town-all but her own death squads, some truly dead and raised from crypts to do
her bidding, some only a hair’s-breadth away from mossy graves like One-Thumb,
the Vulgar Unicorn’s proprietor, a.k.a. Lastel, and Zip, guttersnipe leader of
the PFLS (Popular Front for the Liberation of Sanctuary) rebels who couldn’t get
along without her help.
And Snapper Jo, of course, her single remaining fiend-a warty, gray-skinned,
wall-eyed beast, snaggle-toothed and orange-haired, whom she’d summoned from a
nearby hell to serve her-she still had Snapper, though lately he’d been taking
his spy’s job of day-barkeep at the Vulgar Unicorn too much to heart, thinking
silly thoughts of camaraderie with humans (who’d no more accept a fiend as one
of them than the Stepsons had accepted Roxane).
And she had her snakes, of course, a fresh supply, whom she could witch into
human form for intervals (though Sanctuary’s snakes weren’t bred for
masquerading and turned out small, sleepy in cold weather, and even more dull
witted than the northern kind).
Still, it was a pair of snakes-a butler-snake and a bodyguard-whom she called to
build a fire in her witching room, to bring her chalcedony water bowl and place
it on a column of porphyry near the hearth, to stay and watch and wait with her
while she poured salt into the water and words came from her mouth to make the
salt into her will and the water bowl into the open wounds in Sanctuary. Not
wounds of flesh, but wounds of spirit-the arrogance of loyalty given and
withheld, the gall of greed, the acne of innocence, the lacerations of love, the