earth—”

“Blue generated a Wutganger? Huh. Kid’s got some issues.”

“Gee, you think? Anyway, I took care of the Wutganger, but it bit my hand off and burned out my eye. It put some kind of poison in me. The zombie meat thing—the Wutganger could animate and control dead flesh. I’m a little freaked out that I’m showing some of its powers. I’m worried all this will … get worse. I’m worried that I’m becoming some kind of monster.”

He gave me a hug. “Yes, it’s a legitimate concern, but. Agonizing over this won’t make it any better, will it? You’re made of sterner stuff than … well, me, for instance. I don’t know how you survived your fight with the Virtus. What you did to kill it—that should have killed you, too. I can’t imagine how anyone could have survived absorbing its energy like you did, but here you are.”

I gave him a look. “So basically, you’re saying that I’m some kind of freak of nature? Am I supposed to find this news comforting?”

Cooper made an exasperated noise. “What I’m saying is, you’ll survive this, too. We’ll survive. We just have to stay calm, stay positive.”

He touched my left hand. “Can I take a look at this?”

“Sure.” I pulled off the satin glove and held my flame hand between us.

He held my arm by my elbow and frowned at the fire. “I … wow. This is really different. It’s giving off a vibe like it’s a curse, but not. I thought I could figure out something to do about this, but now that I’m looking at it, I’m kinda stumped. Er. No pun intended, there.”

“Yeah, right.” I gave a snort and slipped the glove back on.

“Hey, what did you do to your other hand?”

I looked down; my knuckles were bruised black and blue. They looked much worse than they felt. “Oh. I, um, hit the Warlock. Kinda lost my temper with him earlier.”

“He does have that effect on people.” He took my flesh hand in his and whispered an ancient word for “heal.”

“Is that better?” he asked, massaging my palm.

“Yes, much. Thanks, sweetie.”

He kissed my knuckles and scooted around behind me on the bed and began to rub my shoulders. “You’re still way too tense. You’ve got more knots back here than a ship’s rigging.”

“Arr,” I replied, pirate style.

He slipped his hands up under the Hello Kitty T-shirt I’d borrowed from one of Karen’s teenagers. His hands were like velvet on my skin. I felt my nipples go hard.

“Permission to come aboard?” he asked.

“Oh yeah. Just … just don’t kiss me. On the mouth, I mean. I know we were kissing earlier, but I feel weird about that right now,” I said. “And don’t pull my shirt off—it might take the glove with it. Mother Karen would be really mad if we scorched her quilt.”

“Aye, Cap’n.”

Cooper gently pushed my T-shirt and sports bra up under my arms, planting small kisses across my back that made me shiver in delight. I sucked in my breath as he slid his hands around my sides and cupped my breasts in his hands, squeezing my nipples between his fingers. He pushed my hair to the side and began to kiss the sensitive spot behind my left ear. His goatee tickled my neck. Goose bumps rashed down my spine.

“It feels like it’s been years since we did this.” I pulled away so I could lie back and start to take off my khakis and undies. I wanted Cooper in me as quickly as possible, but in the back of my mind I was aware that the pants weren’t mine, and I suspected I had only one other pair of clean underwear in my knapsack. So the fewer bodily fluids I got on either, the happier I’d be once the afterglow of our lovemaking had faded.

“Last week was work,” he replied, meaning the erotomancy we’d used to call the rainstorm. He nudged my hands away from the front of my pants so he could finish unzipping them himself. “This is me showing my proper gratitude for you coming to rescue me.”

I laughed as he tugged my khakis down my hips. “Honey, that still sounds a lot like work.”

He tossed the pants into the corner and stripped my underwear down my legs. “I think you’ll see the difference once I get started.”

“Then I leave myself in your capable hands.” I closed my eyes as Cooper gently spread my thighs and applied himself with all the dedication and enthusiasm of an Eagle Scout who’d just earned a merit badge in ear breathing.

My anxiety melted away as the sweet tension built and built, a hormonal freight train, fast even for me, but that was okay. Oh God was I ready—

—my thighs involuntarily clamped down on Cooper’s head as the orgasm took me and I arched my back with a sudden gasp, my body rigid—

—a tiny part of me was aware of a sudden coolness on my left elbow and a faint fwap! that might be the sound of a satin opera glove hitting the wall—

“Mmmmph! Et oh, et oh!” Cooper frantically slapped my ass with his free hand.

I released him and opened my eyes. My flame hand was jetting burning purple jelly all over the wall, all over the dresser, all over the ceiling, and the stuff was simultaneously corroding and igniting everything it touched. It looked like napalm from a particularly bad hell, and stank of sex and sulfur. The paint, plaster, studs, even the exterior bricks were flaring bright and burning down to noxious black ash with astonishing speed.

Cooper spoke an old word for “blizzard,” a flurry of snow and ice bursting from his fingertips, but the spell fizzled against the flames. Parts of the wall were entirely gone, and I could see the neighbor’s house through the smoke.

“Oh Jesus, make it stop!” he hollered.

My climax had well and thoroughly ended, but the arm wasn’t stopping, and I couldn’t even feel the jet. It wasn’t part of me. I shook my head, frightened and baffled. “But I’m not doing this!”

“MAKE IT STOP!”

I closed my eyes, focused all my energy on the flames, trying to get them back under my control.

I heard the door bang open.

“What are you doing in here?” Mother Karen sounded like she was ready to kill someone.

“Why isn’t this place fireproof?” Cooper yelled back.

“It is!” Karen protested. “This … this is insane, I’ve never—”

“Wow. Incendiary ectoplasm,” I heard the Warlock comment from the hallway. “That’s pretty unusual outside a hell.”

I finally turned off whatever diabolic spigot had been opened in my flame hand, but I’d dripped enough in the process that now the bed was on fire, too, my ectoplasm eating huge holes right through the mattress and melting the steel springs. So much for the quilt. I scrambled to safety, then quickly used my flesh hand to pull my sports bra and shirt back down over my breasts, belatedly realizing it was a completely pointless gesture since I was naked from the waist down.

“I—I didn’t mean to do this,” I stammered. “I don’t know how this happened.”

Mother Karen’s face had gone white. “The whole house will burn, we’ve got to get the kids out of here—”

“Try salt water, lots of it. All of you,” the Warlock said.

We did as he suggested, and after a couple of false starts we were able to summon enough ocean water to douse the unholy fire.

The guest room lay in utter ruins; what had not burned was a sodden, stinking mess. Nobody said anything for a long time.

“Well.” The Warlock broke the silence. “I wish Ginger was here to see this.”

“Why?” Mother Karen asked.

“Because I think this illustrates exactly why ancient tribes came to fear the female freak-on.”