Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
THE DEVIL IN DISGUISE
“Take a seat, Tam.” The figure lowered her hood and waved a gloved hand toward the ground at her feet. “You look terrible. You’ve been working hard, yes?”
I ground my teeth, cutting off the retort that bubbled back. I obeyed, settling myself along the bony spine of a fallen tree. “Why are you here? I’ve barely finished. You can’t possibly need me to go again?”
I tried to force myself to focus, to keep my head clear for the incoming conversation. What I would give to be huddled up beneath Candyman’s stall right now. It would’ve been better had I failed, at least then she wouldn’t have an excuse to come for me so soon.
Siobhan giggled in her trademark, tinkling laugh. Girlish, silly, innocent. It made men and women swoon at her feet, but I knew better. My handler always got her way. If I pushed back, she found a way to punish me. The targets kept growing more difficult to find. Almost impossible.
She would make sure to suddenly appear when I'd reached my lowest—waist-deep in a peat moss bog with an assassin’s blade biting into my jugular or when a rival bounty hunter captured my prize seconds before I arrived.
She'd present an ultimatum, try to coerce me into giving up and ceding myself to her.
I’d not fallen prey to her yet, but I’d come close.
Catching me now, seconds after I’d finished with my mark, when the blood still crusted my fingertips, should not have come as a surprise. The timing was perfectly executed on her part.
“But my dear, you’ve been so successful, no?
” She pushed a golden curl behind her ear, her latest color transformation designed to match today’s beauty standards.
Once, she even modeled herself after me with snake-green eyes and wild brown hair.
When that didn’t sway me, she shed that skin and moved on.
She was ancient, of that I was certain. She hadn’t aged a month in the two decades I’d been bending to her will.
At the moment she emulated the romantic women from oil paintings. Voluptuous, sensuous, cherubic. She pouted rouged lips, fluttering her lashes at me.
“Your Collectors have been asking after you again. My dear Tam, I’m not sure how long I can keep them waiting. They must see you. They yearn for it. Can you not sense it?”
I kept the disgust far from my face, the memories chained down in the furthest recess of my mind. “I try not to hang around. I have a job to do.”
“Mhm, quite.” She tugged off the velvet gloves, biting the tips of her fingers one by one.
I sank back against the shadows of the forest, wishing they’d engulf me too.
She took her time, looking down at her polished nails, the color flickering from pink to green and back again.
“If you really don’t want to be tied to them anymore, there is a way out.
You only need to ask, my dear. Accept my invitation to join me.
I’ve only offered this once in my lifetime, so you are honored, no? ”
“And what happened to them?” I already knew the answer. Her constant flitting in and out of my life, learning my habits, molding my personality came at a cost to her too. A weakness, just one. It was all the leverage I had, so I kept it close to my chest, but it was all I needed.
“They were not as strong as you, my dear. You’re heartless, cold, manipulative, all the qualities I admire.
Especially when that person is firmly under my control.
Although, I do sometimes have my doubts.
It is natural, I know. I was human once upon a time, but that’s why I check in on you so often.
” She caressed her bare finger down my cheek.
The touch was downy-soft, ticklish, sending warm chills snaking directly into my core.
I leaned away from her. “I’m fine. No need to come again.”
My stomach spasmed. Not now. Acid crept back into my throat, and I swallowed it down.
“You’re not wavering on me, are you? My protégé suddenly spouting a conscience?” She tsked, sucking air between her straight teeth.
The sound dragged me back to the fayre and the small boy sucking on the swirled lollipop. His messy hair flopped over his eyes as he glanced back and forth over the barrier between his mother’s hand and the doll. I shook the image away. It wasn’t like there hadn’t been people to witness before.
No, not people, a child. Not much older than I was when...
My stomach lurched. I forced my hand away from my belly and dug my nails into my palms. Why wouldn’t it settle?
“No. It’s the adrenaline, that’s all,” I said.
The come down always took a few days, especially when there were no outlets nearby—inns, ales, company. My thoughts idled back to Candyman. He could have made me forget everything by now.
“Mhm.” She leaned over me, wafting lily of the valley perfume, and my eyes dropped to her breasts before I could stop myself. Blush heated my chest and painted my cheeks despite my best efforts. She was toxic, and I should have known better.
She giggled again, covering her mouth with a delicate hand. “Well, my dear, as you are so keen to avoid distractions and return to work, I have come with a special assignment for you. A gift, if you will. For we all know, you are my favorite, yes?”
I groaned before I could stop myself. Favoritism. The time between hunts had been steadily diminishing over the past few years. Every time I turned down her advances, she reappeared in my life faster than before.
“Oh no,” she cooed. She lifted my chin, her fingers molding to my skin, leaving her mark.
“You will love this one, I promise. I had to pull many, many strings to get this for you. In fact, if you fail, there is a whole queue of suitable candidates already waiting to take your place.” Her thumb circled under my jaw. “Shall we say six weeks to completion?”
I swallowed. The ball of saliva audibly scratched its way down my dry throat.
If she was giving me a time frame, she suspected it would take at least double that amount to succeed.
She would be there hovering, salivating, just waiting for me to extend the deadline, the favors dangling from her outstretched hands like iron shackles.
I managed to nod.
“Superb, my dear.” She withdrew from my face, her scent embossed upon my hot skin.
“Of course, you must remember that such an important bounty comes with immeasurably high stakes. You’ve already used up your one failure, leaving me with no wiggle room.
If you don’t succeed, Goddess forbid, then you will be moved along in your role.
Promoted, if you will.” She blinked at me; her round blue eyes entrancing. “Sounds wonderful, no?”
No, it did not. It was a death sentence. For more than just me. I nodded, unable to force my lips to curve into a smile.
“A little warning to go alongside all I have given you so far, my dear. They are clamping down on magic, more so now than ever before. The perpetrators are being rounded up so those with your gifts can be cherry-picked out of the barrel. Due to this, blood magic is becoming increasingly rare.”
“What happens to them?” I’d heard rumors at the fayre of performers disappearing or suddenly retiring. The tricks had been toned down and the magic dulled but unease had cloaked the air.
I’d never met another who harbored blood magic like mine. Siobhan probably kept me far away from anything remotely resembling a comrade, afraid I’d ask questions. But there must be more to my skills than hunting and embedding the trackers.
“Most are returned if found to harbor just cheap elemental magic or trickery. The others? Well, I hope you never have to find out. So the need for discretion, to keep our little operation fully staffed, is most important. And it’s not just in the North, though the walled town you’re heading to is one of the worst for concealment, second only to the queens’ territory.
“You’re a dying breed, one that is being actively exterminated, and I would so hate to lose my little pet in such a manner.
Don’t look so surprised, my love.” She pouted and fluttered her extended lashes, incorrectly reading my expression as fear and not curiosity.
“There’s always something being coveted.
It used to be seers, then mediums, and now it’s dark magic.
Blood magic. It’s a tale as old as time. ”
As old as you are then. Thank the Goddess I said it in my head and not out loud. Although she knew what I was thinking. I could see it in the twitch of her lips.
She closed the distance between us, but I didn’t pull back, refusing to cede my airspace. It was a narrow line, but she liked that I walked it.
“Well, here you are.” She withdrew a small portrait from the pleated folds of her skirt, a trail of glitter impregnating the air behind it.
“He will be easy to find, and the position is all set for you once you arrive. All you need to do is get in, be discreet, and I’ll find you when you’re done.
So, really, you should try and look more grateful my dear, shouldn’t you? ”
She’d removed the only parts of the bounty I enjoyed.
Given me a stationary target, well-known, impossible to miss.
She’d completely eliminated the hunt and the chase, leaving me with only the kill.
All I had to do was get in and get out without being noticed?
A shiver wriggled down my spine. It would never be that easy.
“What position am I taking?”
“Oh no, no, no.” Her red lips split into a grin, her perfectly straight teeth too bright for the grim night.
“That would be far too simple, don’t you think?
” She placed a heavy coin purse on the fallen tree beside me and backed toward the far end of the clearing in the way she had come, and the way she knew I needed to go.
“But you know where to find me if you need help, don’t you, my dear Tam?
And of course, what I would just love in return. ”
She raised her palm and blew me a kiss. A puff of lily-sweet scent glided past my lips and coated my mouth. My stomach churned again.
I looked down at the picture in my hand and my heart stuttered.
I knew him. Even through the miserable gloom and the rough edges of the glitter, that face was unmistakable.
Everyone in the country knew him—Prince Bellinor, the only child of the queens.
He was supposedly perfect. Not just in looks, but with a soul of pure diamond.
Humble, generous, and more ferociously guarded than the Goddess’s pearly gates.
That’s why she’d given me six weeks. It would be six weeks spent dodging the gallows, wriggling my way out of a charge of high treason.
If I were to be arrested, would Siobhan save me?
She’d know about it, maybe even orchestrate it.
Hidden amongst a distant stone circle, she'd wait for me to utter her name with my dying breath, begging her to save me.
If that was her plan, she’d be waiting a long time.
Although, she could equally just let me die, as punishment for every time I’d rejected her advances.
She must have quite a tally going by now.
Maybe she’d wait until I descended the brimstone ladder into Hell and snatch me from the very front of the ragged line of people and bind me to her in the nonexistent realm she’d inhabited for eternity.
I shuddered. That would be worse than death.
I pocketed the coin purse and threw the portrait into the woods.