The Bounty of Blood and Nails (The Devil’s Huntress #1)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

TOFFEE AND TAROT

It was almost time.

The final night, the crescendo, the climax.

The other charlatans would be turning up the fires, pouring out the charm, increasing the danger, the difficulty, the disbelief.

I had to remain stoic. Isolated, yet approachable.

Alluring, yet aloof. They didn’t need to know what I could see, yet I appealed to them, like a whispering siren. A craving. An urge. An itch.

There was only one I needed to satisfy tonight.

I shivered as night rose around me. The air thinned, laced with a refreshing chill as the last of the sun’s color bleached from the sky.

One by one, fairy lights popped to life.

Green, amber, purple, silver, all small fiery splotches of color suspended from spindly wires looping between the stalls.

A gentle breeze rumpled the cloth in front of me, evoking the small tinkling of bells that hung weighted at the edges of my table.

The gentle twang of a harp filtered through the calm night. A few isolated notes of a violin chased after it, attempting to warm the pre-magical atmosphere. The wooden sign suspended above my stall creaked in the breeze.

A low whistle snagged my attention. I placed the tarot deck upon the velvet cloth and brushed the deep hood from my face, allowing a glimpse of the stall across the aisle to the left.

The candy man grinned, dimples puckering his cheeks.

I didn’t know his name, nor age—somewhere in his mid-twenties surely, but the high-waisted tan trousers and star-studded suspenders made him appear twice that age.

Or perhaps transported in time from a century ago.

I wasn’t doing anything to subvert the stereotype either.

Black cloak with scarlet trimmed hood. Sleeves that dripped down past my hands allowing only a flash of red nail polish and multiple silver rings to emerge as I tapped confidently upon the chosen card, eager to bestow my knowledge of the future upon the lucky client.

Candyman ran his hand around the gold-rimmed edge of the floss machine.

Cotton candy swirled around his finger, interlacing like a fat pink chrysalis.

He slowly brought his finger to his lips, maintaining eye contact, sucking the chrysalis into his mouth.

I knew what he would taste like later. Sugar and caramel and a hint of rum—kept in a not-so-secret bottle under his stall.

I swear that when I looked away, he would dab himself with the candy floss like sticky cologne, knowing that it would make me kiss him harder, that it would entice my tongue to caress his skin, my teeth to nip in all the right places.

Though tonight, there would be no fun for either of us.

I let the hood fall back across my face.

The music picked up, a thrum of excitement charging the air from a crowd of people I couldn’t yet see.

If I was successful, there would be no time to lose myself amongst the bags of sugar, the mounds of sweets, the warm, roving hands of Candyman.

If she came and it worked, I would have to dissolve into the dawn, putting as much distance between myself and the Collectors as possible.

Sweat prickled my palms, threatening to slide down my skin and pool upon the velvet tablecloth. I forced my breathing to deepen, my lungs to expand past the point of recoil.

From under the peak of my hood, I caught sight of the first eager footsteps rushing the aisle. The grass lay trampled, blades permanently bowed from the weight of passersby this past week. Yet, for the last six days, she had not come.

She must tonight.

My heart ticked like a bomb, speeding toward the deadline.

Sixty days it had taken me to find this one.

She was reclusive, a shadow. I didn’t know what she’d done, but I wasn’t surprised they’d ordered me to track her down.

Her bounty was impressive. If I could be as stealthy as her, we’d both disappear into the ether, no tracts, no guilt, transformed into legacy.

Candyman handed a large paper bag stuffed with toffees to a small girl. He bent over the stall, deftly flicking the top cube into the air and snapped his teeth shut around it. He winked as the girl giggled, her mother affectionately patting her braided hair.

So that is what he would taste of later. Cinders and treacle. I swallowed, holding his gaze which had floated not-so-innocently to mine until he turned to the next customer, a broad grin lapping at his cheeks.

The music hung thick now in the air, twined with shouts and laughter.

From my right, the swoosh of a lit torch rippled a wave of heat toward me.

Marianne didn’t only eat fire, she commanded it, molding it into shapes like smoke rings from a cigar.

Some of the magic here was real, parlor tricks, really.

Just enough to make people part with their money, but not enough to be arrested.

Sweat trickled down my spine. At least now I could blame it on the heat in the air.

Once the first rush of visitors subsided—those who instinctively knew where they wanted to go or were dragged by small children—the timid arrived next.

These were innocents, virgins to the fayre.

They’d come for a specific reason. Perhaps to catch the eye of one of the performers, eagerly hoping to be chosen as a volunteer to levitate ten feet into the air before being caught by the toned biceps of the magician.

His shirt sleeves rolled up, winding ink crisscrossing his flesh.

On more than one occasion I’d seen his tattoos morph into the mirror image of the person he wanted to tempt backstage. How could one resist when your face was clearly visible etched permanently upon his body? It was fate of course, and so one did not resist.

My first client was here. It wasn’t who I needed to see, but I doubted I’d be lucky enough to escape so early.

She was a young woman of nineteen or twenty.

Her cheeks were flushed, and she gripped the arm of a young man, tugging him toward me.

She would never have ventured this far by herself, and yet, the eagerness in her eyes told me I was who she’d come to see.

Shame I was a fraud.

I gestured silently to the bench in front.

She sat carefully, scooping her long skirt beneath her, the bells tinkling seductively as she rustled the tablecloth.

The man stood behind, one hand on her shoulder.

The sinews popped from his hand; his fingers almost clawed, but he stopped short of releasing that pressure onto the bare skin of her neck.

I riffled the tarot cards in my hand. The deck was pristine, the pattern on the back that of a simple silver skull upon black, the kind you could purchase anywhere.

The satin cloth and silver ribbon binding them also looked new, like I’d exchanged them for a handful of pennies a week ago when the fayre opened.

A trained eye would see the con, could smell the treachery a mile away.

I could scrunch the deck, bend the edges and yet wasn’t this whole place one large trick?

A parallel realm an ordinary being could wander into for only seven nights per year and be transported into a land of magic and fun and frivolity.

One where they could step out of their ordinary, meagre lives and succumb to their dreams. Or so the proprietors would have you believe.

“Are you sure, my dear?” The man’s face stretched tight. His mouth was obscured beneath a manicured moustache. “We have talked about your disposition toward the supernatural at length. Have you forgotten?”

I flattened my palm and raised my hand toward him. My nails wanted to extend, the gift coursing through my bloodstream like poison.

“Oh yes, honey,” she answered. “It’s only a bit of fun. I won’t take any of it to heart, I promise.” Her mouth curved downwards as she spoke, her dark eyes beseeching.

They all wanted the same reading from me this week, will I marry the crown prince? No one was so bold as to outright say it, but it was written in the singe of heat on their cheeks, in the coil of hair they twined nervously around a finger. But not this one. She needed something else.

The man tutted and fumbled in his waistcoat for coins. He withdrew two coppers and dropped them into my open palm, returning the pounds and gideons that were ostentatiously brandished amongst them back to the pocket.

I nodded, tipping the coins into my cloak and returned my hand to the tarot.

I tapped the skull on the uppermost card as my thigh knocked against the table leg, silently cracking a vial of incense.

The perfume seeped out, infusing the air with a faint shimmer.

The young woman’s eyes widened, her chin lifting as she inhaled deeply.

“That’s my nana’s smell,” she whispered. “Roses.”

The man above her said nothing, everything he wanted to utter explained in the twitch of his mouth and the tightening of his hand upon her shoulder. If she wasn’t so enraptured by the aura, she would be able to feel the bruises pooling beneath his fingertips, blemishing the smooth skin beneath.

I turned the first card over. The Grim Reaper. It was my favorite to start with. Everyone knew someone who had died or was dying. That was life.

“You have lost someone whose wisdom meant a lot to you.” The crack in my voice was not intentional. I needed to get a grip on my emotions.

Another pulse ricocheted through my veins as the magic struggled to escape.

She inhaled sharply. Her hand pressed to her breast, but not over her heart. Her fingers rested on a gold brooch shaped like a butterfly pinned to her green dress.

I turned the next card face up revealing two entwined skeletons with empty sockets gazing at one another, bony arms encircling barren ribcages. The Lovers.

Her face faltered. She stared at the card, her knuckles blanching as she gripped the brooch.

“You see,” the man interrupted, pulling her back from the table, “it’s us. Now, let’s go.”