a shed but more permanent in structure than a tent; I guess it’s a blacksmith’s stall—the anvil is my kingpin clue. It sits at the back along with the rest of what I assume is a forge setup. There’s a long wooden table up front that’s situated away from the hot surfaces and blackened tools, but close enough to be positioned under the building’s overhang for shade and, I imagine, safer from any rain should it ever fall here. So far, every day has been sunny and dry. My eyes move over the table surface cluttered with supplies, and I have to wonder if Bash ever gets crafty with this stuff. Obviously, he’s not the guy you’d think of asking to visit a Hobby Lobby with, but there’s somebody in this quarry who would appreciate a trip to that addiction trap. There are buckles and decorative conchos and all sorts of stamp and stab implements. It’s like looking at the operating table of a serious fashion surgeon.
But Bash may not have anything to do with this at all. There’s a man who I’ve seen working in here—or a hob, rather. He’s here now, occasionally shooting glances at us while he rasps something with a steel brush. He’s wearing long brown gloves that fit up to his elbows and a heavy-looking smock, with more pockets on it than some of the ones the women wear for quarry work. Then again, we work with rock; we don’t need pockets. This guy works with lots of tools. Tools he can use to shove metal stuff under hot, hot flames.
I jerk my thumb at the hob and look to Bash. “I thought you told me once that hobs don’t play with fire.”
Bash catches my hand by my fingers and brings my digits closer to his face. “I said they don’t like to. There are exceptions. Cyden is a sterling example.”
His breath is warm on my skin, and he’s touching me. These aren’t just butterflies I’m experiencing in my belly; it’s an Olympic team of women’s soccer players, and they’re freaking out for me like we’re winning the game.
I let him look at me all he wants, feeling him gently grasp my wrist and articulate my hand like he’s memorizing the special way mine and mine alone moves. My eyes keep roaming—not staring back at him, but around us, checking out the little shack and the table we’ve moved behind. Bolts of skin that hopefully aren’t human (okay, some of the skins have scales and some have feathers so those are not bona fide human hide—it’s just that most are smooth on both sides and in a concerning array of flesh tones. But I’m absolutely sure no one has been letting Bash skin and tan women) are neatly arranged one atop the other in a stack. As I already noticed, there’s a scattering of tools over the surface of the table, along with, I now see, rolls and chunks of not-human leather. “What are the skins on your table made of?” I ask, feigning total unconcern.
“Not humans, unfortunately.” Eyes heating to an unsettling emerald, Bash casts a glance of regret past me at my fellow women. “A damned waste.”
“We’re not walking bags of leather,” I inform him.
“Some of you aren’t working bags of leather either,” he counters, then turns his face far enough away so as not to deafen me when he bellows, “YOU! Yes, you, with the mane the color of stale vleip; are you here to stand and flirt?” He narrows his eyes until they’re nothing more than neon glowing slits of irritableness. “That’s right,” he agrees, answering her when she replies in the negative, and my gaze is glued to his lips, the way his scales shift as he smiles. It isn’t a nice smile, technically, and yet he is weirdly handsome when he sends her a scary smile and hisses, “Get moving.”
My eyes move to his head of quills that, unlike hair, are raising themselves up in a relaxed sort of way, an indicator of his mood, essentially saying that now that he’s done yelling at the human who dared to talk to a guy at work, he’s happy to get back to business.
“Have you heard the story of Ebenezer Scrooge yet?” I ask him.
Eyes a pleasant shade of unripe banana peels, Bash’s attention fixes wholly on me. “No, I have not. But I would like to hear you tell it.”
My heart thumps because it likes that Bash is admitting I