He would not need much of what lay before him. But what he did require had to be taken soon and with the greatest of care, lest it lose its potency. Placing the boning knife against the corpse's right quadriceps, he was reminded that corpses never bled when they were cut into, at least not the way a live person did.

As he removed part of the quadriceps and placed it on the table, his crooked smile came again.

And they don't complain, either, he thought.

Soon the exposed thighbone glistened wetly before him. At first glance the bone appeared to have never been broken. That was good.

Placing his knife down, he picked up a short butcher's axe. With two sure, quick strokes he severed the femur from the hip socket and then from the knee joint. He lifted the long bone from the table and placed it to one side.

Putting down the butcher's axe, he put on a pair of magnifying spectacles. Then he took up the bone again and examined it closely.

As he had expected, it was strong, and it had never seen any significant trauma. Over the course of his grisly career, he had cheated some of his other customers by using inferior ingredients. To this day, he had always gotten away with it.

He knew better than to try this with Satine. There was no more accomplished killer in all of Eutracia. Should any one of his potions not prove as promised, she wouldn't hesitate to come back and kill him. Even he would never know she was there. It would be a simple matter of being alive one moment, and dead the next. That wasn't a chance he was willing to take.