Remy darted up the two flights of creaky stairs and burst through the low attic door. Heather glanced at Remy’s face and jumped out of her cot.
“What happened?” her guardian asked, even as she reached for her worn-out pack.
“Fae males, four of them—” Remy panted in Mhenbic, the witches’ native tongue. “I just served them their meal. We should have some time.”
“Four. Shit.” Fenrin grabbed a bundle of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling without standing up from his stool and slammed the handful on the table. Half-made potions and elixirs covered the table’s surface, along with bowls of foraged mushrooms and seeds, and a crate of small, empty brown bottles and corks. “I liked this place too.”
Even with his muttered cursing, he’d already started to pack the witch goods. Only what fit in their leather hiking packs would come. Heather had two bags for her potions, and Fenrin normally hefted them. They always assumed Fenrin would be the strongest. Remy didn’t correct them.
“They called me a witch,” Remy said.
Fenrin cursed again.
“That means nothing,” he hedged. “We’re all brown witches here.” He said it like the walls were listening. Maybe if he said it enough times it would become true. He would not acknowledge who she was, even in the attic.
Heather produced two silver druni from her bag and passed them to Remy.
“Only a witch’s goodbye,” she said.
Remy thought about grabbing her bow leaning against the doorframe, but that would make her stick out like a sore thumb. It was a worn, old bow, but it still worked well enough for hunting rabbits, and Remy was an impressive shot even with an impractical weapon.
Remy rushed back down the stairs. She would barge into the kitchens to grab the usual traveling fare: a few pieces of bread and a hard block of cheese. It would be enough to tide them over.
The three of them had made a quick art of moving after years of practice. Sometimes it would be a slow, calculated move, but other times they would flee in the night. They fled a lot more when Remy was little and she did not have as much control over her powers. But they had bolted from the town before this one too when Remy’s first and only boyfriend had discovered her powers. Remy didn’t think she could really call Edgar her “boyfriend”, but Edgar had tried to kill her by the end of it. Going in to serve those fae when Fenrin had told her not to was just another mistake on her long list.
Remy barreled back down the stairs and across the courtyard, back to the tavern.
Blessedly, the kitchens were still alive with scrambling staff, and Remy was still in her grease-stained work clothes. No one looked at her twice as she grabbed a few apples and shoved them in her pockets. Next, she snagged some bread, cheese, and sticks of dried meat until her pockets bulged.
She knew exactly what to grab and where it would be. She sized up the food pantry the day that she arrived in any new tavern. As she darted out the back door, she dropped the two druni into Matilda’s ledger, more than enough payment for the food. The coins would be their only goodbye. A witch’s goodbye, they called it. Matilda wasn’t a witch, but she employed a lot of them. She would see the two silver coins and know they fled.
Remy scurried back up the stable stairs. She sensed the stillness in the attic above her. Heather and Fenrin must have finished Remy’s packing too.
Good.
As she dashed through the attic door, she realized her mistake.
Heather and Fenrin sat bound and gagged on the floor with three hooded fae looming over them. Heather’s eyes widened when she saw Remy, and she tried to scream even through the gag.
Remy knew what she screamed: “Run!”
Remy turned without a second thought and whirled right into the fourth fae male, the one who had grabbed her wrist from earlier.
“Hello again, little witch.” He smiled down at her.