“Oh dear, I figured you might overreact.”
My heart pounded out of my chest. Where was this guy? Had the thief trying to get in my car returned?
“You see, I’ve been quiet for many, many years. But it seems this has been damaging both of us.”
“What is damaging?” I asked, still not understanding. I backed toward the center of the room, spinning slowly with the blade. The voice moved no further away yet no closer.
“All the killing. Normally I detest it, but Miranda this is really becoming unbearable.”
What the fuck? The panic rose faster in my throat. “How do you know my name?”
“Well we have spent months on end together, though really it’s only been the last several weeks that we’ve really gotten intense about this whole killing a god business.”
No. No, I must be going out of my mind. Still, my eyes slowly fell to the glint of my blade.
“I’ve been killing gods, immortals, and fae for millennia but does anyone ask me how I feel about it?”
I dropped the sword and backed up fast as lightning, flattening against the door. “No. Way.”
“Ouch. No need to be so dramatic.”
“You,” I said in a shaking voice. “You’ve been affecting my aim, trying to keep me from stabbing him.”
“Well, yes. But can you imagine how it is for me? I may be an enchanted blade that kills immortals, but does anyone ask howIfeel about it? Does anyone ask howIfeel about all the blood and icky gore? No. Nobody cares that I’m squeamish or that I’m a pacifist.”
My hands clutched my head. In the same day I have now flubbed a date, played monopoly against a god, dry humped him into a mind melting orgasm before I killed him, and now I was having a conversation with a talking sword.
“Bob?” I asked, hoping against hope I only had a mild hallucination and that it wouldn’t speak again.
“I can’t say I entirely appreciate the moniker, but I do feel it has brought us closer together. And while we are on the subject, I’d prefer you stop referring to me as ‘they’ or ‘it.’ I am quite a masculine weapon, and am a ‘he.’”
“Oh my gosh, I can’t handle this right now.”
“Well unfortunately, you are the only one who can handle me, so you are going to have to get it together, Miranda.”
“I—I’ve got to make a call,” I said, then shook my head. Why the hell am I qualifying what I’m doing to a sword?
I left Bob there, in the middle of the living room and walked into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me.
I called Vivien. Thankfully, night had fallen, so I knew she would be up. Otherwise, she was dead to the world during daylight.
She didn’t pick up. I called twice more before she picked up.
“What’s wrong?” she asked immediately. I never called so insistently, so she knew it was urgent.
“Bob is talking to me.”
Silence.
Well that’s a first, my friend being at a loss for words, but not helpful right now. “The sword, it’s talking to me,” I reiterated.
“What is the sword saying?” she asked in a tone that suggested she didn’t want to set off the crazy person any more than possible.
“He says he’s squeamish about blood, that he’s a pacifist, and oh also, he has a French accent.” Okay. Maybe I did snap. Maybe this was all some fever dream brought on by Jamal’s absence.
Or what I just did in the basement with Xander. Fuck, it scared me beyond anything. I’d gladly run back into a warzone than face the feelings that rushed to the surface after what we did. I felt completely wrung out, like something deep inside me had exploded and left nothing of me behind. And then I’d opened my eyes and found Xander watching me, looking at me like. . .like I don’t know what. But I felt completely naked and the fear rushed at me a million miles an hour and I had to get away, I had to get him to stop looking at me like that, he had to stop seeing me. The me no one got to see.
So I stabbed him.
