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As her head started to pound, she went to rub her face…
And froze as only her left hand came up to do the duty.
Glancing down, she saw that her right one was still in her pocket. Still locked on that switchblade.
“Let go,” she whispered. “You let go… right now.”
Instead of releasing her grip, her arm moved on its own, slowly retracting to reveal what was in her hand.
It was not a switchblade.
The tool was about five inches long, with an end like a melon baller. Alys. An ancient artifact that was used to remove the eyes of the dead.
Or the living that was soon to be dead.
Xhex’s heart began to skip beats. The old weapons weren’t seen much anymore, but she was well familiar with them.
And this one had blood on it. That was dried, but still red.
Lungs burning, she dropped the length withhorror on the desk next to the light-show laptop, and the way it clanged made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“Calm down… fucking calm… down…—”
In slow motion, she watched from a distance as she reached out and pulled open the thin drawer underneath the desktop. The key that she didn’t want to use was in the way back, on the right, behind blank envelopes that would never be put in the mail, brochures from the furniture company they’d used to kit out the VIP section with booths, and miscellaneous scissors, paper clips, and pens that were running low on ink, but not completely out.
A copper key.
Her feet gave herself a quarter turn on the chair’s rollers. There was a set of drawers off to the side, and the one on the left on the bottom had a tarnished circle under the stainless handle.
The trembling was bad as she went to put the key in its slot, and it was a while before the copper found home.
The lock turned easily.
Xhex pulled the drawer out a little, and the darkness that was revealed was an abyss that had no end.
A little farther out.
A little more.
Come on, she told herself. There was nothingin there, just an empty gray interior to match the cheap exterior—
The lidded glass jar was all the way in the back, not making an appearance until there was no more left to pull.
And for a moment—for a split second—Xhex thought there were marbles in the squat, transparent container. Big ones. Aggies—
Gagging, she wrenched away and pulled the wastepaper basket over.
The dinner that Fritz and his staff had pulled together with such gourmet aplomb came up quick. After that… there was only dry heaving.
The eyes have it, the voice in her head said.
“Shut the fuck up.”
Squeamish? Really? You were the one who wanted to start a collection. Come to think of it, you have something to add to it, don’t you.
As she straightened and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, the argument between patrons was still going on outside her door, but fuck that. She had bigger problems—and they were just about to go nuclear.
With a sense of dread, she reached into the left pocket of her jacket—which she hadn’t been aware of having on.
