Chapter Five warnings: Body horror, violence, demonic imagery
Chapter Five
Come As You Are
At first, there were stars.
Pinwheeling alien constellations spread across black velvet across his field of vision. Mick breathed, but the air filled his lungs like ice water. He swam, but his limbs, spindly and weak, cut through nothing. Yet he clawed, desperate, drowning, one of many in a school, in a flight, silvery creatures like fish, like gnats, swarming to . . .
. . . something.
And then there was light, and then there was music, holy words woven in chords. The Godcleaver was here too, mythril songs keening into the moonlit night. Hands rose, and there was fire, and as Mick stretched spindly limbs into freedom, from nothing into something, flames and shadow and thorn ensnared him, and all he knew was pain.
And then he knew wind. Muscles—not his but his?—burning and electric, claws pounding into concrete, colors streaming past him, he bit the wind, swallowed it, threw it back up in bellows too deep and too animal to be his own voice. Free. Free. One of many, free at last.
That’s right, a voice whispered into his ear. Run. Be free. Tear open the doors and let them all in.
The voice beneath the music. The holy song in the Godcleaver’s mythril ribbon. He reached out, spurned on by that voice—familiar, familiar, where had he heard it before?—and caught his fingers onto something warm and painful and almost like the fire that had ensnared him.
He lifted it into the air and roared . . .
. . . and he flinched. His real self, small and weak and dangling between his own claws.
And then—
Mick Martin woke up.
Sunlight streamed through the window and poured across his face and the collection of dirty clothes strewn across his bedroom floor. He winced, groaned, and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes, in that order, then flopped over and tangled himself in his old, tattered quilt. It wasn’t comfortable, but at least he was facing away from the stark gray of an October sun.
Several questions sprung up like weeds in the murkiness of his half-asleep mind. Could he get away with calling in sick? Why did he insist on putting his bed right next to the godforsaken window?
What the hell was around his neck?
He sat up, his muscles and bones conspiring against his brain for this transgression, while his hand groped at the object thumping heavily against his chest. The chain it hung from was short, preventing him from pulling it into view, but his thumb felt its contours until something clicked in his head.
Oh right. The amulet. He’d brought it out just before falling asleep, hadn’t he? Read the tag again. Thought about what he’d wish for.
Truth be told, he could only think of one wish he’d want to make. Wish I could help Eleanor leave Southwind. He smirked—it was dumb, really. This thing couldn’t grant wishes, let alone solve Eleanor’s problems, whatever they were. But it was a nice thought, a magical artifact capable of giving Eleanor the world.
Too bad this wasn’t one of those fantasy paperbacks he definitely didn’t read in his downtime. Mick exhaled slowly, and the thought of granting Eleanor’s wishes gave way to his morning checklist. Properly wake up. Get coffee. Shower. Clean up the apartment he shared with Marcie. Ignore Marcie as he did so. Drag self to the Red Rooster to help open. Trudge through the cycle again until he collapsed into bed at the end of the day, same as always. His fingers ran across the chain around his neck, searching for the clasp.
Would Eleanor call? Would she try? The night before was still clear in his mind, but maybe it was a dream. Was it a dream? Maybe he should call—
What the fuck.
He ran his fingers across the chain. The whole length of the chain. There was no clasp.
And then he realized he hadn’t put the amulet on at all last night. He’d fallen asleep with it in his hand at his side, nowhere near his neck.
He leapt out of his bed at this point, pacing quickly to the bathroom. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck—mirror. He threw himself into the bathroom, locked the door, thanked all the holy powers he could think of that Marcie was still busy fixing breakfast in the kitchen as he flipped on the lights. In the sickly yellow of the neglected bathroom, Mick stood before the mirror over the sink and stared at his reflection. His hands fiddled with the chain, pulling it around his neck in slow circles. No clasp. There was no clasp. It was one unbroken chain winding around his neck.
What the fuck.
He stared, puzzling over how this could be. Thoughts about trick chains and half-formed logical explanations slipped through the crevices of his brain and slid back out just as quickly. He swallowed hard, mind scrambling for purchase on an explanation, a plan, anything . . .
. . . when at last, something caught his eye. Fire orange and glinting, just poking out of his rumpled shirt. He could feel his blood pump harder. His mind blanked, yet at the same time, he knew what he was looking at. He just couldn’t smash words together enough to name what he was seeing.
But as he slowly pulled his collar down and stared at his chest, words little by little clicked into place until his brain screamed.
Scales.
His chest and shoulders were covered in reptilian scales.
And right about here, the rest of him screamed.
“Mick, what the hell?” Marcie shouted from the kitchen.
Mick burst out of the bathroom, having pulled his shirt back over the offending scales. He folded his arms around himself in an attempt to further hide them and forced a smile at his sister.
“Ah, s-sorry!” he stammered. “I, um. I thought I saw a roach.”
She stared back at him, eyebrows furrowed, hawk eyes scrutinizing every inch of his stature. He motioned vaguely to where he knew the phone was, on the wall of the living room behind him.
“Hey, um. I’m . . . I’m gonna call off today. There’s something important I need to do,” he said.
“Something important?” she asked.
“Yeah, uh. E-Eleanor—”
“Say no more.” Marcie turned back to the stove with a wave of her hand. “Just remember what we talked about and use protection.”
Mick opened his mouth, then closed it again. He was fairly certain his sister’s comment made things worse.
---
One awkward phone call and a twenty-minute drive later, and Mick was standing exactly where he’d been barely seven hours previously: at the de Lepaute manor. He’d thrown a hoodie over himself and pulled the sleeves down to his knuckles to hide the scales he’d grown since leaving his apartment. The scales had shown no signs of stopping their spread across his body. He could feel their prickling, poking out of his skin with every passing second, and on the drive there, he watched them blossom across the backs of his hands. The changes weren’t external, either; inside him, he felt something hot and itchy, like a ball of flames licking the walls of his chest.
Even now, he set his teeth—were they sharper, or was that just him?—and tried to choke back his growing discomfort as he listened to the fading echoes of the de Lepautes’ two-toned doorbell. He pulled himself out of a wince and tried to relax. Evidently, even his hearing had grown sharper, as the bells grated on his ears, and he could distinctly hear the sound of someone stomping towards the door inside.
Oh.
Oh no.
Please not now. Mick shut his eyes tightly and gritted his definitely sharpened teeth. Hadn’t he suffered enough that morning? Did the gods have no mercy for him?
Even without looking, he could feel Astrid de Lepaute’s ice-dagger glare as soon as the door swung open. She exhaled sharply through her nose.
“Okay,” she said. “What did my sister order this time?”
“I’m not holding anything!” Mick protested. “Anyway, I’m not here for you.”
“Of course you’re not.”
“I’m here to see Eleanor.”
Silence. Icy silence. Mick hesitantly looked up, steeling himself for whatever psychological torture his luck had decided to heap on him. Astrid had taken to leaning on the door jamb, narrow eyes issuing a silent threat.
“Astrid,” Mick pleaded. “It’s important. I need to talk to Eleanor.”
“What’s the trick this time, Monsieur Martin?”
“Trick?”
“You’re never just here for Eleanor. Somehow, without fail, you always manage to leave me with a stack of pizzas covered in garlic or a mess I have to clean up or—”
“I said I’m not holding anything!” Mick said, fanning his hands out as much as he was willing to dare. He had to keep the scales hidden from Astrid. The last thing he needed was for her to get the slightest hint of what was going on or where they were last night. “Look, could you just get Eleanor? I know she’s in; I was talking to her barely half an hour ago.”
“Not until you swear on your life that that is all you’re here for,” Astrid growled.
Normally, Mick would know well enough to hold his tongue in front of Astrid de Lepaute. She was frustrating, sure, but not worth the absolute migraine that would come out of verbal fencing with the Red Rooster’s most ornery customer.
Still. Mick had woken up on the literal wrong side of the bed that morning, and he was a mite too distraught to keep himself from saying something he would regret to Astrid.
“Don’t you have a day job with actual clients, like an adult?” he asked.
Astrid’s eyes went wide for a second, then narrowed just as quickly—and, for that matter, even more dangerously than she had a moment ago. “I do indeed. I’m a very busy woman, Martin. Which is why I don’t like having my time wasted by you and my little sister.”
“Which is exactly why you’re doing your butler’s job,” Mick fired back. Then, heavier, more pointedly: “I’m here to see Eleanor.”
As if called down from the heavens themselves, Eleanor glided down the staircase behind Astrid with her hands folded behind her back and an angelic smile on her face. She came to a stop just behind her sister and spoke over Astrid’s left shoulder.
“Thank you, dear sister, for answering the door for my guest,” she said.
Astrid smacked a hand onto the opposite edge of the jamb and glared at her sister. That’s when Eleanor dropped her smile into wide-eyed, I-did-nothing-wrong-officer innocence.
“What?” Eleanor asked. “He wanted to see me. I’m not going to say no.”
Astrid radiated irritation. Radiated it like a nuclear dump site radiated from unstable uranium. She poked one index finger Eleanor’s way.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” she said, “but the two of you are not spending all day here. Two hours, and then he goes. Understand?”
Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mum. Now surely you have your important clients to attend to.”
Astrid gave Eleanor one last withering look, then huffed, turned on her heel, and retreated into the recesses of the de Lepaute manor. As a final period to this conversation, she chose a door near the end of the hall to pass through and slam behind her, sending an angry echo into the foyer.
But at least Eleanor and Mick were finally alone.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “You caught her on a bad day.”
“She has good days?” Mick mumbled, just a second before his brain could catch up with his mouth.
Eleanor snickered. “Sometimes. But today, there’s something about a client refusing to sign something or something else. I don’t know, but I know it’s best not to cross her again.”
She reached over and pulled at one of his arms, herding him into the warmth of the de Lepaute home. Literal warmth, of course. Mick never did feel welcome or comfortable in the too-extravagant, too-big, too-devoid-of-people house on the hill. He carefully stepped between Eleanor, the door, and a small table that inexplicably held a clearly expensive vase right next to the doorway. His eyes drifted up to the staircase unfurling itself at the other end of the expansive foyer; he wasn’t surprised that not even the butler was around.
Well, good. Made things easier if they were literally the only two people in the room.
“Right,” he said, letting his eyes settle back onto Eleanor. “Um.”
“You wanted to talk to me about something?” Eleanor prompted. “It was important?”
“Yeah. I did.”
Mick bowed his head and dropped right back into a vat of panic. Oh gods. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. Thinking about it in his apartment and on the way, it seemed simple. Obvious. Go to Eleanor. Tell her about the scales. Figure something out. But now, standing in front of her, Mick realized there were layers to this.
Namely, it hadn’t occurred to him until right at that second that actually telling someone about his scales might be a terrible idea after all. Would she freak out? Normal people would, but—no, this was Eleanor. She would do worse. She would run headlong into—
The mall. Adelaide’s ghost-hunting business. A list of trouble the length of Mick’s scale-covered arm.
This was bad. This was very bad.
“Mick?” Eleanor asked.
On the other hand, he couldn’t not tell her. She was the person he trusted the most with practically everything that happened in his life. She knew secrets that not even Marcie knew, for goodness sake.
And anyway, if anyone could figure out what was going on, it was Eleanor. Not a doctor or Adelaide or anyone else. And he needed someone to help him figure this out. He was growing scales; that wasn’t something that you could just ointment away.
But . . .
He tugged his sleeves over his hands.
“Hey. Mick?” Eleanor said softly. She waved her hand in front of his face. “Are you all right?”
He caught her gaze and took a deep breath. “Eleanor, if I show you something, do you promise not to freak out?”
She tilted her head ever so slightly. “Starlet, in the entire history of our friendship, have I ever been anything other than delighted by and perhaps even proud of you over whatever you would show me after asking me that kind of question?”
Mick winced. “Just . . . just promise me. It’s important this time.”
Her expression softened into a sympathetic smile, and she rested a comforting hand on his shoulder.
He really wished she didn’t do that last part.
“Nothing you could tell me would freak me out,” she said. “You know all I care about is whether or not you’re okay.”
That. That was a reassurance. He knew, of course, but hearing her so sincere, so steadfast . . .
He took one more deep breath through his nose and pulled up his sleeve.
Eleanor stared at the scales for one painfully long minute. Then another.
Then she grabbed his hand and all but dragged him upstairs to her bedroom.
Now, Mick had been in Eleanor’s bedroom before, albeit for wholly platonic circumstances. This was wholly platonic as well, but this particular circumstance was far less pleasant. He stumbled into plush carpet and strawberry perfume, and he could barely register the rich purples and blues of Eleanor’s domain when she all but thrust him onto a bed just a tad bit too soft for his liking and pinned him there.
This was far less pleasant than he hoped it would be too. For one, “pinned” was less accurate than “sat on him while pulling his arm into the light to examine his new scales closely while his body lay on a nest of down comforters, completely helpless under her weight.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I’m . . . not sure. I woke up like this,” he admitted. Then, he grimaced at his own half-truth. “Actually. I woke up significantly less . . . like this. It’s been—I don’t know. Taking me over?”
She looked at him.
“I know that sounds weird,” he said. “It’s-it’s physical, not . . . complete? I think. I don’t feel like I’m changing inside. No, um. No Jeff Goldblum stuff?”
“Mick.” Eleanor gently lay his arm at his side and arranged herself to sit next to him. “I think you need to explain to me exactly what happened this morning.”
So he did. He told her about the strange dream, the amulet and its unbroken chain, the scales, and the uncomfortable itch inside him. And Eleanor, for all the strangeness her best friend was handing to her, sat quietly and listened to his every word. Her eyes fell onto the amulet the second he pulled it out from beneath his hoodie. She watched as he rolled up his other sleeve to reveal his other scale-covered arm. She waited until the last word left his mouth and he turned his head to look at her. And then she sat there for a moment of thought.
And then:
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
Mick shot up. “Excuse me?”
Her request instantly sent fire through his skin. Oh, sure, he liked Eleanor and found her attractive, but this wasn’t the reaction he was expecting from everything he’d just told her. Was this really the time or the place? Didn’t they have bigger problems on-hand? Also, okay, he’d already known that Eleanor tended to have her priorities a little twisted sometimes—that was part of why she made life interesting. But now?
And anyway, even if he went in without any expectations, even if he wasn’t currently struggling with whatever was happening to him, the truth was, he wasn't sure if he thought of her that way. Romantically, maybe, but—he just didn’t really feel that way towards anyone, as far as he knew. Did Eleanor? Would he know if she did? Also, what did it say about her if that was her reaction to seeing his arms covered with scales? Not that he judged her or anything, but he certainly didn’t know she was like those odd people that sometimes hung out at the comic shop downtown. Should he support her? He should support her. That was a dumb question.
But this was all very quick, wasn't it? They’d known each other for years, but not in that way, and—
“We need to see how far those scales have spread since this morning,” she explained.
Oh. Right.
Swallowing back his embarrassment, Mick pulled off his hoodie and shirt.
“Please tell me this is all you need,” he said.
She didn’t respond. Not to his words, anyway. Instead, she leaned close, grazing her fingertips across the fire-orange scales running down his sides and back. He shuddered, not with the sensation of her soft touch but the lack of sensation; he watched her and realized in dull horror that the only thing he could feel through those scales was her warmth, not her actual fingertips.
“Do you remember how far down they went before you left your apartment?” she asked quietly.
“Ah . . .”
Mick looked down at himself for the first time since that morning. Pale gold plates had started developing across his chest and stomach, something that hadn’t been the case earlier that day. It almost looked like a gradient now, skin fading into plates, right at the junction between his chest and stomach. His sides, though . . . as far as he could tell, they were fully covered in scales. He could feel—or perhaps not feel—entire swaths of scales at his hips, rubbing against his pants.
He was able to push away the unpleasantness of it all for the precious few minutes between the de Lepautes’ front door and Eleanor’s bedroom, but now, a tidal wave of discomfort and fear hit him full force.
“H-here.” He pointed to his collarbone. “And here.” He pointed to his side, right at the edge of his ribcage.
Eleanor grabbed his hand and pulled it between them, and it took a second for Mick to understand why. But when he did, he couldn’t take his eyes off it. His nails were blackening, elongating into claws.
He didn’t want to ask. The question hung between them, understood and unspoken.
Just what was happening to him?
“It’s not that fast,” Eleanor said, examining his hands. “These were fingernails a moment ago. But judging by what you’ve told me and the time it took for you to get here . . .”
He didn’t have all day, in other words. She couldn’t say how much it—meaning, the long march into whatever vermin this Gregor Samsa was slowly turning into—would be. She just knew that it wasn’t sudden, but it wasn’t slow, either.
Or in other words, Eleanor had ideas, as Mick had hoped. Just not enough of them yet.
Eleanor stood. “We need to talk to Adelaide.”
And definitely not the ideas Mick was hoping she would have. He slapped a hand around one of Eleanor’s wrists. “No! Not her. Please.”
Mick couldn’t explain why, but something told him involving Adelaide would be a bad idea. Or at least, he had reason to believe this was the case—this whole thing started when she put the idea of ghost hunting into Eleanor’s head, after all—but it wasn’t exactly a rational reason with solid evidence that told Mick she had something to do with his current state. Nor, for that matter, was it a rational reason for Mick to be so afraid of going to her. But . . . something inside, perhaps the bit that was currently twisting in the ball of itching discomfort, told him that if they consulted her, she would make things worse.
Yet Eleanor tugged her hand free and shook her head. “Listen, you need help, and whatever’s happening to you is supernatural, not medical. Adelaide is the only one we know who deals with the supernatural. She may know some way to stop this—or at least point us to the right person to ask.”
Mick couldn’t argue with that. He wanted to, but truth was, he knew Eleanor was right. Adelaide was the only person they knew who dealt with the supernatural—besides the strange cloaks at the mall. And frankly, he didn’t want to think about what the weird mall cult would do to him.
“Okay,” he said softly.
She gave him a soft, reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out. Now get yourself presentable. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Mick grabbed his shirt but kept his eyes on Eleanor. “Where are you going?”
“Calling the place Adelaide’s most likely to be at this time on a weekday,” Eleanor replied. She cocked her head. “Or, more accurately . . . getting Jean-Pierre to call Bard Records for us.”
As soon as Eleanor said it, Mick understood. Alistair. The one member of the Fourteen Cloaks who knew they’d seen a demon summoning last night.
Mick shuddered and slipped back into his shirt. He prayed that Adelaide was working the counter that day.
---
Eleanor floored it from Huntress Woods Mall to Silver River Park. Normally, Mick wouldn’t trust anyone but Matthew with the Rabbit—and Matthew only because he had to trust him, per their mother’s strict instructions—but this was an unusual circumstance.
Namely, something was growing out of his back.
Mick couldn’t tell, but whatever it was sent a stabbing pain across his shoulders and down his spine. He thought, momentarily, that maybe deciding not to go a doctor or something was turning out to be a bad idea, but what would a doctor say? They’d take one look at the scales and the claws, and the next thing he’d know, he’d be on the cover of The Weekly World News. Maybe hauled off to some government facility for experimentation or something.
Not to mention what it would mean for Eleanor. All of those weirdos in the mall would know by then who she was, just by association with the weird lizard freak that got hauled out of Southwind. Or would they know? Would Mulder and Scully let slip to the town that there was a weird lizard freak? Or would he just . . . disappear?
He spent the entire ride bracing himself, curled up in what little space the Rabbit’s backseat afforded him, ignoring Adelaide’s frequent glances from the passenger side to him—and for that matter, ignoring her questions too, of which there were many. It was almost a relief to him when he saw trees grow thicker out the Rabbit’s windows, and when the car slowed to a stop shortly after.
“All right,” Eleanor said, soft and encouraging from the driver’s seat. “All clear.”
Silver River Park sat at the edge of Southwind, just to the north of the mall and at the lip of the thick national forest known as Huntress Woods. At the far end of the park was the trailhead for the Black Diamond Trail, a trail that wound through the woods from Southwind to Faelenvale in the northeast. Mick and Eleanor used to come here all the time for one reason or another growing up. Eleanor, because she went to those Girl Scout camping trips on the grounds just inside the woods. Mick, because his late father would herd the five Martin children to a fishing spot somewhere along the trail. Then the both of them on afternoon hikes, or to illicit high school parties full of booze purchased with parents’ credit cards and fake IDs. Then Mick again when he wanted to be alone and the farmland outside of town wasn’t cutting it. It was the perfect place for someone wanting to hang out away from prying eyes. No houses for miles. No teens now that the mall existed. No hikers when the more scenic Faelenvale was on the other side of the woods.
And now, it was the perfect place to study Mick and figure out what was wrong with him.
As soon as Adelaide was out of the car, he climbed out of the back, eyes warily scanning the trees along the edges of the empty parking lot. The trailhead opened up before the Rabbit’s front end, a burrow amidst a tangle of trees and golden leaves. True to Eleanor’s word, nobody was around but them.
He felt Adelaide’s hands on the tail of his shirt; at once, he slapped them away and took a few quick steps back.
“H-hey!” he yelped. “At least let me get out of the car first!”
“Fine. Fine,” Adelaide huffed. She let her bag drop to the cracked pavement at her feet with a too-heavy thump. “You’re the one who’s turning into a demon, but I guess take your time getting out of the car.”
“D-demon?” Mick gasped.
Eleanor wound her way around the Rabbit, creeping closer to Adelaide and Mick. “Are you sure?”
“Reasonably sure,” Adelaide said. “I mean, I’d have to look through my books to know for sure sure, but . . .” She yanked on one of Mick’s arms. “Orange skin?” With her other hand, she grabbed Mick’s chin and pulled his head down. “Cat eyes?”
“Cat eyes?” Mick yelped through her hand.
“And look here!”
Adelaide parted Mick’s curls. He winced and twisted in her hand as the sensation sent an unpleasant ache through his scalp. It didn’t help that Adelaide’s fingertips were digging to the roots of his hair.
“See that?” she said.
“Adelaide,” Eleanor began, “let him go, all right? He doesn’t like it when—”
“Just look!” she snapped back. “There. That black knob.”
Eleanor fell silent. So did Mick, though he tried one more futile, halfhearted time to pull away from Adelaide.
“Horn buds,” Adelaide explained.
And then, blessedly, she let him go. Mick reeled back, pressing himself against the Rabbit—an act which reminded him of the electric pain in his back. He grit his teeth through another wince but opened his eyes once more when he felt gentle hands on his shoulders. Much to his relief, it was Eleanor, gazing up at him with worry. Adelaide, meanwhile, was busy rummaging through her bag.
“Are you all right?” Eleanor asked.
Mick swallowed and nodded. “I-I mean. All things considered.”
One of her hands rose, hesitating at the side of his face. “You’re not in pain, are you?”
That was a question. Should he tell her? Should he be honest about it? Granted, everything about his situation was worrying at that moment. But the ache in his back grew hotter by the second, and the word “demon” echoed through his skull, and gazing down at Eleanor right then, the last thing he wanted to do was worry her more.
It was stupid, but . . .
“No,” he said, pulling away from her. “I-I’m fine. Really.”
By then, Adelaide had emptied half her bag onto a threadbare blanket on the pavement. A deck of cards. A dual-edged knife with a triple knot etched into its black hilt. A pink crystal on a delicate, silver chain. A leather-bound journal atop a short stack of tattered paperbacks. A box of salt. A silver device with a dial and a blocky screen. Wire cutters. A plastic bottle labeled “holy water” in blocky Sharpie across its label. A rusty railroad spike.
“What . . . what’s this?” Mick asked, kneeling to poke at the spike.
Adelaide looked up, then at the spike. “Oh. Fun fact? The stake you use to kill vampires doesn’t need to be wooden. However, anything you use to kill faerie creatures needs to be iron, and anything human lurking in abandoned hospitals can be killed with pretty much anything sufficiently sharp and pointy.”
Mick looked over his shoulder, as if to ask Eleanor if she was serious in asking Adelaide for help. Eleanor locked eyes with him, then turned her attention to the spike.
“You’re . . . not actually thinking of using it on him, are you?” she asked.
Adelaide looked up from one of the books. “What? Oh! No, not unless—” She pressed her lips together. “You know what? Just ignore that for now. Anyway, you said something about an amulet?”
Mick very much did not want to forget about the railroad spike, so he kept his eyes trained on it as he fished the amulet out from beneath his shirt. “R-right,” he stammered. “This. It was wound around my neck when I woke up. And look.” He pulled the chain through the amulet’s loop and around his neck to show Adelaide its full length. “No clasp. I-I think it’s what’s doing this to me?”
“Hm.”
Adelaide pulled a pair of gloves out of her bag next: thick work gloves with single eyes scratched crudely into the leather on the backs. She slipped these gloves on and reached out to grasp the amulet, an act that made Mick pull away from her.
“Relax,” she said with a smile. She brandished one of the gloves, eye side towards him. “If you’re worried about whether or not it’ll curse me, I’m wearing blessed gloves. See this symbol? Protective ward. Keeps any nasty curses from rubbing off on me when I’m handling potentially magical objects.”
Mick wasn’t worried about Adelaide getting cursed. He was worried about the spike and ritual dagger and the fact that Adelaide was reaching for an object she could use to strangle him with. But he figured it might be a good idea to keep his mouth shut about all of these things, so instead, he forced himself to smile uneasily back.
“Do you usually handle magical objects?” he asked.
“In my line of work? Sure. A lot of stuff is fake, obviously, but now and then, you find something that isn’t,” she said.
Twenty-four hours ago, Mick would have countered with the idea that magic wasn’t real, but now? Cursed objects? A witch? Why not?
“Where did you get this?” Adelaide muttered as she held the pendant closer to her glasses.
“In the mall, last night,” Mick replied. “When that thing attacked us last night, it dropped this.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eleanor giving him an odd look. He prayed she wouldn’t say anything; Adelaide only needed to know the basics, not what the monster was, or what it did to him.
He hoped.
Luckily, she must have caught on, because what she said next wasn’t anything to do with the monster they’d encountered the night before but instead something he hadn’t even thought of.
“It came from the kiosk across from where you work,” she said. “I thought it said it was a wish-granting amulet.”
As soon as the kiosk came into the conversation, Adelaide flinched, her eyes shifting Eleanor’s way. There was a flicker of something on Adelaide’s face that Mick couldn’t identify. Worry? Contempt? A mix of both?
But as soon as this flicker appeared, it was gone, melting back into the professional neutrality Adelaide had been harboring a moment ago.
“That idiot? I thought they sold costume jewelry and nothing else,” she said. “If they’re selling legit magical items, then they clearly don’t know what they’re dealing with. This isn’t a wish-granting amulet.”
“Then what is it?” Eleanor breathed. Mick was more than thankful for this. His own voice had plugged itself up in his throat at the thought that he had a delightful magical mystery strapped to his neck.
Adelaide bent down to pick up the wire cutters. “Don’t know,” she admitted. “But whatever it is, let’s get it off you, shall we?”
Her voice dropped to a murmur, and a humming beat of words Mick couldn’t understand fluttered across her lips. It took him a second to realize she was chanting, words weaving into a spell . . . to do what, he couldn’t say. He wanted to believe she was helping. She was too close; he didn’t want to believe she was doing anything but helping. Yet the longer she droned on, the more he felt a buzz in his head, like something inside him was recoiling, protesting, clawing at his brain. His fingers twitched, itched. Something in his chest growled.
No, he growled, without thinking about it. He set his teeth and tried to will his body back under control. Calm. Stay calm. This would all be over in a moment.
Adelaide brought her wire cutters to the pendant. The chain rested between their blades. She squeezed.
Something electric ran through Mick’s body. His vision went white, and he felt like he was falling through the sky.
And in the next second, he found himself hunched over by the Rabbit’s back end, one hand at his throat. Adelaide was in Eleanor’s arms, head just inches from the blanket with the knife and railroad spike. Eleanor’s wild eyes cast down to Adelaide, then back up to Mick.
“Mick!” she cried. “What the hell?!”
“What happened?” he rasped.
“It wasn’t him,” Adelaide grunted. She pulled herself to her feet, then padded off to retrieve her wire cutters on the pavement several feet away from the Rabbit. “I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy to get the amulet off. Magical things tend to be clingy.”
“What is it?” Eleanor asked.
Adelaide returned to her makeshift magic laboratory and shuffled through her bag again. “Again, not sure. I’ve never seen anything like it. Or this, for that matter.”
“What?” Mick choked.
“Does that mean . . . ?” Eleanor glanced at Mick with worry.
Adelaide pulled another object from her bag and placed it onto the pavement next to her. A tape recorder, Mick realized. She pressed play, and the familiar bass line of Nirvana’s “Come as You Are” thrummed out of the device. Mick could almost feel those notes vibrating against the pavement.
Wait.
No.
He could feel those notes vibrating against the pavement.
“Yes, I can help him,” Adelaide replied, her voice strained with irritation. She opened a book in her lap. “It’ll just take me a bit.”
“Ah . . . and this . . . ?” Eleanor motioned to the tape recorder.
“Music helps me focus,” Adelaide replied without looking up from the pages. “Now, I know there’s a spell in here somewhere that counteracts curses . . .”
Memoria . . . Memoria . . . Memoria . . .
Those words traveled up Mick’s bones and vibrated h is every sinew. He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, but the fire in his back grew to an inferno that reached up to his skull. His muscles spasmed. Something felt like it was trying to claw its way out of his head now.
“Adelaide,” Eleanor squeaked, “perhaps there’s someone in Faelenvale who can help? Someone from the Paranormal Society, for example?”
“Most likely,” Adelaide replied. “He probably won’t have enough time to get there before the curse runs its course, though. We need to stabilize him first. Come on . . . come on . . . control, cure—major, cure—minor, curse—love, curse—money, cursebreaking . . . aha! Curse containment!”
Memoria . . . Memoria . . . Memoria . . .
With each word, with each second, Mick felt his bones twist. He dropped to his knees the moment Adelaide found her spell, and only part of his mind was aware that Eleanor had run to his side. The muscles of his back seized. Electric pain razored across his spine. Something wet burst through his skin and ripped through his shirt and fanned into the cold air. Eleanor screamed, and for a second, Mick’s world was a tangle of color as they—had he grabbed her? had he reached for her?—spilled sideways onto the pavement. She pulled herself back up, kneeling beside him, her hands on his aching shoulder. The thing—things—at his back smacked against the pavement and each other like a pair of confused fish, and his claws splayed over his eyes and across his face as the fire burned through his skull and exploded outward.
Literally.
Orange fire unfurled around him, licking upwards from his body, burning away his clothes. Eleanor shouted to Adelaide, though what, Mick couldn’t tell. All he could hear was the fire, his own screams of pain, and . . .
Adelaide.
Words seeping into his skull. Words he couldn’t understand, yet . . .
He burst into the air. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it. Just . . . one moment, he was lying on the pavement, and then the next, there was nothing between him and the scorched patch of earth but twenty feet of air.
And then the rest was a blur.
---
Mick awoke sometime later to sunlight filtering through golden leaves and something red. At the very least, it was still daylight, though if it was the same day, he wasn’t quite sure. All he was certain of was that he was alive and that his entire body throbbed with a dull ache, like he’d slept in a cramped box all night. Groaning, he stretched, unfurling arms and legs . . . and then more than that.
All of a sudden, the world came into focus, and Mick scrambled backwards until his back hit the rough bark of a tree. He could feel it every inch of the way—the length of it, the weight, the way the cold October air stung every inch as he lifted it off the soft earth and wet leaves.
He lifted it. He gave it commands, and it obeyed, and there it was, bobbing in the air at his right.
A tail. A tail. A long, scale-covered thing, ending in a golden fan of webbed skin, studded with white spikes. And it was his.
He sank, scraping scales and the stubby spikes along his spine against wood, and with every inch, his wings—wings. Bat-like, giant things, gold underneath, red on top. They fanned over him, blocking his view of the thick woods. So that was the something red.
Where was he? What was he? One of his shaking hands drifted up. He meant to grab his head in astonishment or confusion or something else, but whatever word went with the mess of emotions he was experiencing right then ceased to matter when his knuckles brushed something hard. His fingertips trailed along it, following the curve of one ram’s horn, and the further along his hand went, the more he became aware of the weight of not one but two of them on his head.
“Demon,” he breathed. “I’m a demon.”
He sank sideways into the earth. It seemed like the only logical thing to do.
What did he do now? Eleanor would know—or would she?
Oh gods. The fire. Had he hurt her? He shut his eyes tightly and tried to remember what led up to his flight. There was music and Adelaide’s spell and fire and . . .
And what? What happened, right there, the second before he’d taken off?
Oh gods. What if he’d hurt her? What if he’d burned her? What if one of his flailing claws had slashed her? What if she was bleeding out in the middle of nowhere, with only Adelaide there to help? Oh gods, what was he thinking, leaving her alone with Adelaide?
“You really are something else, Mick Martin,” a familiar voice said. “Halfway to turning into a guardian beast, and all you’re thinking about is Eleanor. It’s sweet, really.”
His blood was pure ice the second he’d clocked who that was, yet somehow, he found enough presence of mind to lift his wing, just enough to come face-to-face with Kaedra. She smiled down at him a little too warmly.
Then he realized she wasn’t alone. Behind her stood a tall, willowy figure with a long, pale face framed with wild, violet hair. Next to them was a shorter, olive-skinned woman dressed head-to-toe in camo, just like hundreds of other hunters he’d seen around Southwind.
And that last one was important because of the rifle she pointed directly at Mick’s chest. His eyes settled on the gun while his heart, helping no one and especially not itself, thundered a mere foot from its muzzle.
Kaedra’s eyelids fluttered as she sighed at the woman.
“Faelen, for the last time, he’s not dangerous. You can put that down,” she said. And then, rolling her gaze back to Mick, she held out a hand. “Mick? I hope you have a moment. We need to talk.”