A few minutes passed before the necromancer spoke again, “Your soul is all tangled up. That’s for sure.” She worried a plump bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s really hard to make too much sense of it.” She released her hand and brandished the knife. “It’ll help if you bleed a little.”
Gentry swallowed her nerves. “My blood doesn’t clot well, so can it be a small cut?”
“Sure, here. You do it.” Wren slid the knife in her direction.
Cognizant that her body was still slightly ill from Clea healing her, Gentry picked it up. It was an absurdly big, heavy knife, like the kind one would use to cleave meat in half. Experimentally, she tapped her thumb against the sharp edge. It did the job. Blood soon dripped.
“Perfect.” Wren was already grabbing her hand, and turning it over palm-up. “Now, can you tell me about the man you’re tied to? Like his essence? It’ll help me find the bit of his soul that’s stitched to yours.”
“And do what?”
“Well…” The necromancer looked sheepish. “I read up on it a little today, and I think an excision of his soul from yours is what will work. I won’t do it right away, cause, y’know, I don’twantto kill you. We’ll have to prepare you so that the excision doesn’tput your body in shock. But the first step is I need to learn what’s his and what’s yours, so y’know, I know what to cut.”
“Um, I won’t be able to tell you much about the man,” Gentry said, choosing not to think about how uncertain Wren sounded about cutting into a part of her soul. “I only met him once, and my memory’s been tampered with. I can tell you he isn’t very nice and that he’s rich.”
“Oh! I was ready for that answer.” Wren brightened and then looked over at the large black canvas bag. “Merle, can you bring the tonic out?”
To Gentry’s horror, the canvas bag started shifting on its own. Adrienne, still not looking up from her book, lifted her elbows up from the table to allow the ugliest octopus plushie Gentry had ever seen drag itself out from the bag. It held a bottle in one of its tentacles, while the rest of the tentacles dragged its oversized head across the table in an unsettling shuffle. Its button eyes looked mean.
Nonplussed, Wren took the vial from the octopus’s grip and patted its head. Its tentacles pushed away from the contact. “Good boy,” the necromancer cooed, “now, back in the bag.”
Gentry didn’t speak until the thing had disappeared back in the bag, “What. Was. That.” She didn’t mean to sound freaked, but it wasn’t every day she saw something that scary.
“Oh, Wren can put souls into inanimate objects,” Adrienne said casually as she turned a page, “she changes the body of her little hellspawn Merle all the time. The guy’s an asshole.”
“Hey! Merle can be sweet,” Wren protested, “and I don’t just put him into any plushie, you know. He has to agree. The octopus is his favorite.”
“Because it’s scary. Like I said, that little fox is an asshole.”
“Wait… Merle is a fox?” Gentry tried her best to keep up.
Wren smiled dreamily. “Yes, a fork-tongued fox to be exact. I wish you could see him. He’s pretty cute. Much cuter dead thanhe was alive. But anyway”—the little woman shook her head as if clearing away memories and tapped on the bottle in her hand—“you need to start taking this tonic every night. It’ll help you get in more touch with your soul, as well as the part of his soul that’s inside of you. Then you should be able to tell me more about him.”
Gingerly, Gentry accepted the tonic. It felt warm compared to Wren’s skin.
“Careful not to take too much”—Adrienne at last put her book down—“it was my first time brewing that concoction. Couldn’t believe how old the grimoire was I got it out of. I tested it on a rat and it’s still sleeping. Take a capful — no more.”
That was when the two women launched an assault of information dumping on Gentry. Beyond the tonic, Gentry would have to meditate three times today (Adrienne had told her tolook it upwhen she’d asked how) in an attempt to be more in touch with her inner self. And finally…
“As you become more in tune with the intruder’s soul versus what’s yours, it’ll help if you mirror the emotions it’s feeling so you can learn more about it,” Wren said firmly, “the more you feel like him, the more you’ll be able to tell me about him.”
A chill went down Gentry’s spine at the thought of channeling any part of Drayer Netherton’s psyche. But she saw only earnestness in Wren’s eyes, andknewthat the necromancer wouldn’t lie or try to hurt her. “So will the emotions I feel be from a disjointed part of Drayer’s soul or will it be what he actually feels in real-time?”
The necromancer smiled sheepishly. “I’m not sure. This is all from research that I read last-minute in the Weaver library. Well”—she blushed—“Adrienne helped.”
The two women exchanged glances which made Gentry feel very much like a third-wheel. But she focused on that vital pieceof information. “The Weaver library. Would they keep execution records?”
Adrienne answered, “Yes, they keep all kinds of perfectly boring shit in there. They still don’t keep digital records, y’know. Our leader, Darisius, insists that paper is more secure.”
A little bit of hope unfurled in Gentry’s chest. “Could you get me any records on the Cobalts?” She saw a bit of aggression flare to life on Adrienne’s face. “I’d read them in your presence and give them right back,” she amended hastily, “but it’s related to how I was cursed. I think.”
“I’m not your errand girl, and neither is Wren,” the Weaver said firmly, her voice cold.
Wren gave her girlfriend a sad expression, and that was how they left it off for the night. The two Weavers packed their stuff up, Wren far more cheerily than the moody Adrienne, and Gentry watched in wide-eyed silence as ‘Merle’ moved objects back into the bag, this time without his octopus body. The objects moved scarily fast, just like how she’d imagine a fox to move.
Then Wren said goodbye for the both of them, promised she’d be back tomorrow night at around the same time, and then they were gone.
After putting the gun back into the nightstand, Gentry immediately sank back into bed after gingerly swallowing a capful of the tonic. It made her tongue tingle and tasted like smoked ham. The sensation was altogether unpleasant, but she didn’t dare brush her teeth again because she wasn’t sure if that would dilute its effects somehow.
