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“No.” She hugged the bag against her chest. “I’ll give you one item inside in exchange for you being a decent human and fixing my hand.”
“Human?” The word was vile, almost fetid on my tongue. “Why would you speak of the mortal realm?”
Her lips parted, then closed, then split again like a fish gasping for a gulp of water on land. “Mortal . . . mortal realm?”
“If we are to leave then the time is now,” Gwyn said in a hiss when a boom of thunder rumbled overhead.
“Four items for one finger,” I said, rising to my feet.
The woman’s jaw tightened, but in the end she tilted her head. “Two for one finger.”
“Fine.”
“And I get to pick.”
“If you do not hurry, you will not be selecting anything before Torrent drowns you.”
She cast a wary look to the sky, then drove her undamaged hand into her satchel. In the next breath, she tossed out a strange box shape wrapped in blue with thin, silver slats tucked inside. A breath of mint followed the odd thing, but I let it fall to the grass when the woman added to it what appeared to be small, sea foam green pellets trapped in a diaphanous container.
“There.” She held out her altered hand. “Chewing gum and some mints.”
I lifted the container, inspecting the pellets moving about inside. “Are these spells to be swallowed?”
For a moment, a flicker of a grin tugged on her mouth. “Yes. These”—she pointed to the pellets— “are kept in the mouth until they dissolve. These are to be chewed to release the, uh, the spell.”
“And what is the outcome?”
“Like she’ll speak true,” Asger said, malice in his tone.
He wasn’t wrong. I took hold of the two objects, a little fascinated at the strange scent of spice wafting from within. “Hold out your hand.”
She didn’t flinch as I shifted her little finger back to its rightful position and returned her longest, center digit.
One by one, she tossed out small, utterly befuddling objects—silver coins of varying shapes she insisted were rare currency, soft, foldable linens kept in a pack the woman told us had a sort of spell to stop the mucous when fever or a chill made the nose run, a cylinder with a smoothing balm for the lips and skin, strange quills with the ink built within, a foldable knife Cy claimed, and a vial of a pleasant-smelling elixir Gwyn took for herself before the deal could be argued.
By the time her thumb had been placed on the proper side of her hand, sweat beaded over her brow, but she grinned a little viciously. “There. Deals and deals.”
Our small pile of objects was curious, but seemed a bit worthless.
“True,” I said, low and steady. Gwyn would shout at me, no mistake, but I could not shake the feeling there was more to this woman than her carefully executed extractions. She gave us items that held little value in her eyes.
I wanted what she valued.
“We’ll be off now. As I said before,” I went on, taking a step closer. “I do hope I don’t see you again.”
In one lithe motion, I managed to leverage the strap of the woman’s satchel from her grip and had it tossed back to Asger in a few breaths.
“No!” The woman grappled for the bag.
Ah, there was a bit of fire.
“Afraid a toll isneeded.”
“You’re not taking my bag, asshole.” The woman made a swipe at me, but I’d already stepped three paces away. “That wasn’t our deal.”
I chuckled. “I would watch your tongue, woman. Or I might simply force your jaw tobiteit off.”
I spun my fingers at my side and a slight gasp broke from her chest. No mistake, she was feeling the pressure of my call to the bones. One shake to my hand, and I released her. She cursed me under her breath, then fumbled with the fur wrapped around her shoulders, reaching for something in her thin little shift covering her body.
