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was like those stories you hear about someone’s heart stopping and their spirit flies up to the corner of the room and watches the doctors and everyone rushing around. Then, they blast them with a defibrillator, and the spirit’s vacuumed back up into the body. Except I wasn’t having a heart attack, I’d just screwed up like four days’ worth of work.
    I watched my mallet swing.
    The tip of the chisel slipped to exactly the one place where it could really do some damage – the delicate joint between the neck and the shoulder.
    I bit my lip harder, for some reason completely incapable of stopping my hand as the mallet connected with the chisel, even though I saw the mistake I was making in a flash before I made it.
    Thunk.
    That ungodly, sickening, horrific sound reverberated through my entire body. I didn’t even hear it so much as I felt it.
    The sound of a thousand nails on a thousand wet chalkboards would not make my teeth hurt any worse. The awful cry of a dying rabbit, or a trapped piglet, had nothing on the sound I heard a split second later.
    The crack opened in slow-motion, like when your toe catches in a crack, you fall and try desperately to catch yourself but end up face-planting on the sidewalk. I saw every single event in the chain, but couldn’t stop any of them.
    I heard Jeannie say “oh no!” with exaggerated slowness. The first thing that sprang to mind was a scene in a Friday the 13 th movie where Jason, that hockey-masked lunatic, swings an axe and the whole world slows. The hapless teenager he’s about to dismember raises her arms, screams in slow-mo, and then...
    Thunk .
    It wasn’t the sound of an axe hitting flesh, but at that very second, it was a million times worse. The entire arm, not just a chunk, not just a piece, the whole damn thing fell. I squealed, Jeannie shouted, and then the clay hit the concrete floor and exploded in a supernova of dust, fragments, and lost work.
    When the world sped back up to normal, I looked over at Jeannie, who was gawking at the formerly beautiful biceps and forearm, which was now just a mess on the floor.
    Her voice was as flat as my pulse as she announced, “His arm fell off.”
    The plaster dust hit my nose, my eyes squinted up involuntarily and I unleashed the most savage sneeze of my life. It felt like my brain rattled in my skull. If getting a concussion from a sneeze was possible, I’d never be able to play football again after that sneeze.
    “Uh,” Jeannie broke the silence, and with it, chipped away slightly at the tension in the air. “I guess you can make it a Venus de Milo?”
    I snorted, thankful for the laugh, but still sick to my stomach. “Better get started on the seashell then.”
    We looked at each other for a moment longer before another voice intruded, one that I hadn’t realized was there until the owner stepped out from the shadows at the front of my studio like some kind of weird vampire cliché. I looked at him for a second before I remembered that he was talking.
    “Whatever he’s paying you,” this new guy said, “I’ll double it.”
    “Huh?”
    Jeannie and I exchanged a glance. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
    The stranger tipped his head toward the busted statue. “Him. Whatever he’s paying you for that ridiculously gaudy piece of self-aggrandizement, I’ll pay you double to turn him down.”
    I shook my head. “Why? Although actually we haven’t finalized the cost yet. Er, not like I would tell you anyway. Client confidentiality,” I added hastily. I’m not sure why I thought he might be some kind of lawyer, or some kind of test, but there it is. I can be a little paranoid from time to time.
    “You’re not a doctor,” he said. His voice was smooth, even and slightly delicious. Jake’s had more of a gravelly touch to it, but this new guy – who was also really damn big, come to think of it – was sharper, more intense. This wasn’t the sort of person who makes jokes unless they’re