He heard an incantation being recited, felt his medallion quiver and saw the black coat softly slip to the floor. Then he heard the water splashing.

“Now I can’t see your eyes, Yennefer,” he said. “And that’s a pity.”

The invisible sorceress snorted and splashed in the tub. “Go on.”

Geralt finished struggling with his trousers, pulling them on under his towel, and sat on the bench. Buckling up his boots, he related the adventure by the river, cutting out most of the skirmish with the catfish. Yennefer didn’t seem the type to be interested in fishing.

When he got to the part where the cloud-creature escaped from the jar, the huge soapy sponge froze.

“Well, well,” he heard, “that’s interesting. A djinn in a bottle.”

“No djinn,” he contested. “It was some variant of scarlet mist. Some new, unknown type—”

“The new and unknown type deserves to be called something,” said the invisible Yennefer. “The name djinn is no worse than any other. Continue, please.”

He obeyed. The soap in the tub foamed relentlessly as he continued his tale, and the water overflowed. Something caught his eye. Looking more carefully he discerned outlines and shapes revealed by the soap covering the invisible Yennefer. They fascinated him to the extent that he was struck dumb.

“Go on!” a voice coming from nothingness, from above the outlines which so absorbed him, urged. “What happened next?”

“That’s all,” he said. “I chased him away, that djinn, as you call him—”

“How?” The ladle rose and poured water. The soap vanished, as did the shapes.

Geralt sighed. “With an incantation,” he said. “An exorcism.”

“Which one?” The ladle poured water once more. The witcher started to observe the ladle’s action more diligently because the water, albeit briefly, also revealed this and that. He repeated the incantation, substituting the vowel “e” with an intake of breath, according to the safety rule. He thought he’d impress the sorceress by knowing the rule so he was surprised when he heard laughter coming from the tub.

“What’s so funny?”

“That exorcism of yours…” The towel flew off its peg and suddenly began to wipe the rest of the outlines. “Triss is going to kill herself laughing when I tell her. Who taught you that, witcher? That incantation?”

“A priestess from Huldra’s sanctuary. It’s a secret language of the temple—”

“Secret to some.” The towel slapped against the brim of the tub, water sprayed on to the floor and wet footprints marked the sorceress’s steps. “That wasn’t an incantation, Geralt. Nor would I advise you to repeat those words in other temples.”

“What was it, if not an incantation?” he asked, watching two black stockings outline shapely legs, one after the other.

“A witty saying.” Frilly knickers clung to nothing in an unusually interesting manner. “If rather indecent.”

A white shirt with an enormous flower-shaped ruffle fluttered upward and outlined Yennefer’s body. She didn’t, the witcher noticed, bother with the whalebone nonsense usually worn by women. She didn’t have to.