anyone can reverse or dissolve the spell, she can.”
“What about me?” Gerald calls. “Still hungry and decapitated over here.”
Even ignoring Gerald is a chore. I do my best, keeping my full attention on the witches. “The choice is yours,” I say. “You either help us and have a chance at life, or you die along with Una.” My voice tightens. “I won’t spare anyone who steps in my way.”
I walk away like a boss.
Or at least I try to.
“I’ll feed him,” Farrah says, a little to anxiously. “It’s been a long time since I got some.”
My feet stumble to a halt. “Got some?” I repeat. I understand what she means. I’m just dumbfounded someone in her state would be so brazen. I can smell the illness ravaging her body and I can sense it with my touch.
“Yes,” Farrah says. “Do you really think anyone would want me like this?”
“That’s not how I meant it,” I reply.
“Then why are you looking at me that way?” she asks. She smooths the scales closest to
her gills. “I may have fish parts—”
“Ew,” Gerald interrupts.
Farrah shoots Gerald what may or not be a dirty look. My apologies. With Farrah, it’s hard to tell.
Farrah continues although it’s clear she didn’t enjoy the interruption. “Like I was saying, we may have fish parts, but we’re still females with needs.” She stops herself when she realizes she referred to herself in the plural sense. “We want and need sex. We enjoy that sensation of ache and delight.” She grows defensive when I don’t respond. “Haven’t you ever had an orgasm, Emme? Don’t you revel in them?”
“I’m not discussing my private life with you,” I reply. The realization of what’s happened slows my response. Mirror’s damaging effects reduced intercourse to a primal level, impairing her human mind and clouding her judgment. I doubt Farrah would be so blunt under better circumstances.
No wonder the Lessers engaged in sex for money so willingly and recklessly. Their animal counterparts don’t require the love or commitment I would. Fish engage in sex for the sake of procreation. To them, it’s a part of life. The same, I presume, applies to mice.
The witches surrendered to the desires of their animal counterpart. Just like Una surrendered to her predatory nature.
“You won’t tell me about your sex life because we’re not friends,” Farrah reasons.
She appears confused that I’m not as open as she. “It’s personal,” I reply, hoping to leave it at that.
Farrah’s fish lips open and close as if trying to form words. I think she means to argue. Instead she flaps her gills, whips off her robe and…
Oh, my. I was right. The rest of her is human and very naked.
Gerald positions his head on his shoulders, salivating at Farrah’s approach. But it takes him ramming his eyes shut before he takes that first bite.
Like the crunch of bone, he digs in. Farrah straddles him, her protuberant eyes rolling like marbles.
Merche removes her robe, her beady eyes shiny with desire as she watches Gerald feed.
I back away, jerking when the water stirs and Bren breaks through the surface.
Chapter Thirteen
Emme
Bren doesn’t run to me.
He charges.
In one smooth move, he leaps from the water and yanks me to him, his soaking wet clothes clinging to him as he presses me into his hard body.
A growl unlike I’ve never heard from him punches every syllable. “Are you okay?” he asks. “Are you hurt?”
I hug him tight. He’s okay. He’s safe. He’s alive.
“I’m fine,” I stammer.
His voice is more animal than man. “I don’t believe you—”
He hauls me behind him.
“What the hell is this shit?” he demands. “Is that vamp fucking a fish?”
“Um,” I say.
Okay, where to begin.
Bren backs us away. “Holy shit. He is fucking a fish.”
“Gerald is actually just feeding,” I explain.
Bren doesn’t believe me, and why would he? Farrah’s eyes are spinning, her gills and lips cyclically flapping.
“What the hell is going on here?” Bren roars. His jaw pops open when Merche pokes her head around a large pile of broken rock. “Emme, is that a goddamn hamster?”
Merche gives a little wave with her paw, her whiskers twitching anxiously. “I, um, no,” I reply. “Actually, I think she might be a guinea pig.”
Bren is not in his happy place. He reels on me. “I leave you alone for fifteen fucking seconds and this is the shit I find you in? Fish girl and leech boy going at it—”
Gerald stops feeding just to yell at him. “I need to eat, man.”
“—and a naked mouse with hooters