Ravus held it up, the palm unscarred. "Trolls heal fast. I'm hard to kill, Val."
She looked at his hand, at the table of ingredients, and shook her head. "How does it work, the magic? How do you take ordinary things and make them magical?"
He looked at her sharply and then resumed chopping at the brown bar. "Is that what you think I do?"
"Isn't it?"
"I don't make things magical," he said. "I could, perhaps, but not in any quantity or potency. It would be beyond me, beyond almost anyone save a high Lord or Lady of Faerie. These things…" His hand swept over the worktable, over the hardened nuggets of chewed gum, the various wrappers and cans, the lipstick-stained butts of cigarettes. "Are already magical. People have made them so." He picked up a silvery gum wrapper. "A mirror that never cracks." He picked up a tissue with a blotted lipstick mouth on it. "A kiss that never ends." A cigarette. "The breath of a man."
"But mirrors and kisses aren't magical either."
At that he laughed. "So you don't believe a kiss is efficacious in transforming a beast or waking the dead?"
"And I'm wrong?"
"No," he said, characteristically wry. "You're quite correct. But, luckily, this potion is intended to do neither of those things."
She smiled at that. She thought about the way she noticed all his glances, his sighs, the subtle changes in his face. She thought about what it might mean and she worried.
"Why do you always look like you do?" she asked. "You could look like anything. Anyone."
Ravus put down his mortar with a scowl and walked around the table. She felt a thrill run through her that was only part terror.
She was very conscious of lying in what must be his bed, but she didn't want to get out without any pants on.
"Ah, you mean with glamour?" He hesitated. "Make myself look less terrifying? Less hideous?"
"You're not—," Val began, but he held up his hand and she stopped.
"My mother was very beautiful. Doubtless, I have a broader idea of beauty than you do."
Val said nothing, nodding. She didn't want to think too closely about whether she had a broad idea of beauty. She'd always thought that she had a fairly narrow one, one that included her mother and other people who tried too hard. She'd always been a little contemptuous of beauty, as though it was something you had to trade away some other vital thing for.>Wax dripped down the side of the candle and onto Luis's thumb, but he didn't flinch or change the way he held it. More wax followed, forming a steady drip onto the stairs. "The guy grabs me by the arm and pushes his thumb into my eye. His face doesn't change at all while he's doing it. It hurts so bad and I'm screaming and that's when my mother finally turns around, finally sees me. And do you know what she and the soft-shell crab guy decide? That I scratched my own fucking eye somehow. That I ran into something. That I blinded myself."
The hair was standing up along Val's arms and she had that chill running down her spine, the one that told her just how freaked out she really was. She thought about the sealskins in his story, about the mermaid body she'd seen by the river, and came to no conclusions, except that there was no escape from horrible things. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because it sucks to be me," Luis said. "One wrong step and they decide I don't need my other eye. That's what the big deal is.
"Dave and Lolli don't get it." His voice dropped to a whisper and he leaned close to her. "They're playing around with that drug, stealing from Ravus when I'm supposed to be repaying a debt. Then they bring you in." He stopped, but she saw the panic in his eyes. "You're stirring shit up. Lolli is getting worse instead of better."
The troll appeared at the top of the ledge and looked down at Val. His voice was low and deep as a drum. "I cannot think what it was you came back for. Is there something you require?"
"The last delivery," she said. "It was a… mermaid? She's dead."
He went quiet, stared.
Val swallowed. "She looks like she's been dead awhile."
Ravus started down the stairs, frockcoat billowing. "Show me." His features changed as he got closer, the green of his skin fading, his features shifting until he looked human, like a gawky boy only a little older than Luis, a boy with odd, golden eyes and shaggy black hair.
"You didn't change your—," Val said.
"That's the way glamour is," said Ravus, cutting her off. "There's always some hint of what you were. Feet turned backward, a tail, a hollow back. Some clue to your true nature."
"I'll just get out of here," Luis said. "I was on my way anyhow."
"Luis and I have had an interesting conversation about you and the manner of our meeting." said the troll. It was disorienting to hear that deep, rich voice come from a young man.
"Yeah," Luis said, with a half-smile. "He conversed. I groveled."