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I looked to Sal, whose arrow was still trained on the witch. She shook her head, no, but I saw the fear behind the gesture.
“I will,” I said. Golden light winked into existence and wove between us in figure 8, binding contract.
“Go ahead then,” Hanna urged, slurping a sip of her soup.
Because the shift was loose enough, I left it on as I stepped into the beam of moonlight angling through the small cottage window.
The creature within me hunted to the surface with a savage burst of animal pleasure.
The world folded over on itself as I came to all fours and watched my fingers shrink as glossy black claws appeared in place of the nails.
However awful I thought this place smelled before, it was multiplied a thousandfold once my transformation was complete.
My stomach lurched toward my mouth on a gag as my eyes began to water.
I took a moment to compose myself before continuing to the wall where at least a hundred shriveled skinfolds hung from iron nails.
“The outies are most unsettling, are they not?” Hanna said over her shoulder. “This is what happens when men try to be midwives.”
On this topic, I could not disagree.
Resisting the urge to sink back into my rage, I focused on the task at hand. Or paw, anyway.
Hanna forbade me to use my powers, but fortunately, I’d the benefit of at least eight years with a mother who taught me how to operate them covertly.
Pondering the horrific sight before me, I selected one of the options that required the most negligible physical interaction.
Eenie, meanie, miny, mo, I spoke the sacred choosing spell to myself within my own mind. Catch a tiger by the...
Nice try. Hanna’s voice overrode my own. What next? Abracadabra?
I don’t know which annoyed me more. That the witch could so effortlessly invade my mind or that she’d been accurate about my choice of options.
I was attempting to think misleading thoughts when an altogether different presence arrived in my mind. With it, a scent memory that burst into my brain like an explosion of fireflies.
My heart beating beneath Sal’s lips. The scent of her filling my lungs. The taste of her mouth. I could feel her within me. I could feel her on the very air.
Was this what Mark had always been yammering on about? This undeniable connection neither asked for nor intentionally nurtured?
I opened myself to it. I yielded as much space as it wanted to occupy. And when I could sense Sal even in the space between breaths, I again turned my eyes to the board. They drifted down the road of puckered flesh, stopping when they reached one that was small, tawny, and taut.
I stared at it with my acute vision, enlarging it within my field of sight until I could see the faintest silvery scar crossing the top.
Sal’s.
I lifted onto my hind legs, recoiling when the calloused pad of one toe inadvertently touched one of the other flesh knots. Stifling a gag, I gently pulled it from the nail before dropping it in Hanna’s outstretched palm. Her hand closed over it, her knuckles whitening as they squeezed into a fist.
A ribbon of flame, like the one that had bound me to the witch, appeared between her and Sal, flaming a bright orange before disappearing in a puff of smoke.
“You’re a cheat,” Hanna ground out through tight lips.
“I won fair and square,” I protested. “Now release my brother.”
“A cheat,” the witch repeated, stamping her foot.
“How did you know which one was hers?”
“I suppose I’m just lucky,” I said with a shrug. “We had a deal. Release. My. Brother.”
