“Well, I think I have a remedy for that. If I can heal you, will you help me restock my supply that you destroyed?”
“Yes, I will. You have yourself a deal.”
I paused. “There’s more.”
“Oh.”
“I would also like you to teach me how to hone my own alchemy skills while we work on replenishing my stock. And I need you to help me turn ashes into a gemstone. That’s the first task. So, if I agree to heal you and I succeed in healing you, will you take me on as a student?”
There was another pause. Finally, Klaus’s reluctant sigh came through. “Fine. Yes, I will. But let it be known that I don’t take students for a reason. I am not an easy man to stand. I am ornery and…”
“Grumpy and an overall scrooge. Yes, I already know,” I answered. “But you also have the knowledge I need to hone my abilities.”
He sighed. “You’ll curse your decision to put me in your debt, Poppy Morton.”
I allowed myself a small smile. “At least we’ll be doing something productive instead of breaking into each other’s homes.”
“Fine. I suppose you will have to come to me as I can hardly come to you.”
“I will, and I’ll bring Dirk with me.”
“Very good.”
The call ended with a soft click.
“You’re not going to face him alone,” Wanda said at once.
I blinked at her. “I wasn’t planning to drag anyone else into this. I’m the one who has to heal him.”
“Tough shit,” Wanda said.
“And you wouldn’t be dragging us,” Violetta added.
“Ja. Ve’re volunteering,” Olga put in.
“And there is no way I will let you go to that man’s home alone,” Andre said as he stepped closer and put his arm around me. “He sounds like quite the old grouchy badger.”
I gave him a sharp look. “No. You’re still overcoming a concussion.”
“Iwasovercoming a concussion,” he corrected with a crooked grin. “Past tense. But you healed me, remember? Just like you’re going to heal this gentleman.” Then he cleared his throat. “Although I do hope you won’t be healing him in quite the same way you did me.”
I gave him a look, and then Wanda started laughing. “Interesting, Poppy. Very interesting.”
Lorcan folded his arms over his chest, nodding once. “We are all coming with you, Pops,” he started, making me grateful that I’d just managed to dodge a conversation that I absolutely did NOT want to have. Thank God Finn was still in the other room.
“You need us. You don’t even know what state the man’s in,” Smith said. “And if he’s desperate enough to send something in to scare you, he’s desperate enough to do worse.”
“And if he’s as sick as zee creature says,” Olga added, “he may not even be rational.”
I sighed. “Fine. I guess I’m not going to win this one.”
***
Light slanted across the yard from my front porch, a trickle of gold and green through the trees. It might have been a picturesque sight, if not for the man who was leaning over a wooden cane, barely managing to stand on the front lawn. For a delirious second I thought he might be a ghost—he was that thin, pale, and weak looking.
Why he’d even gotten out of bed, I didn’t know. But the man who hobbled up towards us looked like he’d been dragged, protesting, from another century. His coat was long and black, the cut several fashions out of date. A pair of brass-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, and his hair—once dark, was now shot through with iron-gray. It was tied back with a ribbon that had seen better decades.
Up close, he appeared both sickly and harmless. His skin was the color and texture of parchment, eyes sunken, movements economical as if every gesture had to be accounted for. He looked like an actor dressed up as Ebeneezer Scrooge. But I knew better. This was no actor. This was our culprit. Which meant he was dangerous.
