Page 17 of An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
Oh. It’s blood, he realizes as he takes a third step. She always smelled a little like blood.
The room takes up the entire second floor of the house, and yes that means he’s been living in a house where he’s not using half of the available space. It functioned as her bedroom too, but he’s never seen her sleep and there’s no bed. There’s no dust on anything, as though even it was afraid to enter her space.
The walls are lined with dark shelves, neatly stuffed with books. Any bit of non-book-covered wall has framed photos, all difficult to look at. A glance at the spines on the shelves proves they don’t hold the address book he’s after, so he goes for the closet. It’s the kind with sliding doors, but the doors have never been attached in his lifetime. Instead, heavy crimson curtains hang in their place. He’s seen hints of what’s inside, crept up and peered through the open door. She always caught him, head turning, small frown on her always frowning mouth twitching, and the door would slam.
“Careful.” Ophelia’s voice scares him. She’s squatting outside the room, the skirts of her sepia dress pooled around her. They’d agreed she shouldn’t go in unless absolutely necessary.
Delicately, he catches the edge of the curtain and slides it over, holding his breath until he has it all the way to one side. Any resemblance to a closet within is gone. The space is filled with shelves of trinkets, pictures, symbols, herbs, bones, veils, boxes, and books.
Every inch of it is warded with tiny symbols. They’re even scrawled into the back wall and around the closet frame. All drawn with blood. His blood, he realizes with a start, not thrilled that he can tell this by smell. Even less thrilled when he realizes his teeth are sharp.
This is the real-real shit. The kinds of things he’s not supposed to mess with.
Slowly, like the closet might bite him, he slips his phone out of his pocket, turns on the light, and starts examining every row. A brass key has a wide berth, a series of symbols carved into the wood around it. A mortar with some sort of iridescent sand within. A scrying mirror that he’s extra careful to avoid looking at. A definitely-not-human skull with horns. A wide black candle that’s impossibly burning a soft white flame. Item after item, and he has no idea what any of them are.
A thin, green book catches his attention, not because it looks extra magical, but because it doesn’t. It’s tucked against one corner of the second to last row. It’s exactly what he wants and his heart leaps, except his gaze drags to the bottom row that isn’t a row but the underside of the bookcase. It’s impossibly dark down there. The light he’s shining has no effect even though he’s moving it around, trying to catch the space in its beam.
Something is wrong and it’s already too late.
This thought forms crystal clear in his brain and is then tossed aside as he reaches a hand into the dark space. It doesn’tmatter.He needs what’s in there. It’s his. It’s always been his and she took it from him.
The tips of his nails meet resistance, but he pushes against it, heart thudding in his throat, applying pressure until the opaque blackness parts and then spills up his hand and starts swallowing his arm. It’s freezing, but he only understands this in a distant way becausehe needs what’s inside of the shadow. Feeling around, he meets more coldness, piercing needles of ice rushing up to his shoulder. He’s on his knees with no memory of getting on the ground, still clawing into the dark space,knowing it’s in there and he has to have it. The cold is traveling up arm, to neck, down back and chest, and up his face, engulfing him.
Something is happening to his meat, he thinks with no urgency, still pawing around at the extremes of his reach. It’s then that his nails catch on to something, and he strains, dislodging it. A primal victory shudders through him as fingers close around something solid.
It’s not until he pulls it out, revealing a small black book, that he realizes he’s on fire.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Being on fire is exactly as terrible as it sounds.
Stop, drop, and roll has been ingrained on the psyche of every American kid, so Mateo’s disappointed to find that his first instinct upon being engulfed in flames is to thrash around without much rolling. In his defense, this awareness of being on fire is poorly timed. It came at the moment he was most engulfed, but before the fire had burned through enough tissue and nerves for adrenaline and shock to take any edge off.
He is pain. No faculties available to think.
This useless flailing lasts a moment that also might be forever, and then he’s being doused in something frigid that’s like breathing in hairspray while spraying it directly on an open wound. It sucks but is less bad than the fire, so it’s technically an improvement.
He must’ve blacked out, because he’s suddenly staring at the ceiling, Ophelia leaning over him, expression grim. She sees he’s awake and pulls in a hard breath. “Teo? You okay?”
“Not even almost,” he rasps, voice like he gargled glass.
They get him into a seated position, and he has to double over for a long time, coughing up black—which is normal—andwhite globs—less normal. Eventually, he realizes he’s in the short hallway outside of the office, and he’s coughing up fire extinguisher foam.
“What happened?” he wheezes.
Her expression flickers in that way it does only when she’s really upset, like she can’t keep it neutral despite a lifetime of unshakable success. “You were looking around, got down on hands and knees to dig under the shelf, and stopped answering me. Then you were on fire. But you kept digging like you couldn’t tell or didn’t care.” She swallows and he realizes she’s cradling one of her hands in her lap, bright eyes wet but no tears. She doesn’t let anyone see her cry.
He reaches for her but it’s a terrible idea, every motion stretching tender flesh taught, forcing out a gasp as he crumbles down again. Makes the knife thing earlier feel like a scratch. Panting he manages: “You’re hurt?” He has to settle for being still but saying concerned things.
Her throat works for a moment, trying to tamp down whatever emotion is trying to escape, before: “It’s fine.”
“Let me see,” he demands—like that’ll help. It doesn’t help. She shows him her right hand, palm bright red and shiny. Blisters are already forming, and the surface is swollen and raw. She’d grabbed hold of his burning body and dragged him out. “Phee.”
She grimaces, lipstick smeared from heroics he’d missed. “You look way worse.”
“You’re sweet,” he says, closing his eyes, horrified at the way the lids drag against his eyeballs like bonito flakes sticking to a hot pan. “Please go deal with it. Neosporin and gauze. Do we have gauze? Fuck. I have to just sit here. For a while.”
She leaves for a time, and he swearingly manages to lie down on the floor. Gradually, the flash-fried fingers of his left hand—aperfect replica of a cursed monkey’s paw—straighten, blackened skin unwithering. It’s grotesque but entrancing. And it really fucking hurts, nerves screaming back to life as warped skin and bone slowly slide and pop back into proper pliability.
