He was silent a moment. “Are we officially spying on him?”
“Your kind spies on everyone, whether they want to or not. Give me a fucking break. Blood Mama probably has an army floating over my grandfather’s head.”
“You’re nuts. I’ll call you as soon as I find something.”
Good, reliable, demon-possessed Rex. And to think, I’d once almost murdered him. I started to hang up, but he said, “Maxine.”
He almost never used my real name. It was always, Hunter, or Hunter Kiss, or maybe just an expletive. So I hesitated, waiting, and he said in small voice, “I like this world. It’s fucked up, but it’s good. Please tell me that’s not about to change.”
“It already has,” I said, and couldn’t bear to say anything else. I very quietly ended the call.
I went to the bathroom. Sat on the toilet and tried not to cry. With my pants pushed down I could see the boys on my legs and they looked gray and pale, and dull. I ran my hands over them, held my palms over their slow-moving faces—and whispered, “Love you, love you, love you.”
My reflection was shit. I had new wrinkles in my forehead that made my face look like a minitractor had been plowing right to left and between my eyes. My lips were cracked, bleeding, my cheeks sunken. Haunted, all of me. Haunted and sick, and exhausted.
I washed my face, patted my abdomen, and took a deep breath.
I could do this. I was not alone. I was beloved.
I went back out into the living room. Natural light pushed through the windows, but the space was cool and dark, which only deepened the hush that fell around us.
The Mahati crouched in the corner, eyeing the Shurik through the open door. The Messenger had already taken Mary’s seat and stared at Grant with unblinking, distant eyes. I wanted to pester her but kept my mouth shut and listened to my own body: dizziness fading, strength returning, headache almost gone. I wasn’t as happy about that as I should have been.
The Messenger said, “I do not know if I can help him. He is torn inside.”
I wanted to ask what that meant, but a low, smooth hum rolled from her throat. Power flowed over my skin, and the Mahati took a deep breath and strode from the house. Fled, really. He kicked some Shurik on the way out, and they hissed at him like he was their next Happy Meal. He didn’t seem to care.
I hesitated, then moved in close and picked up the crystal skull. I didn’t particularly want to touch it—the memory of that earlier vision was still too sharp. I was afraid of what I would see again.
Nothing at all, it seemed. I waited, holding my breath. Took me only a minute to start feeling ridiculous. I was going to jump at shadows soon.
The Messenger was right, though: It seemed wrong, having it there on the floor. I wasn’t sure why Mary had removed the skull from Jack’s hiding place.
I carried it outside to the porch. Five fat Shurik were tangled up in my chair, the one I always sat in with Grant when we wanted to feel like an old married couple.
“Move,” I snapped, and all of them raised the tips of their wormlike heads to stare at me. I felt, quite distinctly, that I was looking at a bunch of petulant teens giving me the “fuck you, old person” stare, which would have been a lot more amusing if I hadn’t already felt like an actual fucked-up old person. I waited a couple seconds to see if they were going to listen, but they didn’t even twitch in the right direction.
I used my foot to sweep them off the chair. It was like trying to move cats. All hisses and Velcro grips and tumbling, curling bodies. One of them lost its mind and tried to bite me through my jeans. I felt its teeth connect, the immense strength of its jaw, but no pain. The Shurik, on the other hand, fell back with all its teeth falling from its mouth, covered in black blood and shrieking.
I sat down and pretended not to care. I also pretended not to watch as its companions dragged its writhing body off the porch into the dandelions, its little cries growing fainter and fainter as it was pulled farther from the house. The rest of the Shurik inched away from me. Not far—apparently, they had some pride—but just out of reach.
With my feet up on the rail, I balanced the crystal skull on my knees. Slid my gaze past those holes for eyes, down to the sharp piranha teeth. I felt light-headed.
“Jack,” I said, thinking out loud.
Thirteen skulls. Created to amplify an Aetar’s inherent power—enough to build a prison on a woman’s body, a prison for five demons and the darkness inside them, a prison that would be inherited through blood: a reincarnation of mother and daughter and demon, for all time.
The boys had destroyed all those skulls, except this one. Jack’s skull. Jack’s weapon.