Page 9 of Icy Heart, Empty Chest
The absurdity nearly made me stress-laugh. “Of course they wouldn’t know the
difference in the scars.” Damien, you beautiful bastard, why?
He let go of his collar and zipped the sweater back up. “But you would. Your mother was a great healer. And you have her gifts as well.”
I scoffed. “Barely. I do cuts and small burns and that’s it.”
“Still a nymph, Cora. Can’t hide that.”
“I’m not hiding it. Just out of practice.” My tone was a few degrees more testy than
I would have liked. I looked back at his chest. “Why would you do that? Shooting up drugs would be a better choice,” I hissed. “I thought you were smarter than that!”
His face went ice cold. “It was borne out of necessity.” I get it, we stop being friends and I lose the right to tell you not to do completely insane things.
I looked left and right down the aisle before continuing. “Let’s say I’m dumb enough to believe you had a witch take your kelpie heart out. What happened to it?” I hissed.
The coincidence to the other day was getting to be uncanny.
He sighed, defeatedly. “You were never dumb. I definitely was.” He ran a hand across his eyes.
Merv waddled out of the kitchen with a turkey club sandwich. I smiled and reached for a fry as he put it down.
“Let me know if you need anything else, kid.”
“Will do!” He waddled back to the kitchen. It was not unnoticed that a smuggler and a cop were conversing together.
“Let me repeat myself. What happened to it?” I started on my fries again.
“It was taken from the witch who took it out.” He looked tired, almost haggard.
I peered over my sandwich at him curiously. “How long had she had it?”
“A little over three years.”
I nearly spit out my water, eyes bugging out again.
A coughing spell later and I patted my mouth with my napkin.
“You’ve been wandering in the city for greater than three years without your
heart.” It wasn’t a question but a statement. “Did the witch explain the inherent risks to that spell?”
He groaned. “Of course she did. I paid her handsomely to do it.”
The dekartios spell was only used by the most experienced of witches. The healer witches did it alongside the doctors for complex heart cases. Even then, it was dangerous. If the heart was damaged at all, the owner could die without warning. If it was out of the body too long, the owner could die. In the case of the kelpie, their tissue was so sought after that any on the market would create a bidding war. Some kelpies sacrificed some heart function to give tissue to those in need.
The thing is, the longer the heart is out of the body, the less emotion he’d feel. I guess he was faking many day-to-day interactions. I remember my mother telling me when I was younger that it was a double-edged sword, if for some reason it had to stay out of the body.
I covered my mouth and nose with my hands, just staring at him, trying to process why he took this big of a risk. I was utterlydumbfounded. Damien was always smart, always a hard worker. Top ten in our high school class. He could have picked any college or career he wanted. He wasn’t stupid. In fact, he erred towards the side of caution most over everything. It was how I remembered him anyway.
“I assume you were going to put it back in? That’s why you contacted the witch?” My appetite was near gone. Something extreme must have happened to him.
“I knew I was running out of time but she got to me first, said someone took it. Out
of nowhere I started to get some emotions again, which, I was told, was a bad omen. Near total system shut down.” His laugh was humorless.
“Damien...what happened to you?” I asked incredulously.
