to get the maximum amount of coolness from the hardwood. She turned her face so that she could look at her partner but still feel the wood under her cheek, and whimpered pitifully, her feelings about the heat, the Council, and her current lack of available funds all rolled into one convenient sound.
He smiled at that, his narrow, expressive lips begging for her hand to reach up and touch them. Even now, she was always astonished that the skin there was so soft.
“Things’re bad, huh?” she said instead, curling her fingers in against her palm to keep them still.
He sighed again. “Not so bad, but not good, either. You have cash in the retirement fund, of course—” she actually had an IRA, plus a separate savings account from which to buy the apartment when and if it went coop, being a practical bird “—but in the short term it’s probably going to get a little tight, unless you’ve been saving even more than you’ve told me.”
“Not much more, no. Rent to pay. Groceries to buy. P.B. to feed.”
“You should make that little fur-covered mutant get a job.” But despite Sergei’s long-standing xenophobia, it was said without heat. The two of them, demon and human, had come to some sort of…she hesitated to call it an agreement, but a cease-fire, since she was injured by a sniper’s bullet during the Frants situation. Through his own choice or Sergei’s suggestion, the demon had become Wren’s semiconstant companion, not leaving her side until he judged her able to defend herself physically again. Sweet. And totally unexpected. She had spotted him more than once since then, out of the corner of her eye, lurking within running-to-help distance. It was tough to miss a four-foot-tall white-furred, white-fanged, red-eyed demon, after all. Despite the fact that three quarters of the city managed it on a regular basis.
The fatae, the nonhumans, the magical ones, are always with us, she could hear her mentor saying, years now in the past. But it takes looking with an open mind as well as open eyes. Most people don’t bother.
“Their loss,” she said quietly. “Their loss.”
“What?”
She looked at her partner and gave in to the impulse, running one finger along his lower lip until he nipped at the offending fingertip, then propped himself up on one elbow and heaved himself to his feet, surprisingly agile for a man his size.
“You hungry?” he asked, his body language pretty clearly moving them on from that moment of physical contact like metal shutters coming down. “I could go for some Thai tonight.”
Story of our lives, she thought as she reached up one arm and let him help her up off the floor. Give us business, give us danger and mayhem, and we’re good to go. Personal stuff…not so good. Hence, avoidance.
It had been four months since the combination of a seriously crazy ghost, a Council sniper, and the opening of Sergei’s Deep Dark Secrets Closet had forced them to admit that there was more to their partnership than, well, partnership. And here they were, still at the hand-holding and awkward kissing stages. Not that Wren particularly wanted to go leaping into bed…well, okay, there were days when that was all she wanted. But this geeky awkwardness was so…embarrassing. They could talk about everything and anything else. Why was this so different?
“Y’know,” she said, suddenly unable to face another night of pretending everything was okay, that they were intentionally taking things slow and casual. “I’m really not hungry. You go on. I think I’m just going to make it an early night.”
She pretended not to see the disappointed expression on his face, reaching up to give him a quick kiss at the door. But her hands found themselves threading into his hair almost without meaning to, and the quick kiss turned into something a little longer than that. God, his lips were soft. And warm. And the way he nipped at her mouth, just like that…
But just when she was starting to reconsider the whole “sending him away” thing, Sergei dropped his hands from her shoulder and was out the door before she could react.
“Damn,” she said, leaning her back against the closed and locked door. “And, well, damn.” And she really didn’t understand why she was crying. Maybe it was the heat finally getting to her.
“I need to get away,” she said to herself. “Away from the city. Away from Sergei. Away from this damned heat, and my own damned brain.”
In short, she needed a job.
Chapter Two
Wren wasn’t sure how long she had been leaning against the door staring blankly down her apartment’s short hallway like the answer to her problems was going to appear in front of her. Might have been five minutes, might have been fifteen. So when she heard the heavy footsteps coming up the stairwell outside, she thought that maybe Sergei had changed his mind, turned around outside and come back. But that mixed hope/fear died quickly. That wasn’t her partner’s tread. And the usual weird but familiar desire to brew a mug of tea that always preceded his arrival was missing, although it might have gotten confused, since he had just been there.
The footsteps stopped on her tiny landing, which made sense since the next-floor apartment was currently vacant, the nudist with the craving for curry having moved out last month. Whoever this was hadn’t had to ring to be let in, which could mean it was a fellow tenant from the lower floors—unlikely, as most of them would have leaned out the window and yelled up in their usual way of communicating—or someone had once again left the front door ajar for a delivery person.
“So glad we paid all that money to have the new security intercom put in,” Wren muttered to herself just as the rarely used door buzzer sounded.
“Oh, now you’ll ring, huh?” Still, it was hotter than hell out there, and someone had climbed five stories to ring her doorbell. If it was a burglar or wannabe rapist, the heat alone would take care of him.
“Ms. Valere? Are you there?”
Wren closed her eyes and leaned more heavily against the hollow metal security door; excellent for keeping fires out, not so good with the soundproofing. She would rather have dealt with a burglar.
The bell rang again.
Avoidance. Not a good thing. Even when it seemed like a really good thing. Besides, if she knew anything about her visitor, it was that he wasn’t going to just go away. He’d stand out there all night if he had to. Politely. Apologetically. But he’d be there.
“Right.” She swung around and started undoing the locks she had just done up in Sergei’s wake.
“Andre. So not a pleasure to see you again.”
Andre Felhim. Serpent in an Armani suit. Handler—middle management spymaster, according to Sergei—for the Silence, an organization that was prime offender in her partner’s Deep Dark Secrets Closet. Fanatic dogooders with boatloads of money and very specific ideas of who defined what was good and who got helped. The organization that had grudgingly offered salvation when the Council tried to take her down in various lethal ways—but only after Sergei negotiated out some of the nastier bits of their contract.
The organization whose monthly retainer fee was all that presently stood between her and total unemployment. Right. Damn. The fiscally responsible part of her brain kicked in and opened her mouth for a second take.
“Andre. Such a pleasure. Why don’t you come in?”
His grin at the second greeting, said in the same tone as the first, was appreciatively sardonic, and for a moment Wren could believe that this dapper, oh-so-controlled figure was the man who had allegedly trained her partner in all ways sneaky and manipulative.
Not that Sergei ever tried to manipulate her. Much. Consciously. Anymore.
Andre walked across the doorway, and Wren, channeling her mother for a terrifying moment, panicked. The thing about her apartment was that there was nowhere to invite someone in to sit for polite conversation. She just didn’t have that kind of a life.
Kitchen, she decided, escorting her guest