Page 56 of Taking Jenny
My stomach twisted. I still couldn’t believe I had been living with a magician at Mal’s palace. Dining with him. Joking with him like we were friends…but he was trying to save her. And he was succeeding. And despite my aversion to magicians in general, I had to hold onto that.
Rummaging through the forest, my eyes and nose were perked to the shape and smell. I kept sniffing the air, hoping to find that foul stench. Digging in the underbrush, I tried to bait a pigbane out with the taste of my fingers, before one had the chance to bite me.
I tried to stay focused on the hunt, but I kept coming back to the haunting image of Jenny’s bloody face.She can’t die when she’s mad at me or I have a chance to explain what happened with Mal.We hadn’t been together long, but the quality of our time together outweighed any deficiency in the quantity of our time together.
To distract myself from the threat of finger loss, I thought about Jenny.As she wakes up, I will explain everything to her. Mal likes us both. There’s no reason to be jealous.And I would apologize for holding him against her, when I had fallen for his charms myself. I had been such a fool to deny what had been right in front of my face the whole time.
The truth was, I had been angry with myself for being attracted to someone I thought I should have hated. After hearing nefarious rumors about Malice Ripper for so long, I had believed them to be true. It never occurred to me to question them.
So perhaps all magicians are not evil, either.
It struck me that so much of what I had grown up to believe was based on rumors and folklore and innuendo. Aproper education required money, and my family had none, so what I knew was mostly experiential. My knowledge of spaceship maintenance was due to trying to keep my uncle’s ship running, because he was one of the few Orne’s who made any kind of money. But there was a whole world outside of ship maintenance.
Maybe I should be questioning more of what I think I know.
Then I caught a whiff of foul death and felt something spherical beneath a bush. Carefully, I rolled it toward myself onto the path. The pigbane snapped its jaw as it rolled on the hunt for anything to eat. It was the size of a human’s head, with no eyes, ears, or nose. Only a permanently hungry mouth that housed dagger-sharp teeth. I used the bottom edge of my shirt to scoop it up, folding my shirt over it, then ran back to the lab.
When I got down the stairs with the flower, I asked, “Where do you want it?”
Surge looked to Mal with a gleam in his eye, before he asked me, “You really caught a pigbane?”
“Yes,” I said, trying to catch my breath from my run back. “Where do you want it?”
He chuckled. “Drop it off in the clean sink behind you.”
I did, then turned to see Jenny. She was on her back on the exam table, sleeping peacefully. No more blood on her face. Soon, Discord and Mal came to see the pigbane. The flower rolled around in the sink, biting for food.
Discord looked impressed. “How did you do that?”
“When I didn’t see one near the trees, I started feeling around under the bushes. Found this one.”
Discord blinked at me in shock. “You stuck your hand under the bushes, where you couldn’t see them?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes widened. “You know they eat fingers, right?”
“That’s why I did it,” I said simply. “Fingers are good bait.”
Mal’s brows rose. “You risked your fingers to find the pigbane?”
“So?” I had no idea why they were making a big deal out of it. I would have risked anything if it meant saving Jenny’s life.
Surge laughed beneath his breath, and Mal sent him a sharp look. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s alittlefunny.”
“What is?” I asked, feeling like I’d missed something.
Surge, still looking amused, wiped his hands on a cloth and stepped back from Jenny’s side. “Tiger, you have a problem with magicians, so I sent you to find a pigbane to get you out of my hair while I worked. I didn’t actually need it. Though…” he glanced back at the creature gnashing in the sink. “I’ll definitely be able to use it in some of my formulas.”
“Wait…you tricked me?”
“I didn’t trick you,” he said cheerfully. “I redirected you. And I can’t believe you carried that thing so close to your body. Weren’t you scared it would bite you?”
Anger flared for a beat, but it dissolved before I could fully embrace it. He was right. I did have a problem with magicians and I had charged into his lab, ready to tear him away from Jenny, ready to fight, and he’d only been trying to save her life.
I exhaled a breath and ran my fingers through my hair. “The only thing that scared me was the thought of losing Jenny. Nothing else registered as a concern.”
