Page 116 of Midnight Auto Parts

Ears flicking forward, Anunit listened, but I couldn’t pick out anything worth her attention.

“Well?”I held out my arms to my sides.“What are you waiting for?”

Whatever she had in mind, whatever this would cost me, I wanted it finished before Kierce and Josie got here and talked me out of it.

“The rest of you to arrive.”

“The rest of…”I dropped my arms to my sides.“You mean my body?”

“What else would I mean?”

“You could have asked me to meet you here. You didn’t have to soul-snatch me again.”

“I decided this course of action would expedite matters.”

Twenty minutes later, Kierce appeared on the rim of the pit, cradling my body against his chest.

Anunit took one look at him and began to growl. Had I not already agreed, I would have folded like a paper fan.“I said I’ll do it.”I sank my hand into her ruff, as if that would hold her.“Leave him alone.”

“You are certain?”She searched my face.“You will accept this burden?”

“You haven’t left me with much choice.”I sensed she required verbal consent to proceed.Ha. As if I had any say in the matter.“Yes, I accept.”

“Thank you, Frankie Talbot.”

The form under my fingers grew warmer,realer, and I clenched my spectral hand in her soft fur.

“Keep the final bone. A link between us. I will not abandon you before you understand your role.”

Before I could exhale with relief, she clamped her jaw on my shoe. Not my spectral foot. My actual foot. She slung it off while Kierce shielded as much of my body as he could. But Anunit struck fast as a snake, and he couldn’t do more than watch as she sank her teeth into my now-bare foot.

Blood flowed down Kierce’s arm, wetting the soil. I didn’t hurt. Yet. I saw the wound, but it was like I was watching it happen to someone else.“Blood to seal our pact?”

“Yes.”She swallowed once.“And bone to bind it.”

“B-b-bone?”I gaped at her bloody maw then my bloody foot and understood.“You bit off my toe?”

Mytoe.

She hadn’t even let me choose which one I wanted to lose. She went straight for the pinky. My favorite.

Okay, so I didn’t have a favorite, but still.

She could have asked before hobbling me for life.

“I would recommend not going into shock away from your body,”she counseled.“It is simply a toe.”

“Kierce was right.”I did my best to steady my thudding heart.“He’s never met a god with all ten toes.”

Bumping her head under my chin, she rasped a laugh.“And, like as not, he never will.”

With those parting words, she dissolved into swirling motes that sank into her bleached skull.

Then Kierce was there, on his hands and knees, reaching an arm into the pit for me, but my soul was anchored in the bottom until I completed this task.

“Patch up my toe, will you?” I drummed up a smile for him. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

“Frankie…” His eyes flashed silver and wild. “Whatever she promised you?—”

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