Katie said, “You have done well to find and destroy my enemies. I commend you. I shall provide the standard form of financial remuneration. I approve.”
“Um. Well, actually, Leo killed one of them.”
She smiled and it was a truly terrifying smile. “He did. And he did this for you. Use caution, little cat, that you do not stalk what is mine.”
She meant Leo. And aha. This was what she had been wanting to say. “He’s all yours, Katie. Honest to God. All yours.”
Katie’s fangs snapped down. “Remember that. Leo is mine.” Behind me the outer door opened a crack. Katie threw up an arm against the light and I got out of there fast, through the door that Troll had opened. Sadly, that was the high point of my day.
As I swung over the back fence, the Kid and Tia and the children were heading outside to play—which was grown-up talk for getting out of the line of fire. When I entered my house, it was to walk into the middle of a huge fight between Molly and Big Evan. Evan was standing in the middle of the living room, his hands fisted at his sides, the air swirling around him, lifting his red beard, shuffling through his clothes, his magic activated, but contained, for the moment. Molly, less than a third his size, with her weight loss, was standing at the entrance to the kitchen. Her dress hung perfectly still, her hair a spill of rich color, unmoving. Her hands were relaxed and still, her magic tight against her skin, a dark shadow of potential. Of the two, Molly looked far more dangerous.
“—tell me you were on the pill? How could you not, Mol?”
“Because she was afraid the death magics would interfere with the baby’s development, or with the childbirth, or with something else equally horrible. She was afraid of giving birth to a magical monster or killing the child in her womb. Right, Molly?”
My friend gave her head a tiny nod, one I might have missed had I not been living with Mr. Infinitesimal for the last few months.
“She was also afraid of hurting the children, or draining you in your sleep. She was hoping to find a way out of the problem, but when she heard about Shiloh being alive and in danger, she put her troubles behind her and came to New Orleans. It was stupid, and it was bad timing that she got taken before she could get to me for help. It was also stupid that she didn’t tell us about her magic going bad and let us help her find a treatment or cure, but she wasn’t cheating on you. And stupidity isn’t a crime.”
Molly shot me a glare. Big Evan didn’t take his eyes from his wife, but his face turned even redder. “You talked to her about all this and you couldn’t talk to me?”
“She didn’t tell me anything, you idiot.” I could have been a bit more diplomatic, but I was tired, my house was full of angry witches, and I couldn’t just leave them to it and try for a nap. I might wake up with the house on fire. Or dropped on top of one of them, a pair of ruby slippers sticking out. I grinned, imagining the glittery pumps on Big Evan’s humongous feet. From the look on his face, I probably shouldn’t share the vision with him. “I figured it out. Molly loves you guys with all her heart. She wants her magic back. Or a way to control the death magic. And—” I stopped. It was possible that I had a way, if I could get the familiar back from Gee DiMercy. Or if—
Something launched across the kitchen at Molly. Molly whirled and lifted her arm. Evan raised both of his fists. “No!” I shouted. They both stopped. The kitten landed on Molly’s shoulder. And meowed. A lot of things flitted through my mind, like Aggie’s mother’s prophecy and Molly’s desire to be her old self, and lots of old stories about witches and cats. Puzzle pieces settling into place. “When I was a kid, in the children’s home, before I understood English, I was standing somewhere, maybe in a kitchen, watching some girls put a puzzle together.”
Big Evan looked at me as if I were insane. “What?”
“Yeah, I know. Weird, huh? Anyway, I had no idea what a puzzle was.” The kitten on Molly’s shoulder arched her back and walked around to her other shoulder. Molly held perfectly still. Eyes wide, fingers spread. As if she was afraid to even breathe. “I didn’t understand. Not for, like, two days.” I shoved my hands into my jeans pockets, talking, watching Molly and the kitten. It put its cheek to her and purred long and steadily. “But I knew it was important, it had to be because two of the girls I lived with were so totally focused on it, like, the way a mountain lion focuses on prey when she’s hungry and has kits to feed. Anyway, on the end of the second day, they put the last piece together and they got up and left. They left me alone with the puzzle. So I walked over and looked at it.”
Molly smiled slightly and reached up to touch the kitten. It started to purr and Molly gathered the kitten in her arms. KitKit settled against Molly’s chest, and her purr ratcheted up, echoing, the rumble far too loud for her size, seeming to fill the whole room. Molly took a breath, let it go. And the black cloud of energies wrapped around her began to lighten.
“I knew there was a pattern there,” I went on. “I could almost see it in the greens and reds and yellows. But I didn’t understand humans or two-dimensional pictures. Or most anything at that point. But as I stood there and studied it, I realized what it was. It was a kitten, crouching among some potted flowers, hidden in the board. Trapped there. I didn’t understand about pictures yet. But I did understand about traps. So I started taking the puzzle apart, trying to find a way to free the kitten.”
Big Evan’s eyes filled with tears as he watched his wife. The fine trembling of her fingers eased. She took more breaths. And her smile widened.
“It was the wrong thing to do, of course,” I said. “I was never going to free the kitten. It wasn’t really trapped. But it was all I knew to do. Culturally, educationally, emotionally, I did the only thing I could. I pulled up each piece of the puzzle and looked at the table beneath. Then at the back of the puzzle piece. There was no kitten anywhere. I sat down and studied the puzzle. And I slowly put the picture back together. I realized it was like a spell, a moment of magic captured in the paper, printed on the puzzle pieces. And I enjoyed the moment, the moment of . . . the kitten, crouching beneath the flowers.”
I relaxed. “Kinda like what just happened here. This moment of magic. Her name is KitKit. An old Cherokee woman gave her to me. I gave her to Angie Baby, but I’m sure she’ll share the gift with her mother.”
“Familiars are rare, if not totally fictional,” Big Evan said, as if trying to make sense of what we were seeing. “Witches keep animals, not for their magic, but for their love of animals.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But this animal is absorbing Molly’s death magic.” I shook my head and grinned, picturing Lisi’s face when I told her about her KitKit. “Somehow, some way.”
“It won’t be enough,” Molly said, bumping her nose to the kitten’s, “not by itself. But it’s enough for now. It gives me a chance to learn how to deal with it, without hurting someone by accident.”
Big Evan’s fists unclenched. His stormy air magic quieted. He crossed the room to his wife and gently folded her in his arms. Her head didn’t even reach his chin, and he had to drop his face down to place a kiss on the top of her hair. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do it your way. I won’t fight you anymore.”
I had no idea what they were talking about, but it sounded promising, so I let it go. Then Molly raised her face and kissed Big Evan. There was a lot of passion in the kiss, so I got the heck outta Dodge, leaving them to some privacy. In front of the house, in the heat of the day, I removed my weapons and secured them in the back of Eli’s SUV, all but one throwing knife—just in case some angry blood-servant wanted to try to take me out.
And then, having nothing else to do with myself, I got in and drove.
I ended up at the little church where I had attended a few times since I got to New Orleans. The place was quiet, seemingly empty, and I checked my phone for the time and day. And discovered that it was Sunday, well after noon. I locked the SUV and went to the door, knocking before I entered. Most churches stayed locked when not in use, against vandals and thieves, but the door was open, and I pushed it wider. Inside, it was cool, and I realized how hot it was outside. But it was cool here. Boots thumping on the worn floor, I went to the little chapel. It was empty but smelled of humans and peace and acceptance.
I took a seat in the front pew and stared at the cross hanging on the wall. It was the empty cross, not the cross of the dead Jesus, and that was obscurely comforting. I had seen too much blood in the last day or two. Even redemptive blood, the kind Aggie One Feather talked about, was something I didn’t want to see right now.
When I was growing up, counselors in the children’s home were always talking about redemption, especially to me, because I was always in fights, stirring up trouble, though at the time I had seen my actions as protecting the helpless and the bullied, and in hindsight I’d have done nothing different. Early on, I hadn’t understood why the counselors had wanted me in Christian training classes, why they talked so much about salvation. I didn’t understand what I needed to be forgiven for. But even back then I had understood about peace and the lack of peace. And I had accepted the kind of redemption that brought peace, the kind that brought me peace, or as close to it as I ever got.
Now? I wanted that peace I had lost. I wanted to forgive myself for the lives I had taken, knowing full well that I would take more. I wondered if soldiers felt this confusion, this mixed-up, complex, complicated, crazy set of drives—for peace and for battle. For rest and for blood.
I was War Woman. I was meant to kill.
But . . . I was never meant to enjoy it, to take pleasure in it. My uni lisi hadn’t taken pleasure in the deaths of the men who killed my father. It was a job, a responsibility, and she did it well. That was all. That was what she was trying to teach me when she put the knife into my hand. That lesson was my obligation—to see that I performed my job well, for good and for life, not for death. Weird as all that seemed.