A Tree of Bones (Hexslinger 3)

“Never asked you to. Then again, I misdoubt you know which he was, let alone who.”

Her smile softened, making his stomach churn. “Ah, but there you’d be wrong, for ’e wasn’t the sort you forget — an educated man, wiv quite the ‘ead for hoity-toity God-botheration: Malcolm Devesstrin, what sailed from Dublin to New York City and took up with the gangs, standin’ mage for the Might of Eire ’gainst every roisterin’ jack in the Five Points. Said ’ow ’e’d been a monk once, which was why ’e called ’imself Columcille, after the saint.” It came out Collum-kill, and here Chess felt another odd twist in his gut, something turning, a keyhole creak. “And Christ knows, I didn’t ’ave no cause to doubt ’im. But that was all put paid to, when ’e stole some mouldy book and took off runnin’.” She glanced back over her shoulder, then, lashes lowering flirtatiously, to add: “A fine, tall man, big as a ’ouse and broad as a barn and ministerial in ’is declamation, wiv a powerful love to ’ear ’imself talk. Sound familiar?”

“You’re a lyin’ whore.”

“Oh yes, always, but not about this. Why bother? Bastard’s dead any’ow, from what I heard; struck out in the streets, five years after you was born. Was some Nativist battle-witch they calls the Widowmaker what laid ’im low, probably ’cause ’e tried to pull the same trick on ’er ’e did on me, but she was wilier. Or just luckier.”

Chess shook his head, muzzily. “What . . . trick?”

“Fink a minute on it ’fore you dismiss anything I got to tell you out of ’and, just ’cause it’s me ’oo’s talkin’, Cheshire Pargeter — for that’s your full name, as it ’appens, and did I never tell you that, neither? Sorry.” Her voice dropped, sweet giving way to rough, as the rasp crept upward. “Named you for a county, one I fought my own Ma came from, once upon a time. But that don’t matter much now.”

“Keep on talkin’, bitch, ’fore I paste you another, story or no story.”

“All right. Say a man ’as hexation, powerful bad, and meets a woman ’e’s drawn to, on account of the power she’s got locked up inside; say she’s drawn to ’im the same, enough to let ’im ’ave ’is way and trust ’e’ll do right by ’er, for all every scrap of experience tells ’er that’s a load of old rope. And say one day she misses ’er courses, knows she’s taken short.”

“Any of this got a point, beyond the obvious?”

Display, that’s all it was — his only weapon left, used without compunction. But it made Oona’s eyes light up, same way he knew his own could, or had — shoot genuine sparks like tears from either corner, kill-flash bright, which scarred her cheeks on their way down before healing themselves anew, flesh knitting back together in their wake.

“Point is, you berk,” she gritted, “that everyfing you ’ave you owe to ’im an’ me, more’n you ever knew. Fink I was conjured out of nothin’, wiv you already stuffed up inside? I ’ad fourteen ’ole years before you ever existed, and damn, if I didn’t make ’em count! I could’ve done anyfing, I’d only come into my own, wivout you to ’old me back.”

She clapped her hands and whipped them apart, blue-white arcs of lightning writhing between her palms, their spitting light painting her face. “Anyfing,” she whispered, whites of her eyes gone sodium-bright.

Chess shuddered, then shrugged.

“Gonna need more than that to make a mark, Ma,” he ground out. “That little crackle wouldn’t set me back none even if it was real — Ash Rook was ten times any hex you might’ve been, and I’m ten times the hex he was. ’Sides which, you already told me — down here ain’t nothin’ but dreams. Shadow shows.” He thrust his hand straight into the lightning field, and saw it pass unscathed. “I’ll say it again: I ain’t you, and you ain’t me. Never were.”

Oona closed her hands, making the lightning vanish, but didn’t lower her eyes from his. “No,” she agreed. “Glamour I ’ad, enough t’get me shed of this place, but I wasn’t no true ’ex, since my full power ’adn’t yet come to pass.” A pause. “Your preacher-man — ’e tell you what ’appens to witches carry witchlings?”

“How the whelp comes out dead, or the mother dies, or they both die?”

“That’s right.” No smile, now. “Could feel it movin’ inside me, right along with you. The craft I’d yet to grab ’old of, close as my own blood. I felt it pullin’, each and every day; felt you pullin’ on it, fightin’ me for it. “That was when ’e came back, your Pa. And when I saw ’im again, you jumped inside me like you was tryin’ to bust out right then . . . and I knew. Could see in ’is eyes that ’e knew, ’ad known all along, ’ow this would go.”

Nothin’ worse in this whole world, darlin’, Ash Rook’s Hell-deep voice told Chess, mildly, than a bad man who knows his Bible.

“’E laid it out for me,” Oona went on, “told me there was nought to be done about ’ow fings would end, unless . . . ’e tried something.”

Chess’s brows contracted. “And you let him? Some ex-monk hex you didn’t know from Adam, savin’ he’d had his tackle up in your box, and left you like to die of it?”

“’Adn’t much bleedin’ choice, did I?” Oona snapped. “And ’e . . .” Surprisingly, she flushed. “’Ad a way wit

h ’im, Columcille did. Made me fink it was — I was — important. That we’d learn something, if everyfing worked right; that if fings went wrong, there’d at least be no pain in it, far as I was concerned.”

“Bet he lied about that one, though.”

“Oh, ’e lied about all of it, from first to bloody last. That was just the topper.”

She looked down, red hair falling curtain-long once more, wrapping her profile away. And as Chess’s gaze followed, instinct-driven, he saw her fold into a squat, balancing on those small bare feet, toes already black with mud. Watched her dip the fingers of one hand through a rut puddle, yet more light trailing in its five-fold wake while shadows bred inside the brightening water, a cloudy mirror full of images he struggled to decode.

This same younger form she wore now stretched out in some foul tenement bed, held down, her mouth wide. A dark man crouched watching, one big hand cupping her jaw, the other stroking her sweaty brow. Gas hissing in the sconce, blue flames pin-pointed in her pupils; the beat of a heart, two hearts, a doubled pulse ebbing in and out.

Give it t’me now, girl. My lovely Oona, my hunger’s bride. Just as you promised, as you want to, along with that brat of yours, poor little sweetmeat. Poor, puling little mage-bred sacrifice.

Reminded him of nothing so much as Dame Ixchel, swimming in blood-drool and other hot juices. Suicide Moon Ixchel, taking his lip between her teeth and grinding ever so slightly, like she meant to tenderize him just a touch, ’fore throwing him on the grill. Or eddying alongside as Rook puppeted him stringless through Mictlan-Xibalba’s rainy corridors, telling him that dying for gods you didn’t even know, making ’em a raw meat meal, wasn’t so much dreadful as glorious, flowery, beautifulbeautifulbeautiful —

So sons of bitches ran in his family, apparently. No great surprise, given.

“Sly as the bloody Pope, that one,” Oona spat, one fingertip tracing the dark man’s regal profile, erasing it with a ripple. “So I’m turnin’ inside out from the pain of squeezin’ you clear, feelin’ the ’exation in every part of me ready to pop the exact same way you was, an’ I ’ear Columcille call out somefing . . . Jew cant and church-talk all mixed together, what ’urt the ear t’listen to. And it all just tore, ripped clean away, so fast I didn’t even feel you drop. Nothing left behind ’cept a hole, raw and sick and covered over in scab — ”