“What is it?” she snapped. “I’m drowning things and you’re inter—” She looked at my face and brightened. “Is there a fight?” Then her smile deepened. “Are you wounded?”
“She mostly killed a werewolf with her car,” Aiden said. “All he needed was the coup de grâce.” He paused and then in a mournful voice he said, “The car was sacrificed for the good of all.”
Tilly’s smile disappeared. “Alas,” she said. Tilly liked cars. She couldn’t get far enough from one of her doors to ride in one—and then there was all the cold iron. But she liked them anyway.
Aiden nodded his head in acknowledgment, then said, in a more hearty tone, “She managed the blow without harming the child the werewolf held over his head. She used one of her own werewolves—tossed her wolf onto the front of the car to catch the child. Mercy is a little hurt—but her enemy is dead.”
“You told that backward,” I said. And skipped most of the parts that would have made that story make sense.
“Important parts first,” said Tilly thoughtfully. “That’s how to tell a story. Skip the boring parts. End with the results, though. Good job, Fire. That was a good story—I especially liked the part where the car died. I do so love tragedy.”
She stepped through the door and closed it behind her, running a dirty finger around the latch. The magic she used sent a zing up my spine. Her white shift was drenched with water until she looked at it. Under her gaze, the cloth dried in a few seconds but looked stiff and crusted with salt. There were smears of green here and there. Something I was pretty sure was blood had soaked the bottom of her hem, which was about knee height.
“I need to ask you a few things,” I told her. “I brought you a gift as an exchange.”
Aiden held the plate out to her. She gave me a considering look before turning her attention to the food. She stuck a finger in the cream and licked it off. She ate a slice of strawberry. Waited. Then ate one of the blueberries as if it might be poisonous.
“Did you make this?” she asked.
And I wished I’d taken the time to make brownies or cookies or something, because the way she asked it, I knew it was important.
“I assembled it,” I told her. “My friend made the waffles fresh this morning and my stepdaughter’s mother made the syrup from the first fruits of summer. I whipped the cream”—thus ensuring that anyone in the house who was trying to sleep was awakened—“sliced the strawberries, and put it all together for you.”
“Friends and enemies,” she said. I couldn’t tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing. “Bitter and sweet. And the fruits of the earth. I accept.”
And she ate with the manners and speed of a starving stray dog as Aiden held the plate for her. She took it from him and licked it clean before handing it back. Her face was covered with whipped cream and syrup, and she wiped her hands on her white shift, leaving streaks of pink behind.
“Interesting,” she said. “I liked it.” She looked pointedly at the glass in my hand.
Aiden shook his head at me, so I didn’t say anything. Finally, she sighed, rolled her eyes, and said, “What do you have in your glass?”
“My friend’s grandmother’s bourbon,” I told her.
She had been reaching for the glass, but she hesitated. “I do not know bourbon.”
“Whiskey,” said Aiden. “Local variety.”
She reached for it again and I gave it to her. She said, suspiciously, “This has some magic within.”
“Huh,” I said. “It was more than just alcohol. I had some this morning and it took the ache out of my muscles. The woman who crafted it gave it to her granddaughter. She made it specifically for her family.”
Tilly sniffed it warily, then tipped the glass so she could touch her tongue to it. She smacked her lips together a couple of times. “Good,” she said. “Very good.” Then she drank the whole of it in one swallow.
She handed the glass back to me and said, “That is brewed with fae magic. Your friend’s grandmother has fae blood. It is an old magic she used, for healing and health.”
She dusted her hands and gave me a look out from under her hair. “Before you get all romantic about it, that spell was developed specifically”—she added weight to the word I’d used—“to keep human slaves working at full strength for as long as possible.”
I shrugged. “That was not the intent of this particular magic when it was mixed in with the drink.”
“No,” agreed Tilly. “But I thought it was interesting in the present company.”
“I am only half-human,” I told her. It was not something I said a lot, but it was important that she did not view me with the contempt she felt for humans—and fae, for that matter. Adam really would have been better for this. “My father is Coyote.”
She frowned at me. “I know that. It’s why I find you interesting.”
“I find you interesting, too,” I told her truthfully—and I meant it to be exactly as complimentary as she had.
She bounced up and down for a minute, then gave me a sly look. “Aren’t you going to ask me your questions?”
“Yes,” I said. “But first I wanted to tell you that it’s too bad the smoke weaver ran away. It seems to me that when someone loses a bargain, they should abide by the terms of that bargain and not scamper at the first opportunity.”
I was doing a little bit of guessing.
She scuffed her foot in the dirt. “Right? He cheated.” She sighed. “Okay, he didn’t cheat. I could do things to him if he had cheated. Our bargain was that I got to take him; I didn’t specify that he couldn’t leave.”
“Things” was not a nice word in that context.
“Is your bargain with him still in effect?” I asked.
She blinked at me, then tilted her head in thought. At last, she said, “There wasn’t a final term to it. And the whole thing was nonspecific. ‘Lose our bargain,’ I said to him—I think we were drinking mead—‘lose our bargain and I get to bring you here.’ He said, ‘What do I get in return?’”
She looked at Aiden fondly. “I thought about giving him Fire, because that’s my favorite, but I’m glad I gave it to you instead. You are a lot better friend than he was.”
“So what did you give him?” I asked.
“Body snatching,” she said with relish. “One of my favorite residents—because he was a hunter and brought me back such interesting beings to keep prisoner. He even had me help design his cells …” She got a faraway look in her eye. “He had a body snatcher. Those cells I never did open when I let loose the rest of the prisoners and slaves. Some of his prey might not play nicely with others.”
Aiden exchanged a look with me.
“That sounds like a smart thing,” I told her, and then kept going because I had the feeling that the world didn’t want her to keep thinking about those cells and whatever they held. “So you gave the smoke weaver the ability to take over bodies?”
She nodded. “He was primarily a transmogrifier—a shape changer.” She looked at me. “Better than you. He could change himself and others. The body snatching just made changing to new shapes easier.” Virtuously she said, “It wasn’t much of an alteration—and I gave it limits. He had to bite his prey, pilot them for a while to prime them for his use. When they were dead, their essence—their shape—was his to use until he wore them out. He wasn’t powerful enough for the magic, though.” She pouted. “He said it was a bad gift. I fixed it so that if he made his puppets kill some people, he could use that for power.”