“Take this,” Evelyn said, handing a purple bottle to a man who’s eyes were swolllen shut and red. “Drink this once a day until it’s gone.”

The man nodded and pulled the cork off of the bottle to take a sip of the liquid. A belch escaped from his mouth, his face paled, and he looked as if he might pass out. After a few minutes, he looked better and got off of Evelyn’s table.

“Have a good day!” Evelyn called after him. “Come back if you need anything else.”

The man handed her a sack of coins before leaving her shop. Sighing, she sorted the coins in her coin drawer.

A ring of the door alerted her that somebody had entered her work. “I’ll be with you in a minute.” She finished sorting the last of the coins and turned around, gasping when she saw who stood before her.

“Who are you?” she asked. She stared at the hooded figure with ghostly figures and a large bow on his back and a sword in a sheath.

The man stared at her, unblinking. After a few minutes he asked, “May I speak with a Ms. Evelyn Murrel?”

“I’m her,” she answered nervously, her hand grasped a drawer in her long table which held a dagger, just in case.

The hooded man lumbered over to a chair and sat down. Evelyn sat on another chair across from him. “Are you a healer?” he asked in a deep, gravely voice. He lifted his hood, so she could see his eyes which were a deep brown so dark his eyes looked like voids in the dark.

“Yes, I was born with the gift,” Evelyn answered. “Do you need any help?” She eyed the long shelf of different colored elixirs.

“I’m here on business for a friend, thank you. Would it be okay if I asked you some questions, Ms. Evelyn?”

Feeling as if there was no way to say no, she nodded her head, still unsure of the stranger. “Can I ask you again what your name is?”

“No. Now, how many people have you treated in your career?” The man fiddled with the hilt of his sword.

Evelyn thought for a moment. “At least ten years.” Why is that so important? she thought. The hooded man stared at her still, not giving her any information about him or his mission.

“How many of those patients lived at least a year after treatment?” The stranger’s eyes now had a sly expression, and he peered at Evelyn as though she was a rabbit that hadn’t seen him hidden in the brush, waiting to pounce.

The man she treated earlier in the day crept back up into Evelyn’s mind, her face paled. “To my knowledge, all of them.”

He nodded and pulled something out of his hood. Evelyn saw that it was a piece of paper folded into a square, she cocked her head to the side.

The man unfolded the paper and held it up to her It was a picture of a young woman, her skin fair and she had bright auburn hair with vibrant green eyes, an exquisite green dress draped over her body. “Do you remember this woman?”

Evelyn thought the woman looked familiar though she couldn’t remember her name. She shook her head. “She was the daughter of a regant. Last year, she contracted an illness and came to your shop for care. She was given medication that healed for a time but then it seemed that her life was beginning to drain out of her, piece by piece and day by day. A month later, she was dead.”

Evelyn felt her body shiver, she faintly remembered the girl but had no idea why the girl had died. She did remember that the illness the regant’s daughter had was extremely rare and caused her to ache whenever she moved and painful, red boils to appear on her skin and then burst a burning, yellow pus.

The hooded man continued, “They took her body to a sorceress to see what caused her death. The sorceress said that her death was caused by the very medication that she was given, as it drained her life until she eventually died.”

Evelyn shook her head. “That can’t be true,” she objected. “My potions have never killed anyone. Surely the girl died because of something else and the sorceress lied about the cause.”

The man shook his head. “Sorceresses have an inability to lie, for the truth is what they seek and find. Your creations killed this woman.”

Evelyn wouldn’t believe it.

The man stood and walked over to her. “You know that you cause your customers deaths. All of these townsfolk say that you’re fourty years old but you don’t look a day older than eighteen. You use your patients to have eternal life,” he whispered, flashing a metal in the corner of Evelyn’s eye.

Evelyn barely had time to reach for her dagger before the hooded man’s sword plunged through her chest, killing her.

The man pulled the sword out of Evelyn’s chest and cleaned it off before walking out of the shop.