I opened the door, and the bell rang while scents assailed my nose. The scents of home. That could have all been a coincidence, but the same woman could not. Her smile was neutral as she stood behind the counter.
“Can I help you find something? Maybe a potion to help seduce a particular man?” she asked.
I blinked. “How?”
“How?” she repeated, her eyebrows scrunched together.
“This.” I looked around at the exact shop I was in the city past. “It’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, dear.” She smiled. Alger was a tame city that wasn’t full of magic, and I never knew the strangeness of Alyria until this journey.
“Do you ask every woman if she needs to seduce a man?”
She smiled a large smile that reminded me of a cat grooming the blood off its paws after a kill. “I don’t ask other women anything. But I know what’s best for you.”
My eyebrows pinched together. “What does that mean?”
“Deep down, you know.”
Her words had an alarm ringing in my head. She was probably playing games with me, like the Sylvian women, so I pushed my anxiety aside.
“What is best for me?” I asked.
“The potion, of course. You look like you need it.” She looked pointedly at me.
My eyes widened. “Why?”
“You’re a little uptight, dear.”
“That might be because I’m a prisoner,” I sighed. Why did everyone take this lightly?
“Oh, right. I forgot.” She pursed her lips. “Do I have something you need? Or are you ready to try my potion of desire?”
“What does this potion do?”
“Well, this potion is for men only. It doesn’t work on women, seems only to give them an aching head,” she said, lost in her thoughts, and I wondered when she’d tried to use it on a woman. On second thought, I didn’t want to know.
“Go on,” I pushed.
“Any man to ingest it becomes consumed with lust. He must sate it with whatever woman gave it to him. It’s a wicked potion, and has a high reliability rating.”
“People are so deceitful,” I mused. She only smiled, and I imagined she was one of the most deceitful.
“I’ll take three,” I supplied.
Her smile was malicious like a cat who’d caught the canary.
Maybe it did.
* * *
Is it deceit when someone fools the one who’s been the most deceitful? So many adjectives tacked onto my name; I didn’t want deceitful attached. But neither did I want the meaning to come true: tragedy.
Focusing on the deceit was just a shiny veneer covering up the fox in the henhouse. Also known as feelings.
I had no problem with what I was doing. He had more than asked for it, but the unwanted nausea I felt needed an explanation. And being deceitful was what I was going to blame as I walked up to a red-cheeked, smooth-skinned serving girl. Be thankful I picked a pretty one.
“Can I help you, miss?” she asked.