"You're sure she believed you?"
"She believed every word," Des said, dropping into the chair across from me with the satisfied look of someone who had just gotten away with something truly ridiculous. "Every single word."
We were crammed into the back room of a storage loft two streets from the inn, sitting on sacks of grain and old rope that smelled like river water, and I was holding bread but I hadn't tasted it once because I kept waiting for someone to tell me something had gone wrong.
"Tell us exactly what you said," Malachi said. "From the beginning."
Des leaned back and folded his arms. "Okay. So I knocked on her door, right, and I had that look on my face, the one Pearl keeps calling the devoted puppy face."
"It's very convincing," Pearl said from the corner. She was sitting on a crate, eating an apple, not looking at him.
