Crow Jane - D. J. Butler Page 0,3

of burning flesh, but a woody odor, like that of a tree on fire—filled Jane’s nostrils.

“Aaaaaaaaagh!” the fairy howled. Jane heard her perfectly well, but she knew that as long as she kept physical contact with the creature, no one else would be able to hear her. The fairy jerked and twisted, but the pain sapped all the bite out of her resistance. Jane fell forward with the creature, slamming her face into the soapy mirror and then pinning her to the sink.

“Who are you?” the drummer shrieked, kicking back wildly. Jane cracked her forehead against the white porcelain of the sink and then spun her around, keeping the blade pressed to her white flesh.

“I’m the Marked Woman,” Jane growled. “Don’t your people teach their cubs and kits about me anymore?”

She said it to instill fear, and because it couldn’t hurt her that the fairy knew. Then she slammed her other hand against the drummer’s exposed clavicle, shattering the glass of the vial and grinding the quicksilver into the fairy’s pale skin.

Wings sprouted from the side of the fairy’s head like ears, flapped once and disappeared. A horse’s legs exploded out of the leather-bar-style clothing the drummer worse, and then her face became a horse’s long, bony phiz, and then a falcon’s. She exploded into a shrieking, flailing, formless and many-formed abundance of shapes. She kicked and writhed and twisted but she didn’t escape, because Jane didn’t let her.

All the while, Jane pressed down with the iron knife and smelled smoke.

And all the while, the elusive, ever-present crow of her death perched on top of the paper-towel dispenser and stared down at her with a sour yellow eye.

Then the animal forms were gone, and the man and woman shapes, too, and Jane held the fairy against the sink in her true form.

She was a female, two feet high, with leathery gray skin and eyes that were completely yellow. Her belly and her dugs sagged, her cat-like ears and whiskers trembled. The one remnant of her more beautiful self, her silver horse’s tail, flapped soggily in the running water of the sink.

“What shall I call you?” Jane pulled the knife away, keeping it still in her hand and visible, but she held the quicksilver pressed to the fairy’s flesh. It would keep her from changing shape, or attempting to use her Glamour.

“I’m a fairy,” she croaked back. “I don’t have a true name, sorceress.”

Jane stared coldly down at the creature and flared her nostrils. “Don’t repeat the mistake of thinking I’m stupid, child of Mab,” she said. “I will happily release you from your exile with my iron blade.”

The fairy hissed through gapped yellow teeth. “How…?” she wrinkled her nose, looked at her own handiwork on the mirror, and slumped in defeat. “Twitch,” she said. “Call me Twitch.”

“Very good, Twitch,” Jane gave her prisoner positive reinforcement. “Now listen to me closely. I’m going to ask questions. You’re going to be tempted to evade them, or to lie. The first time you choose not to answer fully and honestly, I’ll cut you.” She held the iron knife in front of the fairy’s eyes as a reminder. “The second time you do so, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

The fairy nodded.

“Use words, Twitch.” Jane smiled.

“I understand,” the drummer agreed.

“Several days ago,” Jane began, “something was stolen in New Mexico. Something that Heaven considers very valuable, that had been in its keeping and hidden for thousands of years. The keeper fled.” No point identifying the keeper as the angel Raphael, or Jane’s real errand, or the bitterness of her feelings. “The thieves escaped. I have tracked them here.” No point explaining about the Mare, either. “Are you following me so far, Twitch?”

“Yes,” Twitch nodded.

“Now,” Jane said slowly. “I’m going to ask you the question that you are going to try to lie about. Remember this, child of Mab. The first time, I’ll only cut you.”

Twitch gulped.

“Where is the hoof, fairy?” Jane asked.

Twitch hesitated. “I … I don’t know,” she ventured in her bullfrog voice.

Jane nodded, affecting a sad face, and stabbed the drummer in her arm.

“Aaaaaaaagh!” Twitch shrieked again, a horrendous, piteous cry. She thrashed and wiggled on the sink, but Jane held her pinned, and kept the quicksilver firmly pressed to her chest.

Smoke billowed from the wound rather than blood, and stung Jane’s eyes.

“Stop! Please, stop!”

Jane pulled the knife back and regarded the fairy with stern eyes.

“I told you,” she reminded the ugly creature, “the first time I would cut you. Do you