When Yaya stepped into the house, the first thing she noticed was her breath—it fogged in front of her lips. The room was freezing.

  The entryway ceiling was low. Tex’s horns nearly brushed it. She tilted her head and dropped her pike to avoid scratching it.

  Sparse furniture. A small table by the door. An umbrella stand beside it. A narrow stairwell led up. Down the hall, a study door glowed faintly with wards.

  Tex leaned closer, her voice low.

  “I’m more talented than I look, y’know? I get that you don’t think I can handle this investigation – but I’m good.”

  Yaya exhaled slowly.

  “I think you can’t handle a sober conversation – let alone arcane forensics.”

  “Rude.” Yaya saw Tex turn away; some spark in her green eyes dimmed.

  “Accurate, but rude.”

  Yaya paused, rubbing the mistletoe clasp on her cloak.

  “I’m an Elf. We have a reputation for being... insufferable. Consider me living up to it. And—sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  Tex approached the door with the wards. “I don’t drink on the job – only after the job.”

  “Careful,” Yaya warned, “step away from the sigil. It’s reactive.”

  “How reactive?” Tex stepped forward and brushed her finger along the glowing edge. The sigil flared, spitting sparks

  “… Right that reactive.”

  Yaya stepped past Tex.

  “The body is in the library.”

  She raised her hands and began chanting—something in Elvish, maybe. Tex didn’t speak it, but it sounded a little uptight. Her fingers moved through crisp gestures as the mistletoe on her cloak began to glow. The warded sigil flickered. Then began to fade.

  “Are you a warlock or ...?” Tex asked.

  Yaya shook her head. “In Valenar, they called it green magic—life, death, roots, and reckoning. Here? Just a Druid with a side of Cleric. Functional, if unfashionable.”

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  The Elf looked at Tex’s pike. “I’ve never met a Barbarian who didn’t have a giant axe. The pike – it’s elegant.”

  Tex smiled. “Thank you. I can also play the bagpipes.”

  “Less elegant.”

  The door to the library opened. The cold intensified. Large spikes of ice grew from the floor and ceiling. Yaya pulled her cloak closer. Tex wished she was wearing more than her kilt.

  “Don’t touch anything.” Yaya put on a set of leather gloves.

  The library was small but appropriately sized for the late Horan Dary – middling wizard with a middling income. The shelves were mostly intact, but clearly something horrible happened in the centre of the room. A scorched sigil spread across the floor, crawling up the walls and reaching toward the lone window. Yaya crinkled her nose – it stank of dark magic. What was left of Horan Dary lay scattered across the room. An arm in one corner. His head behind the desk. A shattered window marked the path of a leg now lying in the garden outside.

  “I bet his last words were ‘I got this’.” Tex caught a glare from Yaya.

  “Do you find death funny?” Yaya asked her.

  Tex put her pike down on the desk.

  “No. I just find life cheap.”

  Yaya picked up a severed arm and examined the edge of the amputation. The edges of the wound were straight, clean. She picked up the head – more ragged, but still precise. Yaya looked out the window.

  “Can you grab that?”

  Tex vaulted easily out the window and into the garden. She picked up the leg and handed it gently towards Yaya.

  “Sorry I can’t give you a hand.”

  For a moment, Tex thought Yaya might crack a smile. She held up the leg, studying the cut. Then, almost absently, she checked between the toes—looking for something, perhaps residue or ritual markings.

  Tex watched Yaya work for a while. Then she turned to the bookshelves. Most of the shelves were untouched. A narrow gap on the top shelf. The dust was smudged, the faint outline of a missing book still visible beneath it.

  “He’s not a bad wizard.” Yaya announced, putting the head down. “Which makes it weird that someone murdered him.”

  Tex tapped the bookshelf, “They also robbed him.”

  Yaya put all the body parts on the desk, loosely in their original shape. It was respectful and touching.

  “Did you know him?” Tex asked.

  “Nope.”

  Yaya pointed to the cuts on the edges of the body parts. “These were made by blades. Sharp ones – well-made ones. But he didn’t blow himself up.”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “When I was eighteen, my parents sent me to train with a Green Magic master. He was also a Cleric of Silvanus. I spent the next eighty years training and putting people back together.”

  “They sound like assholes.”

  Yaya blinked. The comment confused her. “Who?”

  “Your parents?” Tex picked up her pike. “Who sends their child away for eighty fucking years like that’s a normal childhood?”

  She shrugged at Tex. “It’s what happens when you’re … when things are expected of you.”

  Tex held up a hand. “Wait, how old are you?”

  She took off her gloves one at a time and put them in her cloak. “I think next week is my one-hundred and first birthday.”

  Tex winked.

  “You don’t look a day over eighty-five.”

  It wasn’t true, of course. But Tex, a Tiefling from Baldur’s Gate, didn’t know any better.

  She didn’t see the too-warm tone of her skin. The shade of her hair. The slight droop of her ears.

  It was sweet, though.

  “You owe me a god damn lemon cake.”