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That wasn’t a no.
I ascend the stairs.
Jeffrey sounded agitated, fearful even. I have heard eventual fear in the voices of my masters and mistresses. Hearing it now from him and not being expressly denied looking in on him makes me hasten my pace.
His bedroom door is closed, and when I open it, I catch him hurriedly shove something beneath his pillow. “I-I said I’d be right down!” he sputters. The expression on his face is just as fearful.
“Jeffrey, something is troubling you. Please, tell me.”
In an instant, he looks close to tears and gives a heavy sigh. Leaving whatever he hid beneath his pillow where it is, he settles into a cross-legged position and gestures for me to join him.
I remove my shoes and sit on the bed the same way.
“Um, the man who was wrecking the tour last week?” Jeffrey begins. “You know, the one who was rude and awful to me? I saw him at Sage this morning. He was blind, as if something had clawed through his eyes. Did you… do that to him?”
“Yes,” I say. After all, I cannot lie to him and would not want to.
“Why?” Jeffrey demands.
“Because you wished it.”
“I did not wish for that!”
“But you did. You wished: for there to be no more options for enemies sabotaging you in the future, and for me to have whatever autonomy I need to help with saving Madame Mattie’s.”
Jeffrey leans back from me as if horrified. “That meant you needed to blind him?”
“It seemed the most fitting solution.”
“That’s insane! I wish for you to never hurt anyone ever again!” he hurls at me.
“I am sorry, Jeffrey, but I cannot grant that.”
“What?”
“I cannot grant something that goes against someone’s nature, including my own.”
The horror in Jeffrey’s eyes grows. He turns his head, as if wanting to glance back at whatever he hid, but he resists the urge to do so fully. “You’d never hurt me, right?”
“Not physically.”
“What does that mean?”
When questions begin to be asked like this, there is nothing quite as frustrating as being unable to skip past the specifics required and simply tell him everything. But I cannot. “It means what I said. None of my previous masters or mistresses kept me, Jeffrey, b-because…” I try to say more, but I can’t. My curse prevents me.
“Because there is a catch,” Jeffrey says sadly, “and this is it. You’re dangerous.”
I tilt my head because of course I am dangerous. But what I say is, “I can be.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that the first time I asked if there was a catch?”
“You did not ask. You stated, ‘there has to be a downside, a trick to this, a catch,’ but you did not ask me if there was one.”
Jeffrey pants, in obvious distress. “How do I fix it? How do I wish to fix this?”
“You cannot wish for that, Jeffrey. You asked once if I could be freed with a wish. I cannot be.”
“Did you want to hurt that man?”
