Page 40 of An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
“You fucking followed me from Seattle?” Mateo is shouting now.
It almost drowns out Topher’s soft, “But who’s this?”
This—the evil wizard—turns back to Topher.
There’s a beat where no one does anything but look at each other. Dagger Lady at Mateo, Mateo at Dagger Lady. Evil Wizard at Topher, Topher at Evil Wizard. Ophelia at Mateo and Mateo at Ophelia, and then both of them at Evil Wizard and then Topher.
Then the Evil Wizard lifts a black-gloved hand in the direction of Topher like they want Topher to stop where he is.
The same part of Mateo’s brain useful for avoiding bar fights and maneuvering around customers’ shit moods realizes something’s about to happen. It’s not a rational thought based in anything concrete, but it comes with a wash of rage, teeth sharpening further in his mouth. Whatever this Evil Wizard fuck’s about to do, it’s directed at Topher andthat’s an outrage.
Mateo surges toward Topher and shoves him sideways, at Ophelia. Topher yelps, Ophelia swears, and both are propelled through the still open bathroom door.
With Mateo now standing where Topher had been, something hits him.
It’s exactly like what slamming into a wall at freeway speeds would feel like, a solid force knocking air out of lungs and his footing out from under him. The bloodied couch is right beside Mateo. What was once a secure and sturdy obstacle between himself and a large window overlooking the backyard, becomes a comical tabletop situation. His body slams into it somewhere around the knees and sends him tumbling over it and face first into the window.
And then rapidly face first through the window.
And then rapidly face first into the charmingly concrete paver backyard three floors below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When Mateo’s eyes open next, he’s pretty sure his head’s trying to twist off his neck. Eyes haven’t even focused before he’s leaning over and vomiting. It’s horrible for all the usual reasons vomiting is horrible, but it’s doubly bad because something is really wrong on the way up. He’s half choking, drowning on the black bile trying to evacuate his body because it’s hitting a structural complication.
After retching for a while, an awareness of fingers in his hair seeps in. Someone trying to keep it out of the way. An arm around his shoulders as well, stopping him from rolling down into the vomit on what he belatedly realizes is the floor of a car. Quincy’s car.
At some point he’s coaxed back, head on a lap that he assumes is Ophelia’s until quivering gray eyes appear above him. “We’re almost there,” Topher whispers.
“Phee?” Mateo chokes through a blood-coated mouth, thick with mounting alarm, not sure why it isn’t her.
“I’m right here. Don’t worry,” she says quickly, and he turns toward her and it’s a mistake. The scream only cuts off because breathing is so difficult, and he nearly slips back under before hisvision un-narrows enough to see her in the passenger’s seat beside Quincy. More than the terror of the poor state of his body is seeing her expression. Pinched brow, grim line of lips, and the lipstick’s smeared down the right side of her mouth. It’s not easy to disturb Ophelia’s expression but it’s a chaos of naked emotion right now.
“You fell out the third-floor window,” she says, and for a beat it makes no sense. Until it does. Magic people suddenly in the room. Evil Wizard tried to attack Topher.
Mateo tries to sit up, an automatic response to the remembered fear, but his body has other ideas, and the reality of his condition exerts itself. When he was nine, a shrieking coyote woke him in the night. Probably hit by a car and left to die. He’d been neither bold enough to ask his mom or rebellious enough to sneak out to find it, so he’d lain awake for hours listening to it scream. The sound he makes as he crumbles back onto Topher’s lap is a lot like that.
When he can pull in a breath again, he uses it to helpfully declare, “Oh, fuck.”
“I’m sorry,” Topher says softly, so blanched he’s blue.
He’s fussing at something on Mateo, and it takes his screaming brain a while to realize Topher’s positioning Mateo’s extremely broken arms in a less terrible way. He’s too afraid to tilt his head to see it better, but from this angle, it’s like a sleeve filled with loose sticks. Why can’t he feel what Topher’s doing? It seems like he should understand without visual confirmation, but there’s a sickening numbness rolling through his body, blanking out large spots even as every nerve fights to let him know how bad it’s feeling.
“No hospital,” Mateo says to Topher’s face, the thought occurring to him like a gunshot, piercing through all the other concerns.
“I know. Just lie there. We’re getting you somewhere safe so you can rest,” Ophelia’s disembodied voice soothes.
“Are you sure we can’t call someone, at least?” Topher asks urgently.
“I’m sure.” Ophelia’s voice is hard. “No one can know. He can’t go to a hospital. And if you try to take him to one, I’ll crash this goddamned car and drag him away myself.”
A beat of silence, the threat barely making sense as she’s not driving, but Ophelia is Ophelia, so it’s also amazingly credible.
“I don’t like this.” Quincy. For the first time his mellow tones are stressed. Makes sense. Someone’s dying in his back seat.
It’s meant to be a glib thought, but is it? Is this dying?
This seeps into his brain, and like a switch he shuts off again.
