The next room is no less busy, but it’s slightly easier to speak without having to shout. We spend the next hour unsuccessfully trying to ingratiate ourselves into strangers’ conversations to ask about the flying sofa. Some of the people here assume they’re being propositioned while others are less than friendly, but all have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about.
By the time we’ve made our way around the room, my shirt is sweaty and sticking to my lower back. The still untouched drink clutched in my hand is also looking more and more appetising to wet my dry throat.
“I don’t think we’re going to find anything here,” I say. “Have either of you seen Jack to see if he’s had any better luck?”
Torin towers over most people in here, peering over their heads before steering me and Aster to the far corner of the room. Jack’s sitting with his back to us, playing cards with a handful of shifty-eyed males. As soon as Torin steps up beside him, Jack twists around to give a sloppy grin. His eyes are glassy, and he’s close to sliding off his chair.
He looks absolutely hammered.
His grin widens even further as he spots me standing beside Torin. “Eh ohh, it’s you! Hey, you look tired. You should sit down.”His hand goes to my hip, and I take a step back, causing both his hand and his expression to fall.
A silver-toothed man across the table mimics Jack’s grin, raking his gaze up and down my body. “Is this the ol’ ball and chain, is it?”
“Someone’s in trouble with the old lady.”
Jack ignores them, instead reaching around me to grab Torin’s hand and nearly falling over in the process. “Tor! I did good. It was such a good lead coming here.”
“It was?”
“Uh-huh. Yep. Great lead. This guy here won the flying sofa in a game of blackjack.”
“Plunder the eight,” an ogre with a gnarly scar running down the side of his face replies.
“Hmm?”
“Plunder the eight. That was the game we were playing. You said it was blackjack, but it wasn’t.” The ogre glances at me and then returns to focusing all his attention on his cards. “You might want to get your friend out of here. He’s not got anything left to lose, and he’s been threatening to take his trousers off for the past half hour.”
“To... bet with?” I ask, catching Torin’s long-suffering look as he catches Jack right as he’s about to collapse from his seat again.
“We’ll be heading out in a second,” I reply. “But before we go, could you fill in some blanks for us? You said you won a flying sofa off someone? Tonight?”
“Last night,” the ogre replies, scratching his bald head with a blackened fingertip. “Anyway, it turned out to be a piece of shit. Glamoured to the gizzards. I thought I was getting a good deal, but it wasn’t even fit for firewood.”
“And do you remember anything about the people you made the bet with? The owners of the sofa?” I say. The ogre’s response is drowned out by shouting from the other room and I lean closer, forcingmyself to focus on this conversation and not the ruckus going on around us.
“That snake-woman tricked him into a poor bet,” one of the other men says with a sage nod.
“Snake woman?”
“Ash thinks all women are snakes.”
The ogre rolls his eyes. “Nah, she knew exactly what she was doing, coming in here with her black hair and gorgeous face. She distracted us all, working her charms and making off with our money.”
This seems to be the first half-useful thing anyone has said all night, and I fight my face to keep a placid expression. “And do you remember anything else about how she looked? Could you describe her for me?”
“Terrifying eyes, like a wolf’s eyes,” one of the other guys pipes up.
“Like a snake’s eyes,” another says.
I turn to the two of them. “Oh, you were here too? Did you see her?”
The first nods. “She was drop-dead gorgeous. Hard to miss, you know? That’s how you know it’s a glamour. That and the fact they never start sweating, even when it’s hotter than Ash’s gooch after a strong curry, you know?”
I... don’t, but I also don’t want to. Turning to Aster, I check if the description sounds like the sorceress that held him, my stomach dropping like a stone when he shakes his head.
“The glamour would do that, though.”
“Was there a man with her?” Torin asks.
