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Gray, I think—the kazna peri, not the marble. But I could be wrong. It’s tending a silver pot over a blue fire. Ask it for some of what’s in the pot. Bye.”
    And the moss woman was gone before I could ask for anything else. I had to find another moss woman to show me the way out of the Ramble.
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Huddlestone Bridge is tucked away on the southwest edge of the North Woods. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have gone to the Reservoir without telling Astris, much less gone way out-of-bounds looking for a supernatural whose name I recognized from my lesson on minor-league devils and demons. Today, I would have done worse than that if it meant getting one of my questions answered.
    It was hot under the trees and I couldn’t find anything that even resembled a path. I crashed around in the bushes for a while, grumpy and lost, on the theory that if I looked long enough, I’d surely find something.
    What I found was a smell. It was toasty, sharp, and sneeze-making, unlike anything I’d ever smelled before, and it led me to a rough stone bridge over a swift, deep stream.
    This time, I knew better than to rush into a trap without checking it out first. Crawling cautiously to the side of the bridge, I peered down into the clearing below, trying to look as much like a lump of granite as possible. A small, grayish devil was poking at a fire under a pot. The pot was silver, the fire was blue, and the devil’s nose poked out of the darker tangle of its beard and eyebrows like a long gray carrot. I’d found the kazna peri.
    I slithered down into the clearing and marched up to the fire, looking, I hoped, more heroic than I felt. The kazna peri gaped up at me, its mouth a black ring studded with sharp teeth.
    â€œGood afternoon, kazna peri,” I said. “I am a changeling under the protection of the Green Lady and I’ve come to ask a boon.”
    The kazna peri grinned. “And you think this comes as news to me? Would you be here if you didn’t want something? Let me guess: You want the magic treasure I’m cooking here in my silver pot.”
    â€œYes, please,” I said. “I don’t need all of it, though. A mouthful’s fine.”
    â€œWell, you can’t have any at all. You’re too young. It’ll stunt your growth. It’ll grow hair on your chest. It’ll keep you awake for days. It’ll give you ulcers, a sour stomach, the shakes. I live on the stuff from the Feast of St. Michael to Midsummer Eve. I know. You want to end up like this?”
    The kazna peri stuck out its leathery claw; it shook like a leaf in a high wind.
    This might have put me off, if I’d believed it. Maybe the Folk can’t make things up, but they can exaggerate. “I can handle it,” I said. “Will you give me some, please?”
    â€œ ‘Will you give me some? Will you give me some?’ ” the kazna peri mocked. “This isn’t just any ordinary treasure, you know. It’s pure black gold. Why should I give it to you just because you say please? What’s in it for me?”
    Life among the Folk is all about getting what you need without giving up a pot of gold or an arm and a leg or your firstborn child in exchange. The Pooka had spent a lot of time dinning the principles of bargaining into me, and I was sure he would have been proud of how I talked the kazna peri down from a pint of my heart’s blood and my little-finger bone to a dead pigeon I’d seen lying at the edge of the North Meadow. When I brought it back, wrapped in a chestnut leaf, the kazna peri was so happy that it threw in a stone flask to keep the potion in at no extra charge.
    I picked up the flask and sniffed gingerly. The smell that had led me to the kazna peri’s clearing curled around my nose—toasty, sharp, exciting. My mouth watered, and I lifted the flask to my lips.
    â€œYou don’t want to do that,” said the kazna peri around a mouthful of