Shaking my head at Florin and his utter stubbornness, I swung back to slit the pastry open and stuff the pieces of roadkill into the croissant. Hopping down from the footstool, I offered it to the Horned God. He placed his quill away and eagerly reached for the treat. His tongue licked out and ran across his lip, mouth watering, as his talons wrapped around the flaky pastry. "Raccoon, my favorite."
I went back to work, hacking away at the squirrel and what was left of the opossum, while Florin made loud contented noises as he chewed.
Leaving the croissants on the edge of his writing desk, I went into the small room out the back, washed my hands with soap and frigid water that ran down the stone wall into a basin, dried them on a towel, and then headed back into the office. I opened up my black leather bag and got out my tools of trade—my duster and shammy cloth and bottle of glass cleaner—and quickly set about cleaning the office, I'd already lost an hour.
As I dusted the long shelf of past ledgers, I thought Florin might be able to help me with one of my puzzles. I spoke airily as if not concerned, brushing the feathers of the duster down leather spines. "I came across a name in a book in the Deniauds' library. Perhaps you might know the creature. Yezekael?"
Florin tipped his head to the side, taking his time thinking about it while he finished his mouthful. "I've met Yezekael a few times. He deals in secrets and information, sometimes purchasing something on another's behalf." He shrugged a broad shoulder. "He just wants the usual thing."
"And what is that?"
"Something it is not. More than what it is."
What kind of deal had the thing inside my aunt done with Yezekael? What trade had they agreed upon? What had that thing promised it?
"What does he look like?" I asked, just as Florin took another bite from the croissant with sharp teeth.
He mumbled around the mouthful. "An ugly winged lesser creature."
It wasn't much to go on. "Any other description you could give me?"
"Ugly," he grunted, chewing noisily.
Everyone was ugly to Florin, including me. "Where does Yezekael live?"
"I don't know," Florin growled, annoyed. "I didn't care to ask him for personal details. I don't care for chit-chat, you know that."
I raised my eyebrows, pointedly, because that was somewhat offensive.
He sighed, waving a taloned hand at me. "Present company excluded, of course."
"Of course." Except, I thought as I squinted suspiciously at him, he often fell asleep on me when I got to chit-chatting. Or he'd yawn and tell me how much my little servant's job and my little servant's life bored him.
Realizing that was all I was going to get from the Horned God, I tucked away my cleaning tools into the black leather bag, and from my personal handbag slipped out an old book that I'd borrowed from the Deniauds' library. Well, I suppose stole might be the right term since I'd never returned it. Someone long ago had begun the book, noting and detailing otherworldly creatures, the smaller insignificant kind like the Pix and Brunnies and the larvae of the Spryte.
On every visit, I lugged the book with me to Florin's and added my findings to it because his rarities intrigued me. Setting the old tome onto the work table, I went into Florin's shop and picked three glass jars that were next in line to be written about. Poaching my own small human-sized set of writing tools from Florin's desk, I stood up on the footstool and opened up the stolen book.
The gilded pages were frayed from age and the black handwriting was smudged and faded. I found where I'd begun my entries, my handwriting legible, neat and precise, and turned to a blank page.
A purplish veil of light glanced over the jars from the Pix fluttering in large orbs hanging from the tall ceiling. The first glass jar was filled with earth, and burrowing through the moist soil were fat juicy grubs, not pale pink or dirt-colored, but a verdant green. The price tag hanging from the jar's lid had the name: Hymgild's Memory Eater. It seemed a simple enough explanation. "How do they work?"
Florin swiped flaky crumbs off his feathered tunic. "The grubs bury memories."
"How?"
His pointed teeth shone brightly as he grinned. "You have to eat them, little thief."
I pulled a disgusted face, poking my tongue out. The grubs looked rubbery and grotesque, I couldn't imagine how gross it would be to eat them alive.
Florin reached for the croissant with bits of opossum fur sticking out of it and carried on speaking. "You need to hold in your mind what you want to forget while you chew away on the fat wriggling grub. It takes the memory and buries it down deep inside your mind, so far down you'll forget it."
"Do you lose the memory permanently?"
He finished his mouthful. "No. The memory can resurface later...if it's triggered. But it'll come back in confusing bursts until it's completely revealed to whoever has tried to bury it."
Peering inside the second jar, I discovered it was filled with clear liquid.
"Tears of the Brokenhearted," Florin supplied, lowering the half-eaten croissant to the desk.
My eyes widened.
Interesting.
The wooden chair creaked as Florin pushed upright. He made his way to the simmering pot, bent over, and ladled a stream of greenish, chunky water into a large mug. Straightening he swallowed a mouthful, smacking his lips and making an aaaah sound afterward.
Inside the third jar was something lying at the very bottom—a scrap of material the size of my little finger's nail. But besides that, it seemed empty. I squinted, turning the jar this way and that, slowly realizing tiny little black dots were moving all over the scrap of material. The price tag, which I coughed and sputtered at how much Florin was demanding, stated: Zrenyth's Mites.
I twisted around to face Florin, resting my hip on the edge of the table. "What are these?"
He'd turned his back to the fire and one hand was wrapped around his mug of tea, the other braced on his walking cane. An orange hue filtering through his smoke burnished his figure, and gilded his enormous ram's horns, casting a dim shadow that stretched across the floor to where I stood. "Mites that eat wild magic from our God."
My mouth pursed with astonishment. Zrenyth.
Our God that birthed the Horned Gods with his last expelled breath before he fell into the Great Slumber. He'd also been particularly fond of forging weapons.
"Long ago, one of Zrenyth's swords suddenly disappeared from my store room. I couldn't work it out. I thought I'd been robbed," Florin said, eyes wide, somewhat astounded. He pointed a talon at the jar in my hands. "Until I discovered another blade had become corroded, and these pesky mites were crawling all over it, consuming the metal and mist and shadow and gorging on wild magic."
My face screwed up into a frown as I thought about it. "What about your magic? Can they eat yours?"
And just as importantly, could they eat mine?
He took another sip of tea and I cringed when I heard his teeth grinding bits of rat and mice. "They don't seem to be interested in anything organic. They eat magic clinging to inanimate objects. Zrenyth's specifically. Like the dagger I gave you."
I squinted inside the jar at the tiny black dots. "How long would it take to consume something of Zrenyth's?"
Florin leaned against his walking cane as he made his way back to his writing desk. "I've dropped in a single link from one of Zrenyth's chains and it took them a good long while, perhaps close to a year. But the scraps of leather and the chunks I've hacked from one of the God's ropes, they ate through quickly." He pondered it as he lowered himself into the chair. "Perhaps a week or two at most."
Making a humming noise of interest, I put the jar down and dipped the quill's nib into the ink, and began to write, taking my time to ensure my handwriting was neat and straight. For the next hour, Florin went into detail, answering further questions I had about the jars and their contents, and I wrote it all down like I was his scribe. As my quill scratched over the parchment, worry and dread resurfaced and coiled around my bones. My visit with Florin was at an end and I needed to know. Gods, I was running out of time. I had less than two weeks to get my hands on the last item for the spell.
A while later, I finished with my note-taking and blew my breath over the inked pages to help it dry quicker, closing the book and tucking it back into my leather handbag.
It didn't take long to put the ink and quills away, to scrub my fingers free from ink stains with soapy water. When I entered the office, Florin was back roaming his ledger and tallying up the month's sales. His furred forehead was furrowed in concentration. Lifting my peacoat off the horned hook, I stood awkwardly by the office door and fidgeted with the woolen fabric. The Horned God, sensing my attention, turned my way, his mouth thinning and eyes narrowing.
I chewed on my bottom lip. I wanted to ask but couldn't find it in me to even blurt it out. And with trepidation running rampant, making my heart race and my palms clammy, there was nothing casual in my approach either.
So freaking useless.
Florin knew exactly what I wanted to know. His wooden chair groaned as he leaned forward. "Ask away, little thief."
I nervously shifted my feet. Behind my back, I crossed my fingers as I sent up a wishful, hopeful, desperate plea to Skalki. Please, please, please.
"Did you happen to find wyrmblood?"
The Horned God sighed and the dismal sound was foreboding. "I'm afraid not. I heard back from my last lead and nothing. Those beasts went into hiding a long time ago and no one has managed to find them." Smoke rolled off his arm as he put his quill down. "Even before that, no one was able to get close enough to nick their skin and obtain a single drop of their blood. It's an impossible task, Tabitha, to find pure wyrmblood."
Dizziness swirled in my head as failure, heavy as the chains that Zrenyth forged, sank through my limbs and dragged my spirits with it.
A twitch of his nose. "What do you want with it?"
I blinked sluggishly, trying to rally my mind to the here and now. Stinging heat teased the back of my eyes, and I shook my head because words eluded me. He was my last, my only hope, to obtain a drop of wyrmblood.
"Tabitha," Florin said in a warning tone as he rose from his chair, the cane supporting his bad knee. The Horned God loomed above me and I felt so tiny and insignificant, especially failing this task to save my aunt. "You don't ask for wyrmblood on a whim," he growled, cocking his head, studying me with his strange eyes. "What kind of trouble are you in?"
My mouth went dry and the words croaked from my throat. "I'm not in trouble, Florin."
"You don't buy the eyelashes of an albino or a three-headed toad," he rattled off, naming a few of the items I'd purchased from him over the past few years. "Nor the last breath of a dying man...on a whim."
He took an awkward rolling step toward me and it spurred me into action. I was drowning beneath defeat and close to tears. I didn't have the strength to deal with Florin. I quickly shrugged on my peacoat, and grabbed the navy striped beach bag, my leather handbag, and the smaller bag that held the tools of my trade from the work table. Glancing at my watch as if to check the time, I made an ugh sound, as I met Florin's suspicious stare. "It's so late. I've got to get going."
"Tabitha," Florin barked as I darted out of the office, moving quicker when I heard him hobbling after me.
"I'll see you next week," I called out with a fake cheery tone, and I practically ran away from the Horned God, slipping out the front door to his store and shutting it behind me with a bang.
Twenty minutes later, I dragged my aching feet down the pavement, feeling as if I were swimming upstream, while the loud sounds of the city blared all around me—shouting, laughing, and hustling, the annoyed excuse me's, as people pushed their way around my slow-moving pace.
I tried to reassure myself that there were almost two weeks to go. By some miracle, maybe Florin would find the impossible, wyrmblood, but even I couldn't raise my spirits and believe it could be done. I sank further and further into despondency with every weary footstep.
Reaching my car, I packed away everything in the backseat, slid behind the steering wheel, shoved my key into the ignition, and turned it.
Nothing.
I turned the key again and the engine didn't engage. There wasn't even a struggling jug-j-jugg it would do if I'd run the battery down.
I tried again and again and again.
Nothing.
Blistering anger spiked and I slapped my hand on the leather wheel, silently cursing my ill luck. There wasn't any point in popping open the car's hood and looking at the engine and its wires and plugs hoping something would just wave out to me and say—Here's the problem. I could change a car tire, check the oil, and fill the radiator with water if need be, but anything else was completely out of my realm of expertise.
I was going to have to find a payphone and call home and ask someone, probably Oswin, if he could come and tow me. It was going to be hours before I'd get home.
My feet were sore, my stomach gnawed away at itself, I was exhausted from my day of running errands for everyone else, and I didn't have the one thing I needed desperately.
My car dying was the last thing I freaking needed.
Dropping my forehead to the steering wheel I erupted into misery.
My crying was ugly and loud and I let it all out, my disastrous hope for the elusive wyrmblood. I choked back a chest-wracking sob, droplets of brine stinging my dry lips, as it slowly crept up on me, the awareness that the city sounded louder. Car horns were blasting, much more than usual. I was surrounded by the thunderous sound of angry drivers.
Surprise had me jack-knifing straight and I quickly swiped the tears from my puffy wet eyes. Half-twisting around, I blinked in startlement at the shiny silver sports car parked alongside mine. Over my shoulder, I saw a long line of cars backed up. The noise of honking horns and furious drivers and their aggressive shouting was almost deafening. The owner of the sports car had double-freaking-parked and seemed as if they were going nowhere anytime soon.
The sports car's passenger window had been wound down, and I did the same thing. I cranked the lever, and my glass window slowly slid down and disappeared. Ducking a little, as to get a good look at whoever was driving the car beside me, I found it was a guy dressed impeccably in a suit that enhanced a broad upper body, one large hand braced against his steering wheel.
The dying rays of the sun glanced off his aviators when he tipped his sunglasses downward so he could peer at me above their gold rim. His cocky smile slipped into worry. "Need some help, Miss Catt?"
And I burst into fresh tears.