Page 49 of Elixir of Strife
He clutched a handful of his shirt as he jerked upward, as if rocked by a spasm. “But it hurts.”
“What does? Your body, your blood? Your ego?”
He squinted at me in annoyance, his voice reverting to normal. “Would it kill you to baby me a little? Geez. I only saved the day, after all.”
Vera swept in between us, a wisp of a woman, but her presence taking up so much space. “You did indeed, Leonardo, and what a feat that was.”
She smashed her palm dramatically against his forehead. Leon yelped as his body bucked upward, because that was the only actual pain he’d felt in the past couple of minutes. I tried not to smirk.
“You see, Leonardo? You’re perfectly fine. Your temperature is cooler than usual, but that’s only because you’ve been working with so much water magic.”
She prodded at his chest and stomach, fingers pressing with surgical, clinical curiosity. Leon squirmed and thrashed, yowling as she palpated his internal organs from the outside, or whatever the hell it was the Jade Spider was actually doing. I clapped a hand over my mouth, the laughter threatening to break.
“Ah, as I suspected. You’ve simply absorbed an unusual amount of sorcerous water. To a normal human, that might even be fatal.”
“You see?” Leon glared at me accusingly. “Potentially fatal, she says.”
Vera jabbed him between the ribs with her finger, eliciting an especially mournful howl. Two drama queens. A match made in heaven, or my own personal hell.
“But to you, someone who has presumable familiarity with aquamancy? Why, this is simply a minor setback. I expect you’ll be urinating several times an hour. You know, as your body rids itself of the excess fluid.”
Leon blinked, forehead already creasing with worry. “But — for how long?”
Vera inspected her nails. “Oh, a few days, give or take.”
“What?” Leon swung his legs across the couch, finally finding a reason to sit up straight. “Actualdaysof constantly pissing?”
“Aww,” I whispered, setting my drink down. “Poor little piss baby.”
I memorized the look of pure, offended horror on Leon’s face, knowing I’d be able to enjoy it for days on end, or as long as it took him to eliminate his, ah, excess fluid. I didn’t really relish his suffering, though.
Hey, he knew I was more than happy to help.
“Don’t worry about it so much.” I sat next to him on the sofa, slinging one reassuring arm across his shoulders. This close, he still smelled like seawater, a day at the beach. “I can always hold it for you.”
Leon’s glower slashed my soul to ribbons. If looks could kill.
The others who’d been trapped in the webbed dimension — Daniel Lyon, Edel Wise, Flora DeVere, even Divina Brillante — had reappeared in Silk along with me and Leon, just as soon as Vera’s spell expired. Without Leon’s effort, without Bakunawa the sea dragon, we might have drowned in there. Returning with the waters intact would have drowned everyone in Silk, too.
But no trace of the Quartz Spider.
Still, Vera was nothing if not prepared, a squad of Masques already waiting with her to sort out the web of utter chaos we’d all been entangled in. Shocking that the Masques decided in our favor at all.
They reminded Flora that her tiny “miscommunication” about the thousand — or was it actually a hundred bottles of perfume — would result in a public relations scandal for her company that straddled both the magical and the mundane world. I wasn’t a lawyer, but it would likely create problems for her in other areas, too. She backed down quickly after that, but not before throwing daggered looks at me, and Leon, and the Succulence people.
Daniel Lyon had to walk away empty-handed — which meant that we wouldn’t be paid our finder’s fee, either. Edel was chill about the whole thing, once again, only there for the ride. Leon and I would have been more disappointed, except that we did walk away with our lives and our limbs intact. To her credit, Vera did say that she’d make sure our next job was extra juicy.
Which could mean anything, really. It wasn’t often that I could look forward to something and at once experience a deep and abiding dread.
That left a waterlogged Divina Brillante, who hissed, kicked, and spat as the Masques led her away. And by that I meant they teleported her straight out of Silk and back to wherever they held people for questioning. The last look she gave me was one of venomous hatred. The last look I gave her? A satisfied smile.
But again, that still left the Quartz Spider at large. Maybe his former sister spider had some answers.
“Vera, that place you threw us into, that pocket dimension. Where was that, exactly? How?”
She wrinkled her nose, looking at me down the length of it. “You have your secrets, gentlemen, and I have mine. Like your dragons, eh, Witch Boy?”
Leon’s eyes flitted away, his gaze falling on the floor, his lips pursed. Aww. I wrapped my arm around his waist, hugging him tight, trying to squeeze all the guilt out of him.
