Kat Richardson: Downpour

I studied Quinton’s face. The dead color had vanished, leaving pale but healthy-looking skin under the fading gauze of magic that had covered most of his injured cheek. The tiny tendrils of energy were retracting into the dried cake of glop that hid the ugly black line that had appeared when the spirit thing had touched him. “Well . . . it looks a lot better,” I offered.

“Maybe I can wash it off, then. You think?” He raised his eyebrows in hope. “I shudder, imagining what might be in this stuff.”

“Something worse than rum and spit?”

Willow stuck her head around the kitchen door. “It’s mostly comfrey, red pepper, and bearberries, maybe some boneset, definitely some garlic. It brings the blood to the skin and warms it up, wards off infection. Since it was Loko who came to help, there isn’t any graveyard dust in it—you’re lucky.”

“Garlic and red pepper,” Quinton said. “That explains the smell. . . .”

“I wouldn’t use it,” she added with a raise of the eyebrows and a smug-cat smile, “but it does work when you’re getting some help from the loa.” Willow vanished from the doorway and went back to making tea.

“I begin to see why she’s a loner,” Quinton whispered.

I poked him with a finger in the ribs. “You could just go wash it off.”

“What, and miss my chance to imitate a spicy Italian sausage?” He waggled his eyebrows at me in a way that was too silly to be suggestive.

“You are a danger to morality,” I said, smiling.

“I try.”

I flapped a hand at him. “Go wash that stuff off. Costigan said it was done when it started to itch.”

“All right, all right,” he agreed, getting up from the couch and heading for the kitchen.

Willow redirected him up the stairs to the bathroom, saying she didn’t want Costigan’s concoctions dirtying up the place. In a few minutes, she came into the living room with a teapot in one hand and a cluster of mugs threaded on her fingers by the handles.

“You said he was your boyfriend,” she said, putting the tea things down on the nearest table.

I frowned. “He is.” Then I felt a sharp, cutting pain across my cheekbone. “Ow!” I gasped, clapping my hand over my face.

Willow shook her head. “Mates.”

“What the hell . . . ?”

She stopped what she was doing and peered at me. “When did it happen?”

“What happen?” I asked, looking at the palm of my hand and expecting to see blood, but there wasn’t any.

“When did you marry?”

“We’re not married.”

“Not by the state. The soul-bond. It must be new—it looks new.”

“We haven’t done anything like that. No ceremonies, no rings, no blood, no . . . whatever it takes.” I found myself glancing over my shoulder, half expecting some Chinese ancestor to materialize and chastise me for abusing their hospitality. No one did, but that funny feeling remained....

Willow looked around the room. Her gaze paused on the neat pile of blankets beside the couch, then on me. She looked me up and down again. “Did you two have sex in this house?”

I blushed and gaped at her, feeling like a naughty teenager.

She gazed around the room again, but this time with fondness. Then she shrugged. “It’s my parents’ house. It knows these things. You really have to be careful on top of a leyline.” Then she giggled. “Layline. That’s funny.”

Quinton came clomping down the stairs and into the room. “What’s funny?”

“You’re bonded and you didn’t know it,” Willow said, chuckling.

“What?”

“It’s sort of adorable,” Willow added, “in a sickening way. You two.” She started laughing. “You had sex. Here.”

“I’m confused . . .” Quinton said. “Are we in trouble?”

“Willow,” I growled in the most quelling voice I could, leaning hard on the Grey.

She snapped her head up, spinning away from me and into a crouch near the door, her expression feral and her hands curling into the rising tide of energy that flooded suddenly into the house. “Don’t do that! Don’t make me!”

I let go of everything and sat back against the couch, keeping my own hands relaxed and in plain sight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Willow was still tense, but she stood up, slowly, unbending and releasing her grip. She let the magic pool around her feet, though. “All right, then.” She turned and looked at Quinton and pointed at a raw patch on his cheekbone where the red glop had been. “You are impatient—just like a man—and pulled the poultice at the end instead of soaking it off. It stung, didn’t it?”

Quinton touched his fingers to the redness on his face. “Yeah. So?”

Willow pointed at me. “She felt it.” Then she glared at me. “Didn’t you?”

I frowned. “Yes.”

“It will fade. You won’t feel the minor things after a while, but the major hurts, the physical and the emotional, you will. You’re bonded. Mated. When your souls were in tune and open, when you were soft and alight with love, you gave a piece of yourselves away to each other. It’s still there, knitting itself into you. You can tear it out now, while it’s still young and soft. You don’t have to . . . remain this way. If you don’t want to.” Darkness flitted across her face. “You have a few days to end it, if you change your minds.”

Quinton looked shaken and I could feel the trembling of his emotions like a distant earthquake in my body. “Why would we?” he asked, glancing at me.

“Because it makes you weak! It makes you vulnerable!” Willow shouted back. “It ties you to another person who can be hurt and hurt you! You’re a dependent, a thrall, a . . . an adjunct.”

“But it’s mutual, isn’t it?” Quinton asked. He didn’t sound unsure; he was just being polite by framing it as a question. “What might be a weakness could also be a strength. We’re together. We share—”

“Not like that, you don’t,” Willow snapped. “It’s not the powers you share, just the tugging—the horrible, horrible tearing apart when they leave you! The hollowness, the pain . . .” She curled on herself, sinking to the floor as if in agony. “Tear it out now. Get rid of it. It’s just a little pain, a little dead spot, like a place where the nerves died. You’ll never notice after a while and it’s so much better than—than . . .” She slumped against the hearth, sobbing and shaking. “In my parents’ house. My parents’ house . . .”

Quinton looked horrified and started to kneel down beside her. I shot off the couch and reached Willow first, tugging her into my arms.

“Who was it, Willow? Who . . . ?” She wasn’t a child now, but this was the house where she had been and it brought everything with it.

“All of them.” She breathed against my neck. “My mother, my father, my . . . friend. All of them. Tearing pieces of me away . . .”

I looked over her shoulder to catch Quinton’s eye. He made a frustrated little twitch, unsure what to do. I jerked my head upward, glancing toward the bedrooms upstairs, hoping there really was a connection between us, that he’d figure out what we needed to do. He blinked, then scrambled away, up the stairs. I heard him moving around and then the wheezy rattle of the electric heaters coming on for the first time in years. The house seemed to sigh and the shadows in the corners stirred.

In a few more minutes Quinton returned to the living room and scooped Willow out of my hold and into his arms. She nuzzled against him, exhausted and trembling as he carried her upstairs. I came along behind. When we reached the top of the stairs, he turned and carried Willow into what must once have been her own bedroom. A cloud of raw ghost-stuff trailed them, passing through me and leaving a strange tingling warmth on my skin as it went. The green light that had welled up at her feet downstairs flowed up and oozed across the floor into Willow’s bedroom, spreading out to touch all the walls and send glimmering fingers up to frame the door and windows. Even asleep, the magic looked after her.