Page 75 of Of Flame and Fate

It’s simply magic.

I move slowly. All the furniture in Johnny’s loft has been pushed against the wall, creating a large open space where he sits at the center. He’s barely dressed, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else. Piles of broken glass lie around him, separated according to color, the largest piece, a red one, clutched tightly in his hand.

“What are you doing?” Gemini asks.

“I’ll replace the vase,” Johnny says.

“That’s not what I asked,” Gemini growls, more unnerved by the thick and strange magic layering the air than what Johnny has done to the room and to himself.

That’s the difference between me and him. Magic aside, this is a disturbing sight. “Are you all right?” I ask, certain Johnny has snapped.

“Would you care if I wasn’t?” he asks, smirking.

“I would,” I respond truthfully.

My honesty, and I suppose the concern shadowing my features, erases his cockiness, leaving me with the young man I first saw, and all the vulnerability I noticed.

He straightens, exposing his stomach and the blood drenching his torso. The damaged skin where the images of his bandmates once lay, as well as the other tats we destroyed, healed within a few hours. Most witches require healing herbs, or the attention of a mystical healer to tend to their injuries, otherwise they mend at a human’s pace. Johnny can heal himself. It’s one of his gifts as a Fate. But here he is, covered with blood from injuries he self-inflicted.

At first I think he’s cutting and he’s more damaged than any of us suspected. I rush into the kitchen and snag a towel, hurrying back to Johnny.

“Taran,” Gemini warns, hooking my arm and keeping me in place.

I slip from his hold. “He needs help. I’m not going to stand here and watch him bleed.

I kneel in front of Johnny, noting how he watches me when I grip his shoulder and press the towel against his stomach. He’s shocked I’m being kind to him, or more to the point, that anyone would show him kindness.

“It’s okay,” Johnny tells me.

I meet his face, growing sad as I take in every speck of his being. Everything about Johnny screams he’s endured too much too soon, and all he ever wanted was love. He’s screwed up. Be it his life, his lifestyle, or something more, he’s nothing but a ball of insecurity and misery, carefully glossed over with tattoos and cloaked beneath the façade of a rock god. “It’s really not,” I tell him quietly.

He tilts his head, his eyes brimming. I think he’s going to cry. Instead he offers me a small smile laced with enough gratitude to warm my soul. “I’m not hurt,” he says. “I’m just working.”

He places his hand over mine, stiffening at the sound of Gemini’s growls. Very carefully, he guides my hand across his torso, using me to help him wipe. I notice cuts, lots of them digging deep. But as he lifts my hand away, I realize they’re not just slices across his skin, rather an outline of a bird with long feathers.

Like an animated movie coming to life across a screen, colors of blue, green, red, and gold glisten and spread along his skin, each vibrant tone matching the pieces of the broken glass laid out around Johnny.

The bird turns its head, blinking once before shaking out its long feathers.

“It’s a peacock,” Johnny tells me. He releases my hand. I was so captivated by the image, I hadn’t realized he was still holding me. “Not one like in a zoo or the wild, more like how I see one in my head.” He leans back on his heels, exposing the entirety of the image carved into the length of his torso.

The peacock sits up and away from Johnny’s stomach, keeping its lower half seated as if nesting. It watches me closely, clicking its small beak several times before its tail feathers fan out in a beautiful spray of gold.

The tips are long enough to tickle Johnny’s skin. He chuckles. “Okay, now he’s just showing off.”

“He’s alive?” I ask.

Johnny’s smile vanishes. “As much as he can be,” he replies. “He’s a part of me, my magic, I mean.”

“Can you communicate with him?” I scan the remainder of his exposed skin, including the sleeve tattoos inked into his arms.

“Yes,” Johnny answers. “But not as much as I’d like to.”

“What do you mean?”

The peacock settles back into Johnny’s skin, becoming merely another graphic.

Johnny presses his palms into the floor and straightens his legs. “When I was little, I didn’t have any friends, and I sure as shit didn’t have any fans.” His attention falls to the peacock. “People thought I was weird and kept their distance.” He huffs. “And my folks kept me plenty far away from other witches. I got lonely and started making friends of my own.”

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