Suddenly, the itching in his wrist intensified until it was a sharp pain he could no longer ignore. Doubtless the swamp witch was calling him, reminding him of his obligation.
“Reddix,” Tilla said, but he ignored her.
“All right, witch,” he muttered, looking down at the blood red lthss on his right wrist. “I’ll be there to deal with you soo…” The words died on his lips as he saw what had happened to the tiny creature Xandra had imbedded in his skin.
Reddix had expected the thing to have grown again—that it would have completely encircled his wrist by now. Instead, it was…shrinking. Already it was half as big as it had been. What the hell was going on?
“How dare you call me a witch?” Tilla’s shrill, demanding voice pierced through his contemplation. “And look at me when I’m talking to you, Goddess damn it!”
“It wasn’t you I was talking to.” Reddix kept studying the lthss. It was shrinking even as he watched, growing smaller and thinner every moment that passed. There was no way it should be doing that until he had fulfilled his obligation to Xandra, which he most certainly hadn’t. No way she would ever free him of his debt…unless someone else was paying it.
Reddix felt his heart clench in his fist. “Nina,” he muttered. “Gods, no…what did you do?” Pushing past Tilla, he bolted for the door. He had to get to her before the witch did something awful to her.
Before it was too late.
Chapter Thirty
Nina blinked as the old woman led her into a gloomy little hut in the middle of the vast swamp. She felt she’d been walking for hours, but it couldn’t have been that long—could it? Looking down at herself she saw that her shoes— the little blue slippers Lissa had loaned her that went with her gown—were soaked with stagnant water and stained with purple mud. The bottom of her gown was in a similar state. Why had she agreed to let the old woman take her through such a messy, hot, unpleasant area? It reminded Nina of the Everglades back home—that miserable area of swampland past the vast urban sprawl of Miami that was crawling with snakes and gators.
“Well, well, dearie—let’s just get you comfortable, shall we?” the old woman said. Taking Nina by the upper arm, she bustled her over to a three legged stool right beside a large, bubbling caldron.
Nina wanted to protest that it was too hot to sit by a fire and a huge boiling pot, but to her surprise, the pot wasn’t hot at all but cold. In fact, it was so cold she felt like she was sitting right next to an AC unit blowing full blast. Inside of a minute she was shivering.
But it wasn’t just the weird variance in temperature that bothered her. The smell coming out of the thin, bluish broth in the pot was perfectly indescribable. It both disgusted Nina and made her hungrier than she’d ever been in her life. Her mouth watered even as her stomach rolled—what was going on? She wrapped her arms around herself and moved away from the pot. She wanted to get up and get away from it altogether, but she suddenly felt weak…like she couldn’t even get off the stool. What was wrong with her?
“Now, then,” the old woman said facing her…only she wasn’t old anymore. Her gray hair was completely white-blonde now, and all of the wrinkles in her ancient face had been magically been smoothed away. Her pale yellow eyes were large and luminous and wrong somehow. It took Nina a moment to realize that her pupils weren’t round but vertical, like a cat’s.
“What are you?” she breathed, shrinking back from the strange woman. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Come now, dearie.” The woman’s yellow eyes flashed. “We’re in the middle of the swamp, and I’m sure Reddix told you of the little deal he made with me. Therefore it’s logical to assume that I must be…”
“The swamp witch!” Nina tried to make a run for it, but once again, something seemed to be sapping her strength. She barely got off the stool before she sank to the ground, panting like she’d just run a marathon instead of taking two steps.
“Now, now, none of that.” The swamp witch wrapped extremely long white fingers around her arm—this time Nina was able to see that each finger had an extra joint—and placed her effortlessly back on the three legged stool. “Yes, I am the swamp witch, but no, I am not going to kill you. Although I will require some of your blood.”
“Reddix said you needed my blood,” Nina said in a voice that trembled more than she liked. “But…he didn’t say how much of it you needed.”
“Because I didn’t tell him, my dear.” The witch smiled, the vertical pupils of her eyes narrowing greedily. “But I can tell you it’s a lot. I need a lot.”