Page 108 of Vengefully Matched

“Now you’re just fucking around with my body,” said Kevin crossly.

“In our defense, Kevin, you did try to kill me, steal from the Council, manipulate us all, and frame Councilwoman Hart.” Agatha’s voice was dripping with disdain, and her glare must have been, too, because Kevin looked away, breaking eye contact uncomfortably.

“Potato, potahto,” said the head, and Agatha turned to Albert.

“Go ahead, Councilman Thistleworth.”

Thistleworth produced a long silver reflex hammer, the sort a doctor might use to check a knee. He muttered something, rubbed his hands together, and tapped swiftly in two places on the leg, which separated neatly into three.

“Did that hurt?” he asked Kevin, running a hand across his jaw and squinting, as though narrowed eyes might help him see something better.

“It was a tickle,” said the head.

“Good.” He gingerly picked up the bit of knee, and left the lower two portions lying where they were.

For a moment they were still, and then the foot rolled, back and forth, slower and then faster, until it worked up momentum to right itself and hop. It hopped promptly to the bit of calf, threw itself back together, and the pieces knitted into one as though they’d never been separated.

“Just as I suspected,” muttered Albert. “Like the chainsaws, it cannot be destroyed, only separated, and if you leave the pieces close, they will reassemble.” Agatha was suddenly extremely glad she had allowed the experimenting to proceed.

He snapped, and a partition arose around the leg.

“What do you recommend?” Agatha spoke to Albert, but Kevin’s head responded instead.

“Release me, call it a day, and you’ll never hear from me again?” Kevin sounded hopeful, and that made her question whether or not the obliviousness had been an act, because she couldn’t think of a possible situation in which anyone here would agree to that as a solution.

This time it was Priscilla who snapped her fingers, and the partition arose around the head too. “Sorry,” she offered, shrugging. “I couldn’t take another minute of his bullshit.”

“Fair enough,” said Agatha, returning her attentions to Albert.

“I suggest,” began Albert, “That we divide the offender into thirteen pieces, one for each Council member, and we each take separate magical measures to make sure that the bit we are responsible for is both contained and carefully labeled for generations to come so that they understand the danger. Like nuclear waste, we must assume that generations from now, someone could find this and not even have the same language or communication system we have. The bits of Kevin Cross must be labeled as carefully as anything destructive in the course of human history. Kevin simply isn’t going anywhere, and we have a responsibility to ensure he doesn’t do further damage.”

“This sounds like a reasonable plan,” said Agatha.

“I don’t relish taking a bit of Kevin home,” said Priscilla, making a face, “but Hart Manor is certainly equipped to restrain a bit of him in perpetuity. And I know many others here have similarly eclectic homes that could do likewise.”

She was correct, of course. And those Council members who did not have such homes still certainly had the magic to make the storage of Kevin’s parts safe.

“Council, take ten minutes to deliberate, and we vote,” Agatha announced.

The vote was unanimous to divide and conquer Kevin, and soon Agatha found herself taking her own piece to the Council vaults.

She brought a clipping of the pothos with her, weaving her magic with all her might to intertwine the plant craft with the layers and layers of Council spells, put in place by coven after coven specifically so only Council employees could access them. Kevin’s disembodied torso, with its stilled heart, was her task to store, so she rewired the highest security vault, the one at the back of the chambers, so that only a Council president could open it.

When she was done, she returned upstairs and found Priscilla waiting, Kevin’s magically gloved and guarded right hand in tow.

“Would you do me the honor of helping me do away with one hand of the fool who attempted to hurt my beloved?”

Agatha smiled, taking the hand that wasn’t holding, well, a hand. “With pleasure.”

The hearse sputtered and shook a bit on the way to Hart Manor, whether because Priscilla needed to have it serviced, or because the magic of Kevin’s hand was dangerous cargo, Agatha wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe both.

“Come on,” said Priscilla when they reached the front. “We’ll go in through the family graveyard entrance.”

Agatha frowned. “I never noticed a graveyard on the grounds. Is it far?”

Prissy shook her head. “Not in the way you think. It’s far, but not away.”

“Then where?”