out of his paralysis and swung the butt of his shotgun at her head, connected with a sharp crack of fracturing bone.
Miko fell, but it wasn’t Miko anymore, it was the old woman, but Cooper didn’t seem to notice as he bashed her again and again, her skull splitting horribly. Blood splashed onto my pants and shirt.
“Cooper, Cooper, stop!” I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off. “Dammit, stop, she’s gone!”
He finally stopped, still holding his weapon high, breathing hard through gritted teeth. I’d never seen him so angry in my entire life, and it scared me.
“Fuck.” He turned on his heel and stomped over to a nearby fabric display where he began to furiously scrub the blood and hair and bits of tissue off his shotgun. “Fuck.”
I went up to him and touched his shoulder. My hand was shaking. “Are you okay?”
“I’m just dandy.” He gave the gun a final wipe and turned on me, scowling. “Let’s get out of here.”
He grabbed me by the wrist and practically dragged me along behind him, looking neither to the left nor to the right as he marched us back into the Western store.
“I got thimbles.” Cooper reached into his pocket and slammed the cards down on the counter in front of the Warlock.
“Whoa.” The Warlock looked at Cooper’s red face and the blood spatters on our clothes. “What happened?”
“Don’t want to talk about it.” Cooper stripped off his ruined dress shirt and tossed it angrily on the floor. He turned away from us and went over to Charlie, who was still smoking Virginia Slims by the window. “Can I have one of those?”
“Yeah, sure, they’re kinda girly—”
“Don’t care, I just need a smoke.”
As Charlie tapped out a cigarette for my boyfriend, I whispered to the Warlock, “Since when is he a smoker?”
“Since never,” he whispered back. “I mean, Coop sometimes bums a clove off Opal when we’re out drinking, but I’ve never seen him smoke outside a bar. What the hell happened to you two over there?”
I suddenly felt acutely ashamed about what Miko had done to me, and even more disturbed at what I’d felt inside her memories. “We ran into a meat puppet, and things got weird.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Weird how?”
“Weird like I don’t want to talk about it, either.”
Cooper took a long drag off his cigarette and turned toward us, bitter smoke jetting from his nostrils. “I am going to kill that cunt. Kill her. How dare she touch you like that. She … she fucking molested you. I am going to kill her, then raise her from the dead so I can kill her again!”
Cooper slung his shotgun over his bare shoulder and headed for the door.
“Honey, wait, where are you going? We don’t even know where she is!”
He glared at me; he had the expression I always thought he might wear if he caught me kissing a boy at a bar. “I need a walk.”
Charlie looked worried. “You shouldn’t go out by yourself, there could be zomb—”
“Oh, I hope so. I’d love to find something else that needs a skull cracking!” He snatched the pack of Virginia Slims out of the startled girl’s hand and stormed outside.
Hey, Pal, I thought to my familiar, who was still standing guard in the parking lot watching the highway.
“What’s going on?” he replied inside my head.
Cooper’s pissed off, and he’s not thinking straight. I’m worried he’s going to get himself hurt. Could you keep an eye on him for me?
“I certainly will.”
The Warlock was staring at me, both eyebrows high. “The meat puppet molested you? Do tell.”
“It wasn’t the meat puppet. It was Miko. She took over the puppet’s body.” Embarrassed, I started pulling the thimbles off their white cards.
“What did she do to you?”
“Just, um, grabbed my wrist.” I pried at a difficult thimble with my thumbnail.
“And then?”
“I came.” I barely whispered the words.
“You what?”
I cleared my throat and stared up at him, suddenly feeling intensely annoyed. “I came.”
The Warlock rocked back on his heels and crossed his arms, giving me a look. “Oh really?”
I felt myself blush, and I looked away. “Yeah, really.”
“And then Coop had an alpha-dude shit fit.”
“Yeah.”
The Warlock began to chuckle.
“It’s not the least little bit funny,” I protested. “The meat puppet was an old lady, somebody’s grandmother, and Cooper bashed her skull in. It was really ugly. I’ve never seen him like that before.”
The Warlock scratched his chin through his beard. “Coop always acts real cool, but underneath that cucumber façade he’s