Page 8 of Bound and Tide

The incense, herbs, and woodsmoke were undercut by the thick scent of human magic. That had a specific smell, medicinal and onerous with an earthy base. That was cute too, in a way, how humans thought they were doing something by staying alive. He couldn’t wait to tell this darling herbalist that he’d killed someone and then brought them back. No, not like a necromancer! This was much, much better as his patient still had her plucky, unrelenting soul. Not like a necromancer at all, but like a god. And who didn’t want to fall to their knees in service of a god?

The shop’s walls were covered in shelving with neat rows of jars, each labeled with precise handwriting. His gaze flicked to the fingers that had written them, wrapping up a bottle in a soft cloth. Those fingers would be delicately lacing themselves around something else soon enough. The hearth inside kept the cozy space warm, much better than the briskness of the outdoors. Along the shop’s back was a counter, and behind that, a covered archway that led deeper in, likely to private quarters. That’s where they would end up, though her cries of whatever name he ended up giving her would echo down the street.

Red’s smile reminded him of all those other too friendly, too sweet, too beautiful women he’d met and loathed but very much wanted to fuck. Tea Cakes, Kitten, even stodgy, celibate Pips the Pure. Unlucky ladies, all of them, missing out on what would have been the best lay of their lives. But not Red. She was about to be the luckiest of them all. Turleki’s favorite even.

Red tied off a parcel, saying something no doubt syrupy and stupid to her customer. She beamed as she accepted only one of the two coins the man offered in return, and then she waved goodbye with slender fingers just beside her chin. A-fucking-dora-gods-damn-ble.

Xander sauntered nearer the counter, eyes locked onto lips he was imagining around his cock. Red was still invested in her elderly customer as he wobbled away. She hadn’t glanced over at him yet, but was she ever in for a surprise. Red’s sweet salutations sailed after the ancient dawdler until the chimes over the door finally jingled with his exit. Xander dropped an elbow onto the counter and settled his chin in his hand. “Why, hello—”

“What do you want?”

Red’s face lost every morsel of its sweetness in such a flash, Xander didn’t even see it go. A bubbly, bright, blossoming delight one instant, she was now staring absolute daggers at him, cold, cruel, and, well, still beautiful, of course, but peering into the depths of him like she could see the vile goop he was made up of, and she loathed it.

Struck so intensely, all the cleverness he thought he had abandoned him, and he burned under the emerald of her eyes. Very pretty eyes, he noted, even though they were trying to set him alight, and then he remembered that was the whole point.

“What do I want?” Xander’s lips curled away the shock that had taken him. “Well, I was hoping, you.”

“Not for sale. Get out.” She turned, skirts and hair swishing in her wake, and busied herself with something that wasn’t him.

Xander’s arm slipped from under his chin, and he splayed out his hands across the counter. Composure dashed, he swallowed back the scoff that tickled at his throat. “Is this how Maisie intends for her customers to be treated?”

“Maisie’s dead,” she said, flat as could be without even turning over her shoulder to grant him another scathing look. “And you’re not a customer unless you’re here to buy something.”

Xander watched the back of her as she bent over and organized linen and twine in the baskets beneath her work table. He wanted to be offended, but the view was too exquisite. “I do need some…ingredients?”

“Well, shop’s full of ’em.” She stood again, winding twine about her hand, still refusing to cast another glance his way. Clearly she’d not gotten a good enough look the first time, but another should cinch the deal. Just bloody look up at me, woman!

“Do you have…” Xander’s mind churned. He was surrounded by sprigs of this and powders of that, but glanced down instead to see the leather cord that stuck out from his coat. “…blood?”

Her twine raveling came to a halt. Somewhere in the shop, a pot’s lid rattled. Xander screwed up his face—that probably wasn’t something she carried at all.

But she did finally glance at him from under those thick lashes, not even the slightest recognition that she was gazing upon someone undergarment-meltingly gorgeous. “What kind?”

Oh, of fucking course there were different bloody kinds. Don’t say human, don’t say human…but what else even was there? “H…hare?”

“Check with the butcher.” And then she swept beneath the linen hanging over the archway to the private quarters at the back of the shop. Without him.

Xander threw his hands up silently and spun, catching sight of his reflection. Striding up to the mirror that hung between a purple-leafed plant and a basket full of dried petals, he prodded at his face, but there was nothing to be done—he looked positively striking, especially compared to the lot he’d seen in Bendcrest, yet he hadn’t uttered a single bloody word before she went cold on him. Perhaps she preferred the company of women, but people of all sorts had bent their preferences for him before, and frankly, he was prettier than all the women in town too!

Red swept back beneath the linen with a basket full of clinking jars, and he put on his most charming grin once again. She simply lugged the basket onto a table and never even glanced his way.

Xander blindly grabbed a bottle from the closest shelf and strode back over to the counter, placing it down with just enough force to knock against the wood.

Red’s shoulders rose and dropped with a leveling kind of breath, one that reminded him of needling the man who had once been his nemesis, and of course that only made him want her that much more, the tease.

She swiped the jar, full lips parting to say something else pithy and biting no doubt, but instead she only made a small noise of surprise. Now, that was nice. He could command so much more than just that out of her, and she was a fool to not let him. The corner of her mouth twitched, and that emerald gaze finally flicked upward to meet his own. And there—there it was! That candied smile he deserved. “Five silver, sir.”

Xander thought he should like that too, being called sir, but it didn’t sound right on her tongue. He pulled five gold pieces from his purse and slid them across the counter. “Keep the change, Red.”

Her eyes lost their disdain when the gold reflected in them. Everyone had their price, he supposed, and if hers was literal gold, then so be it. It was an in at least, and she could do for a little wearing down. He took his purchase and turned, striding slowly enough to give her a last look before he left.

When he’d taken himself far enough down the road that there was no chance she could see him, he grinned deeply. “Oh, Red,” he said, tossing the bottle upward, “we’re going to become such good friends.”

Xander caught his purchase and turned it over to see what his gold had bought him, squinting at the lavish writing drawn on the label. Maisie’s Tainted Tingle Tonic, it read, and below that, for the treatment of downstairs anomalies, chronic itchiness, bit burning, and warts, bumps, and lumps on one’s nether region.

“Son of a bitch.”

Chapter 6

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