The urge to cross to the nearest wall and bang my head until my brain fell out left my feet twitchy.
“Remy, can I speak to you?” I jerked my thumb toward the hall. “Alone?”
“Rem?” Lillian twisted her fingers in the sheet. “I didn’t get you in trouble, did I?”
“Nah.” Remy waved off her worry. “I told you…” her gaze landed on me, “…Hadley is one of the good ones.”
With a setup like that, any punishment or reprimand I handed down would cast me in the role of villain.
Frak, frak, frak.
Guiding her a few doors down, I pulled on my potentate face. “She’s not going to be a problem, is she?”
“No,” Remy rushed out too fast. “I promise. And she’s got talent. A really cool talent. You can use her.”
“I have too much on my plate as it is.” I had no room for extra helpings. “Lillian is your responsibility.”
“She’ll sit in her pot on the fire escape all day and won’t bother a soul.” She crossed her heart. “I swear.”
“And at night?” I searched her face. “What will she do then?”
Not break into home improvement stores and pass herself off as merchandise. Not if she wanted to live here. But I was beating a dead horse with Remy. She wasn’t listening anymore. She had her heart set on Lillian, and I couldn’t find it in myself to break it.
I was going to cave.
I could feel it.
“She doesn’t have a head for numbers, but she loves to decorate. She can help with interior design for the new Peachy Keen stores. You should have seen the box she was living in. It was beautiful.” She squinted one eye. “Well, it was on the inside. The outside looked like trash.” She shrugged. “It discouraged folks from stealing from her.”
“You’re playing the sympathy card hard right now.”
“You’ve got a marshmallow heart. It’s all big and squishy, and it goes all ooey-gooey.” Remy grinned, scenting victory. “You won’t turn her out now that you’ve met her.”
Ugh.
I hated when she was right.
“No one stays at the Faraday long term without approval from the board. She’s got twenty-four hours to fill out the proper paperwork. After that, if she doesn’t comply, or if they reject her application, she’s got to go.” I could put a rush on it, but that was as far as I was willing help. “You’ve got to teach her the proper way to enter and exit the building too. Like now. Tonight. She can’t sneak past Hank again. Or any other gwyllgi. Their noses are too keen.” Which brought up a good point. “How did she manage invisibility?”
“Check out her hands when we go back in. She invests her money in protective charms.” A few ounces of her usual bravado leaked out of her. “She can turn into a plant. Plants can’t defend themselves real well. She can do a few more tricks, thanks to the charms, but none of them are offensive. Only defensive. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. She just wants a safe place to crash while she decides what to do with her life.”
Most lesser fae fresh from Faerie ended up on the streets until they learned how to conform. More ended up dead when they couldn’t learn fast enough. It was a brutal reminder the grass isn’t always greener.
“You stamped sucker on my forehead while I wasn’t looking, didn’t you?”
“Nah.” Her grin bared pointy teeth. “I waited until you were asleep. You can sleep through anything.”
Sleep.
Man, that sounded good right about now.
“Just don’t let word get out I’m a soft touch,” I warned, “or I’ll never get my street cred back.”
“You make a difference, you know.” She was oddly earnest for a change. “You helped me. Now I get to help Lily. I’m paying it forward. She will too.” She fell silent. “It’s not much, compared to what you do, but—”
“No buts.” I gathered her into a hug that left her squawking and flailing like a parrot with its tail feathers stuck in its cage door. “I’m proud of you.”
I wished she had waited to exhibit growth when I had more time and energy to babysit her metamorphosis, but at some point, you had to climb out of the driver’s seat and pass over the keys.
Shoving me back, she curled her lip for show and grumbled, “That’s got to be a workplace violation.”
“Probably,” I agreed, “but we’re not at one of our stores, or kiosks, or on company time.”
After smoothing her clothes, as if my hug left a stain, she flounced off down the hall, back to her friend.
I followed at a more sedate pace, and Ambrose cast himself as a cat-sized snail inching along the wall.
“Jerk.” I swatted at him, not that it would do any good. “Go pick on someone your own size.”
Ambrose twisted himself back into his Hadley shape, making us identical.
I really should have seen that one coming.
Midas exited the exam room as I arrived, and he brushed his fingertips under my eyes. “You’re tired.”
A tingle spread from that touch, and I leaned in for more. “You’re sexy.”
“Thank you, but flattery won’t get you out of taking a nap.” He tucked me against his side. “Remy can handle things from here. She just went through the application process, so she can guide her friend through it without us.”
“I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me.” I sighed. “Remy is a good egg who was dealt a bad hand.”
“Eggs have hands?”
“Ha-ha.” I elbowed him. “Funny guy thinks he’s funny.”
An audible vibration sent me on a wild-goose chase for my phone.
“It’s in your left hand,” Midas informed me without so much as twitching his lips.
Well, look at that. He was right. “How did it get there?”
“You must have gotten it out while you were talking to Remy.” He cleared his throat, which did nothing to hide his laughter with me plastered against him. “You were probably considering beating her to death with it.”
“Nah.” I was too tired for that, cathartic though it might be. “I did consider giving myself a concussion to mentally escape the situation.”
Gesturing toward my hand, in case I forgot where my phone was again, he asked, “That an update from Bishop?”
“Yup.” I scanned the message. “He says he’ll meet us in the lobby in an hour.”
While I was at it, I requested Anca run a background check on Lily using her application from the Faraday as soon as it was filed. It skirted a line, yes, but Remy would do the same for me. These days we couldn’t take anyone at face value, not when so many of our enemies wore so many different faces.
Midas shuffled me into the elevator. “That’s good news.”
“We’re sitting ducks in a giant blind spot.” I tipped my head back to see him. “How is that good news?”
“They cut the feeds. That means their magic can’t hide them from the cameras.”
“That is a silver lining, I suppose, but it won’t help us in the interim.”
“The pack has recently purchased two dozen drones.” He kept me from wobbling as the car shot up to the top of the building then nudged me onto our floor after the chime. “I might be persuaded to loan a dozen of those to the OPA.”