Excerpt: Find A Bird And Put It In Jail

This is the part where her heart begins to pound and shake like a nuclear reactor, where her fingers feel like they’re ejecting toxic waste. It’s wretched, but it’s such a release that it’s almost orgasmic. She tries not to think about how strange it is to feel that way in this context, because God knows it isn’t Natalie that’s stirring up this tepid stew of emotion. To Rhiannon in this moment, Natalie is hardly there. All that’s left of her is her mother’s anger toward her, and her mother’s heated need to let the poisonous magic drool out of her kind, embracing arms.

Now to focus. If she doesn’t reign this in, and fast, she will kill her daughter. She only revels in the bliss of release for a split second, after that she is alert and on-task. She doesn’t want to make the girl too sick, since if she does she’ll get a panicked phone call from well-meaning Beatriz midway through the day, begging her to take her fever-slapped, convulsing child home. That is absolutely the last thing Rhiannon wants, so she reins herself in, limits herself to infecting her with the same cold that she punished her husband with last night. In the heat of the moment, she can’t remember what he did to deserve it, but she knows that it does not especially matter. Noah deserves a constant stream of punishment, regardless of his crimes or lack thereof.

She strokes the side of her daughter’s face, flooding her sinuses and guiding the mucus towards her nose. Her fingers dance over Natalie’s temples, making them tense up in pain. Her other hand works the throat, lightly touching the skin wrapped around her trachea, willing it to soreness and cough. A kiss on the forehead ensures a slight rise in body temperature, and a whispered “I love you” protects Rhiannon from blame.

This will be a faster rate of infection than it was with Noah, because she wants to watch the virus bloom. The little shit deserves it after her ridiculous behavior earlier. Why in the world would she think it was acceptable to dawdle so much, and to wear stripper boots in the middle of a rainstorm! And how dare she disrespect her mother by correcting her! But she smiles brightly and lets the girl go, then opens the car door and slides into the driver’s seat.