Page 40 of A Divided Duty

“And you trust him to go home, not follow you and show up here in twenty minutes, offering his soul if I’ll just set him on the same path?”

He did that once, a long time ago. I still only hesitated for a moment before I said, “I do. He said he’d go home, and I believe him.”

The Luidaeg shot me an amused look. “Ah. Character growth. Come with me.”

She walked down the hallway, and Tybalt and I followed, unsure what else we could do under the circumstances. The eerie cleanliness of the apartment continued around us as we walked, as seemingly real as the old illusion of decay. I preferred this, but I still wasn’t sure how real it was.

We passed the living room, where the television was on but no one was present, and stepped into the kitchen, a Formica-and-tile dream of the seventies, complete with slate-blue appliances. The single window looked out on a stormy seaside coast that didn’t look like it was anywhere near San Francisco. The Luidaeg waved for us to sit, then began bustling around the kitchen, collecting jars and bottles of strange liquids from the refrigerator and various cupboards.

This, at least, was as familiar as it was unsettling. I cleared my throat. “We didn’t discuss the actual price,” I said. “What do you want?”

“I have all the blood I need from you,” she said, mildly. “It’s useful stuff to have on hand, but let me tell you, trading in body parts was never my childhood aspiration. I have promises and paths aplenty. The one thing I don’t have right now is your restraint.”

“My restraint?” I asked.

“I can get you there and back by the light of a candle, so I’ll only ask once, but for the both of you: for each of you, one time, I will be able to tell you not to do something, and you’ll obey me, no matter how dear the danger might be. If I say no, you will stop. Even if your daughter is in danger, you will refrain from taking action. Do you understand what I’m asking of you?”

“I do,” I said. “But I do not like it.”

“I didn’t expect that you would.”

“Wait,” said Tybalt. “You would bargain for the right to risk our child? To stay our hands when the need is greatest?”

“What else do you have left to give me?” The Luidaeg shrugged. “You know I set my prices as low as I reasonably can where your wife, the walking natural disaster, is concerned. This is the price my magic is telling me suits the request. Take it or leave it.”

“Can you promise me the danger won’t be deadly if Miranda is involved?” I asked.

Tybalt shot me a horrified look. The Luidaeg nodded.

“I can promise you that much,” she said. “I’ll allow risks, but I won’t force you to stop yourself when it means my godchild could be damaged beyond recovery. You have my word.”

That would have to be enough. “We’ll take the deal,” I said.

“I thought you would,” she said, and pulled a large bowl out of the nearest cupboard, beginning to pour her various bottles and flasks into it. She didn’t measure anything, just dumped what she had and kept on going. Most of the liquids glowed. Some of them fizzed. Some of them fizzed and glowed, which was impressive to look at, and a little disturbing when they mixed. Despite their various clashing colors, the resulting mix never got muddy, never turned dull or brown. Each new color caused the whole mixture to change, strobing gold to blue to green to red, until it finally settled on a spectacularly luminescent white, like the hide of a storybook unicorn.

The Luidaeg lifted the bowl and carried it over to her sink, where she added a shot of water straight from the faucet. Past experience told me her pipes weren’t connected to anything as ordinary as the municipal water system: what came out when she turned on the taps was pure seawater, salty and unfiltered.

This accomplished, she put the bowl down on the counter and held out her hand imperiously. “Knife,” she said.

“Which one?”

“The one I gave you, and stop screwing around pretending you didn’t already know that.”

Right. I stood, drawing the curved shell knife she had given me right before Miranda’s birth from its place at my hip. I hadn’t sharpened it since she gave it to me, but it still looked sharp enough to cut the foam off of a wave. Carefully, I held it out to her, and she snatched it out of my hand, somehow managing not to carve my palm open in the process.

Instead, she slashed the blade down along her own palm, splitting the skin and sending a gout of brackish-looking blood pouring into the gleaming contents of the bowl, where it vanished without making any perceptible change.

“Hand,” she said, in the same imperious tone.

I’d been expecting that, sadly. I held my hand out to her, looking away as she brought the blade to bear.

It was so sharp that I barely felt the pain as she laid my hand open to the bone, then guided it into position above the bowl. “Relax,” she said, voice soft as a sigh, and grasped my wrist, turning my hand so that my palm faced the liquid. The blood that had already pooled there fell, followed by the blood still leaking from the healing wound. I could feel the skin knitting itself shut the way I hadn’t been able to feel the initial cut; it itched.

When the itching faded, she let me go. “Come here, kitty-cat,” she said.

“You know I lack my lady’s skill with healing,” he said, the legs of his chair scraping against the linoleum. “Please leave me able to defend her.”

“You worry too much,” she said.