The mages left her half-repaired on the hospital bed after two hours, declaring her body too laden with magic to continue healing. Her ankle throbbed in time with her heartbeat. Sheglared at the IV drip that sat unattached at her bedside. With her now stable, the Curse Ward worked far more slowly. The infirmary TV playing the 24-hour news cycle completed her torture.
A low whistle interrupted her seething. “God, girl, they really hate you, huh?” Mykel looked down at her with an impressed look. “Here, you need this more than I do.” The taller girl expertly hooked up the IV to her arm, the small prick causing tiny rivulets of blood to flow because Gentry’s hemophilia hadn’t disappeared. She was still cursed.
The pain medicine burned her veins. “How’d ya do that?” Gentry said, this time she was the one to slur.
“Drugs. I know all about my art”—Mykel settled into the chair next to the infirmary bed—“now onto business. I ran that software on your school laptop like you asked me to. Hooked me right up to Lucinda’s phone calls like you said it would.”
Elation mixed with the pain medicine. Years of advanced online schooling were the one thing the Curse Ward hadn’t deprived her of. She’d taught herself how to get past the security of her school laptop, and they hadn’t bothered to put patients and employees on a different subnet. The idiots. “Did she call anyone and kiss up to them about my condition?” She tried not to sound nervous. This entire plan rode on the assumption Lucinda would call the very people who her dad had sold her out to. The last puzzle piece.
“Some old bat. Lydia. Mean as hell. She halved her contribution to the Curse Ward until your medical documents are sent back to her,” Mykel said, scratching her arm and glancing at a camera whose microphones had been conveniently disabled. “You really aren’t crazy like everyone says you are, huh?”
I don’ t recognize that name.Gentry sucked in a breath. She’d memorized all the local witch covens, knew their leadershipstructures from studying thousands of messages from a private black market server selling body parts, artifacts of power, and all other materials needed for dark magic. As far as she knew, there was no Lydia on any of their rosters.
“What is your curse?” Mykel asked, interrupting Gentry’s spiraling worries. “I’m guessing if you were right about the mages not wanting to cure you, then you know just what it is you’re cursed with, right?”
For the first time since she’d met her roommate, Gentry looked,reallylooked, at Mykel. The tall woman was dressed in their typical medical standard outfit — a pair of blue jeans (no pockets) and a white shirt — but she’d painted the shirt with a gorgeous butterfly, the tips of its iridescent wings reaching her thin shoulder blades and ending at her hips. A fine sheen of sweat covered Mykel’s skin, making her shaggy brown hair cling to her forehead, and her pupils, ringed with the deep green of her irises, were diluted like she’d been the one to receive a dose of pain medicine.
“I’m not quite sure,” Gentry admitted, “but I think I’m taking someone’s injuries for them. I was never hemophiliac before. And apparently this Lydia woman wants me healthy at any cost. That’s why I'm stuck here. So they can monitor me.” A thought occurred. “What are you cursed with? You’re diagnosed.” Unlike Gentry and the newer patients, Mykel hadn’t had to wear the iron to visitation.
Her roommate shrugged. “Nothing as interesting as that.” She rubbed at her arms and rocked, looking anywhere but at Gentry’s face. “Oh he’s handsome.” She nodded at the small, sad 35-inch display which played the news. Without asking permission, she grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
A banner across the screen flashed DRAYER NETHERTON ADDRESSES SKADRA CITY. A bland, traditionally handsome, white man with a square jar and sandy blonde hair stood behinda podium. Perhaps the medicine was finally kicking in, but Gentry sat up straighter. He looked familiar…
Yet when he droned on with the typical politician bullshit they all used when trying to get elected — equality and how all humans, magic or no, needed to mend broken bridges — she couldn’t pin him down. When he gestured with his hands glowing like sparklers, she scowled.A witch in office. Just what we needed.The pain med burning in her veins did little to abate her annoyance.
Unable to stop herself from listening further, Gentry scowled at the noncommittal, uninspired speech. Middle ground was the man’s stance on everything. So disingenuous.The man is a witch, and he doesn’t condemn the government for conscripting witch kids into their military programs?She hated witches, yet even she found the practice disgusting.
From the lack of cheers from his crowd, she wondered if anyone was falling for his act.
She reached for the remote control on her bedstand, but found nothing. “Hey Mykel, can you—” Something ripped through the flesh of her right shoulder and interrupted her question. It burned like someone had stabbed her with a hot poker. “Fuck!” The curse left her in a gush of air.
“Are you okay?” Mykel asked, her emerald eyes wide with concern.
Fighting the urge to writhe in agony on the hospital bed, Gentry touched her shoulder. Blood, hot and gushing, spurted onto her fingertips. “Shit, shit, shit.” She grabbed her blanket and pressed it against the wound, before looking around the empty hospital room. “Get down, Mykel,” she ordered, “someone shot me.” She’d never been shot before, but somehow she was certain.
“Oh.” She heard her roommate suck in a breath and Gentry looked up at the television screen. Screams came from the speakers, the sound hollow since the volume was still low.
The screaming ceased as the live stream switched back to the news pundits, who looked pale in their stage makeup. One woman, a blond in a tight purple suit, asked, “Did Drayer Netherton just get shot?”
On that question, the news cut to commercial. Mykel ran out of the room to call for a mage, leaving Gentry alone as an election commercial played. It featured the very man who’d been shot seconds ago.
“He’s the one,” Gentry whispered to herself, forgetting her pain as she tried to remember that warehouse with so many masked figures. That memory was always so blurry, always filled with terror. But there was no denying it now. She was cursed, and she’d found the man whose injuries had taunted her for years. Elation and rage filled her as she stared at the stupid witch’s face. “I found you.I fucking found you.”
When Mykel returned with a small crowd of panicked mages behind her, the hospital room television was turned off. For the first time in years, Gentry took her medicine without complaint.
two
Kit
Kit sat at the base of the wooden watch tower and ran his palms over the rich black soil he’d spread over the desert sands. The moist soil stuck to his palms while the small gritty bits of rock wedged themselves into his nail beds, and he gritted his teeth. He hated dirty fingernails, but he needed to expel the magic building in his palms, the pressure prickling and making his knuckles itch.
His palms heated to the point of pain, but he held the magic back from the soil by sheer fucking will. He hadn’t vented in months, and all attempts in the last couple weeks had been failures.
Kit’s pounding headache and chills meant things were reaching a critical state. If he didn’t have a clean vent soon, then he’d likely have to visit a doctor. An embarrassing trip he’d rather avoid.
When his arms felt as if they were about to burst into flame, Kit finally let loose. CRACK. The mix of soil and sand exploded in all directions, spraying him in the face.
He wanted so badly to collapse into the sand, but instead Kit wiped the sand off his face and dug into his jeans pocket for the thin wooden box with shaking fingers. A quick pop revealed a hypodermic needle filled with bright liquid silver. Witchsbane. He twisted the cap off the snake fang needle and plunged it into the bulging vein at the base of his wrist.
