Page 22 of A Thousand Cuts

Nuisance curses used everyday things to work—the wood of the furniture, floral ingredients in beauty or cleaning products, elements in a specific space. Things one would find in everyone’s home.

It was why they were trickier to find but so much easier to cast than any other kind.

Fix went through his process diligently, ignoring Midas’s impatient huffing as he waited. The oak ash infused marker reacted first, the line glowing bright on Fix’s skin before slithering up and lingering in the air.

It glimmered for a split second before settling over a rickety-looking chair tucked in front of the sewing machine.

One.

The crushed cotton flower marker reacted next, the glimmer flying out of the room. Fix followed it into the bedroom, where it latched on to the curtains hanging over the window.

Two.

Lavender was next, reacting the moment Fix touched it to his arm. It led them to Liam’s tiny bathroom and wrapped the glimmer around a perfume bottle.

Three.

The final one was an elemental marker. The water one. It stayed in the bathroom and wrapped itself around the shower head.

Four.

“Four active curses from what I can see,” Fix said, turning around only to find an empty apartment and Midas nowhere to be found.

“Oh for the… Skulking around like a movie villain,” he muttered under his breath as he packed all of the markers except a shiny white one away and unbuttoned his shirt. He had tobreak these curses as soon as possible and be gone before Liam got back.

He let the shirt slip from one of his arms, rolling his shoulder and taking a deep breath before uncapping the marker and pressing the glowing tip of it to his wrist again.

The white ink rushed up the tattooed lines on his arm, mixing with the cursemark for a moment before splitting into four thin tendrils of light that rushed out of his skin.

They went toward the cursed objects and wrapped themselves around the glimmers above them. They squeezed hard, then pulled until there was a soft crackle in the air as the curses began to break.

Fix closed his eyes and focused, a satisfied smile pulling at his lips as he heard the telltalewhooshof a curse evaporating from existence.

He opened his eyes again to see the white tendrils floating slowly back to him, slipping over his skin and dimming until there was nothing left but his cursemark and the dark tattooed lines extending from it.

He put his shirt back on quickly and gathered his things, rushing out of the apartment before he could allow himself to linger just to feel closer to Liam. This wasn’t what this was about.

He clicked the door shut and was wondering how he’d lock it when a hand appeared and did the job for him.

“Took you long enough,” Midas said, putting his tools away and leading the way out of the building.

“I wanted to make sure he’d be okay,” Fix said.

“As if you won’t be keeping watch anyway.”

Fix looked away because he didn’t want every emotion he was feeling to be on display. The thing was, he didn’t really think Liam would be okay even after Fix had done his job. There was something…bigger going on here. Something that went beyond a few silly curses he couldn’t afford to have broken.

“I just think I have to keep an eye out for him.”

Midas clasped his shoulder once before stepping back. “You should also do something about that lovesick look in your eye while you’re at it.”

“I do not have a lovesick—” he started, but Midas gripped his hands mid-sign to stop him from finishing.

“You absolutely do,” he said. “It’s gross. Ask him out on a date or something now the case is done and spare us the melodrama.”

With that he turned and just walked away, leaving Fix to deal with his emotions on his own in the middle of a street he absolutely shouldn’t be seen on. Scratching his beard and the back of his neck, he worried his skin red raw as he walked to his truck. He peeled out of there as fast as he could, struggling to get his own thoughts in order.

Wren felt like he should protect Liam.