Sorceress, Interrupted - By A. J. Menden Page 0,90
from this angle.
The next scene was a very familiar bar, upholstered all in leather and velvet, an air of seduction and excess. Androgynous waitstaff floated by, one of whom beckoned me to follow him to a room off the bar that was dark and lit by a single spotlight. Draped across the couch in the center of it was me.
It was disconcerting, this view from the outside. I saw myself how Cyrus saw me, and it wasn’t pretty. I was gorgeous—he clearly thought so—and stuffed into a tight little black dress that a dominatrix would wear, along with my usual high black boots. My makeup was bordering on garish, with the too-red mouth, heavy dark makeup around the eyes and henna tattoos. I looked like some sort of mad and malevolent goddess.
“Sit down,” the memory me said, motioning to the other couch with a wicked smile. “So, what can I offer you?” I bent over to give a full view down my shirt, a tacky and distasteful display in my opinion. Was I really that trashy?
Cyrus began telling me about how he’d finally been taken down and was going to jail. And then came the part that had floored me: his request. Not to escape, not to make people forget the evidence, but to protect his daughter, especially from her mother’s latest boyfriend.
“I don’t care what happens to me, but I have to protect my little girl,” I could hear him saying. “Bad enough that she’s saddled with a criminal for a father and an addict for a mother, but you know the kind of things Syn will do if he gets his hands on her. And he will get his hands on her. Jessica won’t do a damn thing to stop him. Not that she could, even if she wanted, but . . .”
I watched with a sick feeling as my other self smiled and said, “Of course I’ll help. It’s going to cost you, though. A lot. And you know it.”
That’s all I’ve ever cared about. What I can get out of people. I’m awesome.
“All right, fine,” Cyrus said. “Whatever you want.”
“Whenever I want.” I could see myself using my wiles on him, playing all the little games I always did with men, keeping them only interested in one thing, keeping them at a distance, far away, forever, so that I couldn’t be hurt.
“Stop,” I said, closing my eyes to the vision even though I knew it wouldn’t help. “I don’t want to remember this. I get it, I’m a lousy person. I thought we were here for Cyrus.”
The voices from the past seemed only to get louder, so I continued to walk, trying to put distance between myself and that memory. The sounds were a cacophony that burned my ears. I also felt like I was wandering lost, that I would be stuck inside this mind forever, entangled in Cyrus’s memories.
And then I saw. Sitting at the center of the maelstrom, safe in the eye of a tornado, was Cyrus. The Cyrus I knew. The real Cyrus—or as real as anything could be in a place like this.
The mist around him seemed to thicken, and I swiped at it, stumbling forward. “Cyrus!” I called, nearing. “Cyrus!”
He was staring at something I couldn’t see, lost in memory. As I got closer, I saw what it was and I cringed. He was watching recent events: him saving me from the Dragon cult. Our night together. My voice, saying those words in Italian that I couldn’t bring myself to speak in English. Him painting his expression of love on my body. Then me trying to distance myself from him.
“Cyrus, it’s me,” I said, walking up behind him and putting my hand on his shoulder. “It’s me. I’m here.”
The scene before me shifted to the moments before he was hexed, him trying to hack the spell and failing, me holding him, trying not to cry. “Stop looking at that,” I said, a bit more forcefully. “I’m here now, right now. I’m here for you. I helped you. I’ve done so much to try and save you.”
“What’s it matter?” he said.
“We’ve still got the world to save,” I prodded.
“Why bother?”
“You want to make your daughter proud, remember?” I said. “You’ve still got work to do. You’ve got to come back with me.”
“The world’s got the EHJ. It doesn’t need me.”
“Yes, it does,” I said. “Your daughter needs you, especially.”
“My daughter doesn’t know I exist,” he snapped, finally turning to look at me.