Witchmarked (World's First Wizard Book 1) by Aaron Schneider (namjoon book recommendations txt) 📗

“I hung it on the racks, along with the file,” she remarked, watching the cup mildly. “If we fold or bundle it up, we’re likely to get creases and seams we don’t want. They’d fade with time and use, but we might as well avoid it if we can.”

“Good, good.” Milo nodded over-eagerly. He knew his behavior bordered on manic, but he couldn’t stop.

Imrah peered at him, looking weary around the eyes, though her human guise remained as vigorous as ever.

“I suppose your success makes you think you can keep doing things like this?”

“Yes, yes, it does,” Milo said as he bounced on the balls of his feet. “Now that I know how the connection drains me over time, I can be prepared. Dump the details into the hide and then break the connection. Simple, simple, simple.”

Imrah nodded and sighed.

“Yes, it seems so,” she muttered. She lifted the cup from the flame as little gray wisps emerged. “We’ll have to be careful it doesn’t kill you, but these sorts of skin-coats are relatively simple. Your control is amazing with the blood, but the drain on you physically is a concern. When you begin to learn about protective coatings and replicative adaptations, it will be more dangerous, and I can’t imagine you could pull off extra-dimensionals powered by blood alone.”

Milo was nodding rapidly, taking in the information and pairing it with fanciful, frantic imaginings. His mind caught on extra-dimensionals.

“What are those?” he asked, then remembering he hadn’t said the words out loud, added: “Extra-dimensionals, I mean.”

Imrah smiled wickedly through the saturnine vapors.

“How do you think I carried all these things from Ifreedahm?”

Milo balked and stared around the room, his magically stimulated mind tumbling into a freewheeling spin.

“What? Really? All of it? WHAT?”

Imrah chuckled and held the cup out to him.

“Drink,” she instructed.

His mind still spinning, Milo took the vessel and threw back its scalding contents in one wincing swallow.

“Ugh, that hurt,” he said, but his discomfort hardly slowed his train of thought. “Imagine what we could do with that? It would be incredible. It could revolutionize everything, everything! Why, we—”

“Milo,” Imrah said firmly.

His mind was working so quickly he could hardly see her.

“No, just wait—”

“Milo!” she snarled

“What?” he shouted back.

“The elixir I just gave you is a restorative,” she explained with forced calm. “It is going to counteract the nightwatch I gave you in a few minutes. Unless you want to pass out on this floor, you best get upstairs to something soft!”

After losing a day to sleep, Milo’s world accelerated very quickly.

While he’d slept, Lokkemand had arranged for all the corpses they would need to be stored in the empty home next to Milo’s “lab.” The official explanation was concerns of the dead being infected by a deadly fungus that a specialist needed to examine. The combination of location and the rumor of disease-spreading corpses assured them that Milo could carry out the operation unmolested.

When he had awakened from his alchemically enhanced stupor, Rihyani and her companions had arrived with all the supplies they would require to make skin-coats for the rest of the dead soldiers. Imrah had vanished again, and Milo was in no rush to start the process just yet since the fey brought the supplies in after nightfall. Milo supposed Imrah would arrive soon, and if she didn’t, he would start without her after he shared a meal with his bodyguard and the contessa.

The fey companions, whose names Milo still didn’t know, had elected to leave as soon as their duty was discharged.

The food, sandwiches made from dense field biscuits, canned meat, and local goat cheese, weren’t bad, but the smell of the moldering corpses next door was ever-present. They’d eaten in silence, forcing down bites, trying to ignore the scent of putrefaction.

Ambrose had managed to find some coffee and was brewing a pot whose smell seemed to drive off the worst of the odor next door. This, combined with the plummeting temperatures of the arid world outside, meant the stink was muffled.

“Any news from the Bashlek?” Milo asked as he brought the contessa her cup on the second-floor veranda. Rihyani decided to smoke one of her cigarillos there in the hopes of not offending Imrah whenever she returned. Milo had at first worried at the stir such a luminous and unearthly creature might cause, even when they were nestled away from most eyes, but she’d insisted she would make certain they were unobserved.

“Thank you,” the fey lady said as she took the cup. “There is quite a bit of news from Ifreedahm, not all of it from our friend Marid.”

“Do tell,” Milo urged as he struck a match to light the hand-rolled cigarette hanging from his lip. Ambrose had also found a way to replenish their tobacco in excess of the commissarial allotments.

Rihyani blew out a plume of smoke, and it turned to silver filigree in the light of the moon before dissipating. She sighed, her eyes distant, then took a sip of the coffee.

“Humans and their marvels,” she muttered, then looked at Milo standing at the doorway. “Won’t you come stand next to me as we talk? I so rarely get to enjoy tobacco and coffee with anyone.”

Milo hadn’t brought his coat with him, and even from where he stood, he felt the night prickling his skin with gooseflesh. All the same, he steeled himself, thankful that he had hot coffee, warm smoke, and a fetching creature like the contessa to fight the chill.

“So long as you plan to tell me about that news,” he said, puffing on his cigarette as he came to stand beside her. “Among most humans, making comments like yours and providing nothing is called ‘being a tease.’”

Her wine-dark eyes studied him for a moment as her head tilted to the side, and one corner of her mouth hitched up in a wry grin.

“Can’t two friends just enjoy a moment together? Very soon, you’ll be back to your schemes, and I’ll make busy running my errands. Can’t we