Then I noticed a small figure sitting at a marble-topped table in the center of the room. Its back was turned to me, and it was wrapped in black lace and hunched over like a vulture. It couldn’t have been Camo Pants, could it? He was too large for this small shape.
It didn’t matter. I couldn’t get to the phone without passing him. I hefted the table leg like a club and moved forward. The pain made it hard to think, but maybe this little person all wrapped up in black fabric was Camo after all.
It was just pain. Just pain. It made me dizzy and sick, and it clouded my vision at the edges, but I could push through it. I raised the table leg, feeling bleary and angry. I was hurting and I was ready to share that hurt.
“Ray.”
I stopped, confused, and turned toward the voice. Annalise stood beside a small desk in the corner, watching me carefully.
Annalise Powliss was my boss, a peer in the Twenty Palace Society, and she was incredibly powerful. Although she was just barely over five feet tall and as thin as a rail, she was covered with tattoos—spells—that gave her extraordinary strength and toughness. She could tear a car door off its hinges with one hand and could shrug off a bullet through the eye. I’d seen her do both.
She wasn’t wearing her usual gear—there was no outsized fireman’s jacket, no vest covered with alligator-clipped spells. She wore a pair of plain blue drawstring pants and a white button-down shirt. Her tattoo-covered feet were bare. I’d never seen her dressed in such flimsy clothes.
Like mine, her tattoos were spells, but hers covered her whole body from her collarbones down—I’d seen them one time after her clothes had burned on a job.
Finally her face, which was pale and delicate—almost childlike—was set in the most curious expression I’d ever seen. She had always been difficult to read, but for the first time since I’d met her, she seemed nervous.
“Ray,” she said again in her funny high voice, “that’s a peer in the society you’re threatening.”
I turned back to the shrouded figure. It had turned toward me, and I saw that it was a little old woman with olive skin and gray streaks in her hair. Her face was impassive and her eyes were dreamy.
How had I mistaken her for Camo Pants? I let the table leg fall from my hands, then immediately wished I had it back so I could lean on it again. The little old woman was a peer? If so, she was probably just as powerful as Annalise—maybe more so. Hitting her with a hunk of pine wouldn’t have done more than tear some lace.
The world began to go dark.
“Talbot!” Annalise called. Her voice seemed to come from far away. Suddenly, I felt hands lift me up and steady me. I leaned against a body—not Annalise’s, a large one—and fought my way back to consciousness.
“Hey hey now,” a man beside me said. He smelled of Old Spice and dry sweat. “You shouldn’t be out of bed yet. You ain’t ready.”
I looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing his red shirt anymore, but it was Camo Pants. I was happy to see he had a fat lip. He was holding my wallet and ghost knife; I reached for them and he let me take them.
“Get off me,” I said. “You tried to kill me.”
“Is that right? Maybe I did, although most of the guys I’ve tried to kill were wearing a keffiyeh at the time.”
“You fired a rocket at me today.” Had that happened today? I had no idea how long I’d been out.
“Guess I should apologize then. Guess I should be glad I missed.” He must have guessed wrong, because the apology never came. He led me back into the small room and eased me into the bed facedown. “My name is Talbot, by the way. I’m a wooden man, just like you. Do you want some kind of painkiller?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Annalise said from somewhere behind me, and in that moment I hated her and everything about her. “Talbot, go out to the fridge and bring the blue container.”
Talbot left the room. My face was turned toward the window. I didn’t want to look at Annalise. I was badly hurt, helpless, and ashamed of it.
“Ray, what the hell am I going to do with you?”
I almost said Put me out of my misery, but I was afraid she’d do it. “Water, boss. I need water.”
“No, you don’t.” She took my wallet and ghost knife. Damn. I thought we were past that. I didn’t have the strength to object.
The door opened again. I turned my head and saw Annalise intercept Talbot and take something from him. He left, closing the door behind him. I felt my ghost knife getting farther away from me, until I could no longer sense it through my pain and misery.
Annalise pulled up a chair and sat by the bed. She looked absurdly small, but I was glad she was nearby. She held a big plastic bowl in her lap. “You know you belong to me, right, Ray?”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “I’m your wooden man, boss.” She didn’t respond. “You’re not going to sell me, are you?”
“No, I don’t want to sell you,” she said, as if it was a legitimate possibility that didn’t interest her for the moment. “But I have changed you.”
I almost laughed. Yes, a lot about me had changed since I met her.
“Ray, you’re not paying attention.” She popped open the lid on the plastic bin and held it close to me. Inside were tiny cubes of raw, red meat. Beef, probably. They smelled like blood—I’d been cooked more than they had. The smell made me dizzy and sick.
I stared into the bin and at her. She moved them closer to my face. Carefully, I reached in and picked up one of the cubes. It was cold.
“Don’t bother chewing,” she said. “It doesn’t help. Just swallow it down.”
I put it in my mouth. It felt wrong. Wrong wrong wrong, as though it were a dog turd. I spit it into my hand.
“No, Ray. Try again.”
I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. I put the cube back in my mouth. Was it poison? No, and I knew it wasn’t. Annalise would crack my skull open or throw me through a window before she’d poison me. I tried to swallow it three times, but it wouldn’t go down. The fourth time, it finally slid down my throat.
Annalise quickly set the bin down and lunged at me. She clamped one hand over my mouth and grabbed the back of my head with the other. Her strength was enormous; she held my head in place, my mouth closed, while my guts wrenched and my body bucked. My legs scraped against the sheets, bringing out a whole new level of agony—fierce and wild and utterly in control of me. Blisters burst and flooded the gauze. The pain was so overwhelming that it felt like madness.
Eventually, whatever was happening inside me eased. My body stopped writhing and I lay on the sheets, soaked in sweat and exhausted.
Annalise had a spell on her body somewhere that healed her when she ate meat, especially meat that was raw and fresh. Not only had I seen her do it, I’d saved her life once by cramming tiny slices of raw beef down her throat.
But it hadn’t been like this. She hadn’t tried to puke up what she ate. Her body had accepted it. Mine didn’t. Mine wasn’t healing. If she’d put a spell on me like the one she had, she’d screwed it up. It didn’t work.
I lay still because I didn’t have a choice. Annalise let go of me and picked up the plastic tub again.
“No.”
“Yes, Ray. Another.”
“No. I don’t belong to you.”
“Yes, you do, Ray. You wanted to be my wooden man, so you do. You’re mine.”
She held the bin closer to my face. I swatted at it, but I was too weak to knock it away. I doubt I could have knocked it out of her grip if I’d been at full strength. “Fuck you.”
“Ray,” she said, leaning close to me. Her voice was still absurdly high, like a cartoon animal. “Ray, you gave yourself to me. You’re mine. The golem flesh spell is on you because I wanted it there; you don’t get a say. If I have to, I can break your jaw open and force this crap down your throat. Why not? Enough meat would just heal you again. Now, are you going to take it, or am I going to make you take it?”