Angrily, she turned her massacred face toward him. How dare he yank her attention away, how could he interrupt such a moment? She would teach him obedience soon. It was high time to show him his place. Enough! she screamed in her thoughts.

  Those weren’t her words. Not her desires. A remnant of that carrion’s self had survived somewhere, or rather a memory of its thought process. It would pass soon. It always passed quickly, but it was close. Next time, she had to be more careful, or she’d end up as a wet stain.

  “I won’t heal,” she finally said, but the words stuck in her throat, and humiliation burned her from the inside. That was also a memory. Not her approach. No, she knew her limits. Maybe she was reckless sometimes. Maybe she didn’t always look far enough ahead when making plans. But she wasn’t stupid enough to overestimate herself right now. Besides, she wasn’t asking for help. She was stating a fact, and that wasn’t a request yet.

  Not-a-Doctor sighed quietly, then got up from the armchair and approached her. “I will use your power, and yours only,” he warned, kneeling beside her. “I have no intention of wasting my own energy to fix what you screwed up yourself. It will be unpleasant.”

  She felt like doing something to him. Punch him in the face, or shove him down the stairs. Anything, just because, and not because she was following patterns left behind by the demon. No, it was her own desire. One she had nurtured for years, dreaming of the day she could finally act on it. Too bad that day hadn’t come yet.

  She felt a jolt before she finished imagining his surprise when blood would flow from his broken nose, or whatever passed through his veins. But it wasn’t physical. It was inside her. She felt no pain, at least not at first. Just long enough to give her the illusion that it wouldn’t get worse.

  It was a lie.

  A moment later, she felt bone fragments shifting back into place. Unpleasant, but tolerable compared to the agony of tissues knitting together. Logically, for fuck’s sake, it shouldn’t hurt. She was being healed, not torn apart. But logic didn’t matter here, and she only felt worse.

  After the bones in her face fused, the damaged tissue repaired, and a few similar disasters were handled, it was time for her teeth. Until now, she hadn’t even registered they were broken. Survival had taken priority. But now the fragments, which she had probably swallowed during one of the wall-slamming moments, began crawling back up her digestive tract, slicing her esophagus open on the way. Nothing catastrophic. The wounds scabbed over immediately, painfully. At the same time, her ribs were shifting back into place, so the need to howl fought a vicious battle with the gag reflex. Just as vomiting was about to win, she felt a tearing pain in something she didn’t even have a name for, something she’d never suspected existed in the place where it hurt.

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  Then there were more.

  So she focused on her legs, regenerating after being crushed. It wasn’t easy, because everywhere swelling began to form, something inside her seemed determined to split her skin open and crawl out.

  “Done,” Not-a-Doctor said quietly.

  Alice glared at him. Maybe he was done, but it felt like every centimeter of her body had decided to reinvent itself in the most painful way possible.

  “Focus and block the false signals,” Not-a-Doctor said. “Your body is healed, but it was forced healing. Your brain will lag before it accepts that nothing is wrong. And you need to patch the holes in your aura, or the wounds will reopen later.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus. It didn’t come easily. She imagined her own death, meaning relief from this pain. She also knew Not-a-Doctor was right. That bastard was always right, so it was time to listen.

  She started counting. “One, fuck, my legs. Two, I could just die. Three, God must not love me. Four, I hate Him too. Five, I want to die. Six, kill Not-a-Doctor. Seven, destroy the whole world. Eight, die, die, die. Nine and ten, and fuck.”

  “It hurts,” complained Alice’s emerging subconscious from the darkness.

  “I know it hurts,” her consciousness snapped, trying to stay calm. “Disconnect the pain signals.”

  “That’s dangerous,” the subconscious said, as if it were nothing, and began to withdraw.

  “Then accept the fact that I’ve been healed, damn it, and do something about this pain. I can’t do it alone. I’m going to lose it any second if you don’t help.” The little girl looked at her consciousness with a coldness so sharp, and a suffering so raw, that the latter immediately corrected herself. “I shouldn’t yell at you. You’re the only one I can rely on. Think of something. You’re smarter.”

  The girl, still offended, straightened proudly, positively glowing with satisfaction.

  The pain subsided instantly.

  “It will take a few hours,” she announced, walking away.

  Alice opened her eyes and took a deep breath. It had been a damn long day. She was sick of it. She just wanted sleep. She was exhausted.

  “Get up,” Not-a-Doctor ordered. “I still need to set your shoulders.”

  God should die, Alice thought.

  She stood in front of the house of her dead clients, watching it burn majestically. Right beside her stood the black-haired man she sometimes hated so much. He smoked a cigarette indifferently, glancing at the sky now and then as if he could read the exact time from the stars. He wasn’t happy about wasting time on this. It showed in his face, in his impatient gestures, but Alice didn’t feel even a flicker of guilt. No, she felt a sick satisfaction, and if she could, she would screw something else up just to annoy him more.

  Firefighters and police officers ran around, but no one saw her. A gas explosion. Clean enough. Damage the pipe, erase the traces of her presence, and for good measure, warp the perception of everyone nearby.

  Oh, how she hated him.

  Oh, how tired she was…