If she could pay everyone with her private, ridiculous thoughts and habits, she’d never have to work again.
Hopping off the table with nervous energy, Evie wandered over to the shelf by the door and found a small bottle. It was a charming little thing. Evie thought it would make a good ornam—
“Don’t touch that!” Tatianna screeched, making Evie’s heart race.
“What? Why? What is it?” Evie frantically looked at the bottle and the hand that had almost touched it. “Does it turn people into frogs or something?”
“What?” Tatianna shook her head, confused. “No, it’s a slow-acting sedative. It’s very potent.”
Evie pulled her hand back as if burned, frowning as Tatianna smiled and said all too casually, “I keep my frog potions in a different cabinet.”
A choked noise left Evie’s throat, but before she could ask if the healer was kidding, she continued.
“A secret, if you please,” Tatianna said, turning back to her brewing potion.
Evie paused in contemplation and then grinned. “I had a dream about the boss last night.”
A series of crashes and a screech came from the direction Tatianna was standing, but it was so unlike her to lose composure that Evie wondered if there was some other figure in the room she could not see.
Tatianna whirled around then, knocking several more things over in her flurry to face Evie.
Evie’s mouth opened, her hand going to her face as if something was written there she couldn’t see. “What?”
There were not enough thieves in Rennedawn’s east-village slums to steal the wicked twinkle in Tatianna’s eyes. “Oh, and what did you and the boss do in this dream, you naughty little assistant?”
Evie huffed a laugh and attempted to bend over to pick up the discarded parchments but immediately straightened when she felt her injury protest. “You are very presumptuous to assume it was anything but innocent.”
Tatianna scoffed in indignation, sweeping the contents back onto the table with a slight wave of her hand. A rare gift for healers but a useful one for Tatianna, who sometimes needed to use her abilities to mind-bend objects out of a wound without touching them.
“Have you seen the man? As if anything associated with him could ever be innocent.” She paused for dramatic effect, hands coming up with a flourish. “He’s a walking vice.”
Evie circled her hand above her own head in the shape of a halo, but the healer merely laughed and began mixing contents back into the bowl, hands once again taking on their warm yellow glow.
“I adore you, Evangelina, but you are far from innocent.” Turning around and handing Evie a small brown bowl that smelled sickly sweet, she grinned. “You are corrupt by association, my dear. Now, rub this on your bum and put the gloves on first or it’ll warp the bones in your hands.”
Hastily tugging on the gloves, she grabbed the bowl and darted behind a cloth screen in the corner for some privacy. She yanked her skirt down a couple of inches and smoothed the salve between the fabric of her skirt and the bottom of her back. As she did, Evie contemplated her precarious position working here. She’d seen truly horrific things in her time thus far, all more jarring than the last. But she never once felt the need to stop anything, just the urge to offer help where she could and distance where she couldn’t.
That was neither here nor there, however. Even the most “stand-up citizens” were capable of terrifying cruelty. She would hardly feel guilty for taking money where it came. Especially from a place where she was never mistreated or looked at like a plaything.
Nausea overtook her as she began to feel the broken piece of bone melding back together, a sickly, unnatural feeling. The body wasn’t meant to heal at this pace, but she didn’t have time to waste on a broken bone.
After the last of the bone fragments slid into place like a puzzle piece, Evie straightened, then turned and bent from left to right to test her mobility. The sharp pain was gone like mist on the wind, replaced with a tight ache that was far preferable.
“It’ll be sore for the next couple of hours, but after that, it should feel normal.” Tossing the rest of the bowl’s contents into the fire of the stone hearth, Tatianna rolled her sleeves up. “Just be careful—the bones are still pliable. If you sit incorrectly, they could move.”
Evie wrinkled her nose, throwing her head from side to side to shake the image. “That is revolting.”
Handing Evie a small capped vial, pink in color, Tatianna said, “The next time someone asks me to describe my work, that’s exactly what I’ll tell them.”