How do you feel about that? See me being completely neutral about the girl I was quite fond of in a completely platonic and slightly older-sisterly way finally dumping the guy I’d been hoping she’d dump for literally years.
Strange. I miss him and I still care about him. But I need to focus on me for now.
And Samuel?
Gone back to being god of the sun.
Then.
We don’t have normal exes, do we?
Nope. Welcome to the life of the magical destiny girl. Fifteen years from now you’ll find yourself in bed with an estate agent wondering what life would have been like if you’d made different choices.
The bus finally arrived at Bow Street, or at least close enough to Bow Street that I could walk it. That seems oddly specific was Sofia’s reply.
Long story.
How long?
I thought about it. Not that long. I went to bed with an estate agent and it made me wonder what life would have been like if I’d made different choices.
:confused face:
Then
Estate agent?
Estate agents are people too. I made my way upstairs to my office, and was alarmed to see the main door—the one with the frosted glass and the Kane & Archer sign I really should have got around to replacing—swinging open. Hold on think I might have a break-in.
I sidled closer, wishing I’d brought a weapon, but I’d got far more lax about going armed since I stopped caring if I lived or died. Much as I hated to do it, I reached for my mother’s power, trying to touch as little of it as I could. The senses always came first and easiest, and they were all I needed for now. My eyes sharpened and the scents on the breeze took on new and dangerous characters. The walls were tamed stone, the air smelled of wild pursuits and the faintest trace of a very expensive perfume. I stalked closer and pushed the door open.
Tara Vane-Tempest was lounging with her feet on my desk, displaying much more of her legs than I could cope with while also keeping in control of my mother’s instinct to chase and catch and kill. “You didn’t think I’d wait outside did you?” she drawled.
I banished my mother’s power as quickly as I could, not liking how hard that was getting these days, and glanced back at my phone to see six messages from Sofia, all variants on “what’s happening” and “are you dead.”
False alarm, I texted back. Just a small outbreak of werewolf.
Then I sent her a wolf emoji. Then, The wolf is not intended to be sexual.
“You broke my fucking door.”
“I’ll replace it.” She swung herself into a standing position with a poise and elegance that should have been impossible in that much flowing red silk. “Where did you go last night? I know it wasn’t home—you’ve not been home in months.”
“I’m not your pet. True I’ve been staying in your house, eating your food, and generally leeching off you for quite a long time now, but that makes me a loser, not property.”
She crossed the office and got well, well inside my personal space. Boundaries, for Tara Vane-Tempest, were very much things that happened to other people. She sniffed me. One of these days I had to think hard about my policy of sleeping with women who could track by scent. It got creepy fast. “My my,” she breathed. “You did have a good time last night. I can still smell it on you, although I doubt you’ve showered.”
“It wasn’t really a showering kind of arrangement.” Not that I’d especially prioritised making the option available.
“I don’t expect fidelity.” She was doing that full-alpha-werewolf thing that I always had a difficult time resisting. “But I do expect courtesy. You said you would wait for me yesterday. You didn’t.”
This was getting at least a little bit unfair. “You told me to get off my arse and start trying to be useful, and I did. Sorry going back to my job and my life inconvenienced you, but if you’d wanted me to lie around naked and attending on your pleasure all day, you did in fact have that option.”
She was still very, very close to me, in a way that was fast moving from sexy into threatening. I tried backing away but she moved forwards. Wolves: don’t run, it only encourages them. “A member of my pack was murdered. More are missing. You solve murders for a living. I had hoped you would finally prove yourself to be of some use.”
Oh. “You wanted to hire me?”
“I wanted you to be on my side when it counted. Something bad is happening, and I think you can be of assistance.” Fuck, it never rains but it pours. I added werewolf problems to my list of shit people expected me to know how to deal with. She turned away and lowered herself gracefully into the chair that clients were actually meant to sit in. “If you would prefer this to be a professional arrangement, I can pay you. I’d hoped you’d see it as helping a friend.”
It had never occurred to me that Tara Vane-Tempest thought of me as a friend before. I’d thought she mostly saw me as a slightly annoying woman she wanted to fuck so she could score points off Julian Saint-Germain. Then again, she had saved my life a couple of times, and I knew some of her family didn’t like her keeping me around, so she must have—crap did I have to add taking Tara for granted to my long list of things to feel bad about?
“I don’t need your money,” I said. It was a lie. I very much needed her money. And I’d meant it in the nice I’m doing this because I like you way but from how she bristled I don’t think that’s how she took it. I decided to cut my losses. “Tell me what happened.”
7
Death & Flowers
It took Tara a while to get around to explaining what had gone on after I’d left her. She paced the room like a caged animal and refused to meet my eyes for a good five minutes. There was something about seeing her like this—her guard halfway down but still not quite willing to let herself ask for help—that was scarier than when she was just plain threatening to rip my throat out.
“Was it that bad?” I asked, then immediately wished I hadn’t.
She stopped in front of the desk and stared at me for a long moment. It was like she could barely form the words. Eventually she managed exactly one: “Skinned.”
“Alive or dead.” I wished I hadn’t asked that either.
“I don’t know.” Her eyes went yellow, and her fingernails lengthened into claws. Claws that she dug into the back of my chair but hey, furniture was cheap. Well, the furniture I bought was cheap.
“Where?” That question was safer, I hoped.
“On the edge of the Place of Ice and Darkness, the realm of the King of Shadows, the Queen of Winter.”
That was worrying. I’d never had any particular contact with that particular Faery Lord, but his-her child—the Merchant of Dreams—had been, well, not an ally exactly, but a help at times. Of course they weren’t necessarily involved in everything their mother-father did any more than I was involved in everything that went on in the Deepwild, but they were likely to know something, or be able to sense it at least. “I never thought that the King-Queen was the tearing apart type. That’s more my mother’s style.”
“Which is one of many things that concern me.”