I shrugged. “You chose to join a coven.”
Her eyes flashed and she blinked rapidly. “I saved my mother’s life. What the hell have you done?”
“I just meant that you knew the risks when you joined, right?”
“Sure, I knew it was illegal to join and that we’d all go to jail for life if we were caught. But I also knew that the government made it illegal for my mother to grow old in peace. I knew that the legal thing to do would be to watch her fall apart and slowly die by degrees, day by day.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table, dark hair dropping over her eyes. “A lot of people say hekamists dying out is for the best.”
“Not me,” I said.
“Because you’ve benefitted from us. But do you know what ‘dying out’ actually means? It’s not peaceful, one hekamist by one closing her eyes and drifting off. My mother and all the hekamists her age—they’re dying horribly. They’re dying not knowing who they are. Not recognizing their families. All because people are suddenly afraid of something that’s been around for as long as we’ve had society.”
I squeezed my hands together under the table. All the talk of dying made me think of Mina and the shadow of death that used to follow her around. But I didn’t want to think of Mina; I was here to get rid of Cal. “I’m just here for a spell.”
She flashed a smile, very white teeth in her pale face. “Everyone just wants a spell. So handy, hekamists. What are you going to do when we’re all dead?”
“What’s your problem?”
“I told you. Aren’t you listening?”
“Why are you telling me all this? There’s nothing I can do about it.”
The hekamist shrugged. “Maybe you caught me on a bad day. Or maybe I’m going crazy, too.”
Whether she was crazy or not, I needed her. “Look,” I said, swallowing, “I’m not here to get rich or hurt anyone or do anything else bad, and I’m not here because I care about you or your situation. I won’t rat you out and I promise I’ll pay you for the work. I’m trying to do the right thing. I doubt Cal wants to be stuck in my spell, anyway.”
“Cal?” Echo sat up straight. “It isn’t Cal Waters you’ve hooked?”
“Yeah. So?”
She slumped back, frowning. “If you want a spell to take yourself to cancel out your hook completely and you manage to bring me cash, I’d be happy to take the risk, but otherwise—”
“What? Why not do the other thing, and break the spell on Cal directly?”
She picked at the edge of a raggedy black-polished nail. “Like I said. Too risky.”
“I thought you were a badass hekamist warrior. You’re afraid?”
The hekamist flattened her lips and glared at me, then stood up. “You’ll have to find someone else to do your dirty work,” she said.
I allowed myself to be herded to the door, past the stained coffee table covered with tea mugs, past the runes scratched into the walls and battered couch sticking into the middle of the room.
I felt like I should’ve tried harder, offered more money or said something sympathetic, but the whole experience had taken the fight out of me, the way Mina used to sag after doctors’ appointments even if they hadn’t done anything to her except talk.
“Hey,” the hekamist said, peering behind my back toward the road warily. “You said you wanted to do the right thing. Take the spell yourself to rebalance. Let everyone go free.”
Everyone would go free, but where would I be? Worse than where I was before. Alone. Invisible.
No. I would have to keep doing this the hard way.
It felt like I was buzzing. Like someone’d rigged up an electrical current to run through my skin and if anyone touched me they’d be blasted back a mile. Sometimes it was in my face. Sometimes my chest, my hands. Sometimes other places.
Diana.
I’d hooked up with a lot of girls before her—not as many as my brothers, as they liked to remind me, but a few—and sometimes those girls were memorable for some dirty reason, and sometimes I’d hook up with the same girl more than once because it was convenient or she had an amazing body or a crazy attitude. But I’d never woken up the next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that one feeling like this. More alive.
The buzzing didn’t go away, either, even though I spent my days in the hardware store copying keys and showing people where the drill bits were. In slow moments—and not so slow moments—we texted back and forth.
How many lug nuts does one man need?!?!
Is that supposed to be seductive?
I don’t have to seduce you, I got you
Oh? I’d forgotten all about that!
I hadn’t.
Yeah. Me neither.
Gotta go help this dude with his engine starter
Sounds fun. Call me later?
Miss you
Miss us
Gross