Page 26 of The Mirror of Beasts

A shudder rippled through me as I held out a hand, trying to protect my hair from any spiders looking for a new home. When I risked a glance back, Neve was searching the webs with hopeful eyes.

“No,” I whispered. “No arachnids, and no picking up random bones.”

“Not while you’re watching, at least,” she whispered, ignoring the look I sent her.

Emrys came next, followed by a clearly unhappy Caitriona, both bending at the waist to avoid knocking their heads.

As the Bonecutter reached the bottom step, the basement lights fluttered on, revealing the space in all its mundane glory.

The basement wasn’t exactly the vast, creepy warehouse I had imagined. It was cramped, carefully packed with kegs and shelves of liquor bottles and cleaning supplies. The air was dank, but perfumed by warm wax and something vaguely earthy.

At the very center of it all, directly ahead, was a large table, barely recognizable beneath the chaos strewn over its surface. Plastic containers of bones—both human and animal—were stacked high and carefully labeled with some unintelligible code not even the One Vision could untangle. A tray piled with blank sheets of parchment was set beside a decrepit-looking quill and inkwell.

Most intriguing, however, was that either side of the table was lined with glass bottles hovering over candle flames. Many of the candles had burned down to pools of white wax, drooling onto the floor.

My eyes lingered on the glass containers. They had been worked into delicate, almost ethereal shapes, many resembling flowers or moons, all of which had a pearlescent sheen. I couldn’t place exactly why they’d captured my attention until I saw Olwen eyeing them with something like grief. One of her hands strayed toward the nearest one, her finger ghosting over its curve.

They were nearly identical to the ones she’d kept on the shelves of her infirmary.

The Bonecutter was quick to replace the melted candles with new ones, adjusting the heights of the bottles as needed. Muttering something to herself, she reached into a small burlap sack hooked onto the end of the table. When she dropped the tiny leaves from inside into the nearest bottle of simmering liquids, it belched up gray smoke as the leaf dissolved.

“Now,” the Bonecutter said, clearing the center of her table by unceremoniously dumping piles of books onto the dusty floor. “What have you brought me?”

I set the basket down in front of her, pulling the blankets back to reveal the shattered skull inside. I bit my lip. It was worse than I remembered—some of the shards were so small, they wouldn’t even qualify as slivers.

The Bonecutter retrieved a large pair of glasses from the drawer of her worktable. My own reflection stared back at me in the glossy amethyst lenses, gaunt and bruised. Her small hand shoved me back a step so it could swing the neck of an articulated lamp over.

Light flooded the scarred wood surface, revealing more than one dark stain I could only pray was ink. Her stool creaked as she pumped a lever to raise its height, and again as she turned to face the table.

At that slight movement, the workshop tore itself apart.

The explosion of movement sent my heart slamming into the pit of my stomach. The stones in the walls scattered like disturbed nests of roaches. Olwen leapt away in alarm as they clattered up toward the ceiling and revealed the line of Victorian glass display cabinets hidden behind them.

The dingy light fixture rattled, then bloomed into a full crystal chandelier. The moodier light suited the tapestries that unfurled in all their tattered glory to cover the small windows where the ceiling met the wall.

Smaller tables and chairs raced out from behind the shelves containing the pub supplies, forcing Emrys to dive out of the way to avoid being run down as they moved into position in front of newly emerged bookshelves. The shelves were, of course, stuffed to the gills with scrolls, notebooks, tomes, and even what looked like the occasional Immortality.

Having remade itself, the workshop stilled again. The sound of some unidentifiable, metallic jangling filled the long silence that followed.

“That was amazing,” Neve gasped out. “Where did you hide all the sigils? How did you trigger them to cascade that way?”

The Bonecutter gave only a tight-lipped smile.

Olwen wandered the space with starry eyes, greedily drinking in the sight of it all.

“Should you be keeping the pub stuff this close to your … other stuff?” I asked uneasily.

The Bonecutter waved me off. “I’ve only ever had one incident, and the man was able to pass the adder out of his intestines eventually.”

“No lasting damage with that, I’m sure,” Emrys said. Our eyes met and looked away just as quickly.

“His tongue did, eventually, grow back,” the Bonecutter said, lifting a piece of bone closer to the light.

“What is all this?” Olwen asked, studying the array of objects in the lit cases. They were displayed proudly, like prizes.

“Payment from satisfied customers,” the Bonecutter said.

“Payment?” I repeated. “If you take goods in trade, why make Cab—” His name caught in my throat. “Why make us agree to your mysterious ‘favors’ to get a key out of you?”

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