Stray Magic by Kelly Meding

Author:Kelly Meding
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

It took a little help from my mom to get me out of bed, down the hall to the bathroom, and out of my underwear and tank top—who’d gotten me out of my jeans and jacket was a topic for later discussion—and then into the shower. She tried insisting on filling the tub and letting me soak, but I didn’t want to risk sitting. We’d need extra hands getting me back up, and I was embarrassed enough to be naked in front of my mom. I wasn’t dragging anyone else into it.

She unbraided my hair while I sat on the toilet in a towel. She brushed it like she had when I was ten and prone to massive tangles—gently and with care to never pull or cause pain. I let her mother me. She was scared and she needed the distraction, to feel useful. I don’t know if she’d seen her own mortality in the spider that bit me and could have bitten her instead of merely choking. I couldn’t ask.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what, Shi?”

“Trying to bite you.”

The brush paused in a downstroke, then continued to the ends of my hair. Up to the scalp, down again. “You weren’t yourself.”

“I know, but I wanted to say it.”

“Okay.”

She squeezed my shoulder and put the brush down on the sink. She turned on the water, adjusted the temperature to just below scorching—that’s where I liked it—then helped me stand and step into the tub. My body still felt ten times too heavy and we’d taped a plastic grocery bag around my bandaged wrist. She shut the curtain and left me to it.

I got what I could one-handed with a bar of soap. My hair was harder and I didn’t do a good job of it. Not that it mattered, since I planned on having Mom braid it up again. No muss, no fuss. Long hair was often more trouble than it was worth, but I treasured the times I could wear it down in thick layers and feel like an attractive woman. Vincent liked running his fingers through it while he—Vincent. I swallowed hard.

At the end of my patience with the bathing process, I checked that all the soap had rinsed away, then turned off the faucet. I coiled my hair around my left hand and squeezed. An avalanche of water spilled to the bottom of the tub and swirled away.

The corner of a red towel peeked through the shower curtain. I grinned, a little surprised Mom had hung around. The bathroom had to be a sauna by now.

“Thanks,” I said as I took the towel. “You may want to step out, though. I’ll probably need the full width of the bathroom in order to manage drying off.”

No answer.

I tossed the towel over one shoulder and yanked back the curtain with, “Seriously, Mom—”

Only it wasn’t my mother leaning against the sink, it was Jaxon. The only reason I didn’t immediately sic the Quarrel on him and send him downstairs to pick an ill-advised fight with Novak was because he met my gaze and held it.

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