Super•Villainous

XXXVI

With Atticus as a noticeable presence to my back, I demonstrated to Leigh — and also, if I was honest, to myself, because part of me believed I might have bumped my head when the roof nearly crushed us and hallucinated the whole experience — how my skin refused to retain all injury. I still felt every slow tear of my flesh parting around my pocket knife, forcing me to breathe heavily through my nose to prevent the most minor noises of discomfort from flying past my lips. When it healed, it healed slow, a furious itching over my palm, like it intended to force me to cram every discomfort of the mending process that would have gone almost unnoticed over several days into just a few minutes.

Leigh merely cocked her head to the side, eyes shifting between my knife and my hand, and said, "That doesn't seem sanitary."

"That's your grand take-away from this?" I demanded, exasperated.

"What am I supposed to say?" she defended. "You're a Thaumaturge, congrats. If Shade tries to give you death by a thousand paper cuts you'll be ready."

Involuntarily, my attention darted to land on Atticus. Hopefully she wasn't giving him any bright ideas.

Back to glaring at Leigh, I monotoned, "How fortunate I am to have such a supportive friend. In completely unrelated news, I wonder how much an Uber to Nicole's place would cost."

"Bet. Do it, see if I'll stop you."

"Don't think I won't."

"I do think you won't actually," she said. "Prove me wrong."

"You two argue like an old married couple," Atticus intoned, moving around us to exit the kitchen, a handful of plain almonds in hand — the only bounty the house had to offer — and he started up the stairs towards his old bedroom.

"I can do so much better than you," I told Leigh seriously. "I'll be sending you the divorce papers first thing in the morning."

"Darling," she draped herself dramatically over the counter, clutching for my hand, "think of the children!"

"How dare you bring them into this."

At that point, my hard expression cracked and we descended into a fit of muffled laughter.

"Shhh!" Leigh hissed, circumventing the counter to bump my shoulder. "You know how my parents hate the sound of happiness. Let's head back to my room."

"I'm still annoyed with you," I said, but without much bite as I allowed her to lead us back up the stairs and down the long hallway to her bedroom. "I'm seriously freaking out over this Thaumaturge thing. I need to tell you my theories."

She appeared to consider this, and then nodded sagely. "I do love a good conspiracy theory."

I snorted at the thought. "It's not a conspiracy theory. No one is doing any conspiring, first of all."

Belatedly, I realized that's wasn't entirely true. Sure, I wasn't doing any of the conspiring, but I couldn't speak for everyone.

*+*+*+*+*+*

Ren worked fast. By the next morning, he had me all cleared to move into the Guildhall, and by day after that I'd packed up all my necessities to complete the transition. My dads didn't like it, but, based on their lack of adamant refusal, I imagined they were finally learning how futile it really was to try to tell me what to do.

I hadn't had the conversation with them yet about my healing, mainly because I couldn't find the right words to broach the subject without sounding accusatory. The thought of another argument with my father filled me with dread, so if the only alternative was to avoid the problem, avoiding problems until they either disappeared of their own accord or snowballed into something I could no longer ignore was my specialty. Eventually, I'd address the issue, but I'd give myself a few days to cool off first.