Page 29 of Faerie Hunted

“Tavi? Talk to me.”

Hearing my name come out of Barbara’s mouth centered me and I clung to it like a raft in an angry ocean. “I was…bitten,” I found myself admitting.

And in spits and spats, I managed to get out the entire story of raising Madam Muerte from the dead and having her zombie take a bite out of me.

Barbara waited until the end of my story to huff out a laugh. “You’ve been busy. Much busier than I gave you credit for, you industrious little wolfie. Now come here.”

“What?” I croaked.

“Come to the bars and I’ll assess what’s going on inside of you. You get bitten by a witch, only a witch can heal you. And your Madam Muerte? Before her untimely passing?” Barbara snorted. “Pure witch.”

She made it sound so simple.

I wasn’t sure about that, but I was either going to die of this illness in a prison cell or be executed. What was the harm? I might as well let Barbara do whatever it was she wanted to do.

“I thought you didn’t have your magic.”

“Did I say I ran out of power? Hell no, girl, I’ve gotsomemagic. It just doesn’t do me a shit load of good in here. Now get over to the bars and try not to puke on me. I feel disgusting enough as it is.”

The last time I’d seen her in the real world, Barbara looked as thin as a rail and highly breakable. Not much had changed, apparently. Her slender wrists fit between the bars, and the moment I crawled over to her, she latched onto me, forcing my hand all the way through as well.

Her palms were dry, callused, her knuckles almost too large for the size of her hand when she took hold. But her witch’s magic rushed over me in a soothing wave. I swooned, eyes fluttering back into my head.

It felt oddly familiar.

The same sensation I’d once experienced when I walked through her barriers to reach her house. The heaviness, strange after so long feeling nothing but sickness, fell over me and disappeared in the next inhalation.

I breathed in deep, filling my lungs, and the air itself felt fresher, colored by a hint of her power. My senses tingled and everything smoothed out into a sense of serene calm.

Even my overheated skin began to cool.

I didn’t have a drop of witch blood inside of me. Right? Then why did I vibe so well with Barbara and her magic?

It made no sense and my head spun for a completely different reason: confusion.

Barbara finally released my hand and I held onto the bars until my system righted itself.

“It’s a kind of blood poisoning, from magic,” she said in the gloom. “So yeah, whatever transfusions the nurse gave you, they were helping to keep the poison at bay. But, girl, that’s only a temporary fix.” She sighed, the sound long and forlorn. “It won’t last forever.”

“Then what do I need to do?” I was desperate.

“Seriously? You have to get theantidote.” I practically saw her rolling her eyes at my stupidity. “There is a certain type of flower you will need to mix with dirt from the old broad’s grave. Once you mix the two, you ingest it. Yum, yum.”

My gorge rose at the thought and I gagged.

The last place I wanted to be was back at the graveyard. After what happened when Bronwen and I tried to raise the old gypsy woman from the dead?

Necromancy got me into this pickle in the first place.

It wasn’t as though Barbara was asking me to try to raise Muerte from the dead again, but the idea of going back gave me the creeps. “Isn’t there any other way?”

“No.” That single word was knife-sharp in the dark. “I can do a small spell to take the edge off but it would be like a Band-aid on a bullet hole. Do you get what I’m saying? You need theactualcure. And I’m trying to give it to you if you’d pull the cotton out of your ears and listen to me.”

I sighed. “Yeah, well, theactualcure isn’t going to do me any good if we don’t get out of here.”

“So glum,” she chided acerbically.

“Of course I’m glum. Beyond glum.”

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