I don’t think he heard, or at least he was not listening to me but to something or someone far, far in the distance. “Then I misunderstood. For what it’s worth, I never killed you. But now I know the way he wants it . . . and I agree to his terms. So take it—do it if you’re going to.” He stared back down at the floor, his head sinking between his shoulders.

He didn’t have to tell me twice. I pulled the long knife up over my head and swung it down like an ax. It clicked between two of the vertebrae in his neck, splitting them neatly, and continued on through the muscles that held up his head, and the tubes that went to his stomach, and the pipes that serviced his lungs.

His body collapsed, sinking spread-eagled to the ground.

A great gust of hot air gasped out of the hole where his neck had been, but his head was still attached by some cartilage, meat, and skin. With renewed vigor I hacked viciously away at the last bits until his head rolled clear, jaw slack and yellowed teeth leering from pale gums, one brown eye glaring up and out of the skull.

The eye blinked twice before its light went out. His last words came slowly, his tongue stiffening with death. “Take my curse, child . . . and live with it.”

Then all of him—now both parts of him—withered and went still.

I opened my fingers to drop the knife. It stuck to my palm, lightly glued there by all the blood. I shook my wrist and it fell clattering down between his body and Malachi, whose head had rolled backwards against the bed. He’d either died or passed out again.

For a moment, I thought I might join him. My head was swimming with bubbles and stars, and my skin was tingling all over. Perhaps the shock of my injuries was wearing off and I was on the verge of feeling every cut, every sore. Perhaps I was dying. Perhaps . . . but then I put my hand to the knife wound at my breast and felt that it was dry. I peeked inside my shirt and saw that it had shrunk to a red, swollen line.

Already. How could that be?

Take my curse, and live with it.

Every passing moment I felt stronger, and drier, and less damaged. Oh, the room was still weaving back and forth, and I ached from every joint, but my bleeding had stopped, and the sharp immediacy of pain was fading. “Some curse,” I said. “If this is the worst of it, I’m going to save a fortune in doctor’s bills.”