“Not my name.” Ellie stepped forward. Without thinking, she turned all of his pillows into feathers.
“Hey!” Howie swiped at the fluffy cloud currently filling the room like snow. “That’s actually cool, Builder Lady.”
“Still not my name, Howard.” Ellie glanced at the floor under his feet and turned it into mud.
His legs went out from under him, and he was suddenly sitting in a mud puddle with feathers all over him. He chortled. “You’re a ball breaker, aren’t you, Elleanor Brandeau? Back in the old days, someone would’ve broken you.” He turned his gaze to Prospero. “I’ll cut you a deal if you either loosen my restrictions or give me a favor from her.”
“I do not control her favors.” Prospero shook her head. “Which restrictions?”
“Let me have a crack at the new students if they find me.” The previously wretched man suddenly seemed a lot scarier. “You know what it takes to be able to even find my building, Lady Prospero.”
“If they do find you, I need to be told. Names and purchases,” Prospero said after a longer than normal pause.
Howie clapped his hands. “Excellent. I believe you now have a long line of credit in my store.”
Ellie looked around. All she saw were shelves upon shelves of tiny rocks. “What do you sell here?”
“Stones.” Howie gave her an expectant look. He pulled a tiny river-smoothed pebble from his pocket and held it out. “It’s astoner store,get it?”
When she didn’t react or take it, he frowned. “That’s right. You get your happy from the monster lady, don’t you?”
“Magic can be embedded in natural items,” Prospero added helpfully. “Both violence aids and various other magic. Howie sells other things, but he mostly sells the basest sort. Intimate aids and pleasure stones and the like.”
“Feel-goodmagic.” He rolled the small pebble between his hands until it disintegrated. He stretched and made a happy noise that Ellie instantly wished she could scrub from her mind. “That was a quickie sample… but that’s not whatyouwant, is it?” He turned his pleasure-blown pupils toward Prospero. “A little violence is your taste, eh? You want blood.”
“You heard about the falling of the barrier?” Prospero gave him a dark look. “Afterit happened, I presume.”
“Yes, only after. Take a look in my head. No secrets from you, are there?” Howie oozed closer and tapped his temple with one of his bony fingers.
Ellie repressed a flinch of disgust. How a person covered in mud and feathers could still be so disquieting rather than pathetic was a mystery she had zero desire to contemplate. She just wanted to get out of this place—not ponder the reasons that the strange witch was so disconcerting.
“I put together a care package for my favorite monster because of theIncidentat the barrier.” Howie scurried away toward a wall that was apparently a secret compartment. He looked over his shoulder. “No need to pretend you don’t know where I keep the goods. If you were less ethical, you could just rob me blind.” He giggled. “Least I don’t need to worry that you’llrubme blind.”
“Just get the stones, Howie.”
“She wants my stones,” he quipped. He pulled out a burlap sack and held it aloft. “Some are the usual. A bit of knees taken out and bones breaking—the white stones—and a few bleeding from… you know,places.Those are the reds. A couple badgering ones. Those are the brown rocks.”
Prospero nodded. “Anything stronger?”
Howie paused. “I have a few extras that I made to see if I could.” He bent down and drew out a black sack. It looked like dirty oil made into fabric, not quite silk but shiny like something very similar to it. “You said I couldn’t sell things like these, but I thought experimenting was okay.”
Prospero strode forward. “I’ll take all of those.”
“Hey!” He reached forward like he was going to touch her.
And Ellie didn’t even blink before she had extended a section of the wooden cabinets on the wall. The wood reshaped into wood-wrought skeletal hands that held Howie fast. He dangled from those bony wooden hands.
“I could crush your wrists with a breath, you know?” Ellie mused.
For the first time since they’d stepped into his den, Howie looked afraid, and a part of Ellie that she didn’t generally acknowledge simmered.Mine. Prospero is mine, and no one touches what’s mine.She stepped in front of Prospero, close enough that Howie could kick her if he was foolish enough to do so.
“You ought to learn to use some manners when you talk to my wife,” Ellie said in a low voice. “I’m still a remedial witch, you know. I could just slip up and make a mistake.…” The grip on his wrists tightened a little more. “It would be an accident. No one to blame.”
Howie nodded. “Message received. The monster found herself someone just as fucking scary as she is.”
Prospero touched Ellie’s shoulder and said, “He’s not worth the guilt.”
“Maybe, but if he touches what’s mine, I’ll find that out.” Elliestepped back, shoving her darker impulses somewhere down deep inside her where they struggled to quiet.
