Page 1 of Reap & Sow

One

Whenever the shop bell chimed, Eda liked to guess: Had they come to trade with their coin or their soul?

She considered their newest customer as he stumbled in, shaking rain from his fur-lined cloak. He hovered by the door uncertainly. Wealthy, she decided. Skittish as a dog.

This was promising.

“Welcome to Shaws’ Antiques and Curiosities. Can I help you?”

The gentleman stared at her. Eda smiled back. She was used to smiling when she did not feel like it. Ben always said a kindly face was difficult to mistrust.

“I…” The stranger swallowed. He looked around the shop’s interior: the towering shelves that brushed the ceiling, the low chandelier, the assortment of rugs strewn across lacquered floorboards. Cabinets and brass globes and strange pots littered the edges of the room, leaving meager space to wander. If Lawrie were here, he’d enthusiastically regale the poor man with the origins of all their stock, right down to the hinges on the doors.

Eda tried again. “Are you looking for something in particular?”

The man pulled off his brimmed bonnet to reveal tidy chin-length hair. “Is there anyone else here? Any other patrons?”

“No, sir. You’re our last customer of the day.”

Not that there’d been many. A snub-nosed woman spent an hour sniffing around their collection of antique tea sets, and a pair of academics purchased a tome from the Old Weslic collection. But no one else had crossed the threshold.

Eda suspected this man wasn’t interested in teapots or dusty books.

He approached the counter, splendid in buckled shoes and velvet doublet. His face was nondescript—but the wild look in his eyes struck her with eerie familiarity. She’d seen it before, a hundred times in a hundred different faces.

“I need a mirror with no reflection.”

Eda’s pulse found a new rhythm, fast and flighty as a hare. Her brothers did not share the pass phrase lightly; if this stranger knew it, they’d decided he was serious.

She stepped around the counter. “You know what you’re asking?”

“Yes. I—yes.”

Eda peered through the bay windows. Blackbridge was a dark, noisy smear of wet stone and oil smoke, lanterns bobbing through the gathering night. Irregular bubbles in the crown glass made it hard to discern anyone coming up the street, but none of the distorted figures hurrying through the rain seemed like her brothers.

Never take someone to the mirror alone, Ben always warned. If they come looking to make a Pact and neither of us are with you, you must turn them away. We’re safest in pairs.

In the glass, Eda’s reflection hovered like a pale-haired wraith. She bit her inner cheek.

Ben would be furious. Lawrie would be disappointed, which was even worse. But how long had it been since they last found someone desperate—or stupid enough—to make a Pact? Eda knew from experience that with too much time to think came the niggling whispers of common sense. If she turned him away now, this man might talk himself out of returning. He could run his mouth to the Faithhood, unlikely though it was. What then?

Lawrie called them dealies. Those hopeless souls willing to pay the ultimate price for whatever wretched thing they sought. It had been months since the last.

And they were running out of time.

Eda set her jaw and flipped the sign in the door to Closed. “What’s your name, sir?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Smarter than he looks. “He’ll need a name, I’m afraid. No use hiding it.” She pulled the drapes along their rail, shutting out the door and windows. In the flickering light of the chandelier, shadows about the stranger’s eyes yawned wide: empty sockets in a skull.

“He?”

“The demon you mean to make a Pact with.”

He swallowed. Steeled himself. “I am Bartholomew. Your family name is Shaw, I presume?” He scanned her from head to toe with a disdain common to noblefolk. “You are rather young to be involved in…this sort of business.”

“I’m twenty, sir. And I’ve been involved in ‘this sort of business’ since the cradle.”