No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

“It’s okay.”
She hadn’t yet looked at her right hand. She’d been
dreading it. She did now — for a split-second — and then she
ripped her eyes away, gasping—
Oh God.
She dared to look at the damage again, her vision clouding
with tears. Her thumb, index, and middle fingers were all
okay. But her ring finger was skinned raw. The fingernail was
slivered, half-detached, jutting upright like a cornflake. And
her pinkie finger was gone. Everything from the first knuckle
up. Gone, missing, severed, not a part of Darby Thorne’s body
anymore. Still inside that door hinge across the room, crushed
and unrecognizable—
Oh God, oh God, oh God—
Strangely, the actual act of ripping her hand out of it
hadn’t hurt at all. She’d freed herself in two sharp, clockwise
twists. Just a fuzzy sort of discomfort, blunted by adrenaline.
But she was rapidly losing blood now, spurting a ceaseless
trickle that ran warmly down her wrist and blotted circles on
the floor. She covered it with her other hand. She couldn’t look
at it anymore.
Like Ed had said, hours ago: When you’re facing a lunch
date with the Reaper, what’re a few little bones and tendons?
And more half-remembered voices, warped and tinny,
coming at her in a nauseous swirl: Can you cut a girl in half?
I’m a magic man, Lars, my brother.
My toast always lands jelly-side up, you could say—
Dizzy now, she checked the first-aid box on the floor,
leaving sticky red handprints, pawing through the syringes and
Band-Aid boxes. Searching for that thick gauze — but it was
gone. Sandi had used it all.
“Can they …” Jay hesitated.
“Can they what?”