At the first red light, everything looked a little hazy, as though she was seeing it through a Vaselined lens. She realized her eye was starting to swell.
Also, she thought she might be having a slight panic attack.
She pulled over at a gas station about a mile away and checked her face in the mirror. Her left eye was purpling. Her mouth was cut, upper lip swollen like an aesthetician had gone ham with a needle full of filler.
Charlie was a mess. There were enough people wanting to knock her around that they were going to have to take a number, like at a deli counter.
And what it had taken out of her shadow. She remembered Vince’s words about unspooling. Remembered that it was freshly quickened, with no reserves of energy.
She had to feed it.
Charlie couldn’t remember where she’d first seen an image of a witch feeding her familiar from a third nipple. She recalled a woodcut, or an illustration meant to look like one. It must have been in the research she did for the Inquisition, back when she was Alonso.
As a kid, Charlie hadn’t believed third nipples could be real until she looked them up. It turned out they could show up anywhere on the body. Imagine having a nipple on the back of your calf. Or on the knuckle of your finger.
It made her think of a pronouncement some misogynist barstool scholar once made with great seriousness: Martinis are like breasts; one is too few, and three are too many.
Which was bullshit. Ask anyone who’d been through surgery to remove a tumor. Or any fan of science fiction. Or anyone who liked martinis.
Ask her shadow, which was curled around her, nursing as tightly on her skin as any familiar. Black cat. Toad. Crow. Spirits sent from the devil to make mischief in the world. One wound was fine for it, although even a few drops of blood are hard to squeeze out when your scabs were shallow and are healing.
“You’re okay,” she soothed, as though to a child after a fall. “You’re okay now, right?” So hard not to think of it as a separate thing. So hard not to treat it like one.
So hard not to love it. Or not feel responsible for it.
It settled back into place, a cloak on her back, a carpet at her feet, a veil. Real magic. Her magic.
It was never great to get punched in the face, but Charlie found herself smiling through her split lip. Until she realized that to have followed her from the hospital, Adam must have tailed her to the hospital. Which meant that he knew where she lived. And as angry as he was, he might drive straight there.
She picked up her cell and, cradling it painfully against her cheek, called Posey.
It rang. And rang.
“I know you’re awake,” she muttered.
Posey’s voice mail started up. She must be Zooming with a client. Charlie tried her again, letting it ring, hanging up and calling right back.
Finally, Posey picked up. “Charlie, I’m—”
“You’ve got to get out of the house. Now.”
“Why do you sound so weird?”
Charlie didn’t have time to explain about her swollen lip. “Seriously. Now. A coffeeshop. The drugstore. Doesn’t matter where. Just pick up your laptop and your wallet, go out the back door, and hop the low fence into our neighbor’s yard. The one with the trampoline.”
“What’s—”
“I am going to stay on the line while you do it.”
“I’m in the middle of a card reading,” Posey protested.
“It’s got to be right now,” Charlie said.
“Gimme a sec.” Charlie could hear her talking to someone in a conciliatory way, although she couldn’t make out the words. Hopefully explaining to her client that she had to go.
She came back a moment later. “You know I can’t drive.”
“I will be with you the whole way,” Charlie said, keeping her voice calm and low. Radio voice. Hostage negotiator voice. “I promise. I’m coming to pick you up.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.
“Please, Posey.” So much for staying calm. “Hurry.”
“Fine. The backyard?”
“So you’re not visible from the street.” Charlie wanted to get on the highway and race toward home, trying to beat Adam, but she knew it was better to focus on getting her sister out of the house. “Just. You know. Quick.”
As Posey moved through the house, grabbing some things she said she needed and herding Lucipurrr into a cat carrier, Charlie dug her fingernails into the mound of her thumb. She wanted to scream at Posey to move faster. She wanted to do anything but sit there in the parking lot, hurt and powerless.