Page 25 of Currency in Flesh

Sean’s voice sounds like a rusted hinge. “Yeah, it must have been so hard for you to drive a Porsche, wear designer clothes, live in a fourteen million dollar house. Poor Gracie.”

I hadn’t realized my fingers had clasped around the scalpel until I swung it through the air. The surgically honed blade slid through the flesh and sinew of his cheek like a hot knife through butter. The skin parted, and a vibrant torrent of red emerged, streaming down his neck and soaking into the filthy clothing he still wore. He roared, fighting against the restraints and thrashing his head wildly. Blood splattered the floor, my chest, my cheek, and the small instrument clattered to the floor. I reached for a hand towel atop the table, doing my best to clean myself while Sean continued to shout and curse.

His words sounded slurred, and when I had finished rubbing at my skin with the dry terrycloth, I looked closely at his face. I must have severed a nerve or muscle or something, judging by the asymmetrical tilt of his mouth and the way his lower eyelid sagged, exposing the bloodshot white of his eye. The cut had been a clean one, a perfect, arcing line running from his cheekbone nearly to the corner of his lips. Unwelcome nausea roiled deep in my gut—guilt trying to make a home where it didn’t belong.No.I wasnotallowing myself to feel a single second of guilt in this. Lady Cora had orchestrated his reckoning, and laid the duty of its execution on my shoulders. It had been a gift, as well as a lesson.

“Oh, shit,” I said flatly. “Did I get you with that? Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” I stood, walking slowly to thediscarded scalpel and retrieving it. Dropping it into a convenient sharps container, I sat back down. There was an impressive array of tools laid out before me—Sean should be grateful my fingers had landed on something so kind.

“Do you remember my mom’s funeral?” I asked without bothering to look, still perusing the selection of things Lady Cora had chosen.

I heard the wet slap of spit on stone, and turned to see Sean’s lopsided mouth struggling to free itself from a dribble of bloody drool. His eyes held pure hatred, and I knew if he could, he would have killed me. Ignoring him, I went on.

“Oh, no. You wouldn’t remember it. You were in Dallas and it would have been easy for you to fly to Chicago, but instead, you went home. I stood alone in that church for four hours, surrounded by strangers who thought I was the villain for not remembering the fucking prayers. She diedalone, because you canceled my flight the week before.”

I let my fingers trail along the handle of some kind of hooked pliers. “The hospice nurse told me she asked for me, that they tried to call and it went straight to voicemail.Yournumber was listed—” my voice cracked. “You didn’t even fucking tell me she called!”

My scream echoed across the room, drawing out my long-overdue admission. I hadn’t even found out until the following morning, when the charge nurse found my number in my mother’s phone. I remembered throwing up, my knees falling to the hard tile. I remembered how every inch of me hurt, and how much of that pain had been at Sean’s hands.

A dark, frenzied need for action seeped into my muscles, pushing me forward. I stalked around the room, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides as I struggled to contain all the regret and shame and pain coursing through me.

But I didn’t have to contain it.

My eyes settled on a foot-long, black metal flashlight. Ipicked it up, feeling the weight in my palms. It felt good. The wound on Sean’s cheek had stopped bleeding freely, coagulated blood holding the edges together. Though his right side still hung lower, slack pulling down the fine wrinkles at the corner of his eye, he looked more like the Sean I remembered. He looked like the man who had held me down and violated me while my mother lay dying alone halfway across the country. He looked like a man who hadn’t yet grasped what was coming.

I slammed the heavy flashlight against his hands, feeling the fine bones shatter. It wasn’t enough. Raising it over my head, I struck again and again, the percussive beat making music of my husband’s blubbering sobs.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ilooked at Sean’s ruined hands for only a fraction of a second before my guts flipped and I whirled, the contents of my stomach splattering against the floor. It wasn’t regret or remorse, but seeing a human body maimed so thoroughly was, frankly, unsettling. His garbled cries had quieted to a more manageable weeping so I grabbed the already bloodied hand towel and tossed it over the pile of meat and bone that had once been his fingers.

Lady Cora’s face flashed through my thoughts, and as though summoned, I heard her speak from behind me. “My, my, my, you wicked little thing,” she remarked. Her heels clicked against the floor as she walked around Sean’s restrained body. “I suppose he won’t be touching you without consent ever again, now will he?”

I swallowed down the sour taste of vomit and discomfort before replying. “He deserved it.”

“That, he did,” she agreed. “Are you through with him?” And before I could reply, “For today, I mean. I doubt that a few destroyed fingers is enough restitution for all he has done.”

Summoning confidence I wasn’t sure I had, I glanced at Sean’s face. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, shot through with broken blood vessels and unshed tears. His mouth nauseated me, white foam and flecks of spittle had gathered at the corners like old, chewed food. He looked so weak, so easily broken, and it filled me with an unnamable emotion. Had it been this simple for him to strip me down to bones and fear? Was I ever as strong and determined as I had imagined, or was I always a pitiful thing like the one he had become?

Gentle fingers slid over the denim at my hips, embracing me from behind, right at the swell of my stomach. “You were never truly weak, pet. You were a songbird afraid to attract the teeth of the cat. You were always able to sing.”

My nose prickled, and I knew if I kept speaking, I would cry. But it didn’t feel like a failure to cry in front of Lady Cora. Vulnerable, yes. Shameful? Not anymore. “This doesn’t feel like something a songbird would do. Honestly, is this him paying his due, or me letting out all the anger I’ve allowed to fester for so long?”

“I would ask—does it matter? Is one of those things better than the other?”

“I feel like one of them makes me a good person and the other doesn’t. I don’t want to be like him.” My voice broke on the last word. An unwanted tear slipped down my cheek, hot and fast, and I tried to blink away the rest.

Lady Cora’s face leaned into the curve of my neck, pressing a kiss to the soft spot below my ear. Every inch of my body responded, shifting to angle myself closer to her, giving her as much access to me as possible. I went from sodden to molten in an instant. “I do not care much whether a soul is good or not. Goodness can often equate to a lack of ambition, a fear of judgment. I will tell you a little secret—” She kissed my neck again, her lips parting so she could taste my skin. “The vast majority of souls who make their way to the isles have donethings you would consider terrible. The only true innocents counted in their number are the children. The difference between the pit and the isles is how their actions affected the world around them. People like your husband use others, decent people, as stepping stones on the way to their goals. They think nothing of snapping a person’s spine if it means they are an inch closer to what they want. Those in the isles do not rise alone. They make the world a bit more tolerable for the same people your husband would crush beneath his feet. When they are gone, the world is left better by their actions.”

“But we are not a part of the world anymore, we exist here, in the Underworld. What I do to him has no bearing on the world above. It’s just one bitter woman getting revenge.” My hands had begun to shake. I don’t know why she thought that would make me feel better. If anything, I felt worse.

Her grip moved back to my hips and she spun me to face her. This close, I had to tip my chin up to meet her eyes, and she looked down at me with something vicious in the set of her jaw. Lady Cora’s thumb found my chin and she silently commanded my mouth to relax, her feather-light caress across my lower lip. She bent to claim me, the midnight sweetness of her coating my tongue like a deep, rich port. I moaned into her, my breath quickening, the sounds of Sean behind us fading into an intelligible buzzing.

She pulled away and I leaned forward, chasing her touch, and she spoke in a low, smoky murmur. “Some people like sweets, others enjoy heat. My favorite taste is bitterness, blossom. Let me drink of you and delight in the way you reclaim what he stole.”

I hummed in agreement, nodding quickly. “Please.”

“I told you that you’d beg prettily for me one day, pet.”

I realized in that moment, she was right. I would beg for her. I’d grovel and plead and crawl across the floor on hands and knees. I’d do anything she asked of me and then some. “Do you want me to beg?” I asked. I needed… something. I wasn’t sure what, but I was certain she could provide it.

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