The Autumn Prince

22. Relatively Speaking

"Miss Gold?" I said, hardly believing she was there. Fragments of my door lay scattered around me, and a corpse bled out on my linoleum, but I was still relieved to see her. I set the chair down cautiously, not wanting to offend, but regretted it instantly as she covered the distance between us in three swift strides and fastened her fingers around my neck.

"I asked you a question," she hissed. I couldn't breathe. Her cold grip constricted like steel and I felt my feet leave the floor. Though I struggled, she neither moved nor relented. Spots swam in front of my eyes, nothing whatsoever like fairy lights.

"Stop it! What are you doing?" Katherine shrieked, and I felt more than saw her rushing at Miss Gold.

"Be still!" the woman shouted at her, and Katherine nearly fell face forward in her effort to obey. More words followed but they were muffled, and I couldn't understand them. Someone might have been crying.

"Please," an unnaturally calm voice cut through my waning consciousness, "I just found out magic is real. Please don't take it away from me."

The hand around my throat loosened, only a little, but it was enough that I could suck fresh air into my lungs. Miss Gold turned toward Becca and bared her teeth.

"It is true then," she whirled back to me, "What have you done with the others?"

"The other whghk—" She squeezed again, cutting me off in a feral snarl, her piercing, pale blue stare knifing straight into my skull. As my consciousness began to crumble, I imagined another face superimposed over hers, ghostly white, with hideously sharp fangs, and shining, golden eyes.

"There isn't anyone else!" Katherine shrieked.

My eyes went dark. My ears rang. I counted four heartbeats that must have been my own before the room rushed back and I dropped to the floor in a widening pool of blood that wasn't mine. Sight returned slowly, but sounds echoed and amplified between my own gasping coughs.

"What do you mean?" Miss Gold demanded, "Who is the girl?"

"My name is Becca, ma'am."

"I did not address you."

"She works at the storage facility!"

"I don't anymore."

"Be quiet! Who contacted me?"

Nobody answered for a while, then Katherine's voice, trembling, "I did."

"What did you mean by it? What has Thomas done?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me what has happened, girl!"

"Nothing!" Something inside Katherine burst, and her shouted words matched the ferocity and volume of my godmother's. "He needs you, and you were off dragging your ass who knows where just letting him figure all this shit out on his own! Now she's here and he's hurting more than ever and it's your goddamn fault!"

Miss Gold didn't answer for a moment and in the silence my vision finally returned, though I'd have preferred to see something more comforting than the blank eyes of a dead child. "Who is . . ." I croaked, then decided I wasn't ready to know, "Did you kill him?"

Miss Gold turned to regard me, eyes narrow but her demeanor had taken a sharp turn. She walked quickly to the door and set it back in place, then pulled a phone from her handbag and tapped the screen once.

"I am at the apartment. I require repairs and the immediate disposal of a body." Then she turned back to me, "Wash that off, Thomas. Rinse those clothes and give them to me."

"What do . . ."

"Do it now!" she commanded, the anger beneath her skin resurfacing, and her words went straight to my spine. I stood in the bathtub seconds later stripping down while water from the shower head poured over me.