“Long as you only pull a good card,” I said.

“Oh, honey, they’re all good. Just depends on what you make of them.” She gave me a wink with oversized false lashes. As she smiled, the lines in her face showed that she’d done a lot of smiling in her life. I’d take that as a good sign. I paused, thinking about my gran’s two best friends, Hattie and Missy. For some reason, this Annie made me think of them—likely it was the tarot cards as Hattie had often done readings for me when I’d lived here.

It struck me then that I could stay with Hattie instead of Corb. Maybe he’d go easier on me if I wasn’t in his house. At least it was an idea.

Sarge gave me a tug, pulling me out of my thoughts, and I followed him through the beads, feeling Annie’s eyes on me. We went through the back room which smelled like too many herbs and not enough fresh air, to a set of descending stairs. And I mean straight down.

“Seriously?” I pointed at the impossibly steep stairwell. “Why is there not a ground-level entrance?”

Sarge shrugged and flicked on an overhead light. “Don’t ask me. I just shop here.”

I sighed and followed him down. “This would have been easier as a ladder.”

“Not when you’re hauling a hundred pounds of stuff up the ladder.”

He had a point.

At the bottom of the stairs—such as they were—was nothing but a six-by-six space in front of a cobblestone wall. The stones had a variety of images on them, thirteen to be exact. A few stood out, like the four elements—water, wind, fire, earth. There was a raven as well as a sword. Some were more faded as if they’d been inscribed a long time ago and hadn’t been kept up.

Some of the images were painted rather than engraved.

Sarge grinned and tapped on the cobblestone wall just under the raven symbol. The stone depressed, completely disappeared, and there was a low clunking noise as if it had dropped into a metal barrel.

“Harry Potter much?” I muttered as the cobblestone wall slid out and sideways on silent casters that had either seen a lot of grease or were far newer than the wall looked. Again, Sarge led the way, this time into . . . I shook my head and blinked a few times at the enormous space that stretched out in front of us. We were still inside, but the ceiling had been mocked up to look like a night sky, complete with glowing stars, the moon, and even a few dark spots that had to be bats.

And then one of them moved, and I realized they were bats—bats on leashes.

Jaysus Murphy on a three-legged donkey.

Gran had never mentioned this place. Maybe it was after her time? Somehow, I didn’t think so. Maybe this was one of those things you get to see after you’re inducted fully into the shadow world. That last was more likely.

Vendors sat at tables arranged along one side of the “street,” a stretch that had to go the length of the entire street outside. Behind each vendor was a door. If I had to guess, I’d say they each led into the back of a ground-level shop.

No way was I doing those stairs again.

A distinct smell of herbs, grease, wood fires and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on floated on a breeze that was not possible. I mean, it wasn’t like there were air ducts. This was a full-on breeze blowing my hair back.

Sarge motioned for me to go ahead of him. “Pick out what you like.”

“How about what I need?” I said.

“Whatever you like.” He waved a hand at the vendors. “Whatever you can afford.”

Damn it, so he wasn’t going to help me.

“What do I need, half-man?” I asked again.

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Sarge frowned down at me, a glimmer of too-white teeth showing in the starlight.

Okay, fake starlight. Real bats. It was a trip.

“My gran used to call those who could slip their skin half-men. Fitting, don’t you think?” I looked up at him with one brow slightly arched more than the other.

“Makes me think it was an insult,” he grumbled.

“You mean like you only have one ball instead of two? Or can only get it up half the time?” I shrugged. “It’s possible she meant that, she was a wicked woman in her own way.” With that, I left him standing there, his eyes a little too narrowed and his breathing a little too quick. Irritated he might be, but damn him if he was going to make this more difficult.

I went to the first vendor and looked over what he had, not really understanding what I was looking at. Trinkets? There were nicely decorated boxes of all sorts and sizes, but I doubted they’d help me at my new job. I waved a hand at them.

“What have you got here?”

The vendor leaned forward. “Name is Bob-John. And I sell powders. Mostly clearing powders. A few others too, communication and such.”

That rang a bell, but I didn’t think Gran had covered it with me, or if she had it had been brief. I didn’t think clearing powder would help me with training. “You get many trainees for the Hollows Group come through here?”

Bob-John nodded. “A few. You want to know which tables they visited?”

“That would be great, thanks.”

“It’ll cost you.”

No surprise there. I narrowed my eyes. I wasn’t about to give him money for nothing. “How much is your clearing powder?”

He blinked. “Ten a box.”

“I’ll buy one, and you’ll tell me where the others went.” I pulled a ten out of my pocket and held it out to him. He took hold of it, but I didn’t let go.

“You don’t need his stuff!” Sarge yelled.

I kept my eyes on Bob-John. “Think I should listen to him? Or are you smarter than the wolf over there?”

Bob-John puffed up a little under what he no doubt assumed was praise. “Weapons, armor, spells, all the attack stuff,” he said. “But if you ask me, a few books wouldn’t be a bad idea too. Maybe a bit more smarts in you than the usual lugs they bring through.”

I let the ten-dollar bill go and held my hand out. He plunked a rhinestone-encrusted box into my palm, and I tucked it into my other pocket. “Thanks, Bob-John. Nice doing business with you.”

Bob-John slid back into his chair which put him into the shadows a bit, and I continued on down the street.

I passed by a table with a lot of dried dead things on it, including several chicken feet and a stack of mummified mice. The next was a table with piles of tarot cards and crystals, none of which I considered necessary for my training. But the next table and vendor were interesting, and I found myself pausing there. The table was strewn with leather of all colors and shapes, along with chunks of a variety of metals, none of it in any particular order.

“Scraps?” I ran my hand over a particularly soft piece of leather that felt more like velvet than something that had once been an animal hide. Light tan in color, it could be dyed to be any shade under the rainbow.

A slim woman stepped forward. The hard lines around her eyes told me she was at least my age, although more likely in her fifties. “You are not the usual type they bring through.” She tipped her head toward Sarge trailing me by about fifteen feet. Watching, but not helping.

I looked over my shoulder at him, still irritated by his unwillingness to help. “Sit. Stay.”

He hunched his shoulders and glowered at me but didn’t come any closer. The woman laughed softly, though there was some grit to her voice, like maybe she didn’t smoke now, but used to.

She squinted one eye at me. “You are interesting. I would like to make you something. You need all of it.”

“All of what?” I frowned at her. “You want to fill me in?”

“Stupid men thinking they are being smart by keeping secrets. Do they not know that women are like badgers? We will find all the secrets and then share them with each other.”

Yup, I liked her already. I leaned forward.

“Right? Seriously, how long do they think they can keep us from knowing . . . stuff?” Stuff, yes, that was about as pithy as it came.

“Hold out your hands. I must measure you for this.”

I did as she asked, without knowing why, and she stepped around her table, a piece of string between her hands. She held it up to me, across my chest, around my waist, from my hip to the ground, around my neck.

“You will be good for them, I think,” the woman said. “My name is Geraldine; my friends call me Gerry. I will make your workwear for you. Boots too.” She pointed at my runners. I looked down.

“What will it cost?”

“What did they give you to spend?” She cocked her head to the side.

“Not enough.” I smiled.

She sighed. “It is never enough. But you will show them how this is done. I want it to be in my clothes. Five hundred.”

“For one outfit with boots?” That seemed cheap for something custom-made.

“I cannot go lower. And you are a fool if you think it is acceptable to cheap out on this portion of your equipment.”

I held up my hands. “Actually, I thought it was too low.”

Her lips quirked. “Excellent. Five hundred then?”

I held out my hand and we shook on it. I gave her the money even as Sarge groaned behind me. “How soon can you have it ready?” I asked.

“An hour.”

My eyes about bugged out. “An hour?”

“It will be done before you are finished shopping for the other things you need.” She shooed me away with her hands, all but pushing me down the street.

As I moved away from her, Sarge draped an arm over my shoulders, warmth flowing from him all the way through me. It was nice, until he opened his mouth. “Now that is such a typical move for a woman. Clothing? You spent a quarter of what you have on clothing. You should have spent it on weapons.”

I snorted and pushed his arm off. “Such a typical move for a man. Maybe if someone was helping me, I would have. But I like Gerry, and she’s going to do an excellent job. I have no doubt.”

He snorted. “Gerry is not your friend.”