The witch assassin looked much as she had when I first met her. As usual, leather straps crisscrossed her body, holding a large number of blades. There were a few bloodstains on her clothes, but I doubted very much that they were her own.

“Is the leg giving you any problems?” I asked her.

Her left leg had been badly broken when she was attacked by the servants of the Fiend. It had been fixed with a silver pin that, although it restored that limb to its previous strength, gave her continual pain.

“Why do you ask?”

“The horse,” I said. “At one time you used to walk or run everywhere.”

She shook her head. “The leg gives me pain but functions as well as it ever did. I need the horse because recently it has been necessary to cover long distances faster than is possible on foot.”

I nodded, wondering where her latest journeys had taken her, but she didn’t elaborate. What she did as a witch assassin was her business.

I led her into the kitchen. “Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Water will suffice for now.”

I poured her a large cup of water and she drank it down quickly.

“Did you bury the creature?” she asked.

“No, because I thought you’d want to see it. I left it inside its lair.”

“It will be stinking by now—but yes, you were right not to do so. I want to examine it. Is it far from here?”

“About forty-five minutes by foot.”

“Then let’s waste no further time. How did you kill it?”

“With the sword you gave me. The beast had powerful dark magic. It shrank in size and slipped out of my silver chain. I was helpless against it. It paralyzed me for a while, but I managed to escape and ran back to get the sword.”

“You dug it up out of John Gregory’s grave?”

I bowed my head. “I had no choice. The creature held a girl captive. It was drinking her blood and would eventually have killed her.”

“You needed the sword just to survive, then. . . . It sounds as though you were dealing with a very rare type of Kobalos. You were a fool to bury the sword in the first place,” Grimalkin said bluntly. “I expected better of you.”

I did not reply. I knew that she was right.

“If it is who I think it is,” she continued, “you were lucky to prevail, even using the sword.”

“You know the creature?”

“Perhaps. I will find out soon enough. Here.” She placed the envelope on the table. “This is a copy of a document that your master once had in his possession. It is a glossary of information about the Kobalos, collated by an ancient spook called Nicholas Browne. I suggest you study it closely.”

I knew the name. Browne was mentioned by John Gregory in an annotation marked in his Bestiary; Nicholas was his source of information on the Kobalos.