Page 175 of Brimstone

“Whoa! When did yourveinsturn silver?” He tried to grab my wrist to get a better look, nearly dropping his books in the process. “For that matter, we haven’t spoken about the new tricks you can do now. That Alchimeran shield you lit up when you were fighting those guards was pretty fucking cool. What were all those icons around the outside of it?”

“I don’t know, Carrion. I’m still trying to figure that out. They’re probably other elements of threads of magic I might be able to control one day.”

“Sinners.”He whistled. “That’s a whole lot of potential power. Do you think you’ll be able to turn invisible at somepoint? If I could have access to magic,Iwould definitely opt for invisibility.”

“I’d love to pretend I didn’t know why you’d pick that, Carrion, but sadly I know you too well. Look, Fisher’s checking in with Tal and Foley. I have a bunch of things to take care of before heading back to Ammontraíeth, and I have no idea where my brother is. What do you need, exactly?”

Carrion hoisted books in his hands, adjusting the stack so that he had a better grip on them. “Well, if you’re busy . . .”

I stopped walking and faced him. “Can you please just spit it out?”

“You’re going to help me, then?”

“No, I’m going to find out what it is you’re up to so I can gauge whether I need to put a stop to it. AndthenI’m going to decide whether I’ll help you.”

“You aresountrusting,” he muttered. “Whatever. I need you to come with me.”

“And then?”

“And then I need you to tell me if I’m going crazy.”

“Are you planning on setting fire to anything?” I demanded.

“No.”

“Blowing anything up?”

Carrion made a face. “I haven’t blown up asinglething since I’ve been here.”

I folded my arms across my chest.

The smuggler rolled his eyes. “All right. No, I am not going to blow anything up.”

Letting out a deep sigh, I threw up my hands in defeat. “Fine. You’ve got me for ten minutes.”

“Careful, sunshine,” he said, grinning. “The things I could do to you in ten minutes. Whoa, wai—wait! Ow! That hurt! I’m joking, I’mjoking! I’m gonna drop my books!”

I didn’t elbow him a second time. Instead, I took the top three books from the stack he was carrying and gave him a half-amused look. “You just love flirting with danger, don’t you?”

“Ahh, you know me.” He winked at me suggestively. “I’ll flirt withmostthings, given half a chance.”

When we’d first arrived in Cahlish, Carrion and I had woken in the same room—a huge room, granted, with four large beds in it. There was only one bed in that room now, and Carrion had well and truly made the space his own. There were shelves with a multitude of books. A chaise by one of the windows. There had already been a wardrobe here. Now there weretwo, though given the wrinkled clothes discarded in piles across the room, Carrion didn’t appear to be using either of them. The windows were fogged up with condensation, probably due to the extraordinary number of potted plants he’d managed to cram inside the room. The place resembled . . . well, I didn’t know what it resembled, actually. I’d never seen anything like it before.

“What the hell have you been up to in here, Swift? Have you stolen all this stuff?”

“What? No! How can I have stolen it if it’s all under the same roof? I’ve onlyrelocatedit. Totally different.”

“Uh-huh.” I spun around, taking it all in. There were drawings tacked to the walls, and numerous half-full bottles of whiskey sitting on the windowsill. He’d definitely stolenthose. A muddy trowel on the floor by the foot of his bed. A trail of dirty paw prints led from the bed, across the floor, toward one of the wardrobes.

I heard the plaintive whine before I pieced what I was seeing together . . . but then it hit me.

I stormed across the room and ripped open the wardrobe door, and there was Onyx, curled up into a ball in a thick green blanket at the bottom of the wardrobe.

“Carrion! You shut him in thewardrobe?”

“No. He goes in there to sleep sometimes! The wind must have blown the door shut on him.”

The wind. A likely story. Still, I knew when Carrion was lying most of the time and he didn’t appear to be doing so now. Onyx stretched, his pink tongue curling as he yawned, then he hopped sleepily out of the nest he’d made for himself and looked up at me expectantly, as if to say,Okay, what are we doing?