“Drinking alone?” the man asked, nodding toward the three empty chairs around the rest of the table. His mouth was tilted up in a smile that touched his eyes and made them bright, secretive, and inviting.
Leaned back, and already comfortably warm in the middle of her first glass, Lyda wondered why that had to be a question, why it would have been rude for him to issue it as a statement when they could both so easily supply the answer. She was the only one at the table, and she was certainly drinking.
Meeting his eye, she wondered fuzzily if the question had been rude, too. Or if neither really was.
“No,” she told him.
The man hesitated, his smile hitching a little higher in surprise. “No?”
Lyda smiled back, leaned her head forward and made her eyes a little sharper beneath her brows. “I always bring my devils.”
He paused again and she liked watching the corners of his mouth fall not-quite-flat against his cheeks. When he shuffled off, she leaned into her chair again.
She took another sip from her cup, satisfied that she had not lied, and that she was as alone as she wanted to be.
apprentice, never master 