I could tell he thought it was a pity, though, as he watched her begin to work. With her flawless peach-colored skin, enormous ageless black eyes, and glossy dark hair that she wore piled high on her head, Seraglio was beautiful in all the ways there were to be beautiful. I would've guessed her to be thirty-five, but I could've been a decade off in either direction. She was also a little person, but not Good-fellow's kind of little person. She was a human one, barely four feet tall—medically speaking, a person with dwarfism. And if she wasn't proof positive that once in a while Mother Nature got something right, I didn't know what was.

"Why, are you looking at me, Mr. Fellows?" Her voice reminded me of orange blossom honey, Spanish moss, and the thorns of a wild blackberry bush. Georgia or somewhere down that way. We'd lived in a trailer park there once; I recognized the broad drawl and faded Rs. Her words drifted over her shoulder as she bent over to retrieve cleaning supplies from the bottom half of the pantry. Robin's lips curved into a wicked grin as he watched her uniform pants pull taut over her rounded backside.

"No, ma'am," he lied gravely. "I would sooner pluck my own eyeballs out than show you such disrespect."

As I rolled mine, other skeptical ones pinned the puck. "Well, sir, if any assistance is needed in that area, you just let me know. I have ice tongs that would be just the thing," she offered matter-of-factly before turning back to her task. "Now, run along, children. I have work to do." A bejeweled hand flapped impatiently to hurry him and us on our way.

So we went elsewhere for the whole seven-hundred-tops discussion. After dressing, Robin decided lunch would be a great forum for cannibal tales and picked the restaurant, because after one three-ninety-nine buffet, he would never let me choose again. This place seemed interesting, though, and I let the thought of a tasty twenty-five-cent eggroll go. The restaurant didn't look too fancy from the outside, a few dingy windows and a faded striped awning, but the inside made up for it. The tables were old, dark wood with mosaic tile tops, and the chairs…they were just ugly as hell. With claw feet and worn velvet seats, they looked like props from Count Dracula's castle. From the ceiling hung several non-matching chandeliers. Some were looping metal, some whimsical blown glass, and some looked like they'd been banged together by kindergartners with a lot of enthusiasm and absolutely no talent. Everything in the place did have one thing in common, though—it was all old. Antique, and I could see how Robin would like that.

He ordered for us, some dish called Tavuk Gogsu, and then got down to business. "Turkish." He waved off the waiter before Niko or I could even take a look at the menu. "It's magnificent. Trust me. You'll bring offerings to my altar in thanks. Now, what about dusty old Sawney? Oh, and by the way, he wasn't a cannibal, as he wasn't—"

"Human. Yes, we're now aware," Niko interjected. "Promise's acquaintance at the museum filled us in regarding that, at least that he wasn't human. She didn't say precisely what he was."

"A Redcap," Robin said absently as he accepted a drink from the returning waiter. "Try this. Kahlua, soy, honey, very much like a mead I had in pre-Nero Rome. Quite tasty."

Niko and I exchanged looks of tolerant resignation, gave in, and drank. Robin operated on Goodfellow time and mere humans, or human-Auphe hybrids, couldn't change that. After a polite swallow, Niko put his glass down. "Sawney's a Redcap? I didn't know they were that powerful. And why the human-style name?"

My own swallow barely made it down and I pushed my glass away with a curled lip. Pre-Nero Rome could keep that crap. "What's a Redcap? Some sort of goblin, right?"

"A Scottish-English legend," Niko elaborated. "They were said to murder travelers and then stain their caps with their victims' blood, hence Redcap."

"And once again, the folklore monkeys got it wrong. Caps stained with blood." Robin gave a foamy snort into his drink. "Yes, how frightening. A capering evil wearing a hat. Maybe he wears suspenders and short pants as well. Will the terror never end?"

"No caps, then?" Niko said mildly.

"No." He finished his glass and promptly reached for my discarded one. "They use the blood on their hair. They have this mess of twists and tangles, matted together with gore and stinking to high heaven. They're unpleasant, filthy, nasty creatures, but only dangerous to the unwary or simply stupid. However…" He tapped my now empty glass against his and frowned. "Sawney Beane was quite a different thing altogether. Is a different thing, I guess, if what you say is true and he has come back. That's quite the trick, and one I wasn't aware he was capable of. I'm still doubtful." Sighing, he leaned back and linked fingers across his stomach. "Besides, what he was capable of was more than enough to begin with. As for the human name, who knows? Familiarity? They deal with humans. Fool humans. Eat humans." He shrugged.

"Then the legend of Sawney Beane as we know it is mostly true?" Niko was flipping the serving knife from wrist to palm and back again. Lunch was no excuse to let a practicing opportunity pass by. "He and his incestuous clan robbed and murdered travelers during the fifteenth century. They dragged their victims back to their cave in Bannane Head, hung them from hooks, dismembered them, and ate them. You put the body count a few hundred lower, but do the basic facts hold true?"

"Except for the incest." Goodfellow beamed at the waiter who had chosen that particular moment to appear with our food. "They're brothers," he said to the server, shaking his head woefully. "I tell them that close is good, family is good, but don't be so quick to limit your options."

I lashed out with my foot, but only succeeded in banging the shit out of my toes on his chair leg. Both Robin and Niko gave me a look of disappointment— Robin's mock and Niko's more genuine. "Later we spar in the park," my brother ordered. "If we can find you a worthy opponent from the playground."

By that time the waiter had made his escape, the lucky bastard, and Robin continued. "Redcaps aren't into incest. That was a typical human soap opera addition, because mass murder and cannibalism simply weren't juicy enough."

I swirled a fork through the pale mound on my plate dubiously as he went on. "In reality, Redcaps don't much care for one another's company. Loathe each other. The male and the female even more so. Consequently, they have the quickest mating habits one could possibly imagine. In, out, handshake, see you next year—this is how much they hate one another. Which is what made Sawney so unique. He brought over forty Redcaps together. They killed together, dwelled together, and didn't try to eat each other during it all … astounding." He took another bite.

"And what of the rest of the legend?" Niko asked, ignoring his food for the moment. "How they came to their end."

"Half true. In the original, the women and children were burned and the men bled to death after having their hands and feet chopped off. In reality there were no women or children. They were only male Redcaps and the humans burned them all. I heard that Sawney, as their leader, was given special attention and burned separately. If his remains were gathered and put in a cask, then I suppose that was true." Unfazed by the subject matter, he continued to make his way through lunch with enthusiasm.

"How the hell did a bunch of humans manage to capture and kill these guys?" I finally broke down and took a bite of the weird stuff in front of me. It looked and smelled like chicken pudding. That's what it tasted like as well, but cinnamon sweet. It wasn't half bad.

"How did they manage?" He gave a little shrug. "They had an army. Literally. If you have some bizarre fascination with taking up with where they left off, you're a few short."