“A warning?” In spite of everything, the food smelled good. I poked it a bit and realized she’d incorporated the velly into the eggs, along with peppers and herbs I’d forgotten I had. I tried it—delicious.
“Someone is looking for you,” Lil said.
It took a moment to figure out she meant me, not Shiny. Then I sobered, realizing who might be looking for me. “Everyone saw Previt Rimarn talking to me yesterday. Now that he’s, um, gone, I imagine his fellow previts will come around.”
“Oh, he’s not dead,” said Lil, surprised. “The three I ate last night were just Order-Keepers. Young, healthy, quite juicy beneath the crust.” She uttered a lascivious sigh. I put down my fork, appetite gone. “There was no magic on them to spoil the taste, except that used to kill them. I imagine they were just there to do the beating.”
In spite of myself, I groaned inwardly. That had been the one benefit I could see in the priests’ deaths; Rimarn was the only one who knew of my magic and suspected me of being Role’s killer. Now, with his men dead, he would definitely be looking for me.
Madding’s words came back to me: leave town. Yet the problem of money haunted me. And I did not want to leave. Shadow was my home.
“He’s not the one I meant, in any case,” Lil said, interrupting my thoughts. Surprised, I focused on her. Her plate, faintly visible to me in the reflected glow of her body, was empty—clean, as if she’d polished it. She was licking her fork now, with long, slow strokes of her tongue that seemed obscene.
“What?”
She turned and looked at me, and abruptly I was pinned by her mottled gaze. The dark spots in her eyes moved, spinning about her pupils in a slow, restless dance. I found myself wondering if the spots in her hair moved, too.
“So much hunger,” she said in a soft, raspy purr. “It wraps about you like a layered cloak. A previt’s anger. Madding’s desire.” My cheeks grew warm. “And one other, more hungry than the others. Powerful. Dangerous.” She shivered, and I shivered with her. “He could reshape the world with such hunger, especially if he gets what he wants. And what he wants is you.”
I stared at her, confused and alarmed. “Who is this person? What does he want me for?”
“I don’t know.” She licked her lips, then regarded me thoughtfully. “Perhaps if I stay near you, I can meet him.”
I frowned, too unnerved to comment on this. Why would anyone powerful want me? I was nothing, nobody. Even Rimarn would be disappointed if he knew the truth of the magic he’d sensed in me. All I could do was see.
And… I frowned. There were also my paintings. I kept those out of sight; only Madding and Shiny knew about them. There was something magical to those. I didn’t know what, but my father had taught me long ago that it was important to keep such things hidden, and so I did.
Was it those, then, that this mysterious person wanted?
No, no, I was jumping to conclusions. I didn’t even know if this person existed. All I had to go on was the word of a goddess who saw nothing wrong with eating human beings. She might see nothing wrong with lying to them, too.
Shiny was still there, though I had not heard him eat. I licked my lips, wondering if he would answer. “Do you know what she’s talking about?” I asked him.
“No.”
So far, so good. “Your injuries,” I began.
“He’s fine,” Lil said. She was eyeing my unfinished plate. “I killed him, and he came back whole.”
I blinked in surprise. “You healed him… by killing him?”
She shrugged. “Should I have left him as he was, taking weeks to heal on his own? He isn’t like the rest of us. He is mortal.”
“Except at sunrise.”
“Even then.” Lil hopped down from the counter, leaving her empty plate behind. “He has been diminished to only a fraction of his true self—enough for a pretty light show now and then, but no more. And enough to protect you.” She drew close, her eyes fixed on my plate.
I was so busy pondering her words that I did not notice her approach until her expression turned… Gods, I have no words for the horror of her. It was as if her other face, the long-mouthed predator, had appeared underneath the benign one. I could not see that face, as she had warned me, but I could feel its presence and its raw, bottomles hunger. I realized it only when she lunged, not at my plate but at me.
I didn’t even have time to cry out. Her bony, sharp-nailed hand shot at my throat and might have torn it out by the time I registered the danger. But an instant later, her hand stilled and quivered, an inch away. I stared at it, then at the dark blotch around her wrist. Just like the day before, at my table. And just as then, Shiny suddenly became visible to me, his glow rising from within, his face hard and eyes irritated as he glared at Lil.
Lil smiled at him, then at me. “You see?”
I dragged my mind back from silent screaming fits and took a deep breath to calm down. I did see. But it made no sense. I said to Shiny, “Your power comes back to you when… when you protect me?”
I could still see him, which made it easy to see the contemptuous look he threw at me. I nearly flinched in surprise. What had I done to merit that look? Then I remembered what Madding had said. He doesn’t think much of mortals.
Lil grinned, reading my face. “Any mortal,” she said, and eyed Shiny. “ ‘You will wander among mortals as one of them.’ ” I blinked in surprise and saw Shiny stiffen. The words were not hers, I could tell. They did not sound like Lil at all; I heard darker echoes. “ ‘Unknown, commanding only what wealth and respect you can earn with your deeds and words. You may call upon your power only in great need, and only to aid these mortals for whom you hold such contempt.’ ”
Shiny released her wrist and turned away from her, sitting down with a bleak expression—what little of it I could see, because his glow was fading already. Ah, he had dealt with the threat, so he no longer needed his power.
I took a deep breath and faced Lil. “I appreciate the information. But if you don’t mind, in the future, just explain things to me. No more demonstrations.”
She laughed, which set the little hairs arise on my skin. She did not sound entirely sane. “I’m glad you can see me, mortal girl. It makes things so much more interesting.” Her eyes shifted to the table. “Are you going to eat that?”
My plate—or did she mean my hand, which rested near it? Very carefully I moved my hand to my lap. “Be my guest.”
Lil laughed again, delighted, and bent over the plate. There was a movement too fast for me to follow. I had the impression of whirring needles, and a quick, fetid breeze wafted past my nose. When she lifted her head half a breath later, the plate was clean. She took my napkin, too, to dab at the corners of her mouth.
I swallowed hard and pushed myself to my feet, edging around her. Shiny was a barely visible shadow across from me, eating. Lil had begun to throw glances at his plate, too. There were things I wanted to say to him, though not in front of Lil. He had been humiliated enough the night before. But we would have to reach an understanding, he and I, and soon.
I washed the dishes slowly, and Shiny ate slowly. Lil sat in my chair, glancing from one to the other of us and laughing to herself now and again.