Page 21 of Hexual Healing
We lay there on the floor, magical light still leaking from my skin, and stared at the now completely open doorway.
“She's coming back,” I said.
“Soon.”
“With a plan this time.”
“Probably.”
“We're going to die.”
“Probably not.”
I turned my head to look at him.He was smiling despite the blood, despite the destruction, despite me, despite…everything.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because,” he said, “for the first time in a hundred years, I have something worth fighting for.”
The curse went completely berserk at that.Pain lanced through me like lightning made of acid.I convulsed, and my magic exploded outward in a wild, uncontrollable burst of light.
When I regained my vision, everything in the room had changed.
The furniture was now various colors of the rainbow.The walls had developed a subtle pattern that looked like scales.The ceiling had stars.Actual, tiny, twinkling stars embedded in the wood.And everything, absolutely everything, was covered in butterflies.
Not real butterflies.Magical ones.Made of light and shadow and what appeared to be a six-year-old’s fever dream.
“Tansy,” Gary said slowly.“Why is everything butterflies?”
“I don't know!”
“Why are they all looking at me?”
I turned my head and immediately saw that he wasn’t being hyperbolic.Gary was right.Hundreds of magical butterflies had turned to stare at Gary with their glowing eyes.
“Run,” I suggested.
“I'M A SNAIL!”
The butterflies descended en masse, lifting Gary into the air despite his protests.They carried him in a spiral pattern around the room while he shrieked British obscenities that would have made a sailor blush.
“Should we help him?”Baz asked.
“Probably.”
Neither of us moved.We just lay there watching Gary get butterfly-napped by my rogue magic, too exhausted and overwhelmed to do anything about it.
“Your magic’s weird,” Baz said conversationally.
“You have no idea.”
The house rumbled in agreement, and I could have sworn the butterflies giggled.
This was my life now.Well, today at least.Sentient houses, magical butterflies, a curse trying to kill the guy who’d laid everything on the line to protect me, and my ex coming back for round two.
“We need a plan,” I said.
“We need an army.”