“Foss? What kind of a name is that?”
Rude little so-and-so, my Da would have said. He really did have the kind of face that begged for a good punch—indifferent and arrogant at once, as if he couldn’t be bothered with the world. He leaned his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands, looking for all the world like a gargoyle perched on a window ledge, and stared at me, still waiting for an answer.
“It’s a type of flower,” I said finally, reluctantly. “Where I come from.”
I imagined I could see him thinking he had never seen anything less flowerlike.Fair point, I thought. My name had always been something of an embarrassment. He rubbed at his nose, violently.
“Have you come for a spell? I haven’t the energy today,” he said. “Go ask someone else.”
The irony of it. I didn’t even want the spell I had. “No,” I said.
“Then why have you come here?”
Well, you leave the doors unlocked and unguarded, I wanted to say, and surely people wander in all the time. I searched those gold-rimmed gray blue eyes for a hint of recognition, but there was none. I felt affronted. Clearly he had no memory of me at all.
“What do you want? A charm? Something to ensnare a sweetheart?” He spoke with self-mockery more than scorn, but I still felt my whole self bristle.
“You sell those things?”
“I can. I’m no better than a hedge-witch in that respect. Although my charms are more expensive.”
“I don’t want a charm.”
His interest was waning, like a little boy’s. He picked at his sleeve, looked about, chewed at the edge of a nail.
“Well, then ...” he began.
“I’ve come to be your housekeeper,” I said, before I had realized the words were queued up on my tongue and ready to jump out.
“Oh,” he said. “Well.”
He clicked his fingers. The black cat appeared like smoke.
“The cat will show you where things are.”
I blinked. I hadn’t expected him to accept it so suddenly and without question.
“Go on. Clear off. I’m thinking.”
I bent down to pick up one of the dirty plates.
“Leave it! Leave it. You can get it later. Go on.”
The cat raised its tail like a banner and started marching back toward the big doors, glancing back over its shoulder to make sure I was coming. I straightened up and followed, feeling with each step away from the sorcerer that the ache was becoming worse again.
Still, it was a thousand, thousand times better than it had been in the village. And if I had to live with something permanently that was no worse than a mild stomachache, I could manage that.
The doors opened as if, well, as if by magic, and the cat sauntered through. I glanced back, once, and saw that the sorcerer was sprawled out again, staring at the ceiling, but now with one hand clicking its fingers in the air as if to inaudible music. I had not asked his name.
7
“I’ve come to be your housekeeper.” What an addlepated thing to say. As if I wanted to spend the rest of my born days scrubbing that strange black tile and washing those filthy dishes!
But it had popped into my head as soon as I had realized that he did not recognize me. I had expected ... well, even if he had not recognized me, I had expected him to at least recognize what he had done to me. Surely there was some sign on me, some invisible magic signature, that showed he had harvested up my heart, even just a portion of it?
I felt oddly insulted and unsure of what to do next. He hadn’t swallowed me up or drained me dry upon my arrival, as I had half expected, but he hadn’t given his piece of my heart back to me in a paper bag either.
I could tell by the ache in my chest that it had not been restored (as I had half hoped it would be as soon as I turned up, as if it would have flown to my breast like a homing pigeon coming in to roost), and that he probably still had it somewhere on his person, or in his house.
