WebMage by Kelly McCullough

eventually came to rest with her thumbs pressed into the soft flesh inside the points of my hips.
    "Breathe," she said, her half smile becoming a full one.
    Sheepishly, I drew in a great lungful of air and with it the scent of Cerice. It was sweet with the fragrance of her lilac perfume, and sharp with perspiration brought on by her magical labors on my behalf. I was suddenly very aware that her hands were still pressed tightly against my hips. They lingered there for just a moment longer. Then she reached up to take my left hand. I felt the touch of her fingers long after they had moved on.
    She kneaded my injured hand between her own, then shook her head. "What the hell did you do?"
    For the first time since I'd bitten off my fingertip I really looked at my pinkie. The end of it was gone of course. That was no surprise. What was startling was the fact that the finger looked as though it had never possessed another knuckle. It ended in smooth clean flesh without a trace of scarring. Anyone who didn't know that I used to have a normal finger would have assumed it was a birth defect.
    "I bit it off," I said.
    "You what!?" she asked, plainly appalled.
    "I had to. It was for a spell. I'd be dead if I hadn't."
    "I guess it's a fair trade then."
    "What do you mean?" I asked.
    "The injury is permanent. Open your inner eye and you'll see what I mean."
    Viewed with the second sight, the missing knuckle appeared still to be on my hand, but it was completely magically dead. It looked as though it had been sorcerously cauterized, which I suppose it had.
    Then I had to go back and give Cerice the whole story from the point at which I'd escaped from Atropos's bedroom. I knew she wouldn't believe a word I said if I told her my real reasons for being there, so I said it had been something of a fishing expedition. She let me get away with that, probably because of my injuries, but it was plain she wasn't really satisfied. Whether that was due to some subtle effect of the curse or just her natural skepticism, I couldn't tell. Either way, I was going to have to give her more information at some later point if I wanted to stay in her good graces, which was, I discovered, a place I very much wanted to be. After I'd brought her up to date, she took a look at my knee.
    "You really got yourself torn up, didn't you, Ravirn?" she asked after a few minutes. "This knee needs the help of a good surgeon who won't ask too many awkward questions. Fortunately, I know just the fellow."
    "I'm not sure I understand."
    "You busted the cap into a lot of little, tiny pieces. Your anterior meniscus has multiple tears, and the rest of your cartilage looks like it went through a salad shooter. It'd take a really good orthopedist ten hours just to piece the cap back together. Combined with the other damage, you're looking at several months of recovery, years if you were human, and a lot of really vicious physical therapy."
    "I can't afford that much time with restricted mobility, Cerice. There are too many people who'd like to see me dead."
    "I know. That's why I said what I did. I can cast spells that'll weld the bone back into one piece, and seal up the various other holes you've put in the tissue. But it's all scrambled, and I'm not sure where everything belongs. My surgeon friend can put the jigsaw in the right order, after which I can fix it properly. Call it eight hours on the operating table, ninety minutes of spell work, and about a week convalescing."
    "I can't do that. If Burnt Offerings worked, Atropos believes I'm dead. I need her to keep believing that at least until I'm healthy enough to run. Otherwise, I might as well hand her my head in person. Every ltp link uses the Fate servers and shows up in the routine data reports. You know that as well as I do. Even with a really clean hack to block my signature, I'd be running a risk that Atropos would spot me. If that happens, I'm dead. It's got to be here, and it's got to be you, Cerice. I don't have anybody