Choose Your Enchantment

She smelled of magic, earthy, pungent, goblin magic.

Rynne Sato, Sushi Queen, and my personal fix, stared at me with large eyes, not understanding what I was doing in her kitchen. Also, I was standing close enough that I could thoroughly identify the magic of Magga on her skin. I’d never been so close, never allowed myself within touching distance of the mostly-human witch. After ten years of handing me sushi through the door to the back alley, she wasn’t afraid of me, but she should be.

I stepped away from her, giving her the usual three feet distance.

“I heard something like bone on metal. Did you hurt yourself?” I spoke in goblin, words that no other human in the world would be able to parse, at least not a free human. Not that she was exactly free. But she didn’t know she wasn’t free, and that was the main thing.

She wrinkled her slightly freckled nose. It was the sweetest, most adorable, bitable nose in the entire world. “You heard that from outside?” Her words were in English. Usually her dark eyes would light up at the chance to practice her goblin, but not today. Had the Magga actually hurt her?

Her eyes…I suppose they weren’t terribly interesting in the color or the shape, slightly tilted almond eyes of dark brown, but the way she looked at the world, never showing fear, and then when she was interested, they lit up, sparkling like no precious jewel ever could. For such a sensible person, her obsession with my language was delightfully unexpected. Also worrisome. Worrying about Rynne Sato had become one of my biggest pastimes. And she’d allowed the Magga to touch her. That was not delightful.

I matched her English. “I also heard that you escorted the Magga to Song. Don’t you know that goblins are not to be trusted?”

It was my fault. I’d worked hard to convince her that I was nothing more than a harmless sushi addict. Her father’s sushi was excellent, but I came on Thursdays because that’s the night she was there. I had to be certain she was safe, particularly after she started working in the Growl district as a green police officer. And now, she was practically weaving on her feet, beyond exhausted from whatever the Magga had done to her.

I pulled out a chair for her and waited for her to sit.

She just kept staring at me with those irresistible eyes. Irresistible and exhausted. She was going to collapse if she didn’t sit soon.

Her words were slow, confusion obvious. “You want to take the chair with you? There’s already one at the alley table that you won’t use.”

She was so adorable. Helpless. Completely in my power. She’d been in my power for fifteen years, but hadn’t noticed yet. I spoke as gently as I could. “Sit down. Your mother isn’t here or she would be tucking you in bed and pouring broth and potions down your throat. How much of your life force did Magga drain?”

She pursed her pretty mouth in a pout. It wasn’t one of her usual expressions. That was the face she gave her mother. So cute. “Can you quantify that?”

I loved quantifying things. I could count all the ways she exhibited exhaustion, or I could do blood tests on her and count her platelets. Or I could count the breaths she took, how many blinks her mesmerizing eyes made in a minute. Or all of the above.

She said, still pouting, “You’re going to make me a broth and potions since my mother isn’t here? I never took you for the mothering type, Sashimi.”

Sashimi? She’d named me Sashimi? She was tired, or she’d never call a customer a pet name. I’d heard her call me my order, but never like this, to my face, like we actually had a relationship based on personal tags. I could call her by her pet name as well. Which would I use? Sushi Queen? Goblin Bride? Those would put up her guard no matter how adorably exhausted she was. “I am so mothering, Rynne.” I remembered my mother, human, soft, terrified of all the goblins bred for war. Terrified of me although she snuggled me anyway. Humans were so strange about physical connection. I didn’t dislike it, but it wasn’t something I craved.

“You never call me by my first name.” Her brow rose along with her chin. Such an adorable, bitable chin.

She’d noticed that I kept our lives strictly unentangled. And she thought of me as Sashimi. Was I smiling too much? Probably, but she wasn’t flinching away from my teeth the way my mother would have.

“You named me Sashimi. Does that not put us on familiar terms?” This was a different way of talking to her. Flirting. Would she notice?

That pout. Goblins didn’t kiss, but I wanted to taste that pout. 

“No. Knowing each other for almost a decade puts us on familiar terms, or it would if you weren’t the most suspicious goblin in the world.” She finally sat, nursing her elbow and grimacing in pain. She really had fallen, clumsy with exhaustion. She was usually so graceful.

“You are irritated with me? And you haven’t even tasted my vile potion yet. You are in bad shape or you would have kicked me out by now.” 

How bad was she? Speaking of quantifying, what exactly had the Magga done to my Sushi Queen? Could I touch her? That would help me gauge the state of her magic, her health, her life, but I’d never touched her before. Goblins didn’t touch casually. It was violence, or the kind of companionship that Rynne Sato, Sushi Queen hadn’t ever experienced. Happily, she didn’t know that about goblins. Humans touched each other all the time. And she was thinking of me as her mother. The thought was extremely amusing. Yes, I am so mothering.

I touched her forehead with the tips of my fingers. The feel of her was so alien, soft, delicate, with the pulse beating at her temples more rapidly as she stared at me with enormous solemn eyes. Maybe she did know that goblins didn’t touch like this.

 “Sweet bread? Is that brain?” Her sputtered words were shocking. Ah. She thought I was going to eat her brains. Interesting. Some goblins made an art out of it. The things she knew about goblins were always so interesting. Never in context, but always interesting.

I kept touching her, brushing her skin slightly as I analyzed her temperature. Also just touched her. Had anything been so soft? She smelled like the Magga and earth magic, but also like herself, the zeal of righteousness mixed with jasmine headier than any elixir.

“I believe so, yes, but I wasn’t going to make any for you at the moment. You’re feverish.” She was too hot for a human or a witch. The Magga had done something serious to her or she wouldn’t be sitting here, wondering if I was about to eat her brains without doing something about it. Her parents were in the apartment above the sushi shop. She could have called out to them, but instead, she just stared at me, letting me see all the fascinating striations of her eyes.

Wait. What was that flicker of greenish gold wrapping around her brown strands? It wasn’t human. Was this part of her witch heritage? There was something so unnatural about it, something so…goblin.

No. The Magga couldn’t have made my Sushi Queen her acolyte. Absolutely not. She was mine. I had years of her letters in my most secure vault. I had sushi from her hand to my lips, countless indirect contacts that had bound her as securely as the letters.

But those eyes were changing as I stared into them. Soon, she’d be able to see in the dark. She’d become tough-skinned, sharp-toothed, and not eligible as my goblin bride.

What to do? We stared at each other for too long, that connection between my fingers and her skin growing the binding forged by her words so long ago. I should pull away. I should give her more time to play with her city and her justice, but with the Magga imprinted on her, changing her into an acolyte, her time had just run out.

My poor, sweet, exquisite Sushi Queen.

She was already mine. And soon she’d know it.