Page 23 of The Mirror of Beasts

“Kiss iron?” I managed to ask.

She looked down, running a finger along the grain of the table. “Iron is poisonous to the Fair Folk.”

“It’s something Betrys used to say,” Olwen added quietly, taking the basket from me and joining her sister in the booth. Neve slid in on the opposite side from Caitriona, shooting her an anxious glance. I took my own seat beside Olwen at the booth’s edge.

“Have no fear,” Neve told Caitriona, passing her coat back to her with a grateful smile. “I’ll protect you from any other scoundrels who dare approach, fair maiden.”

Caitriona ducked her head in acknowledgment, hugging the heavy fabric in her lap. Even in the low light, I could see that the tips of her ears had gone pink. “That will not be necessary.”

Griflet stuck his little fuzzy head out from beneath the blankets as Olwen started rummaging around in the old satchel I’d given her to store her things. Drawing out the Ziploc bag of jerky I’d packed, she fussed with the opening until it finally parted with a snap. Eyes wide, she closed it and opened it again several more times, gaping at it.

“Wait until you see Velcro,” Neve told her.

Emrys lingered at the edge of the booth, but I didn’t move in, and neither did Neve. Correctly sensing he wasn’t wanted, he claimed a chair at a nearby table.

“Should you be feeding a kitten that?” he asked.

Griflet gave him a look that asked, Is it any of your business?

I’d tried to get the kitten situated with the other library cats before we set out. I knew they were prone to theatrics and moodiness, but even so, their aggression toward Griflet had shocked me. I was lucky to get the two of us out of there with our eyes intact.

“Griflet has to eat something, and this is the best we can do at the moment,” Olwen said, smoothing the stubborn curls escaping her braid. With her naiad ancestry, she was the least human of the four of us, and it showed in her inky-blue hair and the luminous ring of cerulean around her dark irises.

I’d given her the bright yellow down jacket from the guild’s lost and found bin in the hope that an old thieving strategy of Nash’s would still prove effective. The best distraction from anything unusual was something even more eye-catching.

Neve had been delighted by my assortment of thrift store finds at home and had been all too happy to change out of the clothes ruined by the vault. She picked at the beads on her sweater’s embroidered flowers, watching as the patrons began to pay their tabs and leave. I had to admit it looked better on her than it ever had on me, the soft blue complementing her brown skin.

“All right,” Neve began, her voice low as she scanned the few remaining patrons in the pub. “Anyone see any candidates for this Bonecutter person?”

We’d be sitting here all night if we were going to rely on gut intuition.

“I’ll make some discreet inquiries,” I told them, then added in a hushed tone, “No one stab, steal, or touch anything, please.”

I stood and moved slowly through the nearby tables. A chair screeched back behind me, and I knew without looking that it was Emrys. The smell of pine and sweet greens followed me through the pub’s cluttered array of tables. A fly would have been less annoying.

“Go back to the table, Trust Fund,” I ordered.

“No,” he said flatly. “Because you’re right about the need for discretion, and you’re about as discreet as a hobgoblin when you get frustrated.”

Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t look at him.

“Wow,” I muttered. “This sure doesn’t look like a workshop.”

“You really think she’d make it that obvious?” he answered.

No, I didn’t. Like him, the Bonecutter was always working the shadows to her benefit.

“Feel free to leave at any time now that you’ve fulfilled your self-serving desire for redemption,” I said coldly.

“Nah,” he said, stopping just behind me. He leaned forward over my shoulder, using his height to his advantage as he brought his mouth close to my ear. The back of my neck prickled with the warmth of his nearness. “I think I’ll stay. Night’s still young.”

I wouldn’t step away. I wouldn’t flinch. As angry as the taunting made me, the confusion his nearness brought was worse. My mind recognized that I was being played with, but my body didn’t care.

I gritted my teeth, focusing on the last few patrons at the bar. I wasn’t going to rule out the men, no matter what Emrys believed, but none of them seemed to fit the profile of the Bonecutter. Finally, at the far end where the carved dragon’s head rested on its legs, my gaze settled on something I hadn’t expected.

A little girl, no more than ten, maybe eleven years old, sat next to her grandfather at the bar. A sinking feeling grew in my chest as I watched her.

Her ringlets were as black as a crow’s wing and danced around her shoulders as she wrote something in a notebook—homework? Her stocking-clad legs swung freely above the footrest. She wore a red crushed-velvet dress, the kind you might choose for a fancy recital. It was immaculately neat, even with the basket of crisps in front of her.

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