A Girl Named Calamity by Danielle Lori

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

FOXES AND FEELINGS

Assassins.

You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.

Wait . . .I don’t think that’s a saying.

But it might as well have been because it was my life. My unfortunate situation that I didn’t think I could escape. I could leave, and most assuredly get myself into a lot of trouble, or play follow the leader around Alyria until we killed all of its people. Seemed like an easy decision to make, but fear, that nasty word ruled my life.

What would Grandmother do? She would have found a way to survive on her own. She wouldn’t have followed a corrupt assassin across the country.

And that was why I was scrubbing myself raw with the supposedly scent reducing soap. I was in a hurry so I didn’t get cold feet, which was just a euphemism for being scared out of my bloody mind, and I wasn’t going to acknowledge it. The knots in my stomach were only a reminder.

I slipped on clean clothes and headed out of the bathhouse. I’d hoped that what had happened in Latent City wouldn’t have Weston tying me to him. The act I’d performed in the woods must have cooled his blood a little because he let me walk around Ulmer City.

I wandered around until I found what I needed. Two men jousting. One had his shirt off on the ground, and I slipped over to it without them noticing. I grabbed the shirt, feeling like someone would start yelling thief. That’d be my luck. Nobody noticed my thievery, and I headed back to the inn.

I made it around the corner before I stopped in my tracks. I stared at the square wooden building in confusion before I hesitantly walked over to it. It looked like a lot of other buildings in these cities, but there was something that drew me to it.

I opened the door, and the bell rang while scents assailed my nose. The scents of home. That could have all been a coincidence, but the same woman could not. Her smile was neutral as she stood behind the counter.

“Can I help you find something? Maybe a potion to help seduce a particular man?” she asked.

I blinked. “How?”

“How?” she repeated, her eyebrows scrunched together.

“This.” I looked around at the exact shop I was in the city past. “It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible, dear.” She smiled. Alger was a tame city that wasn’t full of magic, and I never knew the strangeness of Alyria until this journey.

“Do you ask every woman if she needs to seduce a man?”

She smiled a large smile that reminded me of a cat grooming the blood off its paws after a kill. “I don’t ask other women anything. But I know what’s best for you.”

My eyebrows pinched together. “What does that mean?”

“Deep down, you know.”

Her words had an alarm ringing in my head. She was probably playing games with me, like the Sylvian women, so I pushed my anxiety aside.

“What is best for me?” I asked.

“The potion, of course. You look like you need it.” She looked pointedly at me.

My eyes widened. “Why?”

“You’re a little uptight, dear.”

“That might be because I’m a prisoner,” I sighed. Why did everyone take this lightly?

“Oh, right. I forgot.” She pursed her lips. “Do I have something you need? Or are you ready to try my potion of desire?”

“What does this potion do?”

“Well, this potion is for men only. It doesn’t work on women, seems only to give them an aching head,” she said, lost in her thoughts, and I wondered when she’d tried to use it on a woman. On second thought, I didn’t want to know.

“Go on,” I pushed.

“Any man to ingest it becomes consumed with lust. He must sate it with whatever woman gave it to him. It’s a wicked potion, and has a high reliability rating.”

“People are so deceitful,” I mused. She only smiled, and I imagined she was one of the most deceitful.

“I’ll take three,” I supplied.

Her smile was malicious like a cat who’d caught the canary.

Maybe it did.

* * *

Is it deceit when someone fools the one who’s been the most deceitful? So many adjectives tacked onto my name; I didn’t want deceitful attached. But neither did I want the meaning to come true: tragedy.

Focusing on the deceit was just a shiny veneer covering up the fox in the henhouse. Also known as feelings.

I had no problem with what I was doing. He had more than asked for it, but the unwanted nausea I felt needed an explanation. And being deceitful was what I was going to blame as I walked up to a red-cheeked, smooth-skinned serving girl. Be thankful I picked a pretty one.

“Can I help you, miss?” she asked.

Her smile lit up her face, and I suddenly regretted my choice, but forced myself to reply, “A mug of ale, please.”

She nodded her head and left while I stood uncertainly in the inn, hoping that Weston didn’t get the idea to leave his room right now. I was sure he could use his creepy senses to hear me moving around, but I really hoped that he couldn’t hear what I would say. When the girl returned, I turned around and poured the three vials into the cup. I headed towards the stairs and then turned back around.

“I completely forgot that I need to run an errand. Can you take this up to the tall, dark-haired man upstairs?” I asked the girl.

“The Titan?” Her eyes lit up, and the fox shuffled around the henhouse.

“Yes, he’s the one.”

“I would love to!”

I’m sure you would, I grumbled internally.

“Don’t leave until he drinks some, okay? And don’t say it was from me.” That might have sounded strange, but I didn’t think she was even processing what I said.

“Sure thing, miss,” she said excitedly while the fox made a bloody mess out of my chickens. I waited a couple of minutes after she went up the stairs, really hoping that Weston would take the bait. A bitter taste filled my mouth the longer the maid was gone.

When I realized my plan was working, I swept the dead chickens out and headed out to Gallant.

The fly against the fox.

Thankfully, I could fly.