Page 182 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“I’m tired of you,” he hisses in my face. “Such a boring and insolent child. You won’t even cry. And I am ravenous.”

Dread stills my blood in my veins for just a moment, then the pain begins.

I know what it feels like to have my magic depleted. I know what it feels like to be exhausted and spent. But when he says that he will devour my magic, when he begins actually doing it, it feels like being unwoven.

He’s peeling the skin off of my soul, splitting the helixes of my DNA. My magic is as much a part of me as my mind is, and he’s tearing it out of me with brutal violence.

The veins around his eyes pulse black and blue, the chair creeks with the force of his hands tightening. There’s the terrible sound of screaming. My screaming, I realize. Like something I’ve never heard before. My blood goes so cold that I feel like I’m being burned from the inside out.

I want to beg him to stop. But my voice won’t actually form words. It’s everything I can do to steal a shallow breath to scream again.

Eventually, I can’t even inhale anymore.

I’m lost in a void that stretches for eons.

And I know that I’ve died.

ㅤ

The digs in the VIP lounge are nice. I’d be stoked as hell if I wasn’t, you know, fearing for the life of the woman I love. It’s bizarrely empty, though.

The warm mahoganies and golds of the space feel a little odd paired with the smell of faux leather and furniture polish. There are a set of tables that look like they might usually have a line of buffet-style dishes set up on them, when it’s not the middle of the night, and there are refrigerated vending machines that don’t actually require money to get a drink from.

A twenty-four-hour news station mumbles inanely on the large flatscreen, mounted high enough off the ground that no one can fuss with the controls and change it to a sportscast or a political thriller or something. Normally, this would be the perfect place to have a seat on a massaging recliner, and crack open a ThinkPad for some good-ole-fashioned emailing on unsecure, free Wi-Fi while en route to one’s next hostile takeover. There are even frosted windows to protect the wealthy from the prying eyes of all the peasants and plebeians outside.

But now? It’s about to become a summoning circle.

“We have to clear enough room for Aemon to actually take up the space and make a proper circle in the center,” Fletcher instructs us. “And we’ll need some items to represent the five elements.”

“Like what?” I ask.

There’s a clunking sound from the vending machine while Satoshi gets himself a bottle of water. Wren beams.

“Great idea!” she says, snatching it out of his hand. “We’ve got water.”

“I was going to... you know what? Never mind,” he grumbles sheepishly.

“We’ll need a flame of some kind,” Fletcher says. “Then something for earth and air and spirit.”

“Fire? In an airport?” Roxie asks. “I’m sorry, could we avoid being put on the no-fly list maybe?”

“We’re about to make a summoning circle in a VIP lounge, and you’re worried about homeland security?” Oren asks dryly.

“Frankly, yes. I’m not taking a boat every time I need to leave the country,” they gripe.

Oren produces his matte black zippo locket from his pocket and hands it to Fletcher. “Remember how to use it?” He asks the fae. Fletcher flushes beneath his freckles and nods. I have no idea what the fuck that’s about. But I chalk it up to not being my business.

“Alright, fire and water accounted for,” Fletcher says. “Earth, spirit and air, then.”

“How the fuck do you represent air?” Satoshi asks.

“You’re always blowing hot air up your own ass, maybe you rip one and that will work,” I say.

“Ew,” Roxie and Wren say at the same time.

“Wait, I know,” Fletcher says suddenly, rising up to his feet and going to his carry-on bag. He riffles around in it for a moment before producing a... a fucking arrow? And no, I don’t mean an arrowhead. An entire-ass arrow.

“What the fuck? How did you get that through TSA?” Satoshi balks.