The Mage Killer is dead.

Only a few hours ago, I was polishing his daggers, running back for his smoke bombs, checking his pistol for defects—all so we’d be prepared to enter the mages’ hideout in the sewers.  He likes to call me “Warts,” rather than “Wicks,” my preferred nickname.  He claims it’s because of my goggles, the way I keep them on my forehead.  He says they make me look like a frog.

And now he’s dead.  I’ll never be called “Warts” again.

I knew the job would be hard.  Mages, people born with the gift of magic, are dangerous foes.  An evil man with a sword is already hard to fight, but when the same man can hurl fireballs?  That’s a whole different story.  Mages require a special touch; a touch the Mage Killer was trying to teach me.

Eden places his hand on my shoulder, his metal fingers cold against my skin.  He doesn’t feel sadness, guilt, grief—not the way I do, at least.  But I like that he’s trying to pretend.  I give him a half-smile as thanks, but I know my eyes aren’t smiling.  Does he?

I look down at the body on the ground.  Samson Garland, the Mage Killer, reduced to a lump of burnt flesh.  His hands must still be warm, but I don’t dare touch them.  Why would I?  There’s no point.  He’s not here anymore.

“We should go.”  I hope speaking the command to Eden will convince me it’s the right thing to do.  Eden successfully defeated Samson’s killer, a man in a black robe, forever faceless since his head fell in the water.  It drifted down the sewer pipes with the rest of his body.  Would I feel better if I had seen it?  I don’t think so.

Eden nods silently, his porcelain mask creaking against the metal of his neck.  I made him out of scrap metal in my free time, so he looks more haphazard than you’d expect for an automaton.  His face is a cracked porcelain mask, his body a suit of armor.  The frame underneath is merely thick wire, twisted and woven into a humanoid shape.  It’s honestly a miracle that he’s survived this long.  I’ll have to make some adjustments to him later.

The tinkering was always my thing, not Samson’s.  He preferred poison and sleeping gas to the theatrics of gunpowder, but not me.  I kinda like a good BOOM, mostly to my own detriment.  A good Mage Killer knows how to hide.  We don’t have the raw power that mages do, so we have to rely on stealth.

It was the creak of my cannon’s wheels that got the Mage Killer killed.

Eden and I climb up the ladder that leads to the sewers’ exit.  I go first, removing the manhole cover and lifting my cannon into my arms, trying not to collapse from the metal’s weight.  I won’t let myself drop it.  I can’t.  I spent too much time making it, and at this moment I can’t help but wish I had made it lighter.  Going down the ladder was easier, but lugging it back up?  I feel like I’m going to pass out.

I try not to replay his last moments in my head, but I can’t help it.  No matter which way you twist it, how many times you rewind and replay it, the Mage Killer’s death was my fault.   I was the one who insisted on bringing my stupid cannon into the sewers.  I didn’t oil the wheels, I didn’t drag it slowly enough, I didn’t fire it when the mage attacked Samson.  I wish I had.

We get some weird looks as we walk down the alley.  A mechanical man covered in blood and a tired redhead dragging a cannon-on-wheels behind him—I don’t blame them.  We arrive at Samson’s shop and I unlock the door, handling the spare key he gave me as if it were pure gold.

The “bookshop” is in the same state we left it.  Fittingly, there are bookshelves pushed up against the walls, but they’re just for show—we know that, as do our clients.  Our real work is barely hidden: “wanted” posters are scattered on the table, mingling with spare weapons and machine parts.  Some of the parts are from Eden, some from my cannon.  Samson could never tell which were which, but I could.  I took pride in that.  It was the one thing I was better at than he was.

“What do we do, Eden?” I ask, collapsing into the nearest armchair.  It’s Samson’s chair, of course.  The irony isn’t lost on me.  Eden doesn’t respond.  I trained him to know when questions are rhetorical.

The bell on the door jingles.  I jump at the sound.  Despite myself, I half-expect it to be Samson, smiling warmly, jabbing me in the side and shouting “Gotcha!”  It sure would be nice if this were all a sick joke.

Instead, it’s a woman.  She’s elven, and poor—I can tell by the tangles in her hair and the rags on her body.  But none of that is the most interesting thing about her.  Every exposed inch of her (which, given her attire, is quite a bit) is etched with magic circles in bright white ink, popping against the deep, sun-tanned olive of her skin.  Two on her thigh, one on each shoulder, a big one around her right eye—she reaches out to me, and I spot yet another circle on the back of her hand.

“Are you the Mage Killer?” she says, and time freezes.  Now this is a new one.  Her eyes are desperate; they’re destroying me.  I never met any of Samson’s family, if he had any, but even telling a stranger they’re out of luck feels like too much for me right now.

I don’t know why I say it.  It’s not avoidance.  I’m giving myself a lot more problems than I’m solving.  Sure, I was training to be a Mage Killer, but I never wanted to be the Mage Killer.  I never wanted to replace him.

But she’s pleading, her eyes boring into me, praying I’ll give her the answer she wants.  She needs a Mage Killer, and I’m here.  It’s as simple as that.

“You’re looking at him!” I say, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.  “What can I help you with, ma’am?”

Her eyes light up.  Relief washes over her as quickly as regret washes over me.  What the hell am I doing?

“Oh, thank goodness!” she says.  She hugs me, and I freeze in her arms as the reality of my situation hits, like a boulder to the gut.  “I’m in so much trouble, you have to help me!  They’re after me!  They’re all after me!”

Despite my swirling emotions, I shove down the pit in my stomach, and my customer service voice kicks in automatically.  I’ve helped Samson with clients before.  I know how to handle them.  Usually, I’m the one who does this part, until I usher them in to meet with the real Mage Killer.

“Calm down, ma’am.”  I say.  “Breathe.  Slow down.”  I place my hands on her shoulders and breathe with her, as much for myself as for her.  You can do this, Wicks.  You can do this.  “Back up,” I tell her.  “Let’s start with introductions.  I’m Oliver Fenwick, the Mage Killer.”  God, that sounds awful.  “What’s your name?”

“I-I don’t remember,” she says.  “That’s the thing!  I don’t remember anything.  All I know is men in robes keep attacking me with fireballs, and I saw a flier in an alleyway for a Mage Killer, so I came here.  That’s literally it.  That’s all I know.  About me, about these tattoos, about anything.”

Amnesia.  Shit.  Samson had taught me about amnesia.  She can still speak, but she has no memory of who she is, or where she came from, or anything from her past.  I never thought I’d see a case in person, but here we are.

“I can’t pay you,” she continues.  “But if I’m being hunted by mages, I must be someone important!  If we can get to the bottom of this, if we can get my memory back—”

“Relax,” I say.  “We won’t get anywhere with you panicking like this.  We’ll get there when we get there, and if there’s money?  Great.  If there’s not, I’ve either saved you or I’m dead.  If I don’t try, we’re both dead.”  She looks horrified.  I’m not selling it.

“Why would we both be dead?” she says.  “If you don’t help me, you’ll be fine—aaaand I don’t know why I’m trying to talk you out of helping me.”

“And I don’t know why I’m talking about being dead!”  I do know why, but I can’t tell her that.  And I can’t die.  We can’t have two dead Mage Killers in one day.

Eden interrupts.

“Wicks,” he says, tapping me on the shoulder.  “She’s being followed.”  I look up as subtly as I can, to two robed figures outside the window.  One of them is holding a flier, the same flier that’s crumpled in the elven woman’s hand.

“Go to the attic,” I say, as bravely as I can.  “Now.”  She nods and obeys.  I feel like a real Mage Killer for a moment, but then the mages I’m supposed to kill enter the shop, and the feeling vanishes.

“Welcome!” I say, feigning ignorance.  “If you’re looking for Mr. Garland, he’s not here right now.  I’m just his apprentice.”

The first honest thing I’ve said all day.  I am his apprentice.  Was his apprentice?  It feels weird to talk about him in past tense so soon.

Ironically, the mages don’t buy it.

“Search the shop,” one says.  He speaks in Elvish, but I’ve done my homework.  I know the language, too.  “Kill anyone who tries to stop you.”

“Is that so?” I say back.  I’m sure my Elvish is broken, but I pretend I sound as badass as I feel.  “Eden, get him.”

That, they understand.  Eden draws his sword—a rapier, as slender and deadly as Eden himself.  One mage hurls a bolt of ice at him, but it bounces right off his blade as he performs a perfect parry.  The other mage turns his attention to me.

Eden will be fine.  I, on the other hand, duck under a table, flipping it on its side so it serves as cover.  The bookshelf behind it wobbles, but stays steady for now.  I fiddle with the back of my cannon, loading an iron ball into the barrel.  I pull the lever that fires it, and the contraption works, hurling the ball straight into the mage’s stomach.  It won’t kill him at this range, but it knocks the wind out of him long enough for me to get out of his way.

Eden and the other mage continue trading blows.  Eden dodges and weaves with the ease of a practiced swordsman, but the mage keeps up—he’s clearly more skilled than the one I was fighting.

I prepare another cannonball.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a shot in to tip the scales in our favor.  That’s all I can do, really.

“Not so fast.”

The second mage is standing right behind me.  He picks me up by the back of my collar and nods to his partner, who turns to Eden.

“Stand down, creation, or we kill your master.”  He hisses creation like a slur.

Eden hesitates, but I feel the mage’s hand on the back of my neck.  Heat emanates from his palm, the threat of a fireball.  I look at Eden, begging him to obey.

And then, I get lucky.  The bookshelf behind me falls over with a BOOM, distracting my captor just enough for me to wriggle from his grasp.  I grab the nearest heavy object—a large wrench I was using to modify Eden just the night before—and slam it into the mage’s head, knocking the consciousness out of him.  Eden takes the opportunity to strike, stabbing the other mage in the gut, and then the heart, killing him instantly.  I don’t have time to stop him, or consider the ramifications of the kill.  Eden’s just that good.

And with that, it’s over.  We won.  A technicality—a miracle, even—but we won.  I can’t help but celebrate.

“Woo-hoo!”  I pump my fist in the air, grinning at Eden.  “Mage Killers!  Let’s go!”  I almost forget about the girl in the attic—almost.  Before going to fetch her, I tie the unconscious mage to a chair.  Can’t have him getting away, not after what Eden did to his friend.

Normally, I’d take a second to breathe here, but nothing today has been normal.  That, and I don’t want to stop—if I do, I’ll think about the sacrilege I just committed on Samson’s name.  If keeping that name clean means saving this woman, I’ll save her, no matter what it takes.

…And yet, I keep the mage alive.  I tell myself it’s because I have questions for him—and I do!  I’m just also not quite ready for my first true solo kill—and, yes, commanding Eden to do it would count.  I love Eden like family, but at the end of the day, he’s another weapon.  He’s “died” enough times for me to get used to that concept—humans can’t be revived with the turn of a few screws.  I know that now more than ever.

“Wicks?” says the woman.  “That’s what the automaton called you, right?”  I didn’t realize I had made it up the stairs already.

“Yep,” I say, my mask of professionalism slipping on like a pair of socks.  “That’s my name; well, it’s what I go by.”

The woman beams.  In her eyes, she knows the Mage Killer’s nickname, so we’re friends now.  Friends generally tell each other if they’re impersonating a dead man, but pish-posh.

“The mage is downstairs,” I say.  “We left him alive for questioning.”  We slips out.  Would I have been more professional?  Should I have taken the credit for Eden’s part of the fight?

Calm down, Wicks, I tell myself.  You’re overthinking.  Again.

I take a shaky breath.  “Let’s go talk to him,” I say, and I steady my beating heart and go back downstairs.

***

It takes a bit for the mage to wake up, but the woman and I keep a comfortable silence.  I’m too worried about her impression of me to think about Samson.  Probably for the best.

The mage’s eyes flutter open, and immediately narrow as he spots us.  He curses in Elvish, and I nod to the woman.  Eden holds the mage’s hands behind his back, just in case.

“Who am I?” she says—notably, in Common, not Elvish.  She must have forgotten it with the rest of her memories.  The mage looks a mix of confused and disgusted, and I translate.  A comfortable role, and one I’ve taken often—it’s almost comedic.  The renowned Mage Killer, reduced to an interpreter as his client asks all the questions.  Still, it’s better than interrogating a guy while simultaneously making sure your interrogating looks real, so I’m grateful that she takes the lead.

“You’re no one,” spits the mage, and I reluctantly relay his message to the woman.  His next words are harder to translate.  She’s a…spellbook?  Tome might be a more accurate translation—it successfully communicates the vagueness and poetry that Elvish is known for.

“You mean these?” she says, motioning to her tattoos.  The mage’s eyes narrow, but not with hate.  He’s examining the symbols, trying to memorize them.  I think I’ve got the picture.

“Kill him, Eden.”  The command is easier to issue in Common, knowing the man won’t understand us.  If he started pleading for his life, I’m not sure if I’d be able to go through with it.

“Are you sure?” says Eden.  He knows as well as I do how monumental this is.  I’ve assisted in kills with Samson, but it suddenly feels worse now that it’s my call.

I nod, and gulp under my breath.  I can’t look while Eden slits his throat.  If the woman notices my hesitance, she doesn’t say anything, and I thank fate for that.

“Okay,” I say, turning towards her—and away from the corpse.  “We’ve got a few things.”

“My tattoos are spells,” she says.  “My personal identity is unimportant—they’re after the spells.”  She catches on quick.  I like that.

“Yep,” I say.  “We’ve got some spellbooks in the shop.  Nothing too advanced, but I can cross-reference your tattoos and see if there’s any similar iconography.”

She nods—and then suddenly, she’s taking off her shirt.  I’m nineteen years old, practically an adult, but I can’t help but flush and look away.  What can I say?  I’ve always been a bit bashful around women.

“Woah, woah, woah!” I say, averting my eyes.  “There’s no need for that!”

“You sure?” she says, matter-of-factly.  “The biggest one is here.”  I’m not sure I want to know where here is.  Reluctantly, I raise my eyes.

…And it’s her back.  Thank goodness for that.  Like the others, it’s tattooed in white ink, so it’s a bit hard to make out.  Still, it’s crisper than the ones on her hands, and raised slightly.  The skin around it is red, too.

“It’s the newest,” I say.  “Here, let me grab a book.”  I fish around the shelves for a spellbook—any spellbook.  The quicker I find one, the quicker she puts her shirt back on, and the quicker my face stops reddening like the raw skin on her back.

Fortunately, I come across one fairly quickly.  “The Fundamentals of Magic,” it reads.  Samson and I kept a few magic books around—know your enemy and whatnot.  I probably should have read this one cover-to-cover, but I didn’t.  I definitely can’t right now.

I flip through the pages, looking for common symbols between the diagrams and her tattoo.  Samson told me, once, that there’s a lot of symbol reuse in magic circles, but there’s surprisingly little overlap.

…Until I get to the section on necromancy.  Suddenly, the crosses are in the same places, the lines connecting segments matching almost perfectly.  The one on her back is more complicated, naturally.  If it could be found in any old spellbook, the mages wouldn’t need her.

I’ve learned a bit about necromancy.  It never works—not really.  You can animate a skeleton or preserve your brain in a jar, but death comes for everyone.  There’s no spell that can truly bring back the dead—but if there were?

Mages everywhere would be looking for it.

My breath hitches as I look at her back again.  I could test it.  There’s a corpse in the sewers that would be perfect for me to test it on.  If I could bring back Samson, exactly as he was before?

He’d never forgive me.  Not for impersonating him, or messing up his shop, but for using magic of all things to bring him back.  He hated magic—we both do.  There’s a reason he became the Mage Killer, but I never learned the full story.  He never talked about it, but his face went dark every time I pried, darker than I’d ever seen it.  It’d be selfish for me to even try a trick like this—he’d never be able to live with himself.

And that’s assuming it actually works.  I take a breath, willing words—any words—to come out of my mouth.

“It’s a necromancy spell,” I say.  “I’m not sure of the details, but it’s powerful.”

“Too powerful,” says the woman, immediately.  “If it is what I think it is…”

She trails off, and I finish her thought.

“Then we can’t let it get into the wrong hands.  A spell that can thwart death?  Practically everyone in this city has someone they’d give anything to get back.”

Her face is dark.

“And these mages want to exploit that,” she says. “Carve it out.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, but I know what she means.  She hands me a knife, left untouched on the table during our fight with the mages.

“Carve.  It.  Out.”

I freeze.  That level of mutilation is beyond me.  Is it beyond the Mage Killer?  She doesn’t seem to think so.  Fortunately, Eden chimes in.

“There’s a tattoo shop down the street,” he says.

“There we go,” I say.  “They can black it out—they might even be able to remove it.”  The woman raises an eyebrow.

“Will it work?”

“I hope so.”

***

The man running the tattoo shop is human, sure, but he’s big enough to be an orc.  He’s covered in more tattoos than the woman is, and he barely speaks.  He looks over the woman’s back, examining every detail.  He’s not a mage—I made sure of that before showing him.

His accent is thick when he finally speaks.

“Can’t do it,” he says.  “Need magic—or fire.  Lot of fire.”

I can’t let a mage near this tattoo.  Sure, not all mages are bad, but the bad ones would pay a lot for eternal life.  Even a good mage could crumble for the right price.

“Fire it is.”  I say, suddenly glad that I added that flamethrower function to my cannon.  Samson said it was useless—take that, asshole.  Is it wrong to call a dead man an asshole?  He had called himself an asshole plenty of times, and that’s solace enough for me to let the thought go.

“Eden, go back to the shop and get my cannon.  Sir, can I use one of your rooms?”

The man nods.

“Wait,” he says.  “Healing salve.  Make it hurt less.”  He runs to the front desk and returns with a jar of green goop: gross to look at, but it’ll do the job.  Samson always brought salve with him on missions, and it was often my job to store the stuff.  I was too late to use it by the time he died, but it’s great for numbing.  Plus, it’ll speed up the recovery process—less time for us to get caught.

The woman and I enter the spare tattoo room.  Parchment lines the walls, strange designs inked on the pages and taped onto the wooden siding.  None of them look magical, but I can’t know for sure.

“You ready?” I say, raising an eyebrow.  Eden’s not back yet, but it’s a good idea to check in with her.  The woman nods.

“No,” she says with a sheepish chuckle.  “But you’re right. This is the only way.”

There’s a knock on the door.  It’s heavy—could be Eden, but it could also be the shop owner, or a hired thug.  I hesitantly open the door.

It is, indeed, the shop owner, a look of horror plastered on his face.

“Bad.” he says, simply.  “Come.  Now.”

“Give me the girl,” he says, in Common this time.  My eyes narrow, and hatred burns in my chest.

“You’re one of them!” I growl.  “You killed Samson Garland—and you’re gonna pay.”

The man tuts as I lunge forward, his knife getting closer to the receptionist’s throat.  I don’t care about her, not at this moment.  But, unfortunately, my common sense wins over, and I retreat.

The man turns to the elven woman.

“Look at your little Mage Killer,” he says.  “Pathetic.”  My fists clench.  He’s right.  I can’t do anything—this dumb receptionist girl is keeping me from him.  I just…stand there, unable to stop the woman as she walks toward him, glancing back at me with disappointment in her eyes.

“There you go,” he says, the amusement palpable in his voice.  “Good little spellbook.”  He drops the receptionist to the floor, and she takes breath after breath in relief.  He turns to me, uttering one last taunt before he teleports away.

“You know what I’m going to do first?” he says, directly into my mind.  The magic echoes in my head, his mouth closed in a smirk as he speaks through the spell.  “I’m going to revive the Mage Killer—and then I’m going to kill him again.  Just for you.”  I let out a guttural scream as he vanishes, the woman—my client—in tow.

Before I can process any of what just happened, the shop owner turns to me, glowering.

“Go.” he says, and I do.  Thrown out into the street, as it should be.  I’m no Mage Killer.  I’m just a loser apprentice who can’t even light a girl’s back on fire without screwing everything up.

As if on cue, Eden approaches with my cannon.

“It’s too late,” I say.  “They got her.”  I can barely speak, but Eden turns and walks away from me.

“Where are you going?”  I ask.

“After them,” said Eden.  “It was stupid of him to tell us his plan—now we know he’s going to the sewers.”

“You heard that?”  I ask, my voice a whimper. “Wait: you think we can stop him?”   Eden’s supposed to be able to calculate our odds, but he’s also a companion first and foremost.  He’s perfectly capable of sparing my feelings.

But he surprises me.

“No,” he says.  “There’s a 60% chance we fail.  There’s also an 80% chance that you commit suicide in the next six months if we don’t try.”

“Sui—what?”  I feign outrage, but I know he’s right.  Six months feels like an eternity to me now, and there’s still a chance we can catch him.  If I let this opportunity go, I don’t know how I’d live with myself.

“Alright,” I say, before I can stop myself.  “Let’s do it.”

***

The sewer is just as murky, and my cannon just as heavy, as it was the first time we came down here.  I complain to Eden the whole way down.  Who knows if the mage is even there?  As far as I know, he teleported here, grabbed Samson’s body, and teleported away to another city far away.

Voices echo as we retrace our steps, approaching the all-too-familiar tunnel.  I can’t believe it.  Eden was right.

The sight that greets me as I peek around the corner is downright horrifying.  The woman is being held against a column, hooded figures copying the pattern on her back, tracing it in red liquid on the sewer floor.

She’s alive.  Good.

Samson’s body is at the center of the circle, and the smell of death meets my nose.  I’m not sure if it’s him or the blood that the mages are writing with, but I barely stifle my urge to vomit.

I take a deep breath and collect myself.  One, two, three, four, five.  The leader of the mages, the one from the tattoo shop, is directing the other four.  He’s standing close enough to the woman that I can’t just shoot him.  There goes Plan A.

I turn to Eden.

“You ready to be Mage Killers?” I ask, my voice quiet.  Eden nods, and jumps out from behind the wall.  The four mages stand up from their work, startled, and charge toward him.

The leader grabs the woman and turns to leave, darting down the nearest corridor.  Eden is skilled enough to handle the rest of them—and even if he’s not, I can’t let this guy get away.  I race after him, dropping the handle of my cannon and drawing the hand crossbow I keep as backup.  I love my cannon, and it’s extra firepower, but it’ll only slow me down.

Somehow, my spindly legs move fast enough, and I keep up with the mage no-problem.  Fueled by grief and rage, I shoot as I go.  I’d prefer not to hit the woman, but revenge is my top priority.  She knows as well as he does that I’m not the real Mage Killer.  The jig is up—the only thing I can do now is destroy him.

A bolt grazes his arm, and he drops the woman, letting out a stifled groan as she falls to the ground.  He leans down to grab her, and I shoot again, missing his heart by mere centimeters.

“You—” he starts, grabbing his chest and preparing a fireball.  I turn to dodge, but the sewers are narrow—there’s nowhere to run.

Something blocks his attack.  The elven woman stands in front of me, wincing in pain.  Her back took the brunt of the blow, the smell of burning skin filling the tunnel.

The mage shoots a ray of water at her, but it’s too late.  “No!” he cries.  I look down at her—she’s still alive, barely, but the skin on her back is red, the tattoo all but gone.  I can save her—I have a healing salve with me.

I could also kill the mage.

Another day, time would freeze, and I’d contemplate my options.  Today, I don’t.  I kneel down and retrieve the salve from my pack, the mage blinking away to who-knows-where. The woman breathes a sigh of relief as the pain stops, and she turns to me.

“You saved me,” she says, almost in disbelief.

“I’m not the Mage Killer,” I say.  It hurts to admit it, but she needs to hear it from me.

“I know,” she says.  “If you were the Mage Killer, he’d be dead.”  I hang my head in shame, preparing an apology, but then she finishes her thought.  “And so would I.”

“Are you saying—”

“You saved me instead of killing the mage.  A true Mage Killer would’ve gone after him, killed the mage, thwarted his plans at the cost of my life.  It doesn’t matter who I am or was—I’m not a mage, so I’m not the priority.”

I think back to my previous missions with Samson Garland, the infamous Mage Killer.  She’s right.  That darkness in Samson’s heart, his hatred for mages that I’ll never know the story behind?  As it turns out, that was his weakness.

Maybe I’m good at more than just tinkering.

“I suppose so.”

“Is there anything left on my back?” she says, turning it toward me.  She’s still shirtless, but I’m not as embarrassed by it as I was before.

I look over her scars.  “Nope,” I say.  “Let’s get back to Eden.”

***

As I predicted, Eden wiped out the rest of the mages.  Their leader is nowhere to be found—a problem for another day.  Eden’s gone off to bury Samson’s body, so it’s just the two of us now.  I wipe the sweat off my brow, standing up and putting my cloth back in my pouch.

“There we go,” I say.  “All gone.”  Indeed, the blood circle is now fully cleaned up.  There’s no circle on her back, no circle on the ground.  Our witness is gone, and he only got half the circle, if that.  Hopefully, this necromancy spell will be lost to time.

“Thanks again,” says the woman, handing me her cloth.  “Without you, I’d be dead.”

I blush.  “There’s no need for that.”

“I mean, it’s true,” she says.  “You can’t deny that.  Seriously, Wicks, thank you.”

This is what it’s all about.  Not the thrill of battle, not the intellectual superiority of outsmarting a mage—the gratefulness of a client is really the best part of the job.  I felt that way long before Samson died.  Maybe that makes me a bad Mage Killer.  Maybe I don’t care.

“Have you thought about what you’re going to do next?”  I ask.  “You still have no memory, and you don’t have a job, or a place to stay, or anything.”

“I was actually thinking I might work for you,” she says.  “That is, assuming you’re going to continue with the whole Mage Killer thing.”

“Continue it?” I say, puzzled.  “You know the truth now.  Why would I continue it?”

“Because you’re good at it,” she says.  Her smile is too kind.  She really means it.  “You saved my life, Wicks. The Mage Killer wouldn’t have done that.”

I feel her compliment in my whole body, like honey in my veins.  I don’t need to think about it.  If this is what pretending to be Samson gets me, then I want to hold on to that feeling for as long as possible.  Besides, someone needs to be there when mages go corrupt—might as well be me.

“You know what?” I say, smiling back.  “You’re right.  Maybe I should continue being the Mage Killer, at least for a little while.”

“Glad to hear it,” she says.  “Oliver Fenwick, Mage Killer.  Has a nice ring to it.”

And you know what?  It never did before, but suddenly, it does.