Chapter Twenty-two
I was sitting in a booth at BB’s when Sonya slid into the seat next to me.
“Hello, stranger,” she chirped to Asrai. The child giggled and nodded a quick greeting. I wasn’t sure whether or not Fae could get brain freezes, but, considering the speed in which Asrai was sucking down milkshakes, I was expecting her head to explode at any minute.
Her eyes grew heavy-lidded, and voice growing sultry to match, she looked at the man sitting next to Asrai and purred, “Hello, Gabriel.”
He cleared his throat, face flushing before he hid behind his menu.
“Hello,” he mumbled. He’d taken it seriously when I told him that Sonya started ovulating at the sight of him. In his wolfy mind he already had a mate, so the idea of causing that reaction in another woman was abhorrent to him. Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to look the reporter in the eye. Sonya thought his reactions to her made him even more adorable, and I suspected that the power of being able to make Gabriel Evans shift uncomfortably in his seat was going to her head.
I’d have to talk to her about it later, but for now I let it go.
Partially because Gabriel could take care of himself, but mostly because it was funny.
Two weeks had passed since the showdown with the Feds. Since then, nothing else had happened, but it was like waiting for the lightning to strike when you smelled ozone in the air.
You knew it was coming and waiting for it made the hair on your arms stand on end.
I almost preferred getting shot at by overzealous Huntsmen to waiting for the other shoe to drop. While the Feds hadn’t retaliated, we did notice that the government’s push to get the Were Bill passed was becoming even more aggressive. I had a sick suspicion that it wouldn’t be long before known Weres were detained in camps and tagged like livestock. As long as they felt safe again, the human race wouldn’t care what happened to them after that.
The wolves had never located Marcus after he’d run off that night. Another enemy to watch us from the shadows. The morning after the Hounds had saved Gabriel I’d gotten a call from his new secretary. I was informed that my services would no longer be needed, but that Mr. Evans expected me to meet with him for lunch every day at noon, assuming my obligations to the Oracle weren’t too demanding.
Speaking of the Oracle, Sonya and I were swamped with interviews. It would take a while to set up things for the television special, and in the meantime we occupied ourselves with interviewing different Packs from all over the city. It had made us a lot closer and Sonya had gone from being sort of friends to maybe besties.
It was nice, and every now and then Sonya invited herself along to my lunches with Gabriel. Today was one of those days.
I sighed, eyes scanning the menu in my hands without really seeing anything.
In addition to everything else we had to worry about, I was starting to develop an anxiety disorder waiting for the Sidhe to make their move. Gabriel assured me that we’d be all right. Even if they knew where all their Hounds were, it would be a while before they managed to break free of the Sithin. I guess he was right. They had been trying to cross over for a few hundred years now, it wasn’t like they were suddenly going to slip free from the Fae world just because I’d sent them a metaphysical middle finger.
I hoped not anyway.
Gabriel and I had thought that if nothing else the patrols from the Specters would increase. Short of breaking out, getting one of the Hounds to enter the Sithin was the only other way to free the Mad Sidhe. We’d all had dinner last week and I’d had a chance to meet the other Hounds one on one. I knew that none of them were going to be paying any visits to the Sidhe willingly, which left kidnapping the only other option. If we stayed vigilant as far as the Specters were concerned, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
That was the theory anyway.
But if the fallout from the government was like a storm, the threat the Mad Sidhe represented felt a lot like drowning. Sometimes I could feel their intent through the Specter still clinging to my soul like a parasite, and it was enough to wake me up screaming at night. As far as my new inner voice was concerned, the Specter inside of me seemed almost content. Even if it wasn’t trying to brainwash me on behalf of the Fae, I wanted the little guy gone. Sonya said she knew an exorcist and I was trying to build up my courage to call the guy. Gabriel thought I was being ridiculous, but he wasn’t the poor shmuck in danger of projectile vomiting pea soup.
“Why do you even bother looking at the menu?”
Speak of the devil. I looked up and narrowed my eyes at him from over my menu.
“Because this is America, and I have the right to choose whatever I damn well please to eat.”
“You always choose the same thing though,” Asrai piped up, and I scowled at her.
“Snitches get stitches,” I warned caustically and Gabriel snorted.
Sonya rolled her eyes at me.
“You do realize you’re the whitest white girl I know right?”
I grunted in annoyance and went back to perusing the menu. Gabriel shook his head and leaned back in his seat, throwing a companionable arm around Asrai. He had become Asrai’s new guardian, and living together seemed to give them an ease with one another they had lacked their first meeting.
It made me feel strange seeing them together like that.
I wasn’t jealous that the child was getting his attention. It just made me feel sort of homesick. As if I were watching a family I was meant to be a part of live their life and grow without me.
With a gasp of delight, Asrai finished off her third chocolate milkshake and shoved the empty glass away.
“Hey, Phaedra?” she asked.
“Yes, dear?” I answered absently.
“Can you and Sonya take me shopping today?”
“I’d do it but I have a meeting to get to,” Sonya and I looked at one another. “I’ll give you one of my credit cards,” Gabriel added when the silence at the table grew thick.
“Yes, please, and thank you; I would be delighted to take you shopping little girl,” Sonya’s answer was immediate and enthusiastic and Asrai beamed. I put my menu down and folded my hands together on the table.
“Why?” I asked. That was me. Continuously suspicious.
“Well, Gabriel says that I can start school in a few weeks.”
“I just have to finish up some paperwork proving I’m her legal guardian and get her enrolled.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” We had declared war against two very powerful groups and he wanted the most vulnerable, and perhaps the most important, member of our team to attend elementary school? I didn’t have to voice my concerns out loud. Gabriel could feel them.
“I think it’s an excellent idea,” Asrai answered primly. Gabriel nodded, gaze meeting mine.
“Yeah. What she said.”
“Why can’t you just home school her?” I asked, and Sonya raised a brow at me.
“You have something against public schooling?”
“There’s nothing she can learn at a public school that we can’t teach her from the privacy of our own homes.”
“And who would teach her?” Sonya asked, clearly amused. “You?”
When Gabriel remained silent, I nodded.
He sighed as if pained by the thought of some great task he had been entrusted with.
“I can give you three reasons why that’s a bad idea,” he said.
“Oh really?”
“Spell onomatopoeia,” he challenged, and my mind went blank.
“Don’t make up words,” I snarled.
“It’s not made up, Phaedra,” Sonya whispered, and I my nose wrinkled.
“Can you use it in a sentence?” I asked desperately.
He shook his head and held up a finger. “There’s reason one.”
Shit. I could see where this was going.
“What’s the square root of 62?”
Panic had me floundering and my mouth opened and closed li
ke a fish out of water.
Another finger joined the first.
“Reason two.”
Sonya’s laugher filled the restaurant and I slammed my hands down on the table.
“Damn it. I’m a journalist, not some math genius vocabulary guru.” I snapped flustered, “God invented spell check and calculators for a reason.”
“Fair enough,” he conceded, obviously trying not to smile. “One more. What’s a conjunction, Phaedra?”
Goddamnit.
“Um,” I was sweating now. Didn’t I watch a video on this in like the second grade or something? Conjunction junction, what’s your function? I hummed the lyrics to myself but the part of the song that actually explained the purpose of a conjunction eluded me.
“It conjunctifies…stuff?”
A third finger popped up, sealing my fate, and I thumped my head down on the table in shame.
“Here’s her school supply list,” I reached out and grabbed the folded piece of paper he slid to me blindly, my ears burning in embarrassment.
“I’ll come by your place and pick her up tonight after I’m done with work,” he told me, and I nodded without looking at him. Thirty minutes later, we were finishing up lunch when he handed me his MasterCard and tousled Asrai’s hair in silent farewell.
He inclined his head politely in Sonya’s direction and she chuckled. It was only when he met my eyes that a hint of mischief worked its way into his gaze.
“See you later, Kryptonite,” he said with a grin, getting to his feet and throwing on his coat. I mumbled something unintelligible, my face hot, and he walked out of BB’s whistling.
Sonya nudged my shoulder and I looked up to see both her and Asrai looking at me with strangely knowing eyes.
“What was that about?” Sonya asked suggestively, and I shoved the finger she was poking into my side away in irritation.
“Nothing.”
“No, that was something all right.”
Asrai sighed loudly. “Guys. Get your priorities straight.”
I frowned, then I saw that she was staring at the credit card in my hand and it all made sense. She was absolutely right. Out of the mouths of babes.
“Ladies,” I said solemnly, all of my worries and doubts from earlier nothing more than distant memories. “We have work to do.”
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