Page 18 of When Among Crows
“An ingredient,” Dymitr repeats.
“A gift born of pain,” Lidia says. “A powerful item to aid in healing, if offered willingly.”
“A gift born of pain. You mean a fingernail?” Ala says. “You want me to pull out one of my own fingernails?”
Dymitr remembers, suddenly, the cemetery a few miles outside of the town where he grew up. The graves dug up, the corpses untouched in their coffins except for their absent fingernails and teeth. Witches, his grandmother said. A gift willingly given was twice as powerful, but one unwillingly given would still do.
“You, him, whichever,” Lidia says, shrugging. “Do this, and your sacrifice will create a substance with strong magic. That’s my price.”
She looks from Ala to Dymitr with her eyebrows raised, expectant. The strzyga who offered the suggestion is grinning. There’s a narrow gap between her front teeth that would be charming if Dymitr didn’t hate her so much.
“I’ll need a knife,” Dymitr says. “And some pliers.”
5A MURDER MOST FOUL
Ala feels as if she ought to object, like someone reaching for their wallet at the end of dinner even if they don’t intend to open it. But Dymitr doesn’t seem to expect it. He meets Lidia’s eyes and waits.
For some reason, Ala isn’t surprised when Niko steps out of the shadows near the bar and tips his head to Lidia in something like a bow.
“Babcia,” he says.
“Call me your grandmother again and I’ll cut off your head, zemsta,” Lidia says, but she’s smiling a little. Ala doesn’t recognize the word “zemsta,” but it makes the room smell like warm honey, like wariness. All the strzygi at once, reacting.
“My apologies,” Niko says. “But I wanted to offer to do the honors myself. It can be a nasty business, this… fingernail pulling. You shouldn’t lower yourself to it.”
Lidia appears to consider this for a moment.
“Please,” she says. Niko smiles, and walks out of the room, presumably to fetch a pair of pliers.
Dymitr, for his part, seems unfazed. Ala can’t detect much more than a faint whiff of sugar-sweet anticipationfrom him. He stands near the bar as the bartender—a czort with blunt black horns poking out of his hair—sterilizes a penknife using a cigarette lighter. Niko turns up a few minutes later with needle-nose pliers in hand and carries both pliers and penknife over to Dymitr.
“May I sit?” Dymitr says to Lidia, gesturing to the empty chair across from her. It’s tucked under one of the low tables. At her nod, he pulls it out and sits, holding his hand beneath the red lamp.
Lidia slides down the sofa, closer to the banshee, and points at the place she just occupied, her eyes on Niko. She looks like she’s getting ready to watch a movie or a dance performance, her legs crossed at the ankle and her hands folded over her belly. Casual.
“Why the knife?” Niko asks Dymitr, as the latter presses his hand flat on the table and positions the blade over his pinkie finger.
“If you just yank out a fingernail with pliers, you can damage the nail bed permanently,” Dymitr says. “I’m going to… loosen it.”
“Wait,” Niko says, before Dymitr can dig in. He gets up and reaches over the bar for a bottle of amber liquor. Whiskey. He pours a shot of it and carries it over to the table. When he sets it down in front of Dymitr, he bends low, close to his ear. “Some mercy for you.”
“How good of you,” Dymitr says, a hint of sourness in his voice. But he takes the shot, and picks up the knife again.
Ala considers turning away, but as Dymitr presses the blade steadily into his own fingernail, she finds she can’t.Bright red blood bubbles up around his fingernail as he traces its outline. His hand, his breaths, his eyes—they’re all steady.
“I feel like you have more than a passing familiarity with this procedure,” Niko comments.
“My little sister slammed her fingernail in a door once,” Dymitr says. “It was half on, half off. We were in the middle of nowhere and she needed it gone… so my father did exactly this. My job was… to hold her still.”
He sounds tense, his words punctuated by bursts of breath, but he seems to have a high pain tolerance for a human.
“Sounds traumatic,” Niko says.
“She bit me.” Dymitr sets down the penknife to tap a silvery scar on his left forearm. It’s jagged but curved, like teeth. “Time for the pliers.”
He smells nervous now, like peaches, like strawberries. Ala moves closer without meaning to, drawn in by his fear.
Niko positions the pliers over the tip of Dymitr’s bloody finger. Their eyes meet.
