by Holley Trent
“Saw you coming out of the house,” he said, wearing a grin that could have passed for innocent if it weren’t for his elongated cougar fangs. “Wanted to see if you needed a ride back to Ma’s.”
She folded her arms against her belly and arched a brow. “I’m not sure if I need to go back just yet. Do you think she would mind if I left my things there for a few days? I have everything that’s critical in my tote.”
“Nah, she won’t mind. So …” He turned his gaze from Noelle to one of the looming figures behind her. “You have to come back, then?”
She dragged her tongue across dry lips and rubbed the knot forming between her shoulder and neck. “I have some unfinished business.”
“Okay. Lemme know if there’s anything I can do for you.” He leaned forward and looked around Noelle at one of the angels. “We cool? Favor repaid?”
Whoever he was talking to must have given assent, because Tito nodded, turned his ignition over, and waved goodbye.
Tarik wrapped his massive hand around her forearm, did a precursory glance around, and then teleported her to the back alley of her office in Vegas.
Her knees wobbled a bit as she waited for her eyes to uncross. She’d probably need weeks to get reacquainted with traveling via angel. Some people actually liked the sensation of being spun around in a centrifuge, but Noelle had never been one of them.
She fished her keys out of the inside pouch of her bag and slid her battered feet into her shoes. “I think I have it from here. I’ve got to make a quick run into the office, but I’m going to go home and change first. Wouldn’t be a good idea for anyone in the office to see me in this state.”
Tarik raised his chin and crossed his arms over his chest in the way of triumphant gladiators and certain Roman statutes.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m merely thinking.”
“And you want to do your thinking in a Vegas back alley? I can think of better places. Like, literally anywhere that isn’t a Vegas back alley.”
He turned his wrist over and stared at the face of his gold watch.
“Fancy,” she muttered.
“A gift.”
“From whom?”
He gave her a chastising look.
“I imagine people shower you with gifts all the time and don’t even know why they’re doing it. Me? I have to fight to get a cup of coffee while it’s still hot.”
“You’re small.”
“Thanks for the reminder. I’m actually quite statuesque for an elf.” She hitched her tote up higher on her shoulder and started walking toward the street. She could take a cab home. Probably, the cabbie wouldn’t ask her any questions about her attire. After all, they were in Vegas. They saw ruined women all day long, and generally kept their mouths shut.
Tarik’s shadow loomed beside her, and then covered hers as she rounded the corner.
“Ugh, what?” she demanded without turning. She knew one of the doormen at a hotel nearby. He’d get her a cab and spare her the hassle.
“I’m simply ensuring that you get to where you’re supposed to.”
“To make sure your friend gets what he wants, right?”
“That certainly plays into my endgame.”
“Danu, help me.” They were always so damned coy. Pressing them on specifics was usually a waste of breath, and she’d learned that lesson well with Tamatsu. “I assure you, I haven’t already forgotten. I’m going to check my mother’s magic journal and see if she mentioned anything about voice capturing gone wrong. There has to be something in there.”
She waved at the doorman, Connor, as she approached.
“Hiya!” Connor gave her a long look and cringed.
“Don’t say anything, Connor, I’m warning you.”
“You look like what the cat dragged in,” he said cheerfully. He gave Tarik a long glance, blanched at the angel’s chilling stare, and then picked up the phone on the podium.
Noelle leaned against it. “Not a cat. Some kind of horror demon.”
“You really do attract the weird stuff, Noe.” Into the phone, Connor said, “I’ve got one waiting. Thanks.” He hung up.
“Thanks, Connor.”
“You really not gonna tell me what you’ve been up to?”
Noelle twirled an end of her hair and stared at him. She probably could tell Connor. He was a pretty standup guy, as far as elves went, but he also had a flair for dramatic panic. He’d have her blood pressure so high that the heartbeats practically overlapped.
“Eh, maybe later,” she said.
“Aww, shucks. Where’s Jenny? I haven’t seen her in a couple of days.”
“Oh, you haven’t?” Nice guy though he was, a bit of coyness was called for with Connor. He carried a little flame for Jenny. Jenny was oblivious. Noelle tended to prefer that she maintain that state. She wouldn’t be able to bear seeing her friend getting her heart broken, and certainly not by the son of the single most antagonistic guard of the late king. If his father hadn’t been dead, Noelle might have subdued Connor at first sight two years ago and asked questions later.
She made a dismissive gesture and handed Connor five bucks for his effort. The cab approached. “Oh, you know. Busy time of year. Trying to get everything buckled down before winter.”
“Yeah, I know what that’s like.” He saluted her with the cash. “I might move in with my brother for winter. Hate living with that guy. You’d think after all these years he’d be more accustomed to indoor plumbing. Maybe flushing consistently is always going to be outside of his skill set.”
Noelle curled her lip.
Connor shrugged. “Now you see what I mean.”
Noelle waved goodbye to him, nodded discreetly to her angelic shadow, and headed for the cab.
The shadow followed.
“Go away,” she muttered low as she climbed in.
“Not until I’ve completed my task.” Tarik squeezed into the backseat beside her and shut the door.
The driver’s eyes suddenly went very large and very round in the rearview mirror.
She imagined what he must have been seeing. A guy in a duster coat who was over seven feet tall and who had irises a color that eyes didn’t come in, dreadlocks down to his ass, and who shifted uncomfortably as though he was had a big fucking sword and wings on his back.
Because he did.
Noelle pinched the back of her sore neck and groaned. “Head toward North Las Vegas,” she said. “I’ll tip you better if you don’t slam repeatedly on the brakes. I’ll tip you best if you don’t talk.”
“Sure thing.” The driver got them moving.
Noelle crossed her legs away from Tarik and massaged her temples. “You really don’t need to follow me.”
“I should see where you live.”
“You could ask.”
“Easier if I see.”
“And then what?”
“And then I’ll know. Coming will be easier.”
She let her eyes close and pulled in a bracing breath. He meant he could randomly pop in via the angel way after he’d set a foot onto the property once. She didn’t try to understand the nuances of angel travel. There were many facts of nature she simply wasn’t equipped to know, and she was fine with that.
“And I’d like to know what happened,” he said.
“Here we go again,” she muttered. “Why don’t you ask your friend?”
“I’d like to hear your side.”
“Why?”
“I know Tamatsu. I believe he tells me the truth the best he can, but I also believe the truth comes in many different shades.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because he’s my friend. Would you not do the same for Jenny? Would you not query any associate capable of harassing her?”
“Oh, so I’m harassing, am I?”
“You know what I mean. Don’t get distracted by the vocabulary.”
“Yes, I know what you mean, and, yes, I regularly vet Jenny’s associates. For the most part, she
can take care of herself, I guess, but she’s got a knack for picking the exact sorts who’d take advantage of her.”
“Clarissa insinuated as much earlier.”
“Did she?”
Tarik grunted. “She has a very good memory, your queen.”
“Ironic that her mate has no memory at all, then.”
Yet again, he grunted.
“Tarik, I don’t really know if there’s much of a story there. Maybe I thought there was more between us than he did. No one ever said these things had to be two-sided when one of the parties isn’t …” She flitted her gaze to the cabbie and then back. “Like me.”
He nodded, and didn’t say anything else until after the cabbie had deposited them in front of her townhouse.
She watched the cab drive off, then looked to Tarik, and then her front door. She got moving. Knowing her luck, the combination of full-coverage foundation and ectogoop had created an acne flare-up rash. She’d have to pull out the big guns for it. Acid peels were an aging elf’s best friend.
“We don’t … love the same way your kind does,” Tarik said after a minute.
Noelle stilled her key in front of the lock. “What do you mean?”
“We’re creatures of extreme.”
“Meaning?” She slid the key in and turned.
“Meaning emotion doesn’t come easily to us. We don’t feel unless we feel strongly.”
“How is that possible?”
Elves felt everything strongly … or at least, that seemed to be the case to Noelle. They held grudges for so long because fae feelings were wild and raw by default.
“The state tends to keep us neutral.” He followed her across the threshold. Like a good sentry who knew that grungy boots didn’t play nicely with white carpet, he waited on the foyer’s hardwood floor.
“Oh. Well, I suppose that makes sense, then. Appreciate knowing that I’m thought of neutrally by someone I loved.” She bounded up the stairs.
“I do believe he felt for you, Noelle,” he called after her.
“Yes. Anger, I’m sure. And maybe some lust.” She set her bag on the dresser and avoided her reflection, choosing to pivot right away to her closet. “Lots of lust.”
At the creaking of the floorboards against substantial weight, she poked her head out of the walk-in.
Tarik, in socked feet, leaned against the doorframe of her bedroom.
She was lucky the maid had visited while she was away, otherwise the guy might have had a glimpse of her indecency.
“You believe you are attached to him,” he said.
“I’m sure in your obviously long acquaintance to Clarissa, she’s explained to you how elf bonds work.”
“No, but I know of them all the same. I hadn’t considered that was what Tamatsu was dealing with. He was rather vague on details, or perhaps he didn’t know.”
“I don’t think he did. I don’t know if it matters, anyway.”
Noelle pulled back into the closet and divested herself of her ruined pantyhose.
“I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t believe you.”
… if I didn’t believe you.
She had to replay the words in her head twice before they made any semblance of sense to her. “Wait. What did you say?” She poked her head out of the closet.
He shrugged elegantly. “If I didn’t think you were being truthful about belonging to him, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’m here to learn what I can do to make him come.”
Noelle pinched up a bit of flesh on her forearm and squeezed hard.
It hurt.
Not a dream.
“Gods,” she whispered, and then said louder, “What you can do is wait for hell to freeze over, perhaps. I think you’ve forgotten what I took from him.”
Tarik made a dismissive flick of his hand. “Merely an obstacle. We’ve certainly overcome worse in our time walking amongst men.”
“You wouldn’t care if I were with him?”
“Of course I would care. I am simply coming to suspect that there may be mutually beneficial aspects to your partnering. He must have been attracted to you for some reason.”
She cocked her head at his condescending tone.
“You know what I mean, elf. How did you meet? What were you doing at the time?”
“If you’re asking if I rolled onto him mid-orgy, the answer is no. My horse had run off because he’d spooked it. Didn’t take me long to figure out what he was.”
“And then what?”
“I seem to remember a lot of long walks. A lot of comparing of swords and knives. A lot of laughing.”
The laughing had been her favorite part of their time together, because for the first time in her life, she’d truly believed that someone’s amusement wasn’t at her expense. She didn’t have to try to tamp down her humorous side at the expense of being taken seriously when she needed to be. He’d always taken her seriously.
“So you didn’t jump right into bed with him?”
“If I were a hundred years younger, I’d find this conversation entirely too scandalous. Even now, you’re toeing the line, guy.”
He put his hands up in concession. “Fair. I only query because we all have our vices, we Fallen ones. At the time of your meeting, he hadn’t been practicing abstention. If he hungered, he sated himself. Apparently, he … waited with you.”
“Waited? What are you getting at, Tarik?”
The angel didn’t respond. He nodded curtly and, in one of those spectacularly blinding flashes, disappeared from her boudoir.
“I hate when they do that.”
She stepped into the closet in search of her mother’s journal before she could forget. With all the recent revelations scraping for attention in her brain, it was easier than ever to forget.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For Noelle to have been such an efficient creature, she certainly spent a lot of time in a tub.
Tamatsu had been perched on her toilet seat for the better part of half an hour, waiting for her to emerge from her bath. All the time waiting made him angry. He wasn’t angry because he had to wait, but because he’d been sitting in her bathroom for half an hour and she hadn’t noticed.
Careless woman.
He twined his fingers and stared at the white subway tiles on the wall in front of him.
She chanted the lyrics of some old song he didn’t know, splashed a bit, and then moaned indulgently.
He was tempted to pull the curtain back and give her the hard stare she so obviously deserved, but doing such would likely result in her bumped head or a flooded floor.
So, he sat tracing the same tile with his gaze, again and again, until her phone rang ten minutes later.
She opened the curtain, screamed, and then pulled the curtain shut.
He heaved a silent sigh.
“What are you do— Ugh!” She reached out from behind the curtain, patted blindly behind him. “Are you manipulating your energy? I should have sensed you.”
He had been tamping down his power output so as not to risk her reflexively attacking him before he’d fully materialized on her end. Shrugging off his energy bridle, he moved to avoid an accidental touch, and she finally snatched the towel she sought from the back of the commode.
More splashing. Swearing. She hustled out of the tub, hobbled past him with wet hair and a scowl, and grabbed her phone off the vanity.
“Noelle Flint,” she said in a sunny voice like the fraud she was.
He clucked his tongue, earning himself a scowl from her.
She stared at the mirror in front of her, turning her face to better examine a scratch she must have earned during the day’s exploits. “Oh, did you? Well, that’s wonderful news. I can give the listing agent a call and see how motivated the seller is. The house has been on the market for six months. If the owners want to quibble about the appliances, though, then perhaps it’s best if we move on. I know you had your heart set on that school zone, but with your higher loan approval, your options open up in a signi
ficant way.”
Tamatsu retook his seat on the commode.
She pressed the sides of her scratch, grimaced, and then shrugged. “Okay, will do. I’ll give him a call, and if they seem amenable, I won’t call you back. I’ll go ahead and put the offer together and email both of you. Sound good? Great. Talk to you soon.”
She disconnected, then slowly turned and narrowed her eyes at him.
They didn’t say anything. Him, for obvious reasons. He could only speculate on why she didn’t speak, but he suspected surprise had something to do with her silence.
He smoothed his coat over his lap and looked at that tile again.
Tarik had told him to go, so Tamatsu had, begrudgingly, gone.
Perhaps not completely begrudgingly.
Confronting Noelle hadn’t been high up on the list of ways Tamatsu had wanted to spend a night, but he had wanted to see her. He always had, as if he were afraid he’d forget what she looked like in the matter of an hour. Seeing as how he hadn’t forgotten anything about her in hundreds of years, the fear was unfounded.
She returned to the tub side, clutching the hem of her towel to pin it down, and bent with her knees pressed tightly together as if to avoid scandal.
As if I haven’t seen it all already.
She pulled the tub stopper and then turned to him again. “I guess I shouldn’t bother asking you how you got in here.”
He turned his hands over.
“I have to admit teleporting is a pretty neat trick. I wish I had such an ability sometimes when I want to get inside foreclosure homes to take a peek around.”
He canted his head, not following her train of thought.
“When they’re sold at auction, they’re generally sold as-is. They could have serious interior issues and you’d never know until you took possession. Sometimes, they’re a profitable risk; sometimes, they’re a huge fail.”
Ah.
She grabbed another towel and strode through the door. From the bedroom, she called back, “I’ve gotten lucky three times, but have been burned twice. The houses should have been flippable, but the evicted homeowners trashed the places before the sheriff arrived. They’d taken out all the appliances and stripped the woodwork and such. I haven’t done anything with them yet. Still trying to figure out how to make lemonade out of lemons, you know?”
