1.18. Auntie Liz

Lisa clipped Demetrius’ harness to their borrowed wagon and tightened the strap with the squeak of leather. She scritched the dray’s bony snout affectionately and then turned to Tiago, arms wide. “Come here, my boy.”

Tiago loaded the Executioner’s sword onto the wagon. “Not while your lipstick’s wet. I know you too well.”

“Just a hug. Come on. Hug your mama.” Lisa pouted. “I swear I won’t give you a forehead kiss in front of Seth il Gutierre. C’mon.”

Tiago tutted and stepped into his mother’s embrace. She snapped her arms down on him like a bear trap and planted a kiss on his forehead with an exaggerated mwah. He jerked away and rubbed the plum-colored mark she’d left there as she laughed.

“You’re an oathbreaker,” he said. “Good luck, il Gutierre.”

“Have fun in Laramme. Be nice to your sister.” Lisa blew him a followup kiss. “See you in Santura. I love you, Sunshine.”

Tiago put his hands in the pockets of his slate carpenter pants and wandered away from the ranch house. “You too.”

“Hey.” Lisa held up a warning finger. “Say the whole thing.”

“Love you too, mom,” he called over his shoulder.

Lisa smiled and hefted her steamer trunk one-handed. “There was no I there, but we take those.”

Seth looked askance as Lisa climbed into the wagon after her luggage. The wagon bed creaked under her powerful frame. “Were you always this strong,” he asked, “or was it a Winter War-slash-Verdugo development?”

“I didn’t exactly train in earnest until they gave me a sword to swing. But I was always rather robust.” She made a show of dusting her hands off. “You know what they say about Orwinese girls.”

“What’s that?”

“Oooh. You don’t know.” Lisa grinned. “Then I won’t spoil any surprises.” She climbed the wagon’s divider and perched on the box seat. “Hop up, Mr. i’Lynnok.”

“I’Lynnok?”

“Seth i’Lynnok.” She held out her hand. “That’s your pseudonym while we’re traveling incognito.”

Seth took it. Her bicep stood out and slid gracefully under her skin as she helped him into the wagon. “That’s an Orwinese word, right?” he asked, to give himself something to think about besides the Verdugo’s arms.

“Mmhmm. It means fox. Fitting, no?” She scooted over to give him more room, though her generous hips still left him a bit cramped. “Unless you’d like to change Seth too.”

“Seth’s fine. One of the few things about myself I’ve never thought about ditching. Although I have gone by Boris a few times.”

“Boris? You?” She quirked her head. “You wouldn’t be a Boris. Too slim.”

“I was a fat baby,” he said. “What about you?”

“I was fatter.”

“Your pseudonym, I mean.”

“Moi?” She laid a hand on her chest. “I am Elizabeth i’Lynnok.”

“Are we pretending to be married?”

The white marshfires in her eyes glowed as they widened with her surprised laugh. “I’d planned on being your aunt, Seth.”

“Oh.” His cheeks tingled. “Of course.”

“But married could be fun.” She flicked the reins and Demetrius grumbled into motion. “The dashing younger husband and the vamp who stole him away. That could be very fun.”

Annalise’s warning about her sorceress head lurked in the back of Seth’s mind. “Aunt works. Let’s do aunt.”

An amused hum from between her wine-dark lips. “Let’s.”

He cast a skeptical look at his employer’s paperwhite skin. “Though I’m not sure how anyone could see us as related.”

“You let Auntie Liz handle that part,” she said. “Wink.”

“All your heads do that wink thing, huh?”

Lisa stuck her onyx tongue out. “Annalise got that from Lisa, thank you very much.”

Down the cobbled Laramme thoroughfare, a few people cast curious looks at the Verdugo’s oddly lengthened hair, though her sunglasses and her hat covered much of the transformation. Seth looked to the scaffold as they passed. A geezer in overalls was on his knees atop it, industriously scrubbing the arterial blood from its boards.

The woman who’d spilled it hummed melodiously to herself at Seth’s shoulder.

They rolled out of Laramme’s village cluster into the golden waves of its fields. It was a perfect afternoon, the sort you’d want to capture in amber and preserve for the coming dark and cold. A fresh crispness in the air intermingling with the baking emerald warmth of the sun. Seth wondered sometimes whether the Deathspell had influenced the weather at all. Did the kindred of old feel the warmth of their strange yellow sun for longer? Were their winters gentler?

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“Now that we’re away from all that hoi polloi.” Lisa turned in her seat and looped the reins around her bent knee. “May I see your arm?”

He peeled back the sleeve of his tatty jacket; she followed suit, and then pressed her forearm against his. It was easily twice as wide.

“Pardon my skin contact,” she said. “Won’t be a moment. You have just such a lovely warm bronze. Must make sure I get it right if we’re related.”

She tapped her opposite hand’s fingers against her chest diagrammatically, like she was entering an invisible code, and muttered an airy syllable under her breath. Inch by spreading inch, the colorless, tattooed skin laid next to his adopted his Plainfolk tan. Her hair went from black to a dark coffee. She was still six feet and change, and still built like a goddess of war, but the human-colored skin, unblemished by hexentatuae, went a long way in camouflaging her.

He whistled. “Nice trick.”

“Cheers, nephew.” She winked one eye shut. “Did I get the lids?”

“What about the lids?”

“They’re a bit darker than the rest. Like you’ve got some natural shadow on. Did I get them?”

Seth didn’t know how to feel about the level of attention the Verdugo had been paying to how his eyes looked. “I can’t exactly see my own eyelids, but it looks right.”

“Fabulous.” She reopened her eye, now brown-on-white, and slid her sunglasses back on. “I do hope we run into a mirror soon. I’ve been so excited to wear your skin.”

He wondered if that counted as the flirting he’d been charged to shut down.

“Now we have two essential tasks to accomplish in Fontana,” Lisa said, as the road trailed into rural degradation under their wheels. “There’s an import-exporter we need to see. Guy by the name of Marston. He’s the one who bought my head.”

“Do you reckon he’s holding onto it?”