Page 134 of Brimstone

The first fish drowned, the second fish froze, and the third fish swallowed them all . . .

I ended the song with a flourish, setting the fox down onto the bed. He blinked up at me, eyes glassy and black as jet, not really sure what to make of my performance, it seemed.

“I’m sorry, little one. Now that I think about it, that isn’t a very happy song, is it? Do you like fish? I bet you do, huh?”

The fox blinked.

“I bet you’d like some now, huh? Some tasty trout?”

His ears pricked up. I would have sworn to all the gods that he was smiling hopefully.

“Okay, okay. Let me see.” My illusions were real as long as they were observed. A bath could be real. Clothes. But not food. It just didn’t work like that. I had to pull that kind of magic from somewhere else, and that took concentration. I reached . . . reached . . . and grunted with the effort as I reached into my small magic, into a different place entirely, and I drew a silver bowl containing half a smoked piece of trout. Right about now, a barmaid at the Shag’s Nest in Western Dow was wondering where in all five hells the order of smoked trout she’d just been carrying had disappeared to. It was no matter, though. I’d make sure to go there and pay them for the meal soon enough.

I set the little bowl down and then watched with straight-faced satisfaction as the fox hopped down from Saeris’s bed and promptly scarfed the lot. The fish was gone in moments.

“All right, little one. I have to go now. Don’t be causing any trouble while you wait for your mistress, okay?”

Onyx looked up at me, pink tongue licking his lips as he savored the taste of the meal I’d stolen for him.

“Go on. Go take a nap or something.”

The fox yawned and then turned and darted under Saeris’s bed.

I was at the door, hand on the knob, when I heard his soft whine. “What is it, hm?” Glancing back over my shoulder, I watched as the little white fox popped his head out from under the bed and then came trotting over to me with purpose. When he reached me, he ducked his head, and something small and brown hit the rug.

It was a pine cone.

One of the smallest—and most perfectly formed—I had ever seen.

Onyx nudged it with his nose, huffing, then looked up at me expectantly.

I stared down at the fox and the pine cone, hand still on the doorknob, not sure what to do. “Is that . . . forme?”

Onyx nudged the little spiked pine cone, butting it with his nose again, until it rolled and hit the toe of my boot. Itwasfor me.

A gift.

I bent and collected it, tucking the memento into the inside pocket of my leathers. Before I turned and left, I scratched the little fox between his black-tipped ears, trying and failing to pretend that I was unmoved by the gesture. “Thankyou, little one.”

The library was deserted.

Lamps dotted the length of the clerk’s table, their pale green glow forming small pools of light. Books were gathered in five neat stacks, ten tomes high each, at the far end of the table. The place was as silent as the grave.

As I crossed the entryway of the library, headed for the steps that led up to the stacks, a small black cat made of shadow appeared out ofmyshadow, taking me by surprise. Plenty of shadows had come from me before—that went without saying. But they’d done so at my behest, and none of them had ever solidified into somethinglivingafterward. The cat dug its claws into the rug as it stretched, peering up at me with bloodred eyes.

“Where didyoucome from?” I asked it.

The shadow cat sniffed my leg curiously, tiny nostrils flaring.

“What can you smell?” I asked. “A fox? I don’t know if the two of you would get along.” As if it knew what I was saying, the shadow cat butted its head against my shins and began purring loud enough to wake the dead.

I stooped down to pet it, and the damned thing darted away, making for the stairs. On the bottom step, it paused, glancing over its shoulder as if to say,Well, then. Are you coming?

Saeris’s scent hung in the air, faint but detectable, as I crossed the library and headed up the stairs. I lost her as I entered the stacks, following the feline, who trotted on ahead, occasionally looking back to make sure I was still there. I had always made it a rule to follow a cat. Particularly ablackcat. This one was the darkest shade of midnight there was—an absence of light I knew all too well. My senses were on high alert as we wound through the high stacks, left, then right, then straight ahead for two rows. Magic hung thick in the air here, as the rowsgrew closer together and the light grew dim, veiling the titles of the hundreds of books that we passed.

The cat’s feet barely seemed to touch the ground as it padded softly ahead. It rubbed its side against the corner of a shelf as it waited for me to catch up, its long, dexterous tail swaying side to side like a blade of tall grass on a breeze. Once I was close enough for its liking, it took a left, disappearing into a walkway (or more of a tunnel, perhaps), constructed entirely from dusty old books.

Golden light flickered at the end of the tunnel.