Crow Jane Read Free

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 remember what I’m going to do the second time you choose not to answer me?”
    The fairy’s eyes rolled desperately in her head. “Kill me,” she hissed through chapped and shuddering lips.
    “Kill you,” Jane agreed. She turned the knife so that its sharp edge now faced the fairy, and gently touched the blade to her neck. She heard a sizzle and smelled faint burning. “Now, are you ready to try again?”
    Twitch said nothing, only shivered. The crow stared down impassively. After thousands of years and thousands of failed attempts, Jane still had to suppress the urge to throw the knife at the crow instead, to make a heroic lunge and grab the bird with its terrible, joyous burden, tearing into its flesh and feathers with her teeth and devouring it whole, drawing it into her body’s permanent embrace.
    She blinked and exhaled, driving away the thought.
    “I know that you and your friends stole Azazel’s hoof from the well in Dudael,” Jane said. “Understand me clearly: I know it was you. Unless you are content to die here and now, Twitch, child of Mab, tell me where the hoof is.”
    Twitch swallowed hard and stared into Jane’s eyes. “Jim has it,” she said.
    Good. Once the stone started rolling down the mountain, the fairy would be hard pressed to stop it. “Which one is Jim?”
    “The singer,” Twitch said, and closed her eyes pathetically.
    “Where does he keep it?” Jane asked.
    “On his body,” the fairy admitted. “He keeps it taped … taped to his belly.”
    Jane nodded. She wouldn’t have let it away from her person, either. “Is that where the hoof is now?” she asked.
    Twitch hesitated, but only for a second. “He hasn’t let go of it since we got it,” she said. “It’s his.”
    “What do you mean, it’s his? ” Jane asked. “Is he your leader?”
    “Yes,” Twitch said instantly. “The hoof belongs to his family. Really, his father.” Now that she had started talking, she couldn’t stop. “Jim is Azazel’s son.”
    This thoroughly mediocre dive-bar band was quickly becoming the