Page 106 of Vengefully Matched

“What,” said Priscilla, “the fuck.” She was about to storm the rest of the house; Agatha was gagged and couldn’t answer, but her eyes widened, and she tipped her head toward the hallway.

Kevin rounded the corner from the bathroom. Priscilla gasped.

She knew Kevin was an asshole; she just had never imagined him clever enough to be a scheming one.

“Oopsie!” He skidded to a halt. “Well, I guess you caught me. Damn. I was just about to vanish the president with one of those lovely memory spells I’ve grown so fond of, and take her place forever, but this certainly throws a wrench in things.”

He tapped the tips of his fingers together, and the door prodded her gently, but it was like being shoved by an overeager dog: irritating but not enough to tip her over. Kevin always did have weak magic. Priscilla snapped, raising a protective barrier between Kevin and Agatha.

“Why would you tell me all of that?” She snapped again, and the gloves from Agatha’s hands materialized on his, along with the bindings. “Why are villains always monologuing?”

“Oh, come now,” said Kevin, wriggling, but unable to escape. “Surely the bad guy gets to have some fun lines too. I’m smart enough to pull it off, and I should get to shout it from mountaintops at least once. It’s been hard work convincing you all that I’m a dumb, pretty face.” He grimaced, pulling his hands to no avail. “Fucking gloves.” He glared at her. “As soon as I get these off, you’re toast.”

“Shut the fuck up, Kevin,” said Agatha, wiping her mouth with her newly freed hand. And then, turning to Priscilla, “He knocked me out from behind, and when I came to, I was in the back of his car, tied up, gloves on, and unable to magic my way out of it.”

“You really ought to be more careful about who you trust,” said Kevin airily. “Just because I’m such a nice guy doesn’t mean I’m actually a nice guy. Do you know how many so-called nice guys in history did heinously clever shit? Tons!” He smiled wide, and Priscilla absolutely hated how correct he was. It was too true that people were willing to give a seemingly nice guy, even an iffy guy with faint hints of niceness, the benefit of the doubt, the sort they would never afford even a genuinely nice woman.

“Do you want me to hex him so that his breath matches his intentions, always? The worse they are, the worse it will be?”

Agatha shook her head. She stood up, rubbing her arms where they had been restrained. “I am going to knock him over the head. It’s not terribly enlightened of me, but what the hell, I need a bit of tit for tat.”

“Be my guest,” said Priscilla, crossing her arms, snapping the barrier down and smiling evilly. “We can sort him out with magic when you’re done beating the shit out of him, as he so deserves.” She readied her fingers to snap just in case.

With a windup that suggested this woman was no novice at throwing a punch (which Prissy made a mental note to ask her about), Agatha’s fist connected with Kevin’s face so hard that the crack of it reverberated through the cabin like a cartoon. Kevin swayed from the impact, stumbled a little, still tied, and then shuffled backward, a glint in his eye.

“You bitch,” he growled, turning and running. He attempted to vault off the landing, falling headfirst instead.

“Oh my god,” Prissy started, but when he hit the floor below, he shattered.

Her brain took a moment to catch up with what she was seeing, and she blinked several times to make sure that it was what it looked like.

It was unbelievable, but it was also inevitable. There were always consequences for attempting to steal immortality from the universe. And right now, those were clearly on display for both Priscilla and Agatha to see.

“Motherfucker,” said Kevin’s head. It lay two feet away from his body, which was twisted at an odd angle, each limb separated. His torso twitched, alone and limbless. His left leg had landed, from the knee down, by the kitchen table; his right wrist had fractured off, hand on the mantel, and his left arm, shoulder down, was on the sofa. His final foot sat where it had fallen, several inches away from the welcome mat that read SHOES OFF, WITCHES.

Just as Lex had promised, there was absolutely no blood.

She blinked for a moment, taking it in. Hearing about it was one thing, but seeing it was wild.

Agatha and Priscilla stood frozen a few seconds longer on the landing, until the arms and legs began to crawl toward the torso.

“Shit,” said Priscilla, rushing down the stairs and grabbing for the hand on the mantel. Most important was Kevin couldn’t tap those fingers from both hands together, Mr. Burns–style, to make magic. They were lucky that he needed two hands for magic; had he been a single-handed practitioner, they might have been in real trouble here. But as it was, Kevin was comically as impotent as such terrible men often are. Priscilla snapped, and the hand was in a mitten. She snapped again, and the mitten was sewn shut. Agatha did the same for his other hand, but when she set it down, it made a grotesque finger-walking beeline to drag itself toward its partner, so she was forced to put one in a wooden box, and the other in a rather heavy storage ottoman, which she sat on promptly to prevent any mishaps.

“This feels deeply unfair,” said Kevin’s head. “First the arson failed, and now the elixir. I did research, and none of it, not a single account, had anything about this kind of immortality side effect.”

“Everything has side effects, Kevin.” Priscilla smiled smugly. “And it sounds like you overestimated your research abilities, along with so many other things.”

“It was in the fine print of the Compendium of Forbidden Magics, volume three, chapter fourteen,” said Agatha matter-of-factly, as though rattling off the precise location of arcane information was something anyone ought to be able to do off the top of their head. Agatha was so fucking smart, and it was hot as hell.

Kevin sulked. Pretty men really could be so determinedly stupid. Priscilla crossed her arms. “Consider this the side effect of your incompetence, you absolute asshat.”

“That’s rich coming from a woman who can’t stick to a fiancée or an assistant.” He smirked, which was a bold move for a disembodied head.

Agatha rubbed her fingers together, and the gag from earlier was back in Kevin’s mouth.

“That’s better.” She straightened up. “I’ve found I have no remaining patience for his bullshit.”

Priscilla nodded and pulled out her phone. “I’ll notify Otho, and you send the emergency summons?”