A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

Her voice broke, startling Chess, one thought crystal clear in every rigid line of her: No more man, no magic, no promises of love — just me, alone, like I’d fooled myself I wouldn’t be. Positionless and street-bound, with one skill only t’my name, ’less I wanted t’swing for thievery; all that, nothin’ more.

Except, of course, for . . . you.

Chess didn’t want to tell her he knew what that was like — to be took up and dropped, have the whole world pulled out from under you like a rug, by one you thought you’d gladly die for. Shouldn’t have to tell her, anyhow; could just go on ahead and read his damn thoughts like any other dead person, if she was really interested.

Instead, he cleared his throat. “I never heard of anybody could do that — take a person’s hexation from ’em, without killin’.”

“’Cause you know so much about it, eh?” Oona didn’t look up, staring grimly down at the puddle’s fading picture show. “But no, wasn’t like ’e took it, as . . . made it so’s I couldn’t catch ’old of it — so’s it just flowed in one way and out the other. Closed fings up inside me and fused ’em shut, like any back-alley angelmaker.”

“What the hell’d be the point of that?”

“’Oo knows? A give-and-take, maybe, for some bigger reward on ’is own end — ’e ’ad ambitions in that direction, though it wasn’t like ’e’d discuss their particulars wiv the likes of me.” Another shrug. “Or maybe ’e was just a bastard.”

More’n likely, Chess thought.

“Saved your life, though, not that ’e was finkin’ of it — ’cause by makin’ such a mess of me, ’e made sure I couldn’t feed off of you, even if I wanted. And believe you me, I wanted.”

“What makes you think I don’t believe you?” Chess asked.

A silence fell between them then, dull as any unhealed break. Chess let it pass without remark, being used to the sensation — pain run through him like a tide, out and in and out again once more. Though it did surprise him just a tad to see Oona wince slightly, for all the world as though she felt it, too.

“So,” she continued. “There I was wiv you and not enough glamour to light a candle, after I’d been bankin’ half a year on the day it’d all change.” A ghastly smile. “Oh, sonny, you don’t know how many times I almost frew you overboard on our way down the coast, or drowned you in the bath like a kitten . . . not since you were cause of all my sorrows, so much, but just since you were close to ’and. And ’e wasn’t.”

Now, that he could almost believe. Same way he’d ended men for not being the ones he really yearned to kill, or fucked ’em for much the same reason.

“And I was the one set you to whore and smoke, too, I s’pose; neat damn trick, with me still on the tit. Next you’ll be sayin’ the Devil made you do it.”

“Was Columcille I’d’ve blamed, like I said, if there was anything to gain by it. You I kept alive, much as it cost me . . . but ask yerself this: given ’ow much I wanted to get rid o’you, why d’you fink I never actually did?”

“’Cause baby killers get the gallows, they get caught? ’Cause I was worth more sold than thrown away?” Chess spread his hands. “Both or neither, don’t even matter, considering how little of a fuck I give.”

Yet here another voice came back to him, this one light and clear, pleasantly absinthe-softened, betraying no hint of the steel he knew lurked behind it. Babies die, Mister Pargeter. Happens lamentably easily. . . . She’d really wanted you dead, you would be.

“You really ’aven’t wondered, ’ave you, all this while?” Oona cocked her head, disbelief writ wide on every line of her too-young face. “Why I kept on at you, put you straight into ’arm’s path a thousand times over — consider what you know ’bout your father now, ’bout me. Then tell me you really can’t see the why of it all.”

The why of it all: half his life, to this point. That same life had made his double purpose escape and vengeance, without even a hope of prosperity, after. Just hit the ground running and not look back, or fill any motherfucker got in his way with lead.

But yeah, he finally did know what she’d wanted all along, now. So simple, from this side of things. So impossible to guess at, from the other.

“You wanted me to turn hex,” he said, and coughed up a sick laugh. “Go up like a blow-stick, take the whole show with me when I did — that about the size of it? Christ, no wonder you got more and more pissed, every time I never turned the trick!”

“Contrary to the last, you bastard. You really must be the toughest little shit alive.”

“No thanks to you. But then again . . . how dumb are you, woman? In any of the stories I heard tell of, only thing makes a man-hex bloom is threat of death! Ash Rook swung, for Christ’s sake, and he had to take my damn heart out to make me what I am — what I always was. You telling me that for all the neck-stabbin’ and pimpery, there was never one time you thought of just slittin’ my throat in my sleep and seeing what might happen? Or . . .”

He trailed off. She didn’t answer.

Didn’t have to.

Because — oh God, it was already creeping up like he’d been born saturated, a poison-knowledge tisane, waiting for the right hand to dunk him in boiling water and brew the truth right out of him. The bitter truth, too disgusting for anyone — even him — to swallow.

’Cause . . . if you’d done it wrong, all I’d’ve been was dead, and . . . no.

“No,” he repeated, out loud. “You do not get to say that to me, Goddamnit.”

Oona simply stood there, green stare level, now he was the one unable to meet it. Chess shied like a horse, swung away, stormed a few paces off,

spun back. “Bitch, no. You . . . you don’t get to . . . to even start to say . . .”