Page 180 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“I’d need maybe twenty minutes to prepare,” Fletcher says. “Then about five to perform the ritual. It’s not a terribly difficult spell.”

Roxie taps their finger against their lower lip. “Well... We do have access to the VIP lounge. And I don’t think I saw anyone in there when we passed it earlier.”

“We do?” I ask.

“Perks of having a label,” Roxie says with a shrug.

“Are we really about to perform a summoning ritual in the middle of an airport?” Wren asks. “I feel like Homeland Security would have a problem with this.”

“You think Aemon would try to smuggle more than two ounces of liquids into the airport?” I joke. “Should we go back to the TSA check and have him take off his loafers?”

Wren frowns at me. “No need to be a smartass,” she says.

“Well, let’s go summon a smarmy asshole,” I say, clapping my hands.

For the first time in a few hours, I feel the banked embers of my hope spark just a little.

Maybe not all is lost, after all.

ㅤ

After a while, The Aberrant gets bored when I force myself to stop crying. I have to. I can’t stomach the sticky paths his saliva leaves on my face as he consumes each tear that falls. My skin crawls and my nails bite into my palms the tighter he holds onto me—the closer he moves me to his lap.

After what feels like forever, The Aberrant stands without warning, my wrist fettered in his enormous hand as he pulls me along behind him, taking me out of the study and into the corridor. The study turns out to be just one of many rooms in the labyrinthine structure The Aberrant calls home.

It’s embarrassing, humiliating, really, as I stumble behind him. Each of his long strides requires two of mine. He’s huge—taller and more solid than he was back in the hospital. Like he’s spent the last few hours decompressing from the form he shoved himself into to capture me.

He breathes hard, like a great moose lumbering through the forest. Like every movement requires effort and focus. Great bellowing exhales through his nose that reverberate against the stone and wood hallways. He finally stops before a door that looks no different from any of the others. He jerks it open and flings me inside.

I sprawl on the ground, hitting it hard again, feeling the same bruises on my elbow and hip bone cry out in protest.

“Dress for dinner,” he snarls before slamming the door shut.

I take a moment to collect myself, but I can already feel the slow tightening of my throat each moment that I don’t obey his order. I get myself back up to my feet and check the door, jiggling the handle to see if it’s locked.

It is. I expected nothing else, of course, but I did hope. I probably ought to learn to stop doing that. Hoping.

The chamber is just a bedroom, from what I can tell. A four-post bed with red velvet curtains stands not too far away. The furniture is tasteful and perfectly arranged, but the room doesn’t look touched or lived in. I don’t know if this place gets dust, but I can sense the stagnant, miasmic energy in the room, nonetheless.

I find an armoire behind a long black curtain when I’m looking for a window. There are no windows in the room, just curtains to give the illusion that there might be some. This whole place feels like a bizarre facsimile of humanity. Like The Aberrant is grasping at attempts to hold onto normalcy when he’s devoid of anything close to it.

I open the armoire to find it full of clothes that belong at a dinner table from maybe two or three centuries ago. All of them are constructed of fabrics I’ve never even touched in all my years of thrifting and purchasing from online alternative stores. Most of them are dyed in lush jewel tones—rubies and plums and ceruleans.

The last thing I want to do is get undressed in this strange place. But The Aberrant has made it clear he’ll do what he wishes when it comes to my body. It’s doubtful the polyester and cotton covering my body will do anything to protect me. The best option is probably just to change as quickly as I possibly can, and hope to avoid his ire.

I wind up choosing a simple dress that looks like it might have been made in the 1500’s. It’s plum in color, with laces on the sides and sleeves that bell out around the elbow before tapering in toward the wrist. I quickly shuck my clothes off and pull the garment over my body.

I’m still fussing with my laces when the door explodes open. I flinch and back against the wall as he stalks inside the room and crowds me against it.

He peers at me with his strange eyes. Eyes that have changed since I last looked at them.

They were black as pitch, but now, in the center of his black scleras, right where irises should have been, is a sickle-shaped sliver that looks like a crescent moon. Just as pale and luminescent as the astral body herself.

He grins at me with those unnerving teeth before grasping the laces in his too large hands and pulling, hard, on each side. The dress cinches so tight that I can’t breathe. The structure of my ribcage and my organs shift uncomfortably until my body fits his ideal. He ties a haphazard knot that there’s no way to undo without something sharp. I’m going to have to cut myself out of this dress.

His hand goes to the back of my neck, encompassing its circumference as he forces me out of the room and down the hallway with him. Again, it’s all I can do to keep up with him. My breaths come out in tiny pants—the dress not allowing for a deep inhale while I almost run to keep up with him.

I can’t even look at my surroundings. I’m too focused on not falling and winding up choked by his grasp. It’s a long enough walk that I’m relieved when he deposits me in a chair at one end of a comically large dining table.