She lifted an eyebrow. “Well, you did well enough for both of us to survive.”
Yeah, we’d survived. Couldn’t ask for much more than that.
She took the lid off her cup again and scooped out a pulpy mess that smelled like a hamster cage. Stonecrow reached across the center console toward me.
I jerked back. “What’s that?”
She grabbed the wrist of my blistered hand.
“Relief,” Stonecrow said, smearing the mix on my skin.
The hot ache of the wound immediately subsided and was replaced by a damp coolness. Shivers rolled down my skin as the blisters dried, shriveled, and sloughed away to reveal fresh skin underneath.
It felt so good that I didn’t stop her when she dabbed it on the rest of the blisters, too. The stench was overpowering, but not magical. I didn’t even sneeze.
She handed me a fistful of napkins. “There you go.”
I wiped my face clean and checked the mirror. I looked like Cèsar again. A Cèsar that desperately needed to shave, but Cèsar nonetheless.
Stonecrow was smiling a little, giving me a weird look.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, tilting my jaw to see if I was turning purple or something.
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just—I didn’t get a good look at you in the cemetery before defending myself, so now I’m…looking at you.” The smile seemed fixed to her lips.
Fuck if I knew why. Women.
“Thanks for the…” I drew a circle in the air around my face with a finger, indicating all the freshly healed skin. “Even if you caused the damage to it in the first place.”
Her eyes had gone a little glassy as she gazed at me. She blinked and refocused. “Oh. Self-defense. I thought you were going to kill me.” It wasn’t exactly an apology. Guess I didn’t need one. Stonecrow grabbed a clean napkin. “You missed a spot.” She wiped along my jaw. I didn’t think I’d missed anything, but I appreciated not smelling like hamster cage, so I let her clean down my neck and collar.
Once she was done with the pawing, I finished my last burger. The beef didn’t taste quite as good now that she’d mentioned using animal blood in her rituals. “Let’s get one thing straight, Stonecrow. If you’re into human sacrifice for your magic, get out of the car right now. I don’t work with murderers.”
“Isobel,” she said. “Not Stonecrow. Isobel’s fine.”
I liked the sound of that, but I didn’t feel like being on first name terms with a murderess. “You haven’t killed anyone for a magic spell,” I pressed.
“Never,” Isobel said.
Good enough. We could always talk about the animal cruelty later.
“Then let’s have a talk with Erin,” I said, turning the SUV on.
The night grew dark and sultry. It was nice enough out that I would have liked to roll down the windows and let the damp evening breeze into the car, but I was hesitant to give up what little privacy the tinted windows gave us. Not to mention the bulletproof glass. I could still feel the barrel of a gun jammed into the back of my skull. Now that the giddiness from my shitty luck/strength spell was wearing down, I could feel it real well.
I’d been one finger squeeze away from my brains splattered on the desert. That was enough to make a guy turn paranoid.
We parked outside Suzy’s townhouse.
Isobel glanced out the window. “What’s here?”
“My coworker. Suzy. She’s gonna be able to help us.”
“Suzy,” she mused. “Bet she has blond pigtails.”
More like pure animal rage and filthy jokes trapped inside a woman’s body. Whatever. “Stay here,” I said, and got out. When I rounded the car, Isobel was slamming her door, hiking her shorts up her ample hips. “Uh, didn’t I say ‘stay here?’”#p#分页标题#e#
“You said it,” Isobel said, giving me a disarmingly dazzling smile.
Right.
She didn’t follow me when I headed toward Suzy’s blue door. She remained leaning against the SUV. I kept an eye on her as I headed up the walk.
I was on Suzy’s front step, about to knock, when the door flew open. There must have been magical alarms that I hadn’t sensed.
The instant of total relief on Suzy’s face was immediately overwhelmed by anger. “Cèsar, you are one stupid motherfucker,” she said, but she was grabbing me by the jacket, running her hands over my chest and arms, like she couldn’t believe I was still alive. “What are you doing here? Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
Considering that I hadn’t gotten a bullet in the head? Yeah, I was feeling pretty thoroughly okay. “Did you get to Eduardo and Joey first? Did you question them?”