Magic Rises

shampooing my hair and then dragging a soapy sponge against my cuts. It hurt and I welcomed it.
    Andrea once told me that I had a problem processing emotional pain. I couldn’t handle it, so I replaced it with physical pain instead: either I inflicted it on others or I suffered through it myself. Well, I had physical pain aplenty. If she was right, I should be floating on a cloud of bliss right about now.
    Finally the water ran clear. I stepped out and looked at myself in the mirror. The gashes on my thigh and stomach had come open. Demet was really, really good at medmagic, but I was still human and now I was all cut up to hell. In the past, Doolittle had spent so much effort on healing me that some of my old scars had faded. Clearly, this created an imbalance and the Universe had decided to compensate.
    Half a dozen shallow cuts crossed my arms and torso. Hugh’s handiwork. I shouldn’t have let him goad me. Voron always told me that he’d trained Hugh to fight, but also to command and plan. But he had trained me to kill. Hugh would be directing an army, leading it into battle, while I was a lonely assassin on the sidelines, cutting my way through the mass of people to my target. In a simple one-on-one sword fight, I had an edge.
    Neither of us had used magic. I still didn’t know the full extent of his, and he still didn’t know much about mine. At least I hadn’t given myself away completely.
    Someone had left bandages on the night table. Probably a gift from Doolittle. I bandaged the worst of it, sat on the chair very carefully—my thighs hurt—and slumped forward. My body hurt all over. I closed my eyes. It was just pain. It would pass. I just needed a minute. I still had three hours before my shift with Desandra started.
    Someone knocked. I stared at the door, hoping to burn through it with my gaze and explode whoever was on the other side.
    Knock-knock.
    “Yes?”
    “Can I please talk to you?”
    I didn’t recognize the voice. Okay. I pulled on a clean T-shirt and a new pair of jeans, picked up Slayer, and opened the door. A young man stood in the hallway, dressed in a djigit outfit. Young, barely eighteen. Dark blond hair, brown eyes. He stood, rocking forward on his toes, as if expecting to be jumped any second.
    “What is it?”
    “You’re looking for the orange creatures,” he whispered in a heavily accented English.
    “Yes.”
    “I will take you where they nest. If you pay me. But we have to go fast and be very quiet.”
    Aha. “What’s your name?”
    “Volodja.”
    A Russian name, short for Vladimir. “How far is it?”
    “Two hours. On the mountain. I want three.” He held up three fingers. “Three thousand dollars.”
    “Sounds like a good deal to me.”
    “I’ll wait in town by the statue.” He took off down the stairs.
    My howling in the dark had paid off. Someone got upset over the blood test and now they had decided to make me disappear. The only other party interested in getting rid of me would be Lorelei, and she had no reason to fight with me. She was winning.
    They really thought I was stupid. At least he didn’t offer to sell me a nice beachfront property in Nebraska.
    I pulled off my T-shirt—it hurt—and strapped myself into a bra. It also hurt. I put the T-shirt back on, found my boots, and headed to Doolittle’s room. I’d finally found the end of a thread in this messy knot. If I pulled on it the right way, it would lead me to the guilty party. But I’d need backup.
    The door stood wide open and I heard Aunt B’s voice from down the hall. “And then I told him that beads were just fine, but a woman had to have certain standards . . . Come on in, dear.”
    How did she know? I was pretty quiet. I stepped through the door. The debris was gone. A clean, tidy room greeted me, furnished with new bedding, chairs, and desks. Doolittle sat in a wheelchair. I did my best not to wince. Eduardo stretched out on the bed to the right. George sat on the other bed. Keira sat on the windowsill, while Aunt B occupied a chair. Derek lay on the floor, reading a book.
    Everybody, except Doolittle and Aunt B, studiously pretended not to look at me. We’d been attacked, we were still under siege, and the shapeshifters had turned grim. My fight with Hugh must’ve made things worse somehow. Either that, or all of them also knew that Curran had found himself a new main squeeze. Awkward.
    “A young djigit stopped by my room,” I said. “His name is Volodja and for three