Page 10 of An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
They end up on the living room floor atop a forest green area rug Ophelia thrifted to stop them from tripping on the half-missing floorboard between the couch and the coffee table that has its own gravitational pull. The carpet is the nicest thing in the whole house.
Ophelia decides she’s their tech support because all the books are horrible to read unless you love dry academia in a language you’re not especially well versed in. A thing he doesn’t love either, but she callednot itfirst.
Both hunching, Ophelia over her old laptop—from a deluded summer of their fifteenth year when either of them thought college was a possibility—and him over a wide array of books he can only sort of read, they brainstorm and research.
The Topher list ends up looking pretty good: search the Nystrom family online to see what dirt can be had; an exhaustive list of which protection wards to put on them; which cleanses, scrubs, and smudges they could try on Topher; have Ophelia look at Topher; and a tarot reading never hurts.
Easy and reasonably crafted to string Topher along effectively. While helping him. They’re not monsters.
Except on a technical level—where he’s got a demon in him and she’s an undead spirit walker or something.
CHAPTER SIX
He’s always impressed with how much blood the meat suits hold. Like they’re under high pressure, barely contained, everything waiting to flow out at the smallest of punctures. Which he gleefully does, licking the ensuing warmth that dribbles down his arm. He even laps at the wood floor, relishing every sweet copper drop, grit, and the exquisite tang of fear that seasoned the blood before spilling out. There’s no shame in this act, only joy.
And hunger.
And a confusing sense that he doesn’t want to mess up his clothes.
Reaching deeply into the meat, he pulls, delighting in the tension, the give, the eventual slow tearing as a kidney comes free. A half-remembered biology lesson flits through his mind, dragging him out of the simple pleasure of eating. He doesn’t stop, though, pressing organ to lips and biting. Juice and pleasure fill his mouth with a groan, and something shifts, no longer savoring but devouring, ravenous as he takes one bite and then another. Both hands reach in, needing the nextmorsel waiting and ready so there’s no moment without this taste on his tongue. Care evaporates as questing claws meet resistance, solid masses of muscle and bone he has no patience for. He tears, breaks, wrenches, separates joints, and cracks bone, forcing everything down his throat.
He doesn’t slow until the body’s a deboned fish, only major junctions, spine, and the flayed skin he has less of an interest in—though he’ll eat that too. As he sits back, snapping a rib and shattering it between teeth, a nagging thought urges him to look up.
To look at the face.
To understand who he’s eating.
As if that matters.
But a tension starts in his stomach, threatening to make the meal come back up.
He looks.
The space above the hollowed-out chest confuses him, pleasure and horror warring as he presses a blood-covered palm against the cooling cheek, manipulates the slack expression into a self-pleased smirk. Then, an approximation of a cackle. He can’t make either as dickish as the real ones.
None of these thoughts make sense to him, and frustration swells.
Concentrating, he catches just beyond the front teeth with two claws, pressing against a cooled tongue before slowly pulling down. The cheeks stretch, then tear, and he doesn’t stop until the jaw cracks and pulls free.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mateo leans over the toilet and retches salty black demon-goo into the bowl, amazingly glad that he just cleaned the bathroom. It takes ten minutes for the gag reflex to subside, the feel of hot meat sliding down his throat vivid under the harsh yellow light of his tiny bathroom.
He searches the black film on the surface of the water for flesh or bone that isn’t his.
The dreams aren’t new. They started as grotesque flashes of feasting at the edges of his sleep, a hazy memory of salty richness on his tongue. Disturbing but easily dismissed.
By the time he was a teen, the dream found him every few weeks. Never the entire eating, but some section of the act.
And the need.
The details change—and bydetails, he means the victims. He stays the same. His hunger. The pleasure. The thrill of every bite.
Lately, he’s had the dream every night. It encompasses the entire meal and persists in high-definition detail when awake.
The sound of the jaw cracking fills his brain, starts the back of his throat salivating again, and his stomach tries to empty itself of something that isn’t there.
Or, at least, something he really hopes isn’t there.
