Wicked as They Come by Delilah S. Dawson

forcefully than necessary.
    “Lad was acting a bit familiar,” he said, swirling the blood in his goblet with narrowed eyes. “He doesn’t speak to anyone much. I think I preferred him when he was sulky.”
    “I know him,” I said, still amazed. “I’ve taken care of his body for months. And he’s been here all along—his mind has, at least. What a strange coincidence.”
    “I don’t actually think it’s a coincidence, love,” Criminy said. “I take in whatever Strangers I find, if I can use them. I like to confound the Coppers, and misfits go well with misfits. He found us quite near here, so perhaps locations in your world coordinate somehow with locations in Sang.”
    “So you took him in just because he was a Stranger?” I asked.
    “And because of his songs. Starting to regret it a bit.”
    “And did you turn him, too?”
    “Me? Turn him? Hell, no.” He laughed, one sharp note. “That’s not a Bludman. Whatever made you think he was one of us?”
    “The way he’s dressed,” I said, feeling confused and silly.
    “Ah, that,” he said thoughtfully. “Now, that’s a different story altogether. He’s a clever boots, that one. You’ll have to ask him one day.”
    By the time we finished dinner, Casper was already gone. For Criminy’s sake, I tried to conceal my disappointment. We stepped into the twilight with calls of farewell from the carnivalleros, and I admired the stars as we strolled through the misty night. The constellations were very strange, and, just like the clouds, they seemed impossibly close. The moon hung like a broken dinner plate caught in the branches of a far-off tree.
    We stopped in front of a burgundy wagon so shiny with moonlight that I could see myself reflected in the still-wet paint. It didn’t look like the shoddy car of the ex-wolfboy, and my name wasn’t painted on the side yet, but I knew it was mine.
    “Ladies first,” Criminy said with a bow.
    I opened the door, careful to touch only the knob.
    It was lovely inside, freshly scrubbed and smelling of roses instead of old dog. A new carpet on the floor and some scratchless furnishings had turned the little wagon into a cheerful space. Criminy gestured to an open door at the end, and I found a small bedroom with an ironwork bed covered with a patchwork quilt of shimmering silks.
    “It was the best we could do on short notice,” he said with his crooked smile.
    I opened the door of an armoire crammed in beside the bed. Two more dresses hung there, and drawers held gloves and stockings. And, to my horror, a turban.
    I held the offending item out to him on one finger, a mauve jumble of layers with a big paste jewel on the front. I raised an eyebrow.
    “Costumes,” he said with a shrug. “You get used to them.”
    I tossed it back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
    “So what happens while I’m asleep?” I asked.
    “I’ll be in the other room with my books and grimoires, trying to puzzle out your peculiar condition. I don’t need much sleep.”
    “Lucky you,” I said, my gloved hand trailing over the bed. I realized how inviting the gesture might appear and jerked my hand back. He snickered, a surprisingly dark and intriguing sound that made me forget all about the handsome shipwrecked harpsichordist from my world.
    “Will it suit you?” he asked me. I took a moment to answer, part of me enjoying his anxiety.
    “I think so,” I said. “But I don’t have much to compare it to.”
    “It’s better than any city, I promise you,” he said with a sneer. “Flats jammed together, everyone cheek to jowl. The air is putrid. The streets are filthy. No matter what you do, the muck gets into your pores, under your skin. Inside, it’s very opulent and colorful and shiny, to make up for the darkness outside.”
    “Have you spent much time in a city?”
    “I was born in one. Devlin, across the sea from here. I ran away when I was nine and never went back.” He paused for a moment with an odd, faraway look.