It was luck, not skill, that let her deflect the blow. She lifted her head to scream and I hit her collarbone instead of her throat. It slowed her, but wasn’t debilitating. She made claws of her hands and raked them across my arm, reaching for my face and eyes. I grabbed her wrist, dropped the knife, and twisted her arm down and back into a half-nelson. She screamed again, in pain this time, and I brought her to the ground with my knee in the small of her back. They’d taught me how to do that at the police academy. I could tell that later on I was going to be amazed it worked. I leaned forward, keeping her arm twisted between her shoulder blades. “Faye, goddamn it, this is crazy. You’re crazy. You’re being used.”
In retrospect, I was pretty sure they also taught me in police academy not to get my head that close to a violent suspect’s, but I’d stopped moving like a cop and was trying to bring somebody back from the edge. Faye, it turned out, was perfectly happy over the edge. She popped her head back with as much force as she could, slamming the back of her skull into my nose. Blood and tears went everywhere as I toppled over backward, clutching my face. Faye sprang forward, lunging at the bone knife. I flung myself after it and missed; she came to her feet over me, brandishing the blade.
“I’m not going to let you fuck everything up,” she snarled. I leaned back a few inches, my hands spread, watching her warily as I got to my feet.
“Come on, Faye. Let’s talk about this. This doesn’t have to end this way. We can fix all of this.” The rest of the coven was finally moving, leaving their appointed places to watch the fight. I felt like they were absurdly slow, but knew they were moving in real time. Time for me had stretched.
“Fix it?” Her laugh skirled high and sharp. “I’ve done all this to fix it, Joanne! You think it was easy, killing Cassie? But we needed you, and she was too dedicated, she’d never leave the coven!”
“What?” There was nothing to my voice, just a whisper of shock.
“He sent me the dreams of you! Cassie was in the way! My best friend, and I had to kill her so we could get you! You can’t stop now! I won’t let you!” She flung herself at me, the knife raised high. I fell backward, catching her wrists numbly. I had the advantage of reach and strength, dulled by shock. Faye twisted and kicked my shins, screaming with rage.
“You killed Cassandra Tucker?” I felt like my mind had been dipped in a vat of glue. Time wasn’t moving slowly anymore: it was stuck. Faye sneered at me, furious.
“She had a congenital heart problem. The autopsy told you that, right?” Her arms trembled with the effort of bringing the knife down, but I held her fast, leaning into her in order to keep her hands held aloft. She smiled, wide-eyed and manic, her teeth still bared. “Crafting a spell to make the hole a little bigger wasn’t so hard. Just a little bigger, and the heart can’t work anymore. Know what was harder?” She sneered, then lunged like she’d tear my throat out with her teeth. “Your old friend. His heart was healthy. It took a lot of work to damage it. I’d show you the scars, but—” She writhed in my grip, proving that she was too well-caught to be able to show me anything. “It took a long time, but witchcraft can do a lot with little things like that.”
Emotion so cold I had no name for it slid through me, utterly quelling the power centered in my belly. Faye’s skin felt shockingly hot under my hands, so hot that I thought if I let go there would be blue marks around her wrists from my fingers. “Gary?” I honestly didn’t know if I’d said the name out loud, but Faye heard me anyway. “You gave Gary a heart attack?”
Faye surged forward again, kicking and snarling without touching me. “I thought the old bastard would just kick off. He was supposed to. It was supposed to keep you from asking questions.” She bared her teeth again, a smile without soul. “And it worked, too, didn’t it?”
It had. I remembered being on the verge of questioning something Virissong had said, when the phone rang to tell me about Gary’s heart attack. I couldn’t pull together the memory right now to pursue the question, but I would in time. I whispered, “Sorcery. Faye, oh, God, Faye, don’t you see what you’ve done? Faith isn’t enough. We have to use judgment, too.” She was so close to what I was it made my heart hurt. It made breathing hurt, tears knotting in my throat. I had so very nearly become her.
“Virissong used you to get to me, Faye. This is all going to end right here and right now. I’m so sorry, Faye, but you’re under arrest for the murder of Cassandra Tucker.” I had no idea how I was going to make it stick in a court of law, but that hardly mattered at the moment. “Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t aff—”
A scream of rage erupted from Faye’s throat, so furious it became a strangled gurgle. She stopped fighting me, strength going out from her arms so abruptly that I nearly fell into her. I caught my breath, caving my chest in, away from the knife. Pure fanatical light brightened Faye’s eyes.
“You won’t stop it,” she whispered. “You can’t stop it. I’ll stop you.”
“You can’t, Faye. It’s too late. It’s over.”
“No,” she said, “it isn’t.”
She flipped the knife blade around and drove it into the hollow of her own throat.
CHAPTER 31
“Faye!” My scream tasted like blood. My own blood, not the hot splash of crimson that spattered my face and hands as Faye’s eyes widened in shock and she began to topple. I grabbed her forearm and the back of her head, trying to bring her to the ground gently. Power bubbled in my stomach for the first time in days. I wanted to close my eyes and hit my head against something. For the first time in days. For the first time since Judy had come into my garden. For the first time since I’d let myself be led down a bitterly wrong path. I had been a massive fool, failing to see the warning signs at every turn. No wonder Little Coyote hadn’t responded to me. I deserved to have to dig my way out of this mess all by myself Rage and self-directed fury lent all that power focus as I fumbled for the knife buried in Faye’s throat. I was afraid to pull it out and didn’t know how the hell I could heal her with it still in. It was like slapping a patch onto an inner tube I couldn’t afford to lose any air from.
Lousy analogy, but it would have to do. I wrapped my fingers around the bone hilt, focusing on the idea of patching the tube. Around the blade, under my hand, Faye’s skin felt sticky in a way that had nothing to with the blood. More like it was covered in inner tube glue. The analogy was apparently working, even if it made me want to let go a hysterical giggle. “You’re gonna be okay, Faye,” I whispered.
Her eyes rolled back in their sockets until she stared at me. I pulled up the best reassuring smile I had, still fixated on her throat. There were so many layers to patch, and they had to be done all at once. I held my idea of patches in place, building up layer after layer of silver-blue glowing power around the knife. I would have one chance to seal the wound after I took the knife out, and I was willing to take a few extra seconds now to make sure the patch would be airtight.
Or not, given that it was her throat and airtight would make her suffocate to death.
Shut up and concentrate, Joanne.
“You’re gonna be okay,” I whispered again.
The knife stuck when I tried to pull it out in one swift motion. Not badly, but it was harder to remove than I thought it would be. I wondered, very briefly, if removing the sword from my lung back in January had been as difficult, and then I slapped my patch into place, layer after layer of cellular rehabilitation.
And encountered resistance.