about them? Are we just supposed to let them swing in the wind when their crazy stupid parents decide they’re possessed by Satan and go all Spanish Inquisition on them?”
“We take care of our own,” the Warlock said, looking up at me as I helped Cooper into the empty chair beside Ginger.
“Maybe,” I replied, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “Not all Talents are in a hurry to do the right thing, not even for their own kids.” I moved around the table to sit across from Cooper in the chair to the Warlock’s left.
“You were in a rough situation with your mundane family in Texas, right?” the Warlock said. “And your Talented relatives got you out of there, didn’t they?”
“Yeah. My stepfather was going to have me locked up in a mental institution, but my aunt Vicky found out and brought me to Columbus. She was really cool,” I said, swallowing against a fresh swell of sorrow and guilt. No matter how much I told myself that Vicky’s suicide wasn’t my fault, my heart just wouldn’t believe it. “But for what it’s worth, my stepfather isn’t religious.”
Or at least he hadn’t been when he sent me away; for all I knew my stepmother had finally converted him.
“See?” the Warlock said to Ginger. “Jackasses come in all faiths.”
Mother Karen set a platter of halved, medium-rare flame-broiled rib-eye steaks down on the table beside Cooper, who immediately perked up.
“Oh, man, those look so good. Thanks, Karen!” He forked a half steak over onto his plate, waited for Ginger to get hers, then pushed the platter toward me and the Warlock. “Want one?”
“Of course!” I speared one of the garlicky, buttery slabs of meat for my own plate, cut off a perfectly cooked corner of the steak, and popped it into my mouth.
Suddenly, I was thrashing on a cold, wet floor, my mind filled with nothing but terror and the desperate desire to flee, but there was a rope around my hind leg, and a man lunged onto my head and rammed a steel restraint over my muzzle, pinning me to the concrete. The air stank of blood and offal. Oh God, I had to get up, I had to get out, but another man with a long knife brought his blade down on my exposed throat, and there was a hot, bright pain as my arteries poured out, steaming in the foul air, and the men on the other end of the rope heaved and grunted and jerked me flailing into the air as the bladesman slashed me again to finish the job—
I spat the meat back onto my plate, holding my forehead, my mind still humming from the horror of the steer’s death. My skull felt as if the terrified beast had kicked me square between the eyes.
The Warlock stared at me. “What’s the matter—whoa, dude, that’s just wrong.”
I looked down at my plate. The spat-out piece of steak was twitching like an epileptic slug. It reminded me of the dead animals the Wutganger demon had reanimated.
Ginger peered at the chunk. “Huh. Zombie cow. How’d you do that?”
“I—I don’t know,” I stammered, looking over at Cooper. He, too, had spat out his steak, but his was unmoving, nothing more than cooked muscle. Shuddering, I scooped my twitching piece off my plate and hid it under my napkin.
“Did you feel that?” I asked Cooper. “The men, and the knife?”
“Yeah,” he croaked. “Anyone want the rest of this meat?”
“What are you talking about?” the Warlock asked. He hadn’t yet started on his dinner.
“Try your steak,” I said, then looked at Ginger. “You, too. Please.”
They both cautiously cut off small pieces and tasted them.
“Seems fine. Great, in fact. Better than Peter Luger’s,” the Warlock said.
“Mine, too,” said Ginger.
“Try mine,” I said, pushing my plate toward the Warlock.
He cut off a piece, sniffed it experimentally, ate it. “It’s the same. Delicious. What’s the matter?”
“I … I felt the steer’s death,” I said. “So did Cooper, I think.”
Cooper nodded, still looking gray.
“You what?” Mother Karen stepped out of the kitchen with a bowl of broccoli.
“You get your meat at a kosher butcher?” I asked. Karen nodded. “Yes, there’s a place on North High. Why?”
“Their slaughterhouse sucks … they need better workers,” I said darkly. “That was no damn fun for the cow at all. In fact that was pretty fucking terrible.”
Mother Karen looked horrified and helpless. “Kosher slaughter is supposed to be very quick and humane, just takes a few seconds—”