Page 78 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“After you just carved a bone-deep gash in your hand to create it? How about absolutely-the-fuck-not?” I say. “Let me see your hand.”

“Damien, I’m fine,” she says. “It’s already on the mend.”

“Let. Me. See,” I demand, using my Dom voice. Brooking no argument.

She purses her lips and lets out a little breath, giving me her hand. I take it and inspect it. I press gently into her palm to check the wound and... and...

And she’s right. The more I test it, the more the blood dries to a sticky coating on her hand. She huffs. “It’s already sealed up. It will look a little pink for a couple of days, and the skin will be a bit tender. But no stitches required.”

I meet her eyes, feeling oddly heartbroken.

She smiles sadly. “Changing your mind about being my boyfriend yet?” she asks.

I shake my head. “No, of course not,” I say. “I just... God, I feel so fucking guilty for cracking jokes about that. It was... violent.”

“The powerful magic often is,” she says a little tiredly. There’s a bit of knowing sadness in her expression that I can’t quite put my finger on. “But worth it. I want you to be protected. I could have done a less powerful mark, but I want everyone to know how much I care about you. I want you to know how much I care about you.”

“You didn’t have to split your hand open to prove that to me,” I say.

“And, yet, I would. Every time,” she says with a sweet smile.

I frown, cupping her face with my hand, realizing all at once that the slice on my finger is healed too. I brush a thumb on her still-pale cheekbone. “I’m going to go grab something to clean us up, and then I’m feeding you copious amounts of ice cream, you absolute madwoman.”

She chuckles and nods. “Honestly, that sounds lovely.”

I spend the rest of the night taking care of her until she falls asleep with my fingers brushing through her hair. And I wonder how much more her magic has taken from her in the name of keeping her loved ones safe.

I don’t want her to ever do it for me. Not ever again.

ㅤ

“Seems pretty damn solid to me,” I say the next day as I stare at an otherwise nondescript wall in the Odd Bird Apothecary. The one that I know, for certain, has brick on the other side of it. The one Lillith claims is a doorway to the tunnels that will take us to The Buried City.

“You’re going to have to get used to things not being what they seem,” she teases me with a little pinch of my side. I give a startled yelp and her eyes glitter with malevolent joy. “Oh. My. God. Are you ticklish?”

“You seem to really enjoy making me want to punish you,” I counter.

She buttons her lips, but her eyes are still shining with intent as she hooks her arm through mine. “Alright. So, you know those things where you let your eyes relax and a bunch of random shapes become a different image with your eyes unfocused?”

I stare at the wooden wainscotting in front of me and nod. “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve always sucked ass at those.”

She chuckles and sighs. “Yeah, me too,” she says. “But same principle. Stop looking for what you think you know is there. Stop taking reality for granted. It’s... it’s like when you’re a kid and you play pretend. If you could see an opening. What do you think it would look like? Start there and see what changes.”

These last couple days have been the most bizarre exercise in imagination and open-mindedness in my damned life. I look at the wall, thinking about what she said. Thinking about not taking what is in front of me for granted.

At first nothing seems to happen. And then, it’s suddenly there. A... seam. I scowl at what suddenly looks...a pair of very convincingly printed curtains.

“What do you see?” she asks.

I reach out to the wall and spook when it actually gives way.

The two panels of the... curtain? Wall? Wurtain? Whatever it is, it sways. Lillith gives an impressed little coo.

“Ohhh, a curtain! How clever.”

“Is... that not what you see?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “A lot of times, born witches tend to struggle to think as creatively as mortals do. We start to take magic for granted the same way you might think of a wall being a solid object that you can’t pass through,” she says. “When you grow up doing this stuff—learning how to interact with the matter in the world using magic—you tend to just take the most obvious path. Rearranging molecules to soften a surface and make it gaseous, or liquid. Then we step on through. But for someone who only sees a wall, you have to get a bit more...mmn—narrative, I guess. It’s sort of like how you still think in English, even when speaking a different language, until you become more fluent.”