The Villain reached back, quickly ripping the sign from the animal. “Give me that, you little traitor.” His words came out on a growl, which morphed quickly into a cough when he saw Evie’s and her sister’s amused expressions.
After dipping into a small curtsy, Lyssa spun on her heel, then ran back toward the edge of the house, where two other little girls waited. All of them giggled as they ran off.
“She’s in big trouble,” Evie said grumpily.
“Go easy on her—she’s young,” The Villain said diplomatically.
Evie turned toward him, planting her hands on her hips, a look of mock outrage on her face. “Aren’t you supposed to be evil?”
“Encouraging children to neglect their education fits under that bracket, does it not?” He tilted his head as if considering it.
Plucking a stray weed from the walkway and then another, Evie said, “Where did the name Trystan come from, anyway?”
“My mother, I imagine.”
Evie straightened like a rod, slowly dropping the weeds and coming to stand, staring at him with wide, unflinching eyes. “Are you saying…the name you just gave my younger sister…is your real name?”
Disbelief overrode her senses even further when he squinted in confusion. “There’s no need to overreact, little tornado. It’s just a name.”
“Like the deadlands it is!” she sputtered. Trystan. His name was Trystan Maverine.
“If you’re having some sort of episode, may I suggest you sit before you faint and crush the tulips?”
“You’re being far too casual about this. You just told a ten-year-old, who can barely lie about a fictitious school holiday, let alone the identity of my ‘employer.’” She began pacing up and down the walkway, trying to regain some of her equilibrium, but her frenzied brain was buzzing, keeping coherent thoughts out of focus.
“I shared a name. One that nobody else knows me by. My identity as ‘The Villain’ and as Trystan Maverine have never been connected.” His face was a mask of calm, his voice steady. “Nobody will know working for me means working for The Villain. Do not distress yourself.”
“I wasn’t worried about that,” she said. “I was worried about the danger it would put you in.”
His head reeled back as if she’d slapped him. “Do not take it upon yourself to worry about my safety, Sage. Your job is quite literally to ‘assist’ me in the areas I request. My protection, you will find, is not included on the list.”
“Fine. I won’t,” she huffed, turning in the direction of the front door, but her anger dissipated when she replayed his name once more in her mind. “Trystan?” She spun around.
Something about his name on her lips must have triggered an unpleasantness, because she caught sight of the fist of his ungloved hand tightening, his knuckles turning white.
“It’s really…Trystan?” She frowned.
“Do you dislike the name?” he asked dryly.
“No…it’s just…not what I expected.” She leaned back on her heels, noticing dark clouds coming over the horizon.
“I am going to regret this with an alarming intensity, but what were you expecting?” He had his head slightly leaned away, as if she was about to strike him.
Smiling crookedly, taking a step toward him, she dealt her first blow. “Fluffy.”
The response was beautiful.
His mouth gaped open like a fish. Opening and closing, trying to find the right words. But of course, there were none. She clasped her hands behind her back, waiting.
After a few moments of silence that for once Evie didn’t mind, he said, “Fluffy? You looked at me and thought to yourself, He looks like a Fluffy?”
The name in the rough gravel of his voice, which seemed to be getting higher pitched in his outrage, sent her tittering.
“Fluffy is a beautiful name. I had a dog named Fluffy once.” She nodded succinctly and then deadpanned, “He used to growl at lint.”
The noises coming out of him were not in any language she’d ever heard.
“I suppose Trystan is a fine substitution,” she continued. “I am, however, a little offended you trusted my sister with that information before you told me.”
He seemed to come back to himself then, shaking his head, looking a bit dizzy. “I didn’t think I needed to tell you. My real name is on a small plaque on my desk.”
Evie pursed her lips. “No it’s not. I would’ve noticed.”
He mumbled something under his breath that she couldn’t hear, but it sounded like, “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
But then Evie replayed his office in her mind, recalling the layout of his desk. In her defense, it was hard to look at anything else when his presence demanded every ounce of her attention. But she did recall a little black rectangle in the back corner and…
“Huh, maybe it is there.”
“It’s not a maybe,” he said in disbelief. “It is.”
She waved a hand carelessly in front of her. “Yeah, yeah, sure.”
“I—” He paused and angled his body back toward the carriage. “I think I must leave before my head spins right off my neck.”
Evie nodded. Her work here was done. “Very well. Have a safe trip back. Thank you again for the ride home—oh, and the saving-my-life part as well.”
“I would accept your thanks if it wasn’t being employed by me that put your life in danger in the first place.” He hoisted himself up into the carriage, and Evie was surprised at the surge of melancholy that cascaded over her at seeing him leave.
“I’ll be at work bright and early tomorrow, sir, to make up for the day.”
“There’s no need, Sage. Take tomorrow off.” He pulled the loose glove back onto his hand, tightening his cloak around his neck.
“But why? I’m fine,” she argued.
“I’m well aware. However, the work I need your help with won’t be in the office but in the field.”
The words froze Evie in her tracks. “In the field? Are you going to make me light an empty cottage on fire? Steal a litter of puppies? Or something…grosser?”
He chuckled. “Relax, Sage. Nothing gruesome. You can wipe the lurid thoughts of blood and destruction from your mind.”
“I wouldn’t say my thoughts of blood and destruction are lurid,” she corrected, scrunching her nose.
“If you’re not opposed, I’ll need your help tomorrow evening at the Redbloom Tavern, eight o’clock.”
The Redbloom Tavern was not the seediest establishment around, but it was certainly no palace, either. Evie had gone once on a whim with a few girls in her village on her eighteenth birthday. The beer was stale, the wine tasted of vinegar, and the people were filthy and loud. All in all, she had quite enjoyed herself.
“Very well. But may I ask what you could possibly need, work-wise, at a tavern?”
He rubbed his jaw before taking the reins in both hands. “The bomb that was planted in my office.”
The mention of it brought back the smoke, the panic, the frantic beating of her heart, and she sucked in a breath.
“I recognized the timepiece. There’s only one man who could make and sell that sort of watch, the kind that can be hooked and aligned with explosives.”
“And he works at the Redbloom Tavern?”
His lips twisted downward, the dark clouds above casting a pallor of gray light on him. “He owns it.”
He looked to Evie once more with that wary sense of expectation. Like he was waiting, wondering if this was the request that would make her turn her back, would make her run.
But her stubbornness and lack of self-preservation had carried her this far. She stepped forward and nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow night, sir.”
A flash of relief shone on his face for just a moment before disappearing behind a mask of indifference. A sudden noise from his lips, urging the horses into action, and then he was gone.
Evie looked at the spot where his carriage had been. Where he’d just stood. Her front yard would never quite be the same place again.
And then it started to rain, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a very bad omen of things to come.
Chapter 12
Evie
It was cold tonight.