God, I hated her. She scared the living hell out of me, and I hate to show my fear. “Boss, go fu—”
In a blink, her thumb was in my mouth. It tasted gritty—of course she hadn’t washed her hands—and she forced another cube of meat past my teeth. I tried to bite down on her, but it was like biting the tread of a tractor tire. If it hurt, she didn’t show it.
She forced that cube down my throat, then another, then another. After a while, I didn’t have the strength to buck and thrash anymore. I sprawled on the bed, sweating and miserable. When I tried to puke, Annalise clamped her hands over my mouth and nose. I choked. I shuddered. Finally, I wept like a child.
She forced it all down me. It took almost two hours, but she put the whole contents of the tub into me.
When she was done, she tossed the bin onto the carpet behind her.
“Boss,” I said weakly. I wanted to die, and I thought I could make her do it for me. “Annalise. I’m going to kill you for this.”
“That wouldn’t surprise me at all,” she said as she sat back in the chair. She took a white ribbon from her pocket and held it up. I knew what her white ribbons did, and I was hungry for it. I looked at the sigil at the bottom and fell into unconsciousness.
When I awoke, it was daylight. Annalise was sitting beside me.
And my pain was gone. I sat up and looked down at my legs. There were no bandages on them, and the skin looked pale and healthy. And hairless.
“We have clean clothes for you,” Annalise said. “Still want to kill me?”
“Boss, I …”
“Forget about it. You handled it better than I did, that first time.”
“Golem flesh?”
“I hate the name,” she said. “I don’t know who called it that, but it’s the name that stuck. Remember when I took that bullet in the eye?”
I did remember. She’d gone on talking and walking around with a huge hole in her head. My throat felt thick at the memory. I nodded.
“Well, you won’t be that tough. Not for a long time. Golem flesh takes a while to have its full effect. The spell is still changing for me, too. But here’s the deaclass="underline" you need to eat meat every day. Your body will break down if you don’t. Also, you can heal injuries by eating flesh—the more recently killed, the more effective it will be. Over time—over decades, really—you’ll have less pain and less impairment from each wound. Eventually, massive injuries won’t do much more than make you look like an extra in a shitty horror movie. That’ll take a long time, but when it happens you’ll be like a person made of clay. Sort of.”
I didn’t say anything to that. My hands were resting on my bare legs, and I pinched myself. Annalise noticed.
“You aren’t dreaming. And I didn’t put this spell on you. Csilla did. I don’t have the power for it.” She took a long breath. “I called in a favor for this.”
She had put another spell on me. She’d healed me. It had been hellish, but it wasn’t as bad as skin grafts, physical therapy, and a lifetime of scars. “Boss, we have a lot to talk about.”
She gave me a quick nod and stood briskly from her chair. “Your new clothes are on the table. Put them on and come out to debrief us.”
They were white briefs, faded blue jeans, a green T-shirt, and white socks and sneakers. The briefs would cramp my style, but what the hell. Beside them was a brand-new cellphone. Annalise hadn’t said it was mine, but she hadn’t said it wasn’t. I slipped it into the pocket of my new jeans; if she didn’t want me to take things, she was going to have to put them away.
My room had a little bathroom, so I went inside for some water. I thought I really ought to be shaking and unsteady, but I felt strong. I felt like a man who’d slept. I touched my bare face and leg; it felt like skin, not clay. For now.
There was a drinking glass on the sink, and when I unwrapped it, I realized it was made of actual glass, not plastic. I filled it, drained it, and filled it again.
In the mirror, I found the new mark on my ribs under my left arm. It was in black, like my others, and the swoops and curls suggested images of …
I looked away. It was dangerous to study magic too closely.
My face was covered with dry sweat, so I brought my new clothes into the bathroom and took a quick shower.
When I finally went out to the main room, Annalise, Talbot, and the old woman in the black shawl were sitting at the table under the chandelier. They were serving themselves from a platter of bacon, hard-boiled eggs, sausage patties, fried potatoes, and toast. No one spoke to me as I approached the table and began to serve myself, too.
“Thank you, Csilla,” I said to the old woman.
She looked up at me with a vague expression. “You’d better be worth it.”
Worth what? I didn’t know what it had cost her to cast the spell on me, and I squelched the urge to ask. She had already started staring dreamily at an empty spot on the wall. I sat, cut a small piece of bacon, and put it into my mouth. I didn’t vomit or have a seizure. The flavor seemed muted, but I didn’t have the urge to spit it out.
While I chewed, I tried to decide what to tell Annalise and the other peer. I knew them well enough to know what would happen if I told them about the drapes. It’d be like putting out a contract on Arne and the others.
But what could I leave out? It wasn’t just that Annalise would kill me if I tried to shield another friend—she would, but that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that protecting my friends would almost certainly unleash more predators on the world.
And there was the thought that had been lurking in my mind ever since Melly was carried away. Luther had been lying at the bottom of the tub in his house the whole time I’d been there, and when he died, his drape carried him away and two more came through.
That had to have been what happened, because that’s what happened to Melly. The only difference was that three drapes had come through when she died. Did that mean four would come through when the next one died? Five for the one after that?
I tried to do some quick math, but the others were staring at me and the numbers jumbled in my head. Damn. I’d been lucky that the first two victims had died indoors and close to me. If Summer, Ty, or one of the others keeled over in a subway station, or outside a Starbucks, the drapes would be free to hunt in secret. In no time, people would vanish by the thousands until the whole world was empty.
My friends were important to me, but were they more important than the survival of every living thing on the planet?
I told Annalise, Csilla, and Talbot everything. I didn’t sugarcoat it, and I didn’t hold back any names. I even told them about the Bugatti, Wardell, and Steve Francois.
While I spoke, Annalise stared at me the way a cat stares at a mouse hole. Talbot kept eating; he was paying careful attention, but he was trying to be casual about it. Csilla stared off into space and didn’t seem to know I was there.
When I was done, I realized I still didn’t have my ghost knife. I asked for it. Annalise nodded at Talbot, and he resentfully fetched it for me.
“These ‘drapes’ are minor stuff,” Annalise said.
I was startled. “What do you mean, boss?”
“The big question is this: Why is your old buddy Wally King making operatives in L.A.?”
It was hard to imagine Arne or Fidel as an operative of Wally’s, but they owed him, and he could collect at any time.
“He’s trying to end the world,” I said.
“Seriously?” Talbot said, a crooked, swollen-lipped smirk on his face. “I’m sitting here squirting ketchup on home fries, and we’re talking about a guy who wants to destroy the world?”