[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company (25 page)

That Assym thought to take his revenge on me in the middle of it was just the fucked-up cherry on top of this evil Sunday night.

It was also Assym’s biggest mistake. Once he set his sights on me and targeted Lucen to get to me, he’d picked a fight with the satyrs. Thank dragons Dezzi wasn’t so shortsighted as to forgo assisting the Gryphons. In my adrenaline-fueled, sleep-deprived stupor, I started calling the battle the Boston Pred Party.

Too bad none of the sylphs got dumped in the ocean, but I’d settle for arrested or dead.

Dezzi had gathered her council a couple hours ago, which was when I’d finally parted from Lucen. He’d wanted me to stay close and hole up in his apartment, but I had my own problems to deal with. There was still the matter of finding Eric’s soul, as well as those of the other addicts. My threads continued to wait.

In the end, we collected almost all the containers, and the Gryphons arrested almost all the sylphs—and the one goblin—responsible. Amazingly, in spite of the destruction and fighting, Silas’s ledger books had remained intact.

What to do about the containers was the next question, but not one for us. The Gryphon healers took over from there.

Around five in the morning, Bridget sent me home. She’d survived with only a few scratches, in better shape than most. “We’re done. Nothing left for us to do tonight.”

Dazed, I rubbed my eyes. I was exhausted, but all the negative emotions around me kept me unpleasantly alert. I felt like a rubber band stretched to its breaking point. I’d snap soon if I couldn’t relax.

I didn’t have to feign concern when I offered to stick around, but when my offer was refused, I also didn’t need to be told to go home yet again. I left, gladly.

Getting home, however, was not so easy. Shadowtown was in shambles. The damage wasn’t nearly as horrific as it had been when the furies had instigated fighting last month, but it was a hell of a mess. Cars lay on their sides, a couple buildings had burned, and the windows of many satyr- and sylph-owned businesses had been smashed. Given how preds hated messes, I suspected the cleanup would begin shortly.

That worked for me. I didn’t like living in a neighborhood that looked like it had seen the apocalypse.

The apocalypse.

That was when the few threads I’d been weaving began to form a coherent picture.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Tom woke me up with a phone call way too early the next day, considering I hadn’t gotten home until the sun was rising. With my mind racing and my body coming down from an emotional feast, it had been even longer before I could sleep.

I swore at the phone and checked the time. My clock said it was noon. I hated my clock.

My hand whined in pain from a million cuts and abrasions as I answered. “Do you know what time it is? Do you know how late I was up?”

“Five after twelve, and my apologies. I’m aware everyone had a busy night. But in light of that, I think it’s more important than ever that we have our talk. When are you coming in?”

I fell back against my pillow. “You have no idea how right you are about the talk, but it’s not happening today. When I finally drag my sorry ass into work, I need to fill out paperwork and generally deal with the fallout from the Boston Pred Party.”

“The what?”

“Never mind.” I yawned, wondering how long I could delay him. “How’s tomorrow evening?”

“Tomorrow?” He sighed. “No, I’ll be here late today. Your obligations to closing out the case can’t take the whole time.”

A thin band of sunlight sneaked through my drapes and landed on my futon. I pulled my blanket higher. “No, but I have other obligations tonight.”

“What can be more important than this?” He sounded annoyed.

“A lot of things. And who said it didn’t relate to this? I’ll send you more information about when and where later.”

I hung up to the sound of him grumbling in protest. Then, since there was no going back to bed, I forced myself into the shower. I’d have to make a strong pot of coffee because I had work to do. Tom might not believe me, but I hadn’t been lying about my plans.

My life was at a turning point, and I could sense it right down to my bones. To my soul maybe, if there was something to this whole soul business other than emotional energy.

After my meeting tomorrow, nothing was going to be the same. I had to know who I could count on, and who would be better off keeping their distance. The sylphs had used Lucen to get to me, and if anything I suspected was true, yesterday was unlikely to be the last time someone made that mistake. It was only fair to warn those who might become bait and make sure they were willing to be risked.

Steph and Jim shared an apartment in a plain brick building just outside Boston proper. Jim frequently worked double shifts on Mondays, and I counted on him not being home. Although I liked Steph’s boyfriend, he had no place in the conversation I’d planned.

A couple guys pulled into the parking lot around the same time as I did, and they let me into the building. I took the stairs slowly, playing through my planned speech as I traipsed to the fourth floor. It was sweltering inside, but I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t also sweaty with nerves. I didn’t know how Steph was going to react to me showing up at her door.

In retrospect, maybe I should have called ahead. At the time, though, that hadn’t seemed like a good idea. I had words to get out, and it was far easier for her to hang up on me and claim she wasn’t ready to talk than it would be for her to ignore me while I kept knocking on her door.

Funny how I’d been less nervous about barging into Silas’s dry-cleaning shop last night.

And look how well that went down,
a particularly loathsome voice whispered to me.

I told it to fuck off, then knocked.

A TV was on in Steph’s apartment, and through the door I could hear her swear.

“Logan, I told you I’m not—” She threw open the door and gaped at me. “You’re not my neighbor.”

“Not the last I checked.”

Steph remained still for a moment, but I could taste her conflict. She was battling something out in her head, and I could guess what it was. Finally, one side lost and she did a very un-Steph-like thing. She pulled me into a hug.

Shocked, I patted her on the back. “I missed you too?”

She released me and brushed her hair away behind her shoulders. “Get in here.”

I stepped inside and followed her into the kitchen. “Did you hear about Eric?”

“Yes, I heard about Eric.” She handed me a beer. “Why do you think I hugged you? Some Agent Silverman, I think it was, called me earlier. She’s the person monitoring Eric’s progress, and she said he was recovering fine.” Steph collapsed onto the sofa and turned off the TV. “Thank you.”

I sat next to her but not too close. “You’re welcome, but it’s hardly all my doing.”

Steph shrugged and pushed her empty dinner plate aside with her foot. “Well, no, but I heard it was your tip that led to the bust last night.”

“Ah, yeah. And what a bust that was, in every sense. How did you hear that?”

“Your friend Bridget called to tell me they’d found Eric’s soul. That was before the healer called about his recovery.”

“Oh.” I sipped my beer, temporarily washing away the taste of Steph’s anxiety. “I’m glad they recovered it. With everything that happened, I was afraid the information we’d been after would be destroyed.”

Steph just nodded, fixated on her bottle. “Are you okay? Your hands look bad.”

Dozens of red scabs crisscrossed my palms. I flexed my fingers for her. “I’ve had worse injuries. Actually, given how badly I’ve been beaten up in the past couple months, a few scrapes and bruises is nothing.”

“True. But I’m glad it’s not worse.”

We descended into an awkward silence. I picked at the label on my bottle with my thumbnail. The pretty speech I’d been rehearsing just didn’t flow naturally now that I was here. And did I really want to make speeches anyway? That was silly. Speeches were what you gave to faceless, nameless people. They shouldn’t be what you gave to the people who knew you.

Steph had been my best friend for ten years. Through the worst times of my life and her own. So to hell with speeches. All that I should need was a question.

I set down the bottle. “So now what?”

“Now what?” Far from putting her own beer down, Steph clutched the bottle tighter.

“Look, I know you said you needed time. I get that. I kind of dropped a bomb on you without any warning. On the other hand, you’ve known me for a decade, and you know more about me than almost anyone else on this planet. The entire time you’ve known me, you’ve known about my abilities. You were there when they developed. So even this ‘without warning’ thing almost feels like a copout. We knew I was a freak. You simply didn’t know exactly what flavor of freak I am.”

I took a deep breath. I shouldn’t have put that bottle down. My hands twitched with the need to do something to release my tension, but curling them into fists was painful. “Things are changing, Steph. Not me, but the world around me. There’s a lot I haven’t told you, and it’s partly because I was scared of your reaction, but it’s also because I didn’t want to dump a whole lot of weirdness on you. You have your own life, and it’s a decent one. You have a good job. And for once, you have a decent boyfriend. You didn’t need me to fill your head with magical crap that I only ever half believed or understood. But I can’t ignore that crap anymore because whatever I believe or understand—I don’t think that matters.”

“You’re scaring me, Jess.” Steph finally relinquished the beer. “What are these things you’re talking about?”

I held up a hand. “There are lots of them, but before we go there, I need to know where you stand. I could use your support, but if you give it to me, I need to know you mean it. People I care about were attacked yesterday because they’re friends with me. I don’t want to put you, or anyone else, at risk. So think about that before you give me an answer. I’m not just asking whether you can forgive me for hiding what I am from you, or whether you can overlook what I am. I’m asking whether it’s worth it to you to do that.
Really
worth it.”

So much for not giving speeches, but at least I hadn’t planned that one.

I reached for my beer. My mouth was dry, and I needed to do something while I waited for Steph’s response.

Besides feel my intestines tie themselves into a fun assortment of knots, that was.

I told myself I would walk if Steph couldn’t handle this. Even if Steph lied and claimed she could, I would walk. For her sake. But the truth was I’d rather face down an army of sylphs.

Death was less scary than losing my best friend.

Steph picked at loose threads on her throw pillow. Her anxiety had been strong since I arrived, and her fear had grown stronger as I spoke. But there were other emotions buried in her too. Ones I didn’t sense too often and therefore had a harder time discerning.

Abruptly, she punched the pillow and tossed it away. “This is stupid.”

Well, that was unexpected. “Stupid?”

“You remember the night we met?”

“Not likely to forget it.”

“Exactly.” Steph drank heavily of her beer. “I’d gotten the shit kicked out of me by a few bigoted assholes, and you concocted what I thought was this absolutely fucked-up crazy revenge plan to nick their souls and trade them away for some other girl’s soul. For the record, when I say I thought it was fucked-up crazy, I mean it was brilliant.”

“For the record, you thought it was crazy and wouldn’t work.”

Steph waved away my disagreement. “Point is, you’ve had my back since we met. And when I decided I was done pretending to be a boy and started living as a woman, you were one of the only people I knew who didn’t give me the side eye, if they didn’t outright cut me from their lives. You’ve never had trouble accepting me for who and what I am. What kind of shitty person would I be if I couldn’t do the same?”

Carefully, I set the beer back down, afraid I would drop it. “Being transgender isn’t quite the same thing as finding out you’re a pred, even an abnormal pred.”

“No, but it’s not like you’re a serial killer either.”

“No, but I have used my ability to influence people’s desires to my advantage.”

“For good causes.” She wrinkled her nose. “Mostly. Are you trying to talk me out of my decision? It’s not like I came to this realization tonight. I’ve been thinking a lot and generally pissing myself off the past couple days.”

I bit my lip, willing myself to relax so my voice would be steady. “I’m not trying to talk you out of anything. I just want to make sure you heard what I said and know what you’re getting into.”

“Bitch. I know my own mind, and you can
not
toss me aside like an empty beer bottle. I’m not going anywhere, Jess. You’re stuck with me. We’re like family. More than family because my family mostly sucks, as you now understand firsthand. But I couldn’t choose them. I can choose you.”

I didn’t move. All my attention was focused on Steph. I was prying into her head, which I tried never to do with her, but I had to be sure. Had to be so damned positive that she meant what she said.

The pessimist in me—which was basically ninety percent of my personality—could not believe she meant it. Yet I could detect no trace that she didn’t.

Steph wasn’t abandoning me.

I couldn’t hold in my relief any longer, and I doubled over and it gushed out of me in a massive breath. Tears burned my eyes, and I forced them to retreat. Where the hell had they come from? I didn’t cry. I never cried, not since I’d been kicked out of the Gryphon pre-training program.

Besides, nothing would freak out Steph more than me getting all teary.

Except maybe me getting all teary and telling her I thought the apocalypse was upon us. But really, the apocalypse was more than enough for one evening.

So I’d breathe. And continue breathing. Just a few more breaths until I regained my wits.

“Jess?” Steph whacked me with a pillow. “Don’t get all emotional on me.”

“I’m not,” I said, keeping my face buried in my hands.

“Damn you.” She shifted over and pulled me into an uncomfortably positioned hug. “I’m hugging a satyr. Do you know how strange that is?”

I managed a laugh. “Not so strange, considering what
I’ve
done with one. Er, one or more.”

Steph pretended to shudder. “Yes, but you are one.”

“So I’m starting to accept.” I grabbed her hands. “Thank you for accepting it too.”

“Don’t thank me yet. After all that buildup, I’m not letting you leave until you fill me in on all that magical bullshit you were teasing me with. Plus anything else about being a satyr that you’ve been neglecting to mention.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Including how they have better stamina than your average romance-novel hero?”

Steph took the bottles into the kitchen. “Especially that. I’ll make popcorn.”

My smile faded as she turned away. All joking aside, I had a feeling Steph was going to want something a lot stronger than popcorn by the time I finished talking.

I could have spent the whole evening regaling Steph with all the sordid details I’d been keeping from her, but by eleven o’clock I was getting a buzz off the way her head spun. I’d started her off gently, sharing the fun bits before transitioning to the serious events on the horizon. But ultimately, what I had to tell her was not a happy story, and no amount of joking about satyr equipment could overcome the anxiety I’d seeded in her blood.

I left before Jim got home, sensing that she was overwhelmed. “You need to get up in six hours for work tomorrow,” I reminded her.

“You think I’m going to get any sleep tonight?” Yet despite her potently tangerine fear, Steph yawned.

Yeah, she’d sleep, and I could use some of that myself. Fortunately, I had the hit of her emotions to keep me going for a bit longer. There was someone else I needed to talk to before falling into bed.

The Lair was closed and the front window boarded up, but I could see a light shining through the glass in the door. Before I could test whether it was unlocked, it swung open.

“Don’t ever say again that I can’t be bothered to get up for you,” Lucen said.

“I thought we established it would be a tragedy if that were the case.”

“Given I’m satyr, I think it would be more like a farce.”

I stood on my tiptoes and planted a delicate kiss on his lips. His injuries had already healed, but I couldn’t say the same for the damage to the bar.