"Uh. What?"

"I require your service. Something precious has been stolen. I wish you to recover it."

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You want me to recover stolen goods for you?"

"Not for me," she murmured. "For the rightful owners. I wish you to discover and catch the thief and to vindicate me."

"Do it yourself," I said.

"In this matter I cannot act wholly alone," she murmured. "That is why I have chosen you to be my emissary. My agent."

I laughed at her. That made something else come into those perfect, pale features-anger. Anger, cold and terrible, flashed in her eyes and all but froze the laugh in my throat. "I don't think so," I said. "I'm not making any more bargains with your folk. I don't even know who you are."

"Dear child," she murmured, a slow edge to her voice. "The bargain has already been made. You gave your life, your fortune, your future, in exchange for power."

"Yeah. With my godmother. And that's still being contested."

"No longer," she said. "Even in this world of mortals, the concept of debt passes from one hand to the next. Selling mortgages, yes?"

My belly went cold. "What are you saying?"

Her teeth showed, sharp and white. It wasn't a smile. "Your mortgage, mortal child, has been sold. I have purchased it. You are mine. And you will assist me in this matter."

I set the gun down on my desk and opened the top drawer. I took out my letter opener, one of the standard machined jobs with a heavy, flat blade and a screw-grip handle. "You're wrong," I said, and the denial in my voice sounded patently obvious, even to me. "My godmother would never do that. For all I know, you're trying to trick me."

She smiled, watching me, her eyes bright. "Then by all means, let me reassure you of the truth."

My left palm slammed down onto the table. I watched, startled, as I gripped the letter opener in my right hand, slasher-movie style. In a panic, I tried to hold back my hand, to drop the opener, but my arms were running on automatic, like they were someone else's.

"Wait!" I shouted.

She regarded me, cold and distant and interested.

I slammed the letter opener down onto the back of my own hand, hard. My desk is a cheap one. The steel bit cleanly through the meat between my thumb and forefinger and sank into the desk, pinning me there. Pain washed up my arm even as blood started oozing out of the wound. I tried to fight it down, but I was panicked, in no condition to exert a lot of control. A whimper slipped out of me. I tried to pull the steel away, to get it out of my hand, but my arm simply twisted, wrenching the letter opener counterclockwise.

The pain flattened me. I wasn't even able to get enough breath to scream.

The woman, the faerie, reached down and took my fingers away from the letter opener. She withdrew it with a sharp, decisive gesture and laid it flat on the desk, my blood gleaming all over it. "Wizard, you know as well as I. Were you not bound to me, I would have no such power over you."