Burn Me Deadly: An Eddie LaCrosse Novel by Alex Bledsoe

happened. So they’d retreated to the woods, where they lived basically in hiding from the outside world.
    I’d met people like this before, and there was no convincing them with logic. So I just smiled, nodded and drank as much of the corrosive tea as I could manage despite my stomach’s increasing protests. I wondered how late Mother Bennings stayed at her office, and how extensive was her collection of antidotes.
    “I’m sorry for the mess,” Bella Lou said as she put the kettle back on the hearth. I noticed she drank no tea herself.
    “It’s still neater than my place,” I lied. “So tell me about these dragon people.”
    She sat opposite me. “I thought you knew about them already,” she said suspiciously.
    “I do; I’d just like to compare notes.”
    She smiled. She had all her teeth, although a couple appeared destined for the dentist’s pliers. “You first.”
    Well, no way around that; smoothly done, LaCrosse . So I gave her the sum total of what I knew. “There aren’t very many of them, they’ve got a place hidden around here somewhere and they aren’t afraid to hurt people to get what they want.”
    She nodded. “That’s them, all right. When they first came here, we tried to be friendly and get to know them. In the woods, you always like to find out who you can trust, because you never know when you might need a hand. But whenever we’d run up on one of them, they’d get all crazy and chase us away.”
    “How long ago did they come here?”
    “About a month ago, I reckon. The first time I saw one, I was out gathering berries up near the tree line. The dirt’s all washed away there, and there’s places where it’s nothing but boulders. That’s where he was, at one of those rocky spots. He didn’t see me at first. He had a stick, like a fishing pole, about twice as tall as he was, with a rag tied on the end the way you’d make a torch. He even poured something that looked like lamp oil all over it. But he didn’t light it; he just started shoving it into the cracks between rocks, as far as it would go, real carefully, like he was . . . I don’t know, painting the insides of those crevices and things.”
    “What did he look like?”
    “He was a young guy. Had on nice clothes under a big camouflage cloak. The clothes made me think he was town trash—no offense—but he moved around like he was used to being outside.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “He kept painting cracks for a long time, very methodically, like it was his job or something. He didn’t notice me. Finally he stopped, and I decided to say hello. I thought maybe he’d lost something down in the rocks, and I could get Toy or Stick to wiggle down and get it for him. I asked if he needed any help.”
    “What did he do?”
    She chuckled. “He screamed at me and threw a knife. He called me a nosy whore and said he’d kill me if I ever told anyone I’d seen him.”
    “He threw a knife at you?”
    “Yeah. He just missed me. It stuck in a tree right by my head. I grabbed it and ran. Luckily I know these woods like I do this tabletop, because he came after me. But once I got out of sight, there was no way he could’ve found me. He looked for quite a while, though, screaming and cursing at me the whole time.”
    “Do you still have the knife?”
    “ ’Course. Want to see it?”
    I nodded. She went to a trunk-sized box shoved up against the wall and opened it. Light glinted from the blades of a dozen knives clipped to the inside of the lid, ready for the day the king’s soldiers came to arrest them, I supposed. She picked one, pulled it loose and closed the box.
    She handed it to me: five inches long, perfectly balanced and sharp on both edges. If you didn’t know about knives you’d never pick this one, because it was about as visually impressive as a nice letter opener. But I did know, and it told me that if the screaming guy had wanted to hit her, he probably could have. This was a pro’s throwing