Hexed

wished the markets would be open already so we could get it done before he fell asleep again.
    “Do you at least have a plan?” Jim asked.
    “Yes. Most likely we’ll have to get down to Kenny’s Alley in the Underground. That’s where the most expensive animal parts are sold. I will go inside the shop. You will wait outside. I will offer them a lot of money for the snail. If I get in trouble, I’ll scream and you will get me out.”
    “A hell of a plan.”
    I wrinkled my nose at him.
    “And if I fail to bring you back unharmed, your mother will skin me alive.”
    “She might just turn you inside out.”
    Jim had this funny long-suffering look on his face, and then his eyes sparked. “So does she grill every guy you bring home?”
    I don’t bring guys home, you stupid, stupid man . “Ignore it. She’s just worried. I’m almost thirty and still unmarried. It’s a big deal in my culture.” Not that he would understand.
    “I like it how wealthy trumped black.”
    “Jim, ignore it, okay?”
    “Okay.” He raised his hands up.
    Gah. “She’s desperate, all right? She just wants me to be happy, and she’s afraid I’ll never make a good match.”
    “Why?”
    Oh my gods. “What do you mean, why? Jim, look at me.”
    He did. “Yes?”
    What, now I had to spell it out? Talk about humiliating. “My mother tried to describe me in a glowing light: She went through all my virtues.”
    “I’ve got that,” he said. “Especially the part about obedient and respectful . . .”
    “Never mind that. She went through the whole list. If I could do origami, she would’ve mentioned it, too.”
    “Okay, and?”
    “Did she tell you I was pretty?”
    He gave me a blank look.
    “Did the word pretty come out of her mouth? At all?”
    “No,” Jim said.
    “There you go.” Happy now?
    “So this is it? This is your big hang-up? You’re pissed off because your mother doesn’t think you’re pretty? Don’t let it bother you. It’s not important.”
    Oh, you idiot. It’s not my mother I’m worried about. It’s you. I waved my arms. “Jim, what’s the first thing you said to me when I asked you to describe the strange woman? Let me help you remember: You said she was beautiful.”
    “And?”
    “I bet you didn’t notice what she was wearing on her feet, but you noticed how hot she was.”
    “She was barefoot and her feet were dirty.”
    Him and his stupid memory. “That’s how it goes: Men are supposed to be strong, women are supposed to be beautiful. Well, I’m not beautiful. You can put me into a room of a hundred women my age, and I’ll be smarter than most of them put together, but it won’t make a damn bit of difference, because if you let a man into that same room and let him pick, I would be the last one left. If I were a normal woman, I could use my brain to earn money and then I would get plastic surgery. I would fix my nose, and then I would work some more until I could afford to fix my jaw and so on and so on, until I was pretty. But I’m not a normal woman. Lyc-V won’t fix my eyes, but it will undo any surgery. I know, I’ve tried. I’m stuck this way and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. And you say, ‘Don’t let it bother you,’ as if that’s supposed to make everything go away!”
    “And if the surgery did work, when would you stop having it?” he asked.
    “When I walked into the room, and men turned their heads to look at me. I want to be beautiful. I want to be a knockout. I would trade all of my intelligence and all of my mystic tiger magic for that.”
    The green glow backlit his irises. “And be what? A pretty idiot?”
    “Yes!”
    “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
    I glared at him.
    “Nadene is pretty,” he growled. “Beautiful woman. Dumb as a board. She can’t keep a guy longer than a couple of months. Phillip left her and she wanted me to intervene so I went to talk to him. He told me that she was fun to fuck for a while, but being with her made him feel like he was getting dumber. They couldn’t have a normal conversation. He couldn’t handle it. And you want to be that? Are you crazy?”
    “You don’t even notice the fact that I am female, Jim! I’m just a brain with a pair of glasses that you occasionally have to put under guard so it’s not damaged trying to have a little bit of fun. Did you ever ask yourself why I race?”
    “I know why you race,” he snarled.
    “Tell me!”
    “You race because you have a chip