Switchblade Goddess by Lucy A. Snyder Read Free Book Online

I’d killed the devil running the hell by plunging my left hand into its molten lava heart. Part of it had stuck to me, apparently permanently, turning my hand into a torch of enchanted fire and linking me to the hell.
    But inside the hellement I was whole again, my burning hand restored to flesh and bone, my fever and aches gone. In an effort to erase the evil of the place, I’d turned the dimension into a perfect replica of my beloved childhood bedroom, the perpetual late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the mini-blinds, my stuffed animals lined up at attention on the dresser, my grape juice–stained Buzz Lightyear comforter on the bed.
    Beneath the dust ruffle I could see the jarred memories from Cooper’s dead family glowing in the darkness under the bed. The jars were trophies from the devil I’d slain when I rescued my boyfriend; seeing them clustered there so cold and quiet suddenly gave me the creeps, so I glanced behind me to make sure the big red portal door was set in the wall beside my closet. The door was exactly where it was supposed to be, my Totoro poster Scotch-taped to the front. Comfortingly close at hand.
    When I turned back, a doppelganger of the Warlock was standing before me.
    I wasn’t startled to see him. This was my domain now, and as far as I knew, nothing appeared without my wanting it there, consciously or subconsciously. He was dressed in his ripped tuxedo, and his face was a bloody, broken wreck that barely looked human. I’d done that to him, held him down and hit him again and again while I … while I …
    “Say it.” His words were slurred; his tongue was so badly lacerated I was surprised he could talk at all. “Be honest.”
    I felt heat rise in my face, my heart pounding like the whole world was staring at me in judgment, instead of this solitary emotional construct in my private gallery. I remembered the ugly animal violence of what I’d done, the dirty rush it gave me, like a plunged syringe of heroin and venom.
    I took a deep breath. Honesty.
    “I got off on hurting you,” I said. The admission felt like bitter rust in my mouth. “I wish to hell I hadn’t, and I wish I could take it back, but I don’t get a do-over, do I?”
    The doppelganger shook his bloody head, his blue eyes bright and sharp.
    “Was that really me?” I whispered. “Or was it Miko?”
    The doppelganger reached up and put the pieces of his shattered jaw back in place, straightened his nose, smoothed his cuts away with his fingers as though his flesh were modeling clay. In seconds his face was restored.
    “What do
you
think?” he asked, running his thick,callused fingers through his black curly hair and smoothing the sprung curls of his mustache and beard.
    “I think … I just don’t know. I’d like to think that if I had free will I’d never, ever do something like that. And certainly not to a friend.”
    The Warlock arched an eyebrow at me, a familiar expression of disbelief. “Am I your friend?”
    “Yes. Of course. You were the only person besides Mother Karen and Pal who helped me when Cooper disappeared.”
    “Just because I’m useful doesn’t make me a friend. Just because I came through for my own brother doesn’t mean I did it to help you. Coop raised me from the dead, or damn close to it. I mean, I
had
to help, right?” He paused. “And I piss you off most of the time, don’t I?”
    “Well, yeah, but being annoying doesn’t mean you’re not my friend.”
    The Warlock stepped closer, gazing down at me intently. “I hit on you all the time. And that gets old in a hurry, doesn’t it? Unless …”
    My mouth went dry. “Unless what?”
    “Unless, deep down, you’re flattered by my attention. Unless maybe, just maybe, you don’t mind me being interested, because you’re interested, too.”
    He took a step closer. “Unless maybe you fucked me in here because you wanted to fuck me all along. Maybe what you did was a little less about the power and a little