I paused at my open journal, taking a quick note of what I had offered Sadie. I kept a record for each patient, which offered me a sense of reassurance. Having no other reference manual for the treatment of my patients, I’d resorted to making my own.
“She said I was next,” a voice said from the door.
I turned to see the leprechaun standing there in his green jacket and pants, a large gold buckle wrapped around his waist. He wore a wide-brimmed black hat and sported a long reddish beard. The thick Irish accent was easy to place.
“Haven’t we seen each other before?” I asked.
“You do be helping me one other time,” the leprechaun said. “Said I had an infection in my leg, and gave me some pills. I was hoping you could do the same.”
He hurried over to the table and jumped up, then turned to me and crossed his arms, waiting.
I chuckled. “I’m glad it worked. What do you have this time?”
“This,” he said, holding out his arm and pulling back his sleeve.
I hesitated before getting too close. I wasn’t at all sure what he might have, and given that he’d had a pretty significant infection last time, I was half expecting to find something similar…but when he pulled back his sleeve, I noticed what appeared to be little more than a mole.
“That?” I asked, studying it for a moment.
“It wasn’t there last week,” he said.
“What have you been doing?” I was careful not to pass it off as nothing, especially knowing that within the magical world, any change might be worrisome.
“I was working, no different than I always do. My farm needs caretaking.”
“What kind of farm do you have?” I asked.
He glared at me. “Why? Do you think that you can steal from me?”
I raised my hands, leaning back from my study of his arm. “I have no interest in stealing from you. Come on, you came to me for help. I’m just offering a little bit of small talk.”
“What’s small talk?”
“You know, trying to get to know you a little bit better.”
“Why do you need to get to know me?”
“It’s sort of how things go. I figured I could ask you a few questions, get to know you while I’m trying to decide what I need to do for this.”
“I came for your help, not to make a friend.”
I found myself grinning at him and enjoyed the attitude, regardless of how irritable he might be. There was something perfectly abrasive about the leprechaun, and it was easy to know where I stood with him—much easier than it was for me to know where I stood with others in the magical world.
“Does it hurt?” He shook his head. “Itch?” He shook his head again. “Burn? Tingle? Change size or color?”
“No. Why do you keep asking?”
“Then it might just be a new change to the pigment of your skin. I don’t have anything that I can offer you at this time other than a suggestion that we keep an eye on it.”
“An eye?”
I started to smirk when the idea of Mumbles holding his glass eye above the leprechaun’s arm came to my mind, but then shook my head. “We just observe it. I can take some measurements and make a record, and then why don’t you come back in a week”—I thought that was a bit aggressive, but given that I could feel a bit of pressure from the leprechaun at the fact that I wanted to simply observe it, maybe a week was better than asking him to come back in two weeks—”and we can remeasure. If anything changes in the meantime, I would encourage you to return to me.”
The leprechaun watched me. “That’s it? You don’t have any pills for me?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. If we were concerned about it in a human, we would cut it out and take a look at it under the microscope, but—”
“You are not cutting my skin,” the leprechaun said.
I nodded. “I didn’t figure that you would let me. I remember how you felt about the idea when I suggested cutting into the abscess the last time. That’s why I thought this might be for the best.”
The leprechaun watched me for another moment before nodding. “Fine. Do what you must.”
I headed over to my cabinet, pulled out a ruler, and made a few measurements of the mole. Finally, I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture.
The leprechaun watched me the whole time. “That’s it?”
“For now. Like I said, come back in a week.”
“What happens if you’re not here?”
“Why wouldn’t I be here?”
He nodded to the plywood wall. “It looks like you’ve had some trouble.”
“Well, I’ve had a bit of difficulty recently, but it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
The leprechaun looked back at me. “If you take care of this, I will repair that for you.”
“It’s a deal,” I said.
He hopped off the table, and I jotted a quick note about his symptoms. I folded the corner of the page as well so it would be easy enough for me to look back on, though I did have the picture in my phone, so figured that I could reference that again.
There came a muttering from the closet that I made a point of ignoring. I was not going to deal with Sharur today. The mace could stay where he was: out of sight.
“There’s not going to be any bashing of heads today,” I muttered.
When I headed out of the exam room, I almost ran into an older, white-haired woman with intense blue eyes whom I’d met one other time. She had her hands up, stumbling forward, almost as if she couldn’t see me.
“Lilah?” I asked, glancing over to her.
Lilah forced a glass of water into the leprechaun’s hands, and he regarded it with suspicion for a moment before drinking it quickly and handing the glass back to her.
“She said she needed to see you,” Lilah said. “Not that she had all that much for you to do.”
“Can I help you?” I asked the woman.
She reached out and took my hands. I noted that she looked to be in relatively good health. She was short and a tad overweight, and as I squeezed her hands, I could feel that her heart was a little bit thready. Since Lilith had taken me under her wing, I had been far more attuned to that kind of sensation, more aware of things dealing with blood, which was not necessarily a bad development in my line of work.
“Don’t worry. She doesn’t really love you.”
I frowned at her. “What was that?”
Lilah was there, and she studied the woman. “Do you mean Bells or Callie?” she asked, and glanced at me. “Maybe it’s time to use that love potion after all. If you can decide who to use it on.”
“I’m not using on anyone,” I protested. “I’m not into that kind of thing.”
“You might change your mind about that,” Mumbles said.
The old lady patted my hands. “Don’t worry,” she said again. Then she pulled her hands away, took a glass of water, and strode out of the apartment.
I stood there for a moment, staring at the door blankly. “What was that about?”
Lilah frowned. “I really don’t know. That was strange, wasn’t it?” She looked at Mumbles. “Tell me that it wasn’t just me thinking that was strange.”