I shook my fist in his face. “So help me, electrician, I am going to separate your teeth from your stupid head.”
He chuckled, stumbling away from me, then cried out, his expression suddenly warping into pain. He went down on one knee, clutching at his ankle.
“What – whoa, are you okay?”
Roth hissed as he pulled up his pants leg and pressed both his hands around his ankle. There was a cut near the top of his foot, the wound glistening in the moonlight. Somehow I’d missed the scent of blood, but I could definitely smell it now. Wet, warm. Delicious.
24
“I’m fine,” Roth said. “Just a flesh wound. Not even, maybe a scratch that went too deep. It was probably from the witch’s brambles.”
Asher brushed me out of the way. “Let me take a look.” He gave me a sidelong glance, whispering. “And try not to look at him like you haven’t eaten in days.”
“I wasn’t,” I protested. I was.
Roth extended his leg slightly to give Asher a better view. “It’s fresh, but it’s nothing serious,” Asher said. “And no traces of poison, either, which is good.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely good,” Roth said, nodding. “Those ninja witches can be pretty sneaky.”
Behind him, where Roth couldn’t see, Gil was closing his trembling fingers around empty air, like he was pretending to choke him out.
I thought that Asher was going to send Roth off and be done with it, maybe kiss his boo-boo and declare him fit to walk home. Instead he passed his hand in the air above Roth’s foot, his fingers glowing with a pale wreath of green light. Roth gasped, then sighed as tendrils of necromantic energy reached for the edges of his wound, seamlessly stitching his skin back together. The light faded. See, while necromancers were known for their work with the essence of death, they had some familiarity with the essence of life, too. It made them very decent healers.
Asher stood up and dusted his hands off, beaming proudly. “And that takes care of that.”
Roth looked at each of our faces carefully, studying our
expressions. “Who are you people, exactly?”
Gil cracked his knuckles again, what was slowly becoming a very familiar sound indeed. “We’re the people who know where you live. We’re the people who will happily rip your head off in your sleep if you breathe a word of this night to anyone.”
Roth’s hands flew up. “Okay. Okay. My lips are sealed. I saw a man with very hairy legs. There was no one at the witch hut tonight. I didn’t have my foot cut open by a ninja witch.”
“We’ll find her again,” Asher said. “I have the weirdest feeling. We scared her off before we could get any real answers. Well, Sterling did.”
“Harsh, but probably accurate.”
“Hush. This isn’t the end of it. You don’t just up and leave when you’re the self-appointed guardian of a whole forest. Oh, and when you have an entire cute hut to yourself. Gotta keep that fire going.”
Roth’s eyebrows furrowed as he looked off into the distance. “That reminds me. Did I leave the stove on tonight?”
I pointed vaguely towards the woods. “Go the fuck home.” And take your sweet-smelling blood with you, I added in my head. “Are you sure you’re going to be fine on your own? No risk of getting murdered on the way?”
Asher made an exaggerated titter. “Maybe you should walk him home, Sterling.” He kept on tittering, even after I glared at him.
“I’ll be fine,” Roth said, flexing for show. “Check out these deadly weapons.”
“Goodbye, Roth,” I said, rolling my eyes.
Gil hesitated to say anything, frowning, but finally relented. “Text us when you get home so we know we don’t have to scour the woods for your dead body.”
“I will,” Roth said. “Hey, you guys? This was fun. I don’t know what the hell we just did tonight, but I have a decent feeling that you’re doing all this for the right reasons. Thanks for not killing me and stuff.”
“Least we could do,” I said, shooing him off as he made false starts towards home, waving sappily like he’d just found a new group of friends. And you know what? Maybe he had.
Gil shook his head, sighing when Roth was out of earshot. “Extra large helping of idiot, that one.”
Asher shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he’s more of a goofball, stuck in a lumberjack’s body.”