"I'm sorry," the Trickster said, sitting at the table next to Alice and Mark. "I'm..." Damn it, she thought. What's that word? There was a guy she accidentally almost killed once, he said he was--

"Allergic," Cassie said out loud. The Trickster jumped, and stared at Alice and Mark. Could they tell that was a different personality? ...No?

"Yes," the Trickster said eventually. "Allergic. I am sorry, but I am allergic to mushrooms."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Alice said.

"No, you weren't to know," the Trickster said. "And I do like the taste, so I am enjoying smelling the pie."

"All the more for me, dear," Mark said, smiling. Alice put a small amount of the mushroom pie on her plate, a large one on Mark's, and loaded the Trickster's plate up with vegetables.

The Trickster had been involved with more awkward dinner parties before, but this one was just awful. Mark kept on chatting to the Trickster like she hadn't been tied up just a few minutes before, and whenever the Trickster tried to get Alice to join the conversation she would say the bare minimum and let the conversation go. At one point the Trickster realised that though Alice had cut it up, she had not eaten any of the pie on her plate. The Trickster avoided eye contact with her after that.

"So, what brings you to this part of the woods?" Mark asked jovially.

"Oh, there's all these cultists running about, killing witches," the Trickster said. "I'm not a witch myself, you understand, but I don't want any confusion to arise, considering the colour of my eyes."

"Which village do you come from?" Mark asked.

"I... don't think it actually has a name. It's around five days that way." The Trickster pointed towards Cassie's village, and Mark visibly relaxed. For someone being nice to a girl he plans on maybe torturing for information later, the Trickster thought, he's really not a suspicious guy. Does he really not suspect anything? Anything at all?

"You're a bit far from home," Alice said mildly, the first thing she had said without being asked a direct question the whole meal.

"Yes, it turned out the cultists were going in the same direction I chose, and I've had to go well out of my way to stay in front of them," the Trickster said. "My plan is to take a circular way back home. It's more out of my way, but I'm less likely to run into them."

"Probably a good idea," Mark said heartily. "Have you been to any other villages between yours and here?"

"Just the one. There was a scandal," the Trickster added, because she really couldn't help herself.

"A scandal?" Alice asked blandly, as Mark started.

"Yes, a murder," the Trickster said, and hurriedly continued as Mark gripped his knife, "the cultists have been convincing everyone to find and bring them witches, and a man murdered another for trying it with his girlfriend. A pity really, he seemed a promising lad, and now he's got a huge blood price to pay."

Alice stared steadily at the Trickster, who stared back. It was at this point Mark stood up suddenly.

"I don't--" he started, then collapsed. The two women maintained eye contact as he convulsed twice, then lost consciousness.

"You aren't really allergic to mushrooms, are you?" Alice asked.

"I would have certainly reacted badly to those ones," the Trickster said. "Why did you kill your husband?"

"He was going to kill you, and lie to me and promise me he wasn't going to kidnap the next passerby, honest. I was sick of it."

"Well, thank you," the Trickster said. "Are you going to let me go?"

The Trickster was in a precarious position, facing off against this poisoner now that Mark was gone. Mark had been nice to her--or at least, pretending to be--and paid the ultimate price as the curse worked to kill him before he could suspect the pie, but the nicest thing Alice had done was not poison the vegetables she put on the Trickster's plate. At least, she thought that was the case. It was really hard to tell. The Trickster couldn't rely on the curse, at any rate, or her magic, now Magnus knew she was about and would be watching for it. She would have to rely on her own wits to give her an advantage. As the other gods had described those wits variously as dimmed, halved, and scattered, this wasn't much of an advantage at all.

"The way you baited Mark with your story of the murderer--you know who we are, don't you?" Alice said coldly.

"Oh, no," the Trickster said. "I uh, I only did that because I knew about the ghost."

"The ghost?" Alice said skeptically.

"Yes, the ghost in the room you were keeping me in before," the Trickster said. Alice's mouth twitched slightly. She folded her arms.

"And what was this ghost like?"

"Well, they had black hair--or wait, brown, it's hard to tell with ghosts," the Trickster said.

"Nice try," Alice said. "They were bald."

"Well, even if he was bald, the poor old man wanted hair in his deathly state, and who are we to say it's just a wisp of ghost-stuff he's put on his head?"

"You are really bad at this," Alice said.

"She was a priest," Cassie said aloud. Both Alice and the Trickster froze. Unlike templemen, priests chose only one of the gods to worship. A few of them shaved their hair like that. Priests were specialised, and didn't have the same rules attached to them for the gods as templemen did--the cultists, after all, were technically priests of the Trickster, and nobody felt it necessary to refrain from lying, cheating, or killing them. It was still considered bad manners to let harm come to the other's priests without a good reason, though.

"She came into your village, and Mark thought she was beautiful," Cassie said. "She stayed at your house, and you saw him flirt with her. You both waited until she had left the village, and caught her in the forest. You both tortured her for two days before she died. You would have got away with it, but Mark was slovenly, and Alfred saw the blood underneath his fingernails. You both fled here, to make a life alone in the forest. Mark still keeps the corpse in that trunk in your bedroom."

"You bitch," Alice snarled. "Why couldn't you leave us alone?"

"Because she was a priest of Bounty," Cassie said.

There was silence for a moment.

"What?" the Trickster said blankly.

"You heard me," Cassie said. The Trickster grabbed the leg of her stool, stood up, and bashed Alice over the head with it as hard as she could. Alice slumped to the floor.

"Who needs wits when you have adrenaline?" the Trickster muttered.

Alice woke up staked out in her own vegetable patch.

"You know, Mark didn't have to worry," the Trickster said to her, squatting to look at her victim tied down to the earth. "As long as Bounty sleeps, she's too unaware to take revenge for her murdered priests. But I do kind of feel responsible for that, so I'm going to give her a little help."

"Let me go!" Alice yelled.

"Uh... no," the Trickster said. Alice struggled for a little while longer, then gave up, panting.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Ah! Well, while Bounty's priest won't give you Bounty's curse, she will fertilise this ground well enough that your plants will grow nuts. If you survive being staked out like this for two, three days--and I think you will, it looks like it is going to rain soon--you will be eaten alive by your own garden. I've buried her underneath you, so hopefully it will be quick."

"You have a sick mind, you freak."

"Actually, I didn't come up with it. Nearer the Glade of the Gods, where Bounty's growth is a bit faster, it's standard practice in the more bloodthirsty villages to kill murderers by tying them up with an acorn buried underneath them. But I need my acorns to bribe a mean squirrel, so you'll just have to make do with..." The Trickster got out a few paper packets she had found in a drawer in the house, and squinted at the labels. "Rosemary, lettuce, and beans. I'm not sure the lettuce will do much, to be honest. The beans will grow quickest, but the rosemary is more spikey, so I think it will be a tie between them as to which one does you in."

The Trickster shook the seeds out around Alice's head and torso.

"Let me go," Alice said. "My great grandmother was a witch, I'll give you a death curse, I swear."

The Trickster smiled, showing her teeth. "I'm already cursed; there's no room left for another."

"Let me go!"

The Trickster stood up, and walked away.

Behind her, the first bean began to sprout.