A perfectly nice murder just got a lot more complicated.

I jerked back. "Fuck balls!"

Omar's eyes bore into me with a terrified pleading look.

The feather had paralyzed him, entombed him in a death-like state, but with it out of his body, its hold had loosened enough to feel the magic that wrapped around and through him like a spiderweb on a fly. It rolled off him in waves and I didn't have to get close to know that, left like this, that magic would slowly and ...