Page 71 of An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder
He’s not even grossed out, though he can taste Ethan’s blood in his mouth—Topher’s too, and he’s trying not to think about that. This lack of distress is so deeply distressing that he folds it up tightly, stuffs it in a waterproof bag, vacuum seals it, and shoves it into the furthest depths of histhings Mateo refuses to emotionally deal withlockbox where it will hopefully die.
It’s really hard to ignore the reality of the situation, though, not just because of the dagger that is, again, still in his chest, but because he also can’t stop looking at the large stain at the bottom of the stairs.
They’d told him the particulars of what had happened—mostly Ophelia while Topher anxiously chimed in. How Ophelia had maneuvered Yoga Wife around the room while Ethanand Mateo had exorcism fun. She’d messed up the magic circle around Topher to free him, had been trying to find something for Topher or her to hit Ethan with, but then things had gone to shit.
Then he’d been stabbed in the heart and transformed into something else. The demon. The thing inside him. He’d called out to it right before the knife went in and it had acted.
Except.
It hadn’t felt likesomething else. He hadn’t been sitting on the sidelines watching the demon pilot his body around. Confused, half out of his mind, and furious about everything, it had felt like him.
If not for Ophelia thinking to mess up the circle around Mateo before going for his binds, he’d have stayed trapped, and they’d all be dead. Thetheythat didn’t include Mateo. Because he had been dead in a way he’s absolutely not going to deal with right now. Which means Topher’s not wrong. Ethan deserved it.
Ophelia returns, squatting first in front of Topher, hands on his cheeks, making sure he’s not about to pass out, and then she straightens and looks at the dagger in Mateo’s chest. “We should get that out.”
“I was thinking of keeping it. Like a hardcore piercing,” Mateo says, unwillingly dragging his attention from the spot where he ate a man to the spot where said man stabbed him. He can feel it in him. Like. A lot. It’s absolute shit. And if he concentrates, he’s very aware that his heart isn’t beating around it.
“What are we talking about in this wretched basement?”
From the top of the stairs, the unmistakably displeased tone of Ulla calls down, followed by the sound of stilettos picking their way unerringly down the steps. She halts before the last step, gazing at the stain there, then takes them all in.
“Oh good. None of you died.” She actually hops over the stain, a dainty little leap that looks insane because she’s still in her flawless white power skirt blazer combo and four-inch heels. When she gets closer, she amends her comment. “Oh. One of you did die. Well. Two out of three isn’t terrible.”
She, exactly as Ophelia had done moments before but with negative ten thousand degrees Celsius warmth, squats, takes cheeks in hand, and regards Topher. Having never met her before, with no obvious indication of who she is, Topher allows this because he’s too awkward to stop a stranger from grabbing his face.
“Topher,” she says, voice taking on a tone that feels impossible for her. Which is to say, soft and sympathizing. “I’m your Auntie Ulla. Your brainless mother’s warding the house upstairs. She’s perfectly alright and will join us in this grubby little room in a moment. Your father is dead.”
The entire delivery is the same soothing tone, so it takes them all a beat to process the last line.
“Oh,” Topher says and then reasonably starts weeping. It’s devastating-looking because Topher’s all mussed, with a huge red welt forming under his half-closed right eye, the sclera filled with red and now leaking silent tears.
Ulla leaves him to that, surveying Mateo and his whole dagger situation. “Isn’t that where hearts are?”
“That’s such a disconcerting way to ask that,” Mateo counters, but then she wraps her fingers around the handle. He tries to yellwaitordon’t, so what comes out is a shrill, “want!”
Which she ignores and jerks the blade out.
Sagging forward, blood dumps out of his chest, onto lap and floor, splattering everything with black. Ulla makes another affronted noise. He hopes she got splashed as he gasps anduselessly tries to stuff blood back in with his hands. Something thick and sodden splats into his fingers. It looks like soggy paper, but as soon as he has the thought, it slurps back into the gaping wound in his chest. Which is just one more thing in a day with a lot of shit. The torrent slows, then stops, and he sits back gasping.
“Not. Cool,” he says between ragged breaths.
“If it didn’t keep you dead just sitting there, it wasn’t going to coming out.” She has the nerve to sound annoyed, but she’s also looking at her shoes in disgust. Small victories.
The scent of fresh-cut grass fills the room, and Linnéa Nystrom walks through the doorway.
She’s a lot, but in a totally different way than Topher.Amazonis the word that comes to mind, like an uncanny but upsized fairy queen. Makes absolute sense that Ethan saw her and thought Christopher was pulling far above his pay grade. She’s also the whitest lady Mateo’s ever seen ever. The same platinum blonde hair as Topher but turned up to a twelve, nearly glowing it’s so light, falling in pristine sheets on either side of her face. He can see her white lashes from across the room. To make her all the more surreal-looking, she’s in pale jeans and a simple button-up long-sleeve slate top. Perfectly pleasant mom-wear, and he has the thought that Ulla dresses to up the uncanny, but Linnéa’s trying—and failing—to downplay it.
Mateo starts to sweat, which is strangely encouraging because it means he’s still capable of getting nervous. He hopes Topher’s gigantic mom isn’t, like, mad at him or something. Maybe hamingja hate demons. Everyone hates demons. There’s a whole genre of movies about how much no one wants them around. And here he is, dumping blood on her sister’s shoes, eating people near her delicate son. It would be exceptionally poeticto make it twenty-three years and deal with an evil wizard just to be snapped in half by the lady he was trying to find.
But she doesn’t care about him. Stepping through the horrible bloodstain with no mind, she moves to Topher and sweeps him into her large mom arms and bosom where he cries more miserably—possibly partially in relief now.
Ophelia, unmoved by intense mom action, says to the room, “We need to get out of here.” And then to Ulla. “Get your car into the garage. These two can’t walk far. Then come back down here and help me steal anything that looks valuable.”
He expects Ulla to protest, but she only mutters something under her breath and gingerly makes her way back to the stairs.
A cursory look at Topher clinging upsetly to his mom and Ophelia then comes over to Mateo. She waves a hand in front of his face and he starts—so he must be trying to pass out. “Teo? We’re going to get you two out of here, but we have to do something about the wife.”
Mateo stares at her, then connects meaning to those words and turns to stare at Yoga Wife. She’s sprawled beside the exorcism table. A whole spandex-clad body just right there.
