by JJ Jones
Clarissa nodded slowly, with a small, slightly bemused smile. She toed her shoes off before she headed into the living room, not offering any sort of protest as he disappeared into the kitchen.
She made herself comfortable on Abel’s couch, reclining back against one of the throw pillows. The curtains were open, so she could watch cars and people pass by outside, and she smiled slightly to herself whenever someone with a dog passed by.
It had been quite a night.
It had been beautiful.
There were only a few occasions in her life where she had been able to see the sky quite like that. It simply wasn’t truly possible in Chicago, and she didn’t leave the city very often. And she still had dessert to look forward to, even if she was pretty sure Abel was just adding a few finishing touches to something he had purchased pre-made, despite his insistence that he was baking it himself. If only because she was fairly sure Abel had no idea how long it took for many desserts to bake, or else he would know that if he was just starting it then it would likely be midnight before it was done and ready to be eaten.
(Besides, if he could really bake, he would have tried to impress her with it before.)
Regardless, she was willing to let him pretend if he thought it might impress her for a short while, and it gave her time to think. It seemed like she never had enough time to do that anymore, but she supposed that made sense, considering more had happened during her time in Paris than at any other point in her life, or at least that was what it felt like.
Her thoughts drifted until Abel emerged from the kitchen, two plates in hand, each with a slice of some sort of dark chocolate torte on it, each slice decorated in slices of fruit. Having some sort of idea of how long such a dessert took to bake and the fact that it wasn’t even warm meant that she knew he had been bluffing, and by the rueful look he gave e her as she took the first bite, he knew he had been caught out.
Regardless, it tasted amazing, so she was willing to give him a pass.
They talked about nothing in particular as they ate, their chitchat breezing from topic to topic with no real connection from one to the next. It was comfortable and easy, and by the time they were done eating, Clarissa had hardly even realized how late it had gotten until she started
yawning.
Finally, they decided they had lingered long enough and it was probably a good time to head to bed. It wasn’t as if they needed to get anything else done for the night.
They left their plates haphazardly in the sink before they trooped up the stairs. They stripped in silence, down to their underwear before they climbed into bed and got comfortable. Clarissa still couldn’t get over how comfortable his bed was, and as he pulled the blanket up to cover them both, she was amazed that she didn’t fall asleep right then and there, as if she expected the
mattress to have some sort of hypnotic effect.
(If only, if only. They could solve all of their current problems by just capturing Corvin, tossing him onto the bed, and hypnotizing him into behaving. What a world that would be. But if wishes were fishes, they would all be swimming in the sea.)
Silence fell over them, and Clarissa traced patterns in the light that fell across the ceiling from the window, until Abel broke the silence, his voice low.
“Hey.”
Clarissa rolled onto her side to face him with a low, inquisitive hum, one arm tucked beneath her pillow and the other curled to her chest. She was slightly closer to asleep than she was to awake, though that changed very quickly after the next words out of Abel’s mouth.
“What if you stay here?” he suggested, offering it mildly. A bit too mildly, as he sounded just convinced enough to make it clear that he had put quite a lot of thought into whether or not he should say anything about it at all.
Clarissa’s thoughts all seemed to stall out for a moment, as she tried to slot those words into place. She knew very well what he was suggesting, but she still found herself asking, “What, for the rest of my trip?”
Abel made a low, slightly consternated noise. “That’s not what I mean,” he mumbled, before he cleared his throat. “Even after that. You could stay here, in Paris. With me.”
She blinked at him slowly as she contemplated that idea. She couldn’t say it didn’t have any
appeal to it; it would be a bald-faced lie if she tried. And she couldn’t even say that the thought had never crossed her mind.
Regardless, it was a bit too big of a thing for her to immediately agree to it right then and there.
“I think,” she mused slowly, “that this is something we should talk about when I’m not almost asleep.” Her eyebrows rose slightly, her expression turning expectant, and Abel huffed out a breath of quiet laughter.
“Fair enough,” he agreed, evidently content to let the topic drop for the time being. Clarissa nodded once in satisfaction before she squirmed closer to him, burying her nose against his neck as she curled up close to his chest.
She would give the topic some thought. She had been genuine about that. Just not that night. That night, all she planned on doing was sleeping.
CHAPTER NINE
They didn’t actually decide if Clarissa would be staying in Paris permanently the next morning. She did promise to think about it, but it wasn’t the sort of choice she could just make on the spot like that, and Abel was content enough to give her time to think about it.
From time to time, it was a little hard to believe that Clarissa’s life was actually her life. Maybe that was a little dramatic, considering she hadn’t actually been in Paris for particularly long, but so much had happened that it seemed like entire epochs had passed from when she got on a plane in Chicago and that moment. And while she couldn’t say she was unhappy with the way things had gone—the incident with the naga not withstanding—it was still a lot to take in and she needed a moment to just sit down and process all of the information from time to time.
When she turned down Abel’s offer to spend the day together, he took it gamely, and Clarissa couldn’t help but sigh in relief. She had heard too many horror stories about men who seemed pleasant at first, only to turn into complete nightmares the moment they were denied, and
Clarissa hadn’t really denied him anything up to that point; just telling him that she needed to think things over didn’t really count as denying him anything, after all.
She could have just spent the day in the hotel, and it was a tempting idea at first. She didn’t have anything specifically arranged for the day. But it seemed like a waste of a day to just sit inside the entire time, so she got dressed as comfortably as she could while still being presentable to be in public, and she packed up her recorder, her laptop, and her headphones and headed out.
She found a cafe with a courtyard and made herself comfortable, popped open her laptop, and got started on the actual article. She should have been working on it days ago, but she had gotten rather distracted on more than one occasion. She figured it could be forgiven.
For a time, she got into a decent rhythm, sipping coffee, taking bites of a sandwich, and typing rapidly as she paused and occasionally rewound her interview with Abel. It was a comforting
situation, familiar and well-worn. Even in another country, it was similar to the way she tended to get her work done back home.
Granted, it didn’t really take too long before her thoughts began to wander, and she didn’t bother to fight it.
Could she call Chicago home for much longer? While the idea of simply staying in Paris had never really occurred to her in a serious capacity, after Abel had broached the topic, she couldn’t get the idea out of her head. True enough, her French still wasn’t ideal, but she knew that
exposure would improve it, and English was a common enough language that she wouldn’t run into problems while her French improved.
And the city was beautiful. Beautiful enough that she couldn’t imagine its charm wearing thin if she lived there full time. It would just mean she could appreciate it whenever she wante
d to, and she wouldn’t need to pay for a plane ticket and pack her luggage to do so.
But she would be leaving a lot behind if she did that, and as she thought about it, she pushed her laptop back a few inches and pulled her phone out, so she could start barraging Lacy’s phone with pictures. There was no response to the first few, but soon enough each photo was met with a
parade of emoticons that started spilling over onto multiple lines.
And there was her mother to keep in mind. She had moved out years ago, but she still kept in touch. Granted, she kept in touch largely by telephone, and she supposed that wouldn’t be particularly complicated by moving across the ocean. More expensive, true, but she got the distinct feeling that Abel wouldn’t mind if she asked him to chip in towards her phone bill if it became too much of a concern.
Her job was something she wasn’t particularly concerned about. The magazine had various iterations in other countries, and she knew there was one in France, just as she knew that people had transferred from the American branch to an international branch in the past, so it wasn’t impossible. And to be frank, she was nearly one hundred percent certain that if she told her bosses that she wanted to stay in Paris, none of them were going to blame her. They might even think it was unusual if she expressed an opinion otherwise. So, her job wasn’t a problem, and would be even less of a problem when she had an opportunity to brush up on her French.
And she knew Lacy wouldn’t hold it against her. Lacy would miss her, but they would still keep in touch, just as she would keep in touch with her mother. And she knew Lacy wouldn’t object to having a ready excuse to visit Europe without needing to worry about a hotel.
With all of that laid out, it was beginning to seem like maybe she just didn’t have a good reason not to. Her social life had never been particularly expansive, after all. Outside of Lacy, she had a few friends from work who she got drinks with every so often, but she wasn’t close enough with any of them to truly miss them if she couldn’t see them anymore. Her job wouldn’t be an issue. It wasn’t as if she would never see or talk to her family again.
With a sigh, she was forced to acknowledge that her only objection was that it would be a big change and she was nervous. And she supposed she had every right to be; she didn’t know anyone in Paris outside of Abel and Marjorie, and she knew remarkably little about the area other than the handful of destinations she was supposed to be researching. It would be like getting thrown into the ocean when she had only ever lived in a goldfish pond. It made sense to be
nervous.
But it didn’t make sense to let her nerves keep her from doing anything with her life, and she knew that.
Even acknowledging that, she couldn’t really say she had actually made up her mind. She was still leery about actually packing up her entire life and moving it across the ocean. But she at least felt a bit more amenable to the idea, and she knew that she would be able to come to a decision soon enough, rather than just dithering uselessly for the rest of her stay in Paris.
It helped that she did at least know a couple people in the city, and that she found them rather compelling. (One more so than the other, but still.) It wasn’t as if she was contemplating the idea just because she could, but because there would be people waiting for her if she decided to move, and because it wouldn’t overly inconvenience anyone or throw her life off track. She knew that if she decided to do it, it wouldn’t even be particularly complicated.
Gradually, her thoughts calmed until she could return to work. She set her phone aside and pulled her laptop close again, and she resumed working on the article. Eventually, she put her recorder away and instead pulled up the notes she had been taking on her phone. The interview with Abel was only a portion of the article, after all. The main portion was supposed to be about things people wouldn’t want to miss doing if they had the chance to visit Paris.
Once again, she fell into a rhythm, thoughts occupied only by the words on the screen in front of her and the notes she took. It was calming and familiar. It was relaxing, despite the fact that she was working, and she had always considered that to be one of the greatest benefits of her job. Most of the time, it didn’t truly feel like work. It felt like she was being productive, but she had never felt as if her job was trying to suck her soul out or make her miserable.
There was something soothing about it, words appearing in a steady stream and knowing that they were her doing. She would need to pass it on to an editor at some point, but for the time
being it was all her work. Her words. Maybe there were some people who didn’t think of what she did as true journalism, but she could live with their disapproval. She didn’t need them to approve for her to find joy in it, and she didn’t need the entire world to take her seriously to feel as if she was contributing.
She was content in her own skin, and she knew that was something many people very similar to her couldn’t say. And as she kept working, the rest of the world seemed to gradually peter out of existence, until it consisted of just her, the clicking of her keyboard, and the words crawling one by one across the screen like ants in a row.
All the relaxation of the situation’s simple familiarity abruptly vanished when a shadow fell over her, rapidly getting larger as it got closer, until a horribly familiar dragon landed in front of her. And yet…no one else seemed to notice, as if nothing had happened. As if a dragon landing in broad daylight was perfectly normal.
Clarissa cast about wildly to see if anyone was going to notice anything at all, only to realize that the air around them seemed to be shimmering slightly, just out of the corner of her vision, in a large dome around them.
Magic, she realized distantly. No one was going to realize anything was wrong because he wasn’t going to let anyone.
Slowly, she forced her gaze back to Corvin’s face, and she drew in a sharp, horrified gasp as she realized there was something dangling from his jaws. There was a low rumble of laughter as Corvin dropped the mangled body of a gryphon with a wet, meaty smack. And despite the gore, Clarissa recognized it as being part vulture and part cougar.
With a careless swipe of one foreleg, Corvin shoved Gaspard’s body aside and stepped closer, lowering his head as he did until he was nose-to-nose with Clarissa.
“More than one of my people went conveniently missing after having interviews with you, and though it took some convincing, I managed to get Gaspard’s compatriots to admit to seeing someone of your description shortly before those inspections,” he spat the word like it had personally offended, “began.”
He snorted out a warm breath over Clarissa’s face. “It didn’t take much to put the pieces together, and I wasn’t going to let it continue. You have been swimming in an ocean far too dangerous for one as small and insignificant as you, and you don’t know the sorts of things that lurk
beneath the water’s surface. But you will.” His voice was silky soft as he made his promise. “I will see to it.”
He lifted his head, jaws opening slowly. Whether to breathe fire or to grab her, Clarissa didn’t know, and neither one sounded like it was going to go particularly well for her.
And then a miracle happened.
She could hear bells steadily approaching, until Marjorie burst through the shimmering veil, and Corvin recoiled two short steps at the unicorn planted herself between him and Clarissa. Her leonine tail lashed back and forth behind her, and her ears were pinned back against her head. She pawed at the cement with one hoof and ducked her head, horn brandished in a clear threat.
“You pissant fuck,” Corvin growled, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything else before light was spilling from Marjorie’s horn, brighter than anything Clarissa had seen before. Corvin recoiled sharply with a growl, ducking his head and bringing his wings forward to shield his eyes, and Marjorie stepped back just enough to bump Clarissa with one shoulder.
Clarissa didn’t need any more convincing after that, and she scrambled up onto Marjorie’s back without complaint, du
cking low over her neck and clutching at her mane as Marjorie wheeled about on her hind legs and took off straight into a gallop, jumping over Gaspard’s body as she did.
She was faster than any horse or deer that Clarissa had ever heard of, and the wind whistled past her ears as they ran. Each stride seemed too long, as if they were clearing several extra yards of space with each long stride, eating up the ground like a race car. It wasn’t quite like flying high above the city, but it was still nothing quite like anything else Clarissa had experienced, and she only wished it was better circumstances, so she could actually enjoy it.
Every so often, a massive shadow passed above them, and she knew that Corvin was following them, and the only thing that kept him from swooping down on them like some sort of enormous bird of prey was the fact that Marjorie kept weaving between buildings, ducking down alleys and side streets that were far too small for a dragon of Corvin’s size to fit.
