The pain in my brain subtly shifts—as though a magnet pulls the vile energy from my head into my body.

The agony travels through my shoulder and into my hand.

It’s so intense I nearly drop Fluffster’s carrier.

Then I see the black electricity turn pink in the vicinity of Rose’s ring, and as suddenly as the pain appeared, it harmlessly dissipates, just as the ring cracks in half.

“The spell failed,” Fluffster notifies me excitedly. “We should get out of here before she casts another.”

Since I don’t know how to speak to Fluffster mentally, I don’t tell him that getting out of a locked room guarded by Koschei on the other side might not be the easiest thing.

Then it hits me.

Rose’s ring protected me.

Only now it’s broken, so the protection is gone.

Acting purely on instinct, I pretend like I’m moving Fluffster’s cage from one hand to another. Using the magic principle of larger movement covering a smaller one, I twist the ring so that the stone faces inside my palm.

As I hoped, Baba Yaga doesn’t seem to have noticed me fiddling with the ring.

Instead, she looks awestruck that I can move at all.

I glare at her.

When she catches my gaze, I use her distraction to curl my hand as though I have a card palmed in there. This way, she won’t see the state of the ring, though I hope she doesn’t even look for it.

“Did you just try to take over my mind?” I ask her conversationally, as though lots of people have tried and failed to do the same.

She stares at me. “You seem to have powerful friends.” Her accent is suddenly much less pronounced. “Looks like I can’t use any shortcuts today. For the best, really. I could use some practice bargaining the old-fashioned way.” She looks at me as though for the first time. “What was it that you wanted, dear?”

I’m extremely tempted to say that I don’t want anything at all, but intuition warns me against such a course of action. “My domovoi,” I say evenly and raise the cage higher. “I want to restore his memory.”

I wish Nero were here so I could tell him that I just followed my intuition without a second thought. I’m clearly drinking his Kool-Aid and beginning to believe in my powers. Also, if Nero were here, I bet this witch wouldn’t have dared to mess with me.

“A domovoi?” Baba Yaga examines the cage with interest. “How did you get one?”

“That is what I hope to find out.” I fight my nerves as I take a step toward the old woman and bring Fluffster closer to her wrinkled nose. “He doesn’t recall anything that happened before he took on this animal shape.”

She closes one eye and examines Fluffster’s whiskers like a jeweler. “They never do. Put him there.” She points a crooked finger at the wooden desk.

I place the cage gently on the table and open it.

Baba Yaga approaches Fluffster and reaches for him.

With zero hesitation, Fluffster bites her finger.

“A feisty one.” Yaga yanks the digit away from the chinchilla. Looking at him sternly, she says in a low voice, “You forget we’re not in your domain. Here, in mine, you’re exactly what you look like—a rat with fur.”

“Fluffster,” I say, again acting on instinct that’s telling me my friend is in real danger. “Be nice to the lady. She’s trying to help.”

Her finger in her mouth, Baba Yaga walks over to the corner of the room where a giant mortar stands next to a big broom. “I could try to restore his memories. I’ve done so with others of his kind, albeit less stubborn ones. He might recall just a glimmer of his very last embodiment, or he might recall them all in detail—there are no guarantees in this business.”

“But you could do it,” I confirm.

“I could,” she says, and when she grins, I count only a few jagged teeth in her otherwise empty mouth.

“So.” I fight to stay calm. “Will you do it? Please?”

“You beg so nicely.” Baba Yaga smiles even wider, a big, wrinkled dimple appearing on her cheek. “I’ll do it. But someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me. But until—”

“Are you quoting The Godfather?” I ask, the incredulity of it making me giggle hysterically.

“What if I said ‘an eye for an eye?’” Baba Yaga’s smile turns predatory. “Or perhaps, ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours?’”

“I don’t trust her,” Fluffster says urgently in my mind. “No doubt she’ll ask for that favor in the next five minutes, and you won’t like it.”

Again, I wish I could mentally respond to Fluffster. I would then tell him that without any more protection from Rose, I’m in a pretty vulnerable position. If Baba Yaga wants something from me badly enough, she could try her earlier spell again, and this time, it would work without a hitch.

What could she want from me, anyway? She made a big deal about me being a seer, so the likeliest scenario is that she wants a prophecy—or at least that’s the best guess that my all-nighter-tired, adrenaline-saturated brain can come up with.

Maybe if I’d had my beauty rest, I’d be in a better position to figure this out.

“I won’t do anything illegal for you,” I say after a pause so pregnant people on the train would’ve given up their seats for it. “By that, I mean I won’t break human laws, or written or unwritten rules among the Cognizant.”

“Anything else?” she asks, a bit too gleefully. Does she really enjoy bargaining, or is she just toying with her food?

“The favor has to be within my capabilities at the time of request,” I say, figuring that if she asks me for a prophecy in the next fifteen minutes, I can in all honesty say I’m not in control of my powers and can’t oblige. “You can’t make your favor a request for many more favors,” I add, thinking of all the stories about the djinn.

“Agreed.” Baba Yaga spits on her hand and extends it to me.

I scan the room for a wooden jar of Purell, find none, and grudgingly extend my hand for her to shake.

At least this is a verbal agreement—I was worried she’d ask me to sign something.

“Is the spell or whatever dangerous for him?” I look at Fluffster worriedly after I pull my hand away and, with all the surreptitious skill of a magician, wipe it on my pants.

“No,” Baba Yaga says. “He might be weak right after the treatment, but once you return him to his domain, he’ll be as good as new.”

“Last chance to back out,” I tell him.

“I’m worried about you, not me,” Fluffster says mentally. “I don’t want you to owe this creature because of me.”

“I’m doing this for me,” I remind him out loud—not caring if Baba Yaga hears this, since it’s not a big secret she can use.

“Fine,” Fluffster says. “In that case, I’m ready.”

“Do it.” I look at Baba Yaga with a confidence I don’t feel. “You have yourself a deal.”

Her face twisting in concentration, Baba Yaga extends her gnarled hands in Fluffster’s direction, and thin black energy flows from her fingers into Fluffster’s fur.