Page 115 of Mistress of Bones
The Witch wouldn’t let it. Manzar’s closeness to De Gracia was too convenient to lose. She fought back, and the connection between the bodies weakened further. Like a children’s tug-of-war, the Witch managed to bring one body to her room while she wavered in and out of the other’s mind. Drunkards’ dreams were so much easier to control.
The window was opened carefully, if in small jerks rather than the smooth motion she’d have preferred, then the Witch forced Manzar’s body to stand. She sent the drunken gent to pass out a street over and retreated fully into Manzar.
The trembling of her limbs abated, the racing pulse calmed. She felt Manzar hide in a corner and lick his wounds.And stay there, she added viciously, as if she could communicate with him. His body was young and strong, but so were any number of other bodies that had hosted her. His wasn’t special—once her need was met, Manzar was welcome to have it back.
She ran through Cienpé back to De Gracia’s residence. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since Del Arroyo and her guard locked her in the small room, but a fast glance at the sky told her Luck and Wonder were well on their way down, dawn a couple of hours away.
De Gracia was home, seemingly worried and frantic, a calculating gleam in his eyes. The Witch recognized it easily. She’d havepreferred him angry, for angry people made mistakes, but, alas, at least he was willing to talk.
She was ushered into the same parlor they had escaped from, the window still open, a slight nightly breeze rustling her hair.
De Gracia seated himself on the opposite settee.
“I have a proposal for you,” the Witch wasted no time in telling him. “I know what you are, and I know who you want. You raise corpses; you are attempting to make your own body.” She watched carefully for his reaction, but it was as if he were a corpse himself. “I would like a body of my own too.” Giving voice to the hope that had carried her the whole night was like eating the most decadent dessert. She wanted more. “Raise a beautiful body for me, De Gracia.” A body with no mind of its own to fight her off, young, powerful, completely hers—a rebirth. Shivers of pleasure ran along her back, and she closed her eyes briefly. “If you will do this for me, I will give you your sister’s whereabouts.”
“I don’t haggle. I can find my sister on my own.”
The Witch gave him a sardonic smile. “Ah, but it will take time, and she is intent on escaping you, isn’t she? She’s cunning, that young woman. She might give you a chase you could easily avoid.”
De Gracia shrugged, unbothered. “That might be so, but in the end, I will still find her. Is that all?”
“Of course not. That was simply the initial lure. I feel we are similar, you and I, De Gracia.”
“I doubt that.”
“I’m willing to offer you something else in addition to Del Arroyo’s whereabouts.”
“And that would be?”
“It’s obvious by now that Isile Manzar is not in command of this body. Give me another one, one that fits my wishes, and I will return this one to him. Otherwise, you will never speak to him again. And you hold him in great esteem, don’t you?” the Witch added with a touch of malice.
“I hope you are bringing something else to the table, because that is no concern of mine.”
The Witch fought the blink of shock and the floundering of her thoughts. Had the footman not appeared unsurprised at Manzar’s appearance in the middle of the night? Had Manzar and De Gracia not been sitting so cozily when she and the count had visited? Were they not always together at gatherings? “You have no wish to see your darling free?”
De Gracia laughed, a surprisingly genuine sound. “Is that what you thought? That we are lovers?”
The Witch cursed herself. “I can see you are not, and that you hold no regard for your friends.”
“Oh, I regard them well, and I shall miss his company and his words. But as I told you before, I do not haggle, whoever you are—andwhoare you?”
“You may know me as the Faceless Witch,” she answered to earn herself some time, her thoughts chasing each other into never-ending loops as she tried to come up with a new plan.
“Ah yes, of course, the Conjurer of Dreams. I should have guessed,” De Gracia said. “I’m sorry our meeting must be cut short, but I have other things to do.”
“Wait,” the Witch cried. “You want to make a body, don’t you? Those fingers in your study are proof. But without a mind, it will simply be a puppet. What if I could help you give it thought? Dreams are made of thoughts, after all, and dreams are what I do best.”
Or she hoped she still could. Was her gift of dreams dependent on her consciousness, her essence, or her body? If the latter, she was truly, royally screwed.
De Gracia snorted. “I don’t want the body tothink. I want it doing as I wish.”
The Void take this man. What was it going to take to crack him? “Why not simply make a doll out of wood, then?” the Witch asked in irritation. “Why not keep using these bodies, like your footman?”
“Humans are inefficient, flawed. My aim is to construct the perfect conduit for my will. A body made from the best pieces of the best bones.”
“Wouldn’t that still make it a human—an inefficient—body?”
“Ah, but not all our bones are made of humanity.”
