Cohost writing prompt: @spy-thief-assassin-who — Fixer who is waiting patiently for you to return the equipment — that you broke
Lily sits in the back bar at the Heavenlode, sinking drinks steadily but as slowly as she can make herself go, occasionally twitching.
The whole fucking thing was Jevvi's idea, of course, wasn't it always; and she had too much on Lily to say no to her. (Not that she ever could say no to Jevvi, which is how she ended up with that much dirt on her to begin; but Jevvi doesn't know that. Please gods Jevvi doesn't know that, Lily doesn't need to die pining and pityingly spurned.)
"The Witch of the Green Mount is planning a job," Jevvi had said, stirring a tall drink of something cold and sinister. ("Like I like my women," she says sometimes, flashing her soul-stabbing grin; "as the old joke goes.") "Looking for specialists."
"That's nice," Lily had replied, reading the society obits in the hopes she might recognise some relatives.
"Oh, yes. Grand plan to crack the vault at Dagon's Palace." Jevvi dimpled.
"And I wish the entirety of whatever crackerjack crew she recruits terribly nice funerals," Lily said, "whether the Caesar of Downtown slits their throats for looking sideways at his casino, or the Witch twists their heads off their necks for fun, or out of pique, or just because she's a madwoman."
"I have," Javvi has said magnificently, ignoring her, " a plan."
It was, of course, awful. The plan went: Lily (best thief in the city, you know you are, darling whenever she wanted to coax Lily into something —) would join the Witch's crew, and do the job, and also do a little side job at the same time for Jevvi ("Nothing that will interfere, darling! The Witch and I have very few overlapping interests!").
The Witch, naturally, wouldn't see it that way, and if she found out she'd flay Lily with a snap of her fingers and have possessed crows tear off and eat her screaming flesh.
Then, the twist: the Witch was only recruiting people with Koschei contingencies.
"No," Lily had protested, at that; "absolutely no, Jevvi, why is she only recruiting people who've had their deaths removed, what's she's planning to put them through to get in there—" and then of course it made no difference at all; Jevvi sent her in to audition anyway.
"I haven't had my death hidden in a fucking duck's egg, Jev—"
Jevvi had, grinning impishly, produced a block of unmelting ice, inside which pulsed a human heart. "This is your proof you have," she said.
"Underlord's sweaty taint, Jevvi." Lily had stared, appalled. "Whose is that?"
"Mine, of course," Jevvi said, and pressed her death into Lily's resisting hands. "Off you go, darling!"
The Witch, of course, was suspicious. Suspicion, and violence, are the Witch's defining traits. Lily looked over the crew the Witch was assembling, sipping a martini and getting a worse and worse feeling about what the Witch might actually be planning; twin Theofabrikoi clerics, draped in talismans with iconographies of blood and fire; a person so nondescript Lily assumed assassin; several assorted criminals known to her for their various specialties, none of which immediately suggest casino heist.
The Witch took them all to a private function room, and one by one inspected their Koschei artifacts — most, probably, the traditional eggshells, encased in a variety of protective matrioshkas: armoured brass reliquaries, laquered boxes, and one opaque, hovering, head-sized stormcloud as a container. Lily had wrapped the block of ice in a silk scarf and put it into suitably sizeable beaded clutch, as one does; sauntered up when called and passed it over, into the Witch's long, pale hands; nine fingers and the one storied stump, capped with scrimshawed ebony which is set with a single ruby.
The Witch was dressed for dancing, her eyes the pitiless cold of freezing to death in a gutter.
"What an interesting piece," she said, looking at it, and Lily didn't dare look anything less than unflapped, daren't so much as swallow wrong. Of course Jevvi wouldn't think twice of getting her strung up with her own entrails by making her hold out a recognisably unique thing, that's definitely not her own.
"Like lingerie," she'd said carelessly, "if one cares to let someone gawk at it, one wants to be sure they recall every detail—"
The Witch cracked a smile, and then, with her terrible hands, cracked the ice surrounding the beating heart, discarding the now-melting fragments with a small shake of her arm, holding the heart alone in one palm.
"That was terribly expensive," Lily said petulantly, and took a gulp of her martini to stop herself from saying anything else.
"Rather fragile," the Witch said, gaze boring into Lily's.
"It's a metaphor," Lily said, hardly knowing what was coming from her mouth. "And really, ma'am, I have to insist — when a woman's intent on manhandling my heart, I expect a little more than a cocktail —" and, having taken leave of her senses, stepped into the Witch's personal space, planted a hand on her hip, and swooped in to kiss her.
Really, she only registered what a terrible idea it was when she stepped back again, cheeks red and the throbbing heart in her own hand. She breathlessly licked at what was left of her lipstick.
"Golly," she said in a strangled voice, because for a stone cold arcane lunatic, the Witch sure can kiss.
The Witch looked at her, and looked at her own, now empty hand, and touched just the very darting tip of her tongue to the corner of her own mouth.
"All right," the Witch said. "One of you is a Fed, but I'm relatively sure it's not you after all, miss thief," and all Lily can do is drop a little theatrical curtsey.
"Thank you kindly for the vote of confidence, ma'am!" she said brightly, and then got splashed with blood, toe to hairdo, all up her left side when the Witch summarily vapourised Kerry the Hand instead.
"I'll contact you all tomorrow," the Witch said, and swept out.
So now Lily's in the back bar, down the stairs; a little worse for wear and unable to loosen her grip on the purse containing Jevvi's precious and unprotected heart, an hour overdue to rendezvous with her back at the Finch's Perch for debrief drinks, and with no idea how to explain to her just how much shit they're both in.