Dosthy?

She’d never heard that word before. And she wasn’t sure what that black flicker over Earnest’s scales meant. For all the shit she’d seen and done over the last twenty years, and the arrogance she’d accumulated on the way as a result, clearly there were some important gaps in her knowledge.

Well, lucky for her, Ronnie was now glued to her very own grekelhind… for however long this bullshit lasted. The second grekelhind, this Binks character, however, was nothing like Earnest and everything like the sleazy greks she was used to bagging for Vent. 

Binks probably never bothered with glamours, half or full, enjoying how it unbalanced humans seeing a color changing lizardman walking around. In his true planar form right now, Binks was rather small, barely topping ten feet, dragonfly shaped wings tucked neatly against his back. Covered from head to toe in true scales, claw hands and feet, elongated snout — the whole nine. To the uneducated, he was a dragonkin, and shits like Binks leaned into the allure of dragon fiction to get into humans’ pants and rob them blind.

If people had any idea what an actual dragon looked like? Ronnie shuddered, but her attention snapped back to the conversation at hand now that they seemed to actually be getting somewhere. Fucking finally.

Binks just shrugged, fluttering his wings with indifference. “Why would I care about something like that?” Then he smiled and reached out for Ronnie, but Earnest smacked his hand away before she could react. “I mean, it looks like you’re doin’ all right... got yourself a nice little meal ticket over here, Frenchie.” 

Earnest stepped forward, a loud growl rumbling in his chest. “I got pinched by Vent, you moron!” Without warning, he’d grabbed Binks by the wings, causing him to let out a screech of pain. “What the fuck did you do?” 

“NOTHING!” Binks howled. “I didn’t do a damn thing! Someone’s selling a totem! I just was here to negotiate the buy for these guys, that’s all!”

Ronnie shot Earnest a withering look. She could take care of herself and didn’t appreciate wannabe knights-in-shining armor. It would be a topic for another time ... assuming there was another time. Stepping up beside Earnest, she looked straight at Binks. “Ain’t a meal ticket, asshole. Tell us more about these guys with the totem.” 

The rest of the crowd had scattered, unsurprisingly. They had been a mix of elementals and other grekelhinds — probably younger, and definitely unwilling to get mixed up with Vent’s business.

Binks doubled down on the innocent act. “I don’t know! I don’t ask questions!”

Unphased, Earnest kept the pressure on Binks’ wings but looked up at the troll. “Anything you’d like to add before I rip the wings off your proxy?” 

“What happened to just a conversation?” Ronnie hissed at Earnest.

Earnest’s half-glamour scaling flickered into a vivid pink, the surprise reflecting on his face. Then he shook his head, anger painting his coloring in hot molten orange — the effect akin to staring into a kiln. “Well, excuse me for assuming you’d do anything to save your sisters, same as I would mine.” Now there was actual heat coming off her grekelhind partner, and Binks went bone white when Earnest’s scorching gaze fell back to him. 

Ronnie retreated half a step, driven by the implied lack of dedication to her sisters and the sudden certainty she’d drastically underestimated the creature Vent had tangled her up with.

“Why don’t you tell her how long it took to grow back your wings after you hit my sister, Binks?”

The captured grekelhind frantically waved his hands. “Nah, man that’s old business. I was just joking about Anya, all jokes. Never come near her, swear!” 

This wasn’t the right answer — Earnest repeated his question. “How long?” 

Binks winced. “Six years.” 

Ernest nodded, squeezed the delicate wing joints, and Ronnie winced at the crinkling. “Vent made me into a bridge, Binks. You know what that means for our kind, which means you not telling me what I need to know is putting Anya in danger. So I’m asking once more, and if you don’t talk, or convince your troll friend here to pony up the right answer, I’ll make sure they don’t grow back this time around.”

Binks hesitated. 

In response, Earnest’s face went perfectly calm as his scales rippled emerald blue. Then he snapped the first wing joint. 

Binks screamed. “Ok! Ok! Ok! It was Eve — she wanted to buy it! I swear, I’m not lying!” 

Earnest looked up at the troll, who gave a stony shrug as he joined the conversation. “Why would I want to leave this bridge? I like the attention.” 

Earnest exchanged a look with Ronnie, and they each ran the odds of a lie. After a second, Ronnie gave an almost imperceptible nod that Earnest returned. They agreed it was the truth, and Ronnie wondered just how she’d caught Earnest in her circle to begin with. He was clearly skilled. 

Earnest let up the pressure on Binks’ wings, and brilliant white tears streamed down his face from the relief. “Need the seller, asshole, not the buyer.” 

Binks squirmed in his grip. “I don’t know! We were supposed to be neutral ground!” 

Ronnie stepped back up, sliding a small hooked blade from its sheath on her waist and pressing it into Binks’ gut. It pricked just enough to draw a drop of blood. “Who set it up?”

Binks winced, rolling his broken wing around uselessly and glaring at Earnest. “Fuck should I know? Eve just seems to get things — you know how fucking leprechauns work.” 

Ronnie groaned. “Seriously? They’re involved in this shit?” 

The troll shrugged, ignoring the howling grekelhind. “Came up to us talking about how she was about to come into some serious magic... wanted to see if we were interested in leaving the bridge. Thought about it, but decided fleecing tourists was gonna be so much better. Asked for stronger glamours, though... figured it might be useful in keeping the sanitation workers off our backs- they keep trying to take the garbage.” The troll looked at Ronnie, then frowned. “Do you know how hard it is to get snacks when you can’t leave the bridge? I do... fuckers keep trying to take away all the good stuff!”

Ronnie stepped forward. “So are you still meeting Eve for the glamour buy?” 

The troll bobbed his enormous head. “In two days, yeah. Midnight, you know how it is.” 

To Earnest, she said, “Good a place as any to start.” Then she smirked. “Not that leprechauns have wings to break.” 

Black flickered across his scales. She still wasn’t sure what it meant, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t be very forthcoming. Earnest let the other grekelhind go, and Binks scuttled away behind the troll, his wing hanging limp. “You interfere with this at all, Binks, I’ll break the other one.” 

“And us?” The troll asked. “What do I get for keeping my mouth shut under my bridge and maybe messing up a good supplier?” 

“I can cast a temp glamour that will cover the trash for the next two days,” Ronnie offered. “And we’ll wait outside your turf, so Eve will never know you were involved.” 

The troll salivated a little, then nodded. “Done.”

Ronnie fished the coin from her bra, glanced at Earnest in warning — instead, he gave her a curt nod. Concentrating, she cut the runes for a fade and second to mask odors, then felt Earnest’s soul flicker across hers before filling the demands of the spell. 

Fuck, it was weird. 

She could almost hear him under her skin, his soul far hotter than hers. This made sense since most Grekelhinds came from a fire plane. But human magic always had an earthy tone, and Ronnie had always imaged hers to be a forest, with lots of dark corners, sunbeams and flowers, anchored by heavy old-growth trees. 

At first, she felt the irrational fear that Earnest’s soul magic would consume her, burn her forest to the ground, maybe even torch her soul in the process – an out-of-control wildfire. Instead, the flames licked through the underbrush and weeds and fallen leaves, charring and cleansing everything as it left the soil more lush than before he passed through her mental grounds. 

Ronnie stared at him after she cast. If she didn’t know it was impossible – it had to be – it felt like he’d made room for her soul to replenish itself. No, that wasn’t right. More like the ashes left behind from his passage nourished the soul she had left.

Sweat beaded across her skin, goosebumps rising, all the fine hairs on her body tickling. Earnest canted his head at her in question, and she hurriedly shook her head, her cheeks flushed. Coughed and cleared her throat, then said to the troll, “All done. We good?”

“Keep your bargain, human. Trolls have a long memory if you betray us.” 

Ronnie snorted. “It’s always ‘blame the human’ if shit goes sideways. Ugh, Earnest, let’s get out of here.” Without waiting for a response, she turned and strode away from the bridge, back towards the car. 

She didn’t love having two days of downtime. They’d have to find some way to make them productive, get a better handle on what they’d be walking into — getting ambushed was not on high on her list of fun activities. 

Earnest blinked in beside her, glamour back intact. He’d ditched the clothes from before in favor of cargo shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Dropping the aether, he shoved his hands in his pockets and matched her pace. 

They made it about two steps before she whirled on him. “Mind explaining what the fuck that was back there?”

The grekelhind stared at her, his face devoid of expression. “Told you. If it means keeping Anya safe, I’ll do anything.” 

Ronnie frowned. “Your sister isn’t involved in this.” 

Earnest rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “How long have you known about your magic, Rainmaker?” 

“You’re not making sense.” 

“Just answer the question.” 

Ronnie paused, counting the years in her head. Twenty under Vent’s tail, on the streets before that ... “Twenty-five, thirty years. Why’s it matter?” 

He’d shoved his hands back in his pockets and was looking down at the sidewalk. “And I’d wager you didn’t get much in the way of explanations, being human and all.” 

Ronnie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, educating humans is every planar’s favorite job. Nevermind the fact that deeper we get in your bullshit, the less human we turn.” 

“Then you don’t know. Being a bridge? It’s blood magic — something happens to me, it hops to the next blood kin until the job’s done.”

Ronnie went pale- she couldn’t imagine a world where one of her sisters would be stuck in Vent’s debt. Sarah was too soft, too delicate- she’d never make it out of her first job. Trish had a shot, but she was too brash, too quick to rush in. However, the ancestors had thankfully made sure that she was the only one with no magic talent at all. Trish often complained about this, but Ronnie viewed it as a blessing. She’s too much like me, she thought as she picked at her nail. She’s what I wish I could’ve been. 

“Hey,” Earnest asked, snapping his fingers in front of her face. “Earth to the Rainmaker... I asked if you were hungry, kid.” 

Blinking, she straightened up, glaring at the creature in front of her as she kicked the driver’s side door twice, a trick she’d learned long ago. “What?” 

Earnest sighed. “I said, are you hungry? I know bridge magic can pack a punch if you aren’t used to it. And,” he said pointedly, looking her up and down, “we both know you aren’t.” 

Ronnie scowled as she slid into the seat, watching as Earnest gingerly opened the door, tossing aside the burger wrapper on the seat and glaring at her as he swept for hidden crumbs. “You know, you weren’t this much of an uptight ass when you rode in here earlier.” 

“That was when I thought this was going to be a quick little jaunt,” he replied, sighing as he settled into the seat. “Looks like we got two days together... I would have taken you back to the diner... but you blew it up!”

Ronnie snorted. “That place was horrible and you know it.” 

Earnest’s eyes flickered that beautiful sunlit yellow right before he chuckled. “Yeah, aside from the milkshakes, it really was shit.” 

Beautiful? Where the fuck did that come from? Ronnie started the car and glowered. “And I told you to stop calling me kid.” 

“You said you didn’t like Rainmaker.” 

“Here’s a thought — how about my fucking name?” 

Earnest crossed his arms. “Well now, you’d have to actually introduce yourself for me to do that, now wouldn’t you?” 

She blushed. Earnest was as fucked in all this as she was, and she’d been such a bitch she hadn’t even told him her name. “Ronnie...” she mumbled, feeling chagrined. 

The grekelhind nodded and held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Ronnie.” 

She took it, surprised by how warm and soft his skin was. “Yeah, uh, you, too.”