20: how to get blood stains out of a rug?

What once was a stealthy crouch turns into a lurching stagger. Lucky for me, we were just outside the little grove of townhouses where Midge lives when those guys decided to skewer me, so it only takes about three minutes of lurching and staggering to reach my destination. Jamie keeps trying to help me, but I keep denying him, because I have way too much dignity to let myself be cradled by some kid.

Besides, I'm okay. Really.

Jamie's extremely upset that there's no doorbell, probably because he has a strange liking to pressing things. I don't have the slightest idea why, but it's just the way he is. It takes all my strength to pry my television remote from his hands back at the apartment, and not even because he wants to watch TV. I swear, the kid may be fifteen, but he acts like he's two.

Except when he gets in a fight, then he goes all Rambo on everybody. An enigma, that one.

I knock. Behind Midge's front door, there's a lot of shuffling and some shouts before she swings the door open. "Grey?" she says, stunned. A flush goes to her cheeks, and I'm not far behind her. Last time I saw her, I kissed her, and I don't think either of us can forget it. "This is a surprise—oh my God, is that blood?"

I glance down at the wound at my chest. "Oh. Right."

I take a step forward, into the foyer, but Midge yelps at me. "No!" she exclaims. "Don't bleed on my floor. What's wrong with you?"

"Like I can help it!"

"You could have! I swear, you're always getting in these dumb situations—"

"Most of which are your fault, Midge Osborne."

Midge shakes her head violently, her bright hair whirling about her face. "Not this time," she grumbles, her arms folded across her chest. I don't comment, but she's chosen to go with a rather eccentric style today, to say the least. She's wearing a pair of baggy jean shorts and a multicolored shirt that looks like a lampshade you'd find in a grandma's house. Not to mention she's got the banana socks again.

From Midge, though, none of this is unusual.

I stare at her, and she stares at me, and Jamie just blinks confusedly.

"So, are you going to help me or just watch me bleed?"

"I'm leaning towards the latter," she says, and when I snort, she rolls her eyes and reaches out to grab my hand. "But I'm feeling nice today."

Jamie swings the door shut after him, and both Midge and I jump as it thuds into the jamb. Midge says, "I'd appreciate if you wouldn't destroy things, Jamie," before rolling her eyes and leading us through to her living room/garden/apothecary. I'm not sure what you call it. The place is weird and witchy, but also aesthetically pleasing at the same time. Trust me, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.

"Mom!" calls Midge as she orders me to sit down on her couch, Jamie beside me. Then she turns and starts rustling through the glass shelves on either side of their mini television, going through bottle after bottle and flask after flask. I can barely hear her voice over all the erratic clinking. "I could use some help in here! Grey went out and got himself stabbed!"

I mutter, "Wouldn't be the first time."

Midge whips around, hyper speed. "I heard that."

"What, like you can deny it?"

She narrows her eyes at me, but ultimately decides I'm right and continues her furious bottle-searching. Midge's mom rounds the corner, a bright African robe draped around her shoulders. It brushes the floor as she enters, a pair of knitting needles and a half-finished homemade sock in her hands. When she sees me, or rather the blood caked on my shirt, she rolls her eyes and rushes to help.

"Get the incense," she orders her daughter, pulling a wand from her sleeve as Midge returns to the shelves. "What happened here, Grey?"

"Actually," I say with a bit of a grimace as Mrs. Osborne sets the wand into my skin, a low string of Latin words coming from her mouth. I don't recognize the spell, but that's fair, because I don't recognize many spells at all. Witches spend their whole lives studying magic. I've spent my whole life on the couch. "It's why I was coming here. The protests. Have you seen them? They're happening right outside."

Mrs. Osborne pauses her spelling. Midge pauses her incensing.

"Protests?" they both say at once.

"Yeah," Jamie cuts in, tapping his feet against the Oriental rug arrhythmically. He nibbles at his bottom lip, his eyes darting between each of the other three people in the room. "The humans don't like us so much anymore. They attacked us."

Midge's dark eyes go wide, her rose-colored eyebrows shooting up towards her hairline. "That's who stabbed you? Humans?"

Shaking her head in dismay, Mrs. Osborne finishes the spell, slipping her wand down her sleeve again. She instructs me to lay back before she gets up again, making a slow waltz between the plethora of green plants to her kitchen. "Somehow I knew this was going to happen."

"What do you mean?" Midge asks softly, her shoulders slumped. Frizzes of pink hair stray from the rest, and I have this weird incessant urge to lay them down for her. I look away instead.

Mrs. Osborne pinches her nose, a mug clinking against the counter as she retrieves it from the cupboard. "All these attacks, you know what they're breeding?" she elaborates. "Fear. And that's what the humans are responding to—fear of us."

Beside me, Jamie swallows. "That's not good."

"Not at all," I murmur, pressing a hesitant thumb against the spot where the wound had been. The bleeding's stopped and now it's just barely tender, like the most I got was a bruise. "And it has something to do with the energy?"

Midge nods fervently, lighting the incense and climbing to her feet. A thin, gray trail of smoke ascends toward the ceiling fan, billowing into the air like smoke from one of Sybil's pipes. The room fills with a thick aroma of ginger and burning wood, and Jamie's nose twitches. "I mean, it has to. It can't be a coincidence, that these attacks and this disturbance are happening at once."

There's a moment of cold silence, and then Mrs. Osborne asks, "Have you considered paying a visit to the pixies?"

I have to fight a gag. Pixies and I don't really get along. They're all sunshine and nature, and I'm basically bred from everything dark. They're the hippie, tree-hugging race of the nonhumans, and the most I've rubbed shoulders with haven't liked me.

"Pixies?" Midge questions, saving me from responding. "What would pixies know?"

"Dear God, Margaret," snaps her mother. "Think about it. They're just as in touch with the city's essential energy, perhaps even more than we witches are. Bouncing ideas off of them might do you good."

Midge sits in thought for a few moments before nodding her head, shoving her hands in her pockets. She turns to Jamie and I with a new resolve, her brown eyes scrutinizing us. "Mom's right. They might know something we don't already—Grey, what's that look on your face?"

"Huh?" I say, trying to wipe whatever "look" it is away. "I don't know what you're talking about. That's just my face."

"I've seen your face. That's not your face."

I raise an eyebrow. "Then whose face is it?"

Midge looks about ready to kick me, or possibly stab me again. "You know what I meant."

I roll my eyes at her, wondering how anyone could be immune to my flawless sense of humor. I hop to my feet, ignoring the chorus of concerned shouts for me to slow down. It's like they forget I'm half-demon, or something. With all the chaos surrounding Midge's so-called prophecy, you'd think it would be a detail they'd never forget. "Fine," I mutter, "but we have to talk to Safiya and Rocco first."

Midge huffs, folding her arms across her chest. "Why's that?"

"We can't do anything rash, Midge," I elaborate, motioning for Jamie to follow me as I make my way towards the front hall again. In earnest, the last thing I want is to go back out there, but I also don't want to spend another second in Midge's living room when it smells like a forest fire and a perfumery had a child. "If we run it past them and they say it's a good idea, then fine. But I'm not doing anything without their input."

At the foyer, I risk a glance out the window, my face pressed to the glass. There's still a moving body of people, all swarming the streets, pinpricks of protest signs and black t-shirts. I shudder when Midge brushes my shoulder.

"I didn't know you answered to Safiya and Rocco," she says playfully as I turn to face her. Her mother's stayed behind in the living room, and Jamie's ambling inattentively through the hallway. We're alone, and I feel it now more than ever, like a tickle on my skin. Or a rash.

I frown at Midge, trying not to think too much about how soft her hands are. "I don't. I just trust them enough to talk me out of anything dumb."

Midge's face twists into disbelief, her hands going to her hips. "You're saying my mom's idea is dumb?"

"I mean—"

"No, of course not," Midge cuts me off, a smile forming at her lips. "You're stalling."

Stalling? Me? Never!

I chuckle uncomfortably, turning for the door. "Let's go, Jamie!" I call over my shoulder. "You too, Midge. And stay close to me if you don't wanna get stabbed."

She pauses. "Last time I checked, you did get stabbed."

"Jesus Christ, Midge! Just follow me!"

She gives an odd half-snort, half-laugh that's as charming as it is annoying, herding Jamie through the front door and following closely after me.