Page 74 of Cheater Slicks

Lifting the finger bone for him to see, I let it do the talking for me.

I mean, not literally. It was a finger. Fingers don’t have mouths. And…yeah.

Twenty-four hours. Matty only had twenty-four hours. Twenty-four tiny little hours.

As much as I hated to bump Vi down the priority list, Matty had surged right back to the top.

Pulse racing in my ears, I shoved those worries out of my mind. I skidded into Vi’s room, aiming for her apothecary table where she tinkered when inspiration struck but she didn’t want to change out of her pajamas to test a theory.

Her mortar was carved from the remains of a relative’s tombstone. I didn’t hesitate as I dropped the finger bone in and removed her matching pestle from its drawer. I wasn’t as careful as I normally would have been as I smashed it to bits, working out my frustration. I didn’t get every lump out before stealing the glass on Vi’s bedside table, tipping her pitcher to fill it, then dumping every speck of the mix into the water.

The grains hadn’t hit bottom before I turned it up and gulped it down.

“You didnotjust do what I think you did.” Josie stumbled into the room. “That’s disgusting.”

As the gritty mixture slid down my throat, I had to agree with her, but I didn’t have time to argue.

“What happened towe listen and we don’t judge,” Pascal asked, his voice blurry with exhaustion from clinging to Matty for longer than his usual shift. “You literally just lectured me on what my face says when my mouth isn’t moving.”

“I never saidwe watch and we don’t judge.” She gagged. “She swallowed a man’s crushed finger bone.”

“I thought that was headache powder.” He coughed into his fist. “That’s very, uh, necromancer-y of you.”

“Anunit,” I yelled, blocking out their bickering and how much it reminded me Matty ought to be here to rag on me instead of Pascal. “Nothing’s happening.”

No sooner had the words left my mouth than magic flooded my limbs, dripping from my fingertips.

“You okay over there?” Josie drifted closer. “You look weird.”

“Your hair is floating.” Pascal made a circular gesture with his finger. “Should it be doing that?”

Energy fizzled along my skin, crackling and popping. Pressure built behind my breastbone, shoving outward, and my feet lifted off the floor. I hovered between Vi on her bed and where Pascal, in Matty, stood. The moment I stepped between them, I felt it. A warm thread tying them to me, a slow trickle of heat that pooled in my stomach like a hot meal.

I was devouring souls. I was consuming victims’ life forces. I wanted to vomit.

This bond made me no different from Lyle, after he became a dybbuk. It made me a monster.

These people weren’t dead. They wouldn’t be dying if not for Dis Pater. A death god shouldn’t be killing to feed himself. That wasn’t his role. His domain was the afterlife. He had no right to impose his will on the living.

“You must focus on the individual souls within your grasp.” Anunit cupped my jaw with Harrow’s fingers. “You can feel them.”

“I can.” I tasted bile in the back of my throat. “There are so many of them.”

“Do you remember how you used the skulls of my kin to locate each skeleton’s missing bones?”

A memory of Kierce teaching me to do just that surfaced, and the queasiness intensified until the backs of my eyes prickled with the threat of tears. “Yes.”

“Apply the same method to identifying your brother’s soul among the threads.”

Anxiety forced my head to shake in a denial that I could hope to isolate one person among so many.

“You fondle his soul twice a day, five days a week.” Josie punched an arm in the air. “You got this.”

“I don’t fondle anyone,” I played along with her, allowing her jibe to ease the dread balling in my gut.

She was right. I didn’t handle his soul the same as I did the Suarez brothers’, but that was because he slept while they animated his body. He was always in there. He never left. But I had that contact daily. Twice daily. And I had for years.

Allowing the familiarity of Matty to wash through me, I skimmed the bonds humming between me and the victims trapped in the enchantment. I focused on the whole of him. His laugh. His eyes crinkling at their corners when he smiled. His sense of humor. His deep love for his family.

---