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Sal’s hand remained cupped at the back of my neck as her forearm banded beneath my shoulder blades and helped me to rise. We shuffled to the chair, and she eased me into the chair. “I’m going to lean you back over the tub.”
Instant panic flared within my rib cage, and she must have seen it in my eyes.
“I’ve got you, Kat.”
And she did.
Cradling my head with one hand, she poured the kettle’s contents over the mass with the other, keeping the steaming stream well away from my scalp.
“I have good news and bad news,” Sal said after several minutes. “Which would you prefer first?”
“Good,” I said.
“The chocolate is coming away pretty easily,” she said.
“And the bad?”
“There’s caramel beneath it.”
“Please tell me you jest.”
“I jest not. If I sit the chair up, can you manage for a minute?” Sal asked. “I might be able to make some kind of solvent.”
“Just cut it off,” I said miserably.
“No,” Sal said with enough vehemence to make me flinch. She brought the chair to all for legs and stalked over to the table.
“Why not?” I asked. “You think just because I’m not fae that I can’t pull off a pixie cut as well as you can?”
“I’m not fae, and I didn’t choose this style,” she said. Rummaging through the bag, she set out an assortment of tiny bottles and pouches. “It was cut when I left the Order.”
“Left the order?” I asked, admiring how the bathwater deepened the intensity of the linework on her arms. “But, your cloak...I thought anyone who left the Order was stripped of it.”
“In that case, how did you get yours?” A flash of light and puff of smoke rose from the glass jar where she mixed the various contents.
“My mother gave it to me,” I said after an extended beat of silence. “Right before she died in childbed.”
The memory returned to me unbidden.
My mother’s stomach was still a distended mound beneath sheets stained crimson in a circle spreading behind her. Her face was pallid as the chalky stones here along the Moors. Her dark hair tangled as kelp. All that power, all those battles, and the life dependent upon hers for survival had defeated her.
Which was why the Order demanded abstinence.
Not because anyone gave a damn whether they were virgins. But because sex required women to yield control of their sovereignty.
Nothing I had seen nor experienced in the course of my long life had proved anything different.
Sal returned with the glass jar, the swirling contents resembling a small, sparkling galaxy.
“Since you’re clearly not magic, I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s stable dirt and horse piss?”
“Oil of the tea tree and coconut flesh.”
“And what was the flash I saw?”
“Just a bit of black powder leftover from the fireworks I have brought from the far east. I thought you might appreciate it for dramatic effect.”
My eyes searched the heavens. If karmic punishment was due, perhaps I could just get run down by a carriage next time?
