The pills Cassia had given me—
—“Ibuprofen. Stop looking at it like it’s poison. When I want to poison you, I’ll put it in your beer or hide it in a cookie.” She regarded me through narrow eyes. “Or a chunk of cheese.”—
—did some good to take the edge off.
“It’s fractured,” she said, while digging in the doctor’s bag on the bed next to her.
“Might be broken, but—" She looked up at me. “Wiggle your fingers.”
I wiggled.
“Fractured,” she muttered, pawing through the bag again. The clatter of glass and metal and something that sounded a lot like a startled frog filled the air. “Let’s start here.”
She withdrew a modern brace, an Ace bandage, cotton, cotton pads, and a small brown bottle of liquid. One last swipe through the bag produced a soft towel, which she spread over my lap.
“How long have you been on the road?” Her voice was slightly kinder now that she’d settled into applying first aid. She spread a matching towel on the bed and staged the supplies.
“You can’t tell?”
“I’m a witch, not a psychic.” She nodded to herself. “More than a short lifetime, that much I can see.”
“One long lifetime,” I said. “Overly long.”
“A curse or circumstances?”
“What’s the difference?”
“This might hurt. Hold steady. And level.” She gave me a pointed look.
I corrected the angle of my arm. The liquid was first, tipped out onto cotton pads. I was taken by how gently she worked, to sanitize my skin, elbow to fingertip.
“A curse has intention behind it,” she said in a softer voice. “Someone has to draw it up. Someone has to pay a price to make it viable. To make sure it sticks.”
I grunted.
“Many different sorts of people and things can do it. Set a curse.” She dropped the used pads into the cheap plastic trashcan, then picked up a terry cloth and dabbed at the moisture left on my skin.
I shivered.
“I’m…experienced in spotting curses,” she said. “Have a knack, if you understand.”
“Sure,” I said. “It’s one of your specialties because you’ve had practice cursing a lot of people.”
She chuckled, and it was deep and wet. “Let’s just say I’ve spent a few years perfecting my interests.”
“Cursing people,” I repeated.
“Well, not just people,” she allowed. “I’m not speciesist.”
She discarded the cloth and picked up a roll of fluffy cotton with a stitched backing. “Lift.”
I lifted. She wrapped the cotton, starting around my knuckles and working her way to mid-forearm.
“You don’t think I’m cursed?” I said.
She made an indeterminate sound. “Curses work a certain way, follow certain rules. To undo them takes skill.”
“Gods have skills.”
