Page 29 of Bound

The mortal realm smelled like dirt.

Slate still had not asked Ruby whether she ate dirt. But judging by the amount of effort the Glenda woman was putting into making a second pie when she had mounds of dirt in her garden, he assumed that it was not, in fact, a crucial part of a mortal’s diet.

He lingered in the corner of her kitchen, concentrating on the invisibility spell. It had been a long time since he had needed it, and he couldn’t afford to lose it now. Not when he was so close to finding out a mortal food that wasn’t pie or rabbit.

He caught glimpses every time she stormed over to the cupboard, grumbling as she went.

“Lousy, greedy, good for nothings,” Glenda growled as she worked. “Supposed to be able to leave a pie on your own damn windowsill without it getting pinched. Void take them.”

She swung open the cupboard again. Slate peered into it, catching a glimpse of woven bags filled with grains, granules, and flour.

He sighed. He needed more than ingredients—he needed a preparedmeal. He hadn’t even gotten the rabbit right. Rubydidn’t only need to skin it but gut and cook it. So many steps before they could eat. Slate had lived millennia with a simple diet: he saw something, he ate it. If necessary, he picked fur out of his teeth afterward. His castle did have a kitchen, but he never used it. That was for whoever was in his void before him, who presumably had a more complicated diet.

Four children of varying ages sprinted into the kitchen, chasing each other with such enthusiasm that Slate felt weary.

“Oi,” Glenda snapped, waving a sticky wooden spoon at them. “Calm down, or nobody gets any pie!”

“Okay, Ma,” the children trilled in one. None of them slowed down. The smallest one fell close to where Slate was hiding invisibly, and Slate pulled away reflexively. The child had sticky fingers.

The child squinted up at him. For a moment, Slate thought his enchantment had slipped, and he was about to get found out. But the child only stared up at him with a vacant expression, then whirled around.

“MA,” he yelled. “CAN I HAVE A CHOCOLATE?”

“Not yet,” Glenda said, ducking around the other children on her way to the pie sitting on top of the heating oven. Then she froze, stabbing her wooden spoon at the children standing on top of each other to reach the highest shelves of the cupboard. “Oi! What did I just say?”

“Sorry, Ma,” the children chorused.

Glenda sighed, rubbing her lined forehead. “Get out of my sight until dinnertime, alright? Give my poor heart a break.”

Slate watched the children tumble out of the room. Then he snuck into the cupboard and took the item the children had been climbing on top of each other to retrieve: a small, brown bar wrapped in smudged cloth.

He was almost out of the house when a young woman leaned her head into the kitchen door. “Glenda! Any word on our witch yet?”

“No, and let’s hope it stays that way,” Glenda barked.

Slate stopped. There was only one witch that they could be talking about. He stepped back into the house, the chocolate safely cocooned in his cool fingers.

“Aw, don’t be like that,” the other woman said. “She wasn’t all bad. Hoity-toity, but not all bad.”

Hoity-toity. Slate did not know the meaning, but it was not said in a complimentary tone. Were witches not revered in the mortal realm anymore? When he and Paimon used to visit, they were held in high esteem. Then again, that was long ago. So long that they had invented a new title for him, and nobody remembered a time when he was named anything else.

Glenda huffed, dropping another strip of pastry over the pie. “You’re only saying that because she keeps quiet about your boils.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the other woman said with a tight smile. “Alright, I might not have liked the girl. But you’d do well to remember that if that Skullstalker ate her, we’d need to find some other witch to hide out in that strange little house on the edge of town. What if the next one’s a blabbermouth?”

“Then you’ll need to learn how to deal with your own boils,” Glenda said distractedly. She knelt to fan the oven flames, then slid the pie inside. “And don’t talk about him. You know what happens.”

The other woman laughed, exposing several missing teeth. “You suspicious old thing. I’ll say his name however much I want!Bygone, Bygone, Bygone?—”

Glenda straightened, slamming the oven door shut with a sharp bang. “Tessa! Step away from my house, turn around three times, and spit!”

Tessa laughed louder. “Oh, come on.”

Glenda waved hurriedly at her.

Slate watched, baffled, as Tessa stepped away from the house and started spinning in place. It seemed like some rudimentary warding ritual… to keephimaway. Why did they think some spinning and saliva would keep him out?

Slate glided out of the house, still puzzled. The mortals didn’t know his name anymore, and they invented strange, false rituals to ward him off. He never had much to do with the mortal realm in the first place, but he was a guide, not a thief. What use would he have with stolen mortal souls?

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