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If you love me, cut off my head.
“Lila,” I said. “I don’t know how to change you.”
She pads to the edge of the table and jumps onto the floor. Surreal. Everything is surreal. None of this is happening.
“I am thinking of doing something to force myself. Something crazy. Something you maybe suggested. To force the magic.”
This is stupid. Someone has to stop me. She has to stop me.
She rubs her cheek against the blade, closing her eyes, and then rubs her whole body against it. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“You really think this is a good idea?”
She yowls and hops back up onto the table. Then she sits, waiting.
I reach out and place one hand on the fur of her back. “I’m going to swing this sword at your head, okay? But I’m not going to hit you.”
Stop me.
“Stay still.”
She’s just watching me, just waiting. She doesn’t move, except for her twitching tail.
I pull back the sword and swing it toward her tiny body. I swing it with all my weight behind it.
Oh, God, I’m going to kill her again.
And then I see it. Everything goes fluid. I know I can shift the sword in my hand into a coil of rope, a sheet of water, a dusting of dirt. And the cat is no longer a collection of fragile bird bones and fur. I can see the badly woven curse on her, obscuring the girl underneath. A simple mental tug and it pulls apart.
I’m suddenly bringing the sword down on the naked form of a crouching girl. I pull back, but my weight is way off balance.
I topple to the floor and the sword flies out of my hands. It crashes into a water-stained Venetian chest at the other end of the dining room.
She is a tangled mass of dredded curls the color of hay and sunburned skin. She tries to stand up and can’t. Maybe she’s forgotten how.
This time when the blowback hits, it’s like my body is trying to rip itself apart.
* * *
“Cassel,” she says. She’s bent over me, in a too big shirt. I can see almost the entire length of her bare legs when I turn my head. “Cassel, someone’s coming. Wake up.”
My ribs are hurting again. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I just need to sleep. If I sleep long enough, when I wake up, I’ll be back in Wallingford and Sam will be spraying himself with too much cologne and everything will go back to the way things are supposed to be.
She slaps me, hard.
I suck in a deep breath and open my eyes. My cheek is stinging. When I turn my head, I can see the hilt of the sword and a shattered vase that must have fallen off the chest. The whole floor is freshly strewn with books and papers.
“Someone’s coming,” she says. Her voice sounds different from how I remember. Scratchy. Hoarse.
“My grandfather,” I say. “He went to the store.”
“There are two people out there.” Her face is both familiar and strange. Looking at her makes my stomach hurt. I reach out a hand.
She flinches back. Of course she doesn’t want me to touch her. Look what I can do.
“Hurry,” she says.
I stumble up. “Oh,” I say out loud, because I remember the stupid thing I told Philip. I can’t believe I ever thought that I was good at deception.
