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"I don't know who that is," I told her.
The woman laughed. Her teeth were filed into points.
"You don't know who you are?" she asked me.
"I know I'm not Ana
The woman laughed again, and I knew it was pointless to lie. I wished to the deep dark sea that I had waited for Naji to finish his magic.
"Who are you?" I asked.
She tilted her head and little lights danced in the shadows around her. Whenever I looked at them I felt dizzy.
The woman drifted up beside me. It took me a minute to realize that she didn't have feet, that her skirts ended in a cloud of creeping mist that got up under my clothes, all cold and damp. Those little lights swirled outside my line of vision, and I used all my willpower to keep my sight focused on the bridge of her nose. I knew better than to look her in the eye.
"Surely you know," she said. "You've met my kind before. Harbor. Although she did insist on a fully human body." The woman laughed. "Stupid of her. At least she bled all over your world and not mine."
"That ain't what I'm talking about. I know you ain't human." I took a deep breath and steadied myself. "You know my name. Only seems fair I know yours."
The woman gazed at me for a long time. I stood my ground, even though the mist crept and crept around me.
"You can call me Echo," she said.
"You expect me to believe that's your name?"
"I didn't say it was my name. I said it's what you can call me." She gave me this sly, slow smile that reminded me of a fox. It showed just enough of her teeth.
"So what do you want?"
"Now that," she said, "I'm certain you already know."
"You'd be wrong." A lie, of course. I knew damn well what she wanted.
She stared at me for a long time, like she couldn't decide if I was lying or just that stupid. I could tell she figured either one was a possibility.
"Your companion," she said finally. "The assassin."
"Oh, him." I frowned. "I don't know where he is."
She tilted her head. "Don't confuse me with Harbor," she said. "I've been doing this much, much longer than she. That charm she lent you was one of my own devising. It should have worked. But the assassin had taken precautions I didn't realize."
The woman ghosted her hand along the line of my throat, coming close but never quite touching. I could feel Naji's charm pressing against my heart. "You seem to have taken precautions yourself."
"Figure I can't be too careful, out in the wild."
She drifted closer. Her body gave off cold the way a normal person's gives off heat. She still didn't touch me, though, and I figured I could thank Naji's charm for that.
"You can still help me," the woman said. "It will be of your own accord, and that way is always better. And I would never expect you to work for free."
Her silvery eyes drifted over my face and came to rest on the charm.
"Oh yeah?" I asked. "What would you give me?"
She laughed. "Whatever you want."
"Money? Empire money, I mean, not some worthless Mist coins."
"We can acquire wealth, yes. Human wealth."
I looked past her, to the gray space where she'd first appeared. It shimmered in the trees, a thundercloud that lost its way out of the storm. From where I stood, the Mists were grayness. They were nothing.
"My lord would be pleased if you brought him the assassin," she said. "He would grant you a boon." She smiled. "A hundred boons."
Her hand traced over the line of my forehead. She couldn't touch me, but it was still like walking straight into a typhoon.
And I got these pictures in my head. Me with my own ship, sleek and tall, with sails the color of blood. And that ship of mine, she had a crew that listened to me even though I was a woman, and together we sacked the coasts of Qilar and all the lands of the Empire. The Confederation fell cause of me and that ship. All Confederation pirates became part of my armada, and I ruled the oceans, the richest woman in the world. I took lovers more handsome than Tarrin of the Hariri, more handsome than Naji. I wielded Otherworld magic that put the seas under my control and gave me power over typhoons and squalls and sunshine and steering winds.
I became the most perfect version of myself, fierce and terrifying and even beautiful.
I wanted to take her up on it. I wanted to wrench that charm off my neck and stomp it into the ground and race through the woods till I found Naji crumpled up in pain in the shack. I wanted to, cause on the surface it was the most common-sense thing to do. Always take the money, Papa said. You can always doublecross on the deal later if you don't like the terms.
But I also wanted to do it cause Naji didn't see me, he would never see me, and for reasons I couldn't decipher, that bothered me.
I wanted to do it. I just couldn't do it.
I stepped away from her, my forehead damp from where she'd almost touched me.
"You liked that, didn't you?" she asked.
"It had appeal, ain't go
Echo's eyes turned flat as mirrors. Darkness roiled through the woods. The trees shook. The earth rumbled.
"You can't hurt me," I said, thumping the side of Naji's charm with my thumb. "I ain't afraid of you."
She bared her teeth, sharp and bright, and let out a low, snaky hiss. But I was right. She didn't move to attack. I was protected.
"Protected?" she sneered. "You think you're protected?"
"Course I do. You can't even touch me." I tried not to think about her reading my thoughts.
"Why do you think you threw your sword into the woods?" Her voice was nothing human. She glided up to me, and there was that cold dampness again, but I held my ground. "I can control you, I can force you to lead me to him–"