Free Hexomancy by Michael R. Underwood Page B

so slightly. “Thank you for finally telling me the truth,” she said, the emphasis on finally stabbing like a misericorde straight through Ree’s heart. “And what I want to do now is be alone.”
    Anya went over to give Priya a hug, but she brushed the diva off, making her way toward the kitchen.
    Taking the cue, Ree and Anya left to the sounds of the triple locks on Priya’s apartment door and walked in silence down to the street.
    “That went awesome,” Anya said.
    “Could have gone worse,” Ree answered. “She could have disowned us as friends right there.”
    “Who says she didn’t?”
    “Let’s just go home.” The pair walked to the cross street, Ree keeping a hand on the hilt of her lightsaber even as her vision blurred, lagging behind the movement of her head.
    Anger-drinking while explaining magical bullshit was, in reality, a terrible idea. She’d need a good liter or so of water and several hours before she’d be worth anything to anyone.
    After a few minutes’ wait, a cab turned the corner, and they flagged it down.
    Anya dozed with her head on Ree’s shoulder as the cab headed toward Anya’s side of town to drop her off first.
    All the while, Ree beat herself up mentally, pulling no punches. Months of omissions and deceptions all spilled out at once. It was like ripping a bandage off all at once, only this bandage was one of fifteen, each covering a different psychic wound. The melange of mental bullshit in her life, between Drake and Priya, Eastwood’s paranoia, the ruins of Grognard’s, and the maybe-threat of the Strega was just too much for her emotional RAM to handle.
    The cab finally arrived at her street, and Ree forked over half of her remaining money.
    Note to self: Invoice Drake for the booze and that cab ride. When you’re done being too mad to talk to him.
    She took the stairs up to the Shithole very, very slowly, now that the enormity of her binge-drinking had hit her like a backpack full of bricks.
    Step one was water.
    Step two was food.
    Steps three through six were more water.
    Step seven, if she made it that far, was more sleep.
    Ree got as far as step three when her phone lit up again.
    “No,” she said, staring at her cell as it displayed Eastwood’s name and picture. “Nope.”
    The call went to voicemail, and was quickly followed by a text message.
    Come quick. I just got jumped.
    “Fuuuck,” Ree said, reading the message.
    Myh hoem hlife just blewq up. totally drnkg rught nnw.
    She pressed send before seeing how typo-tastic her message was, but she let it slide, since it was an accurate representation of her not-fit-for-duty-ness.
    Shit. Get over here as fast as you can, then. I’m going into lockdown. Email when you’re at the door, everything else will be shut off.
    The dumbass, headstrong part of her wanted to stomp back downstairs and go on the warpath, but Ree had, in this case, enough self-awareness to know that doing so might just get her killed. And while that might resolve the love triangle that had just jumped in a bucket of gasoline and then started playing with a butane torch, it wouldn’t do Ree any good. Self-immolation solved so few problems, in reality.
    Returning to steps three through seven, Ree topped off her oversized plastic cup with more water and tiptoed to her room as best as she could for the sake of her neighbors, only causing two different crashing thumps as she knocked books and a stack of bills to the floor.
    Shitshitshitshit , Ree thought on a loop, sneaking into the bedroom and closing the door behind her.
    Ree took up her laptop and earphones and settled into a drunken meditative stupor, guided by last week’s episodes of The Colbert Report , downing water as quickly as her stomach could handle.
    Five episodes, four refills, and three trips to the bathroom later, Ree felt like she had her shit together enough to go over to Eastwood’s, though she gave herself only even odds as to whether she’d puke if she had to get into a