Before you ask me what business I’ve got making deals with strange beautiful women, I’ve got to tell you a little bit about myself: I’m a Summers. Our Clan is a mess of deals and gambles that span generations. We’re bad decisions, the family tree edition. But we’re also still alive when we technically shouldn’t be. We gamble, we live, we earn, and we die. Everything between the moment we’re born and the second we’re backstabbed in a dingy alley or musty little bar is just survival. My uncle says we’re like roaches. My aunt says we’ve got the luck of the Gods on our sides. Dear old mom used to spit on those ideas, because to her, we’re just too stubborn to lay down and die.

  Even if we’ve got every single right to call it quits, it’s kinda just not in our nature. If some guy in a trench coat came and told me he’s got an elixir that’ll quadruple my Magical Potential, then I’d probably beat him over the head with a brick and steal it from him, even if the only thing it’ll give me is the shits for a week. We take what we can get, because the world doesn’t give the Summers Clan much apart from the body you’re born with. Hell, just ask Uncle Joey what he thinks about my mom and you’ll get the picture that we don’t even really have each other.

  If we did have each other, then I wouldn’t be in this mess. But I am, and that’s just how the dice roll.

  So when I gasp awake inside the stuffy darkness of a trunk, I’ve got a grin already on my face. Ha! Don’t know who the lady in the armor is, but if she’s the reason I’m alive again, I owe her the world over. It’s a tiny space. So small I can hardly move without pressing the top of my head against the sidewall of the trunk. My hands are bound tight and my shoes are gone. My ankles are being held together by zip ties and rope, and I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that I’m not alone in here. As the car grumbles and rattles, banging against potholes that slam me against the top of the trunk, I squirm around, searching for… There she is. She’s been put inside a bloody sack.

  “Jane,” I hiss. The sack says nothing, so I’m forced to use my feet to roll the bag closer until she’s at my knees, then my chest. I use my fingertips and teeth to rip a hole through the old, greasy canvas until I see her face.

  My smile vanishes almost immediately. Her jaw is skewed to the side. Gums are bloody and torn up, meaty and bleeding. Her hair is missing in clumps around her head, as if they took turns throwing her around and kicking her like some kind of soccer ball. She splutters and moans weakly. A single tear escapes through a swollen shut eye.

  She gurgles and says something I can’t make out, then she whimpers and softly cries.

  I swallow past the lump in my throat. “It’ll be fine,” I whisper. “I promise.”

  On my brother’s grave, I swear it.

  Not too long, and the car slows to a sudden stop. I pull the bag gently over Jane’s head again as best as I can and shut my eyes, lying limply in the dark on old pieces of rope, a jack, and a spare tire. It hurts my ribs being here, but my heart is beating hard against my chest like a war gong. I force my hands to relax and stop myself from digging my fingernails into my palms. I can still hear Jane whimpering inside the bag. Scared as all hell, just like a part of me is, I’ll admit, as the trunk swings open. The smell of sewage pours inside the space, filling my nose and lungs. I almost gag, but don’t. Three people are standing over me, talking amongst themselves in tiny whispers.

  As if they’re afraid of being found, and if I was them, I would be too, ‘cause they’ll be dead soon.

  Mark my fuckin’ words.

  “Beck,” a raspy voice says. “Grab the Mage. Haul her to Grim first. He’ll bag us our bounty.”

  “What about the head?” a thick-accented voice says. Something Old World. A little like a cousin I once knew. Where the hell am I? “I mean, she’s a talking head. She’s gotta have at least a little bit of magic inside her.”

  The feeling of Jane’s cloth bag against my arms vanishes. “I’ll take her,” the main voice says.

  One of them hasn’t spoken yet. Beck, that’s who. The one the bodily grabs me like a pig carcass out of the trunk and lays me on their shoulder. I try not to flinch when a hand smacks my rear, followed by laughter from the accented one and the raspy one. I hear the trunk slam shut, my eyes still closed. The stink of sewage only gets worse the longer I’m carried. The sound of torrents of water surging into an abyss starts to put the pieces into place. I’m somewhere south of Dogway, where all the reused water in the forges comes down from to get recycled. Some kinda water plant. Old, I’m guessing, because the stench of Nectar is in the air, too. I hear the familiar rattle of a spray can. The hissings and jeers of other people wanting a piece of the pie, whether that’s chunks of me or just the cash they want to get, I’ve got no idea. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck. They’re whistling, striding. Joking and so proud, too.

  But I know one thing, and that’s the fact that the bitch who shot me isn’t one of them. She took my sword and my dagger, and would have probably carved the runes right off my arms if these guys didn’t want to sell me.

  Because what good is a cow if you’ve already taken bits and pieces from it before even selling it.

  I hear a heavy metal door groan open. I risk opening one eyelid. Vomit-green light illuminates a stairwell filled with people loitering on the stairs, drinking beer, snorting fairy dust, and asking what the three of them have in their arms this time around. The thickness of the air in the place only gets worse, almost choking. My heart gets a little bit quicker against my chest. When’s go time, Kacey? But I need my stuff back, and that means I have to wait.

  Finally, we reach the bottom of the stairs. Beck shoves open a door, its breath huffing hard against the mask it’s got on its face. It reeks of raw meat, the wet kind flush with blood. Some kind of Orc? Probably. One that’s not had a good time of it, judging by how it limps and grunts as it walks, struggling to keep me on its shoulder without letting me slip out of its grip. The hallway beyond the door is silent. So silent I’m scared one of them will hear my heart hammering away inside of my chest. Then we stop, the stink of sickly sweet cigarettes burns my throat as one of them bangs their palm against something metallic. We wait. Nothing happens. They bang even harder. Something rattles open, like the sound of a shop opening in the morning. Then I hear a sigh and a grunt.

  “What’ve you got for me this time?” a man asks tiredly. Another quiet sizzle. Another cloud of smoke.

  Must be that guy they were talking about. Grim, or whatever.

  I’m dropped very roughly onto a counter top, my head smacking against the hard metal. It’s got stains all over it. Blood. Ash. Cigarettes and scars that look like bullet grazes and knife carvings, like I’ve just been put on some kind of board used for dicing up slabs of meat. I’m not the first to be put on display on this table. Probably won’t be the last either. I try not to let the pulsing headache of pain beating in the side of my head get the better of me as a pair of cold, gloved hands start prodding and checking, rolling me onto my back. My gut is pressed and my shirt is lifted, and then so is my compression bra. I try not to anger. Try very, very hard to stay calm as those same hands fondle and touch and let my shirt fall. I feel like meat on a spit. My arms are lifted and a blade is put to them. Not cutting, just grazing the ice cold metal tip along the black runes on my skin. A huff, a grunt, then I’m on my belly. The back of my legs get squeezed. My toes are counted. I hear muttering under his breath when he finds the nail wound. Grim lifts my shirt up again, staring hard at my back, and then I hear a chorus of whistles from them.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Hell’s angels,” the raspy voice says. “Girl’s got some ink.”

  “And a cloak o’ scars, too,” Grim mutters.

  He spends time massaging each of them. Some are fresher than others, so fresh that pain spikes through my body, almost making me gasp. I bite down onto my tongue to shut myself up, trying not to wince, but I also can’t help but wonder what the hell they’re talking about. The only tattoos I’ve got are the ones on my arms and one on the side of my neck—a tiny little symbol, nothing else. My back is clean apart from the web of scars and stitches.

  “That’s gonna bag us more, right?” the accented one says. “Runes like that go for double nowadays.”

  “Unrecognized,” Grim grunts, turning me over once more. He rams his thick, sausage-like fingers into my mouth (nearly gagging me, mind you, as he tugs on my tongue and pulls my cheeks wide apart until they hurt), and then he begins fondling around my teeth, pausing on the silver tooth fillings I’ve got in a few of my molars. I hear clattering, then taste something metallic in my mouth. Don’t pull, don’t pull, please don’t pull. Maybe it’s the Gods or that lady in the armor, but he seemingly changes his mind and stops. “Ain’t ever seen the one on her back. Gonna charge you extra if I’ve gotta go looking for what it means. Might cut your pay by nearly a third if you want that.”

  “What!” the raspy one says. A fist slams on the metal counter. “That’s centaurshit and you know that!”

  Silence, then: “Get your paw off my table before I take it as collateral.”

  The raspy one obliges, albeit from encouragement from the others.

  “Besides,” Grim grunts. “Might be some family hex. This’ll cost you more regardless for my sake. For all I know, I get one of my boys to start peeling off the flesh, and suddenly I’ve got the Rott eating through everything.”

  “Fuckin’ cheapskate,” Raspy mutters. “You just want extra cash.”

  “How much more?” Accent asks, speaking over their friend..

  “Why don’t we ask her?”

  Then a fist slams into my gut, and I can’t help but gasp and sputter awake. I cough saliva and curl into a ball out of reflex. My head is woozy. My eyes try to focus through the lingering smoke above me. Then I see Grim, and if Ricky was unfortunate, this guy is bad luck, the person. He’s got an Orc’s single tusk sticking out of his mouth, but the rest of him is ugly and human. His skin is pale and covered in warts. One of his eyes is stitched shut, the other is wide open and beady. He’s got a pig’s snout and tufts of gray hair dotting his large dome. I try to scoot away from him, but he’s large. Very large. And chained, I notice, to his desk. His ankle is wrapped with heavy black steel coils welded to a slab of iron, but he grabs my jaw and wrenches my face toward him, ripping my gaze away.

  “Fuck!” the raspy one says. Human. A kid with ratty blonde hair, goggles around his neck. Scrawny, ugly, smells like shit and has a sword on his belt, as well as one hell of a jagged pink scar along his throat. “Thought—”

  “You idiots thought she was dead?” Grim snarls. “Mages are like roaches. Step on ‘em and they’ll live.”

  “She was shot,” the accented one says. Tall, slender, sleek and dark skinned. I can’t tell what they are with that mask covering their face. Some kind of gas mask without the nozzle. “I’m sure that usually means they die.”

  “Then you three were just askin’ for it,” he grumbles. “Where’s the fourth one of ya?”

  “She hates this place,” Raspy says. “Figured we should cash in and then bounce.”

  She’s gone to sell my stuff. I spit on him in particular, just for some showmanship.

  His eyes flare and he grabs the baseball bat off Accent’s back and nearly swings. Grim catches the old, nail driven-through-it thing and wrenches it free from his hands. “No pay for damaged goods,” he snarls quietly, using the bat to tap a glowing neon sign above us. Grim throws the bat back at Raspy, who stumbles and fails to catch it.

  “What’s the rate looking like?” Accent says, tilting their head at me. All I can see is my own blood smeared face in their large goggles. They toss Jane onto the counter beside me, the bag slipping off. “Including her, too.”

  Grim grunts. “‘bout ten hundred bucks old world. Five thousand silver. One thousand gold. Ten Drachma.”

  “What the fuck, man?” Raspy says, throwing his hands into the air. “She’s a prime haul! She chased us down and rammed a freaking motorbike at our ride, and still got up and iced two of Cleo’s shadows, man! She’s gotta be more than a handful of gold.” He leans over myself and the counter, and now I’ve got his foul-smelling shirt in my nose. “Tell you what? We’ll take these two somewhere else and get a way better price for them, Grim.”

  “Take ‘em,” he says, folding his thick arms. He’s got four of them. The two others sprouting from his sides are stumpy and flailing, fiddling with their own fingernails. “Won’t get any better offer than here for these things.”

  “You know what—”

  Accent grabs his shoulder and shoves him out of the way. “Eleven drachma, and we’ll toss in this.” They dig into their pocket and set something metallic down on the counter beside me. I struggle to turn over, trying not to make myself seem like too big of a threat, and then I pause, because that’s my pendant on the table. “And now?”

  Grim stares at it, then plucks it off the table, but not before Accent snatches it away.

  “You get it only for the thirteen drach.”

  “I ain’t no ‘smith,” he grunts. “And you just said eleven.”

  “Money is money, gold is gold,” Accent says. “You’re lucky I’m even asking for just three extra drach.”

  “Hey,” I hiss. None of them look at me, except for Beck, who’s a monster of some kind; some ungodly creature standing behind them, lost in the flickering lights and the glum cigarette smoke. Beck’s eyes glow softly, almost gleaming in the dark. Beck shifts, rolling the shoulder I’d been on, grunting in pain. “That’s mine. Give—”

  Raspy slams the bat onto the table right next to my head. I flinch as one of the nails slices open my cheek, letting my blood slowly pool around my face, warm and stick. He grins wide. “What’s the matter, magi? ‘fraid?”

  Accent shoves him. “We’ve already caught her. Don’t need to add a slur.” They look at Grim. “Well?”

  Grim grabs it. “Twelve, for being loyal customers.” He smiles an ugly, rotten, yellow-tooth smile. He fishes around underneath the desk and hands over a fist full of glittering golden coins. More money than I’ve ever seen. So much money that I almost lunge for it—I do lunge for it, sinking my teeth into Grim’s thick fingers and flooding my mouth with the foul taste of blood and leather and unwashed flesh. He curses and punches the side of my head. I daze and let go. The coins clatter onto the table and the floor, denting the metal and smacking hard onto the stone.

  “Little bitch,” he snarls, wrapping his finger with his t-shirt. He grabs my shirt collar and tosses me behind his counter. I hit the floor with my shoulder, the wind knocked out of me. Jane gets thrown down on the floor beside me, half her face smashing into the floor. I wince and try to grab her, just before the portal runes I’ve landed on begin to hum and glow, turn bright purple, and swallow us both whole. Last I see of Grim, he’s glaring down at me, my pendant sliding between his fingers, bloodied by the skin I took off his hand. The bastard has the nerve to smile.

  And to blow me a kiss, too.