Vanity Scare Page 9

  Henry was glaring daggers into Knight. I didn’t know if he was trying to intimidate him or just show that he was definitely on my side, but Henry has the intimidation factor of a bunny—whatever he was doing, it wasn’t working, not even a little. Knight was having a hard time not looking at him, though. His eyes kept skating past me to the very conspicuously peeved one-eyed Henry Cotton.

  “I mean, no wonder he spilled it. It’s not exactly choice coffee, is it?” Knight asked with a forced smile.

  It sounded like he was trying to make a joke. Lighten the mood, maybe even make me smile.

  Why did that make me want to hit him?

  “Detective Vander, Agent O’Neil and I have work we’ve got to get back to,” Henry interjected coldly. “For the Bureau.”

  Knight’s jaw visibly tightened. He looked at Henry like he wanted to push him off a cliff.

  There was a really, really long silence.

  “Right,” Knight said finally, swallowing hard. “Me, too.” And he looked at me and added, “See you later.”

  “Probably not,” I retorted. I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but there it was. Oops.

  I couldn’t read the expression on his face, but it definitely wasn’t happy. He looked at Henry one more time before walking away, looking… almost betrayed. Like he thought Henry was replacing him as my big scary protector or something. Which was more than a little funny, but I couldn’t get myself to laugh.

  I exhaled the tank of air I’d apparently been bottling up in my lungs for the past two minutes. “Hades,” I groaned.

  “Sorry, Dulcie,” said Henry.

  “For what?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. That he exists?”

  I snorted.

  “You looked really angry,” Henry added.

  “Did I?”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s obviously an uncomfortable situation, especially now that he’s working here, too.” And he gave me this sad little smile.

  “Well, thanks,” I said. I put my elbows on the desk before remembering that it was sticky with shit coffee. “Hades fucking dammit,” I muttered, and full-scooted away from it in my rolling chair.

  “Want me to go check on that janitor?” asked Henry.

  “Yeah. Please.”

  He nodded, patted my arm, and stood to go find not-an-intern Will and the janitor he was supposedly retrieving to clean up his mess.

  Knight was getting in the elevator. When he saw Henry coming his way, he turned around and went for the stairs instead. I couldn’t tell if he was being noble or childish.

  I sat there, stewing in my own pissed-off energy, for a full five minutes. I couldn’t help thinking that something about the interaction was righteously unfair, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

  He was still him. After all of this, after dumping me because he couldn’t figure out how to recover from everything that happened.

  Being pissed about anything specific felt wrong, though. Everything I could point at and be like, “this is the thing he did that made me want to pulverize him” felt… almost petty. It was like I was skating around whatever the hell the real answer was supposed to be. And the answer wasn’t what had happened on the side of the road when he’d had me in his custody. Yes, it was wrong and no, it shouldn’t have happened, but I couldn’t argue the fact that I had wanted it. I’d wanted him. So, even though Bram might have considered Knight to be the bad guy in that scenario, I didn’t. Not fully.

  Truth be told, I was more pissed off that Knight had given up on us, that he’d broken up with me without even putting up a fight. But then, I was also mad at myself that I hadn’t fought for us, either. We both had basically just thrown in the towel and not really even tried to make things right.

  So, really, did I even have the right to be mad at him?

  And now? What was making me so upset now? I didn’t know. Maybe I just wanted him to man up, to apologize. Or maybe I just wanted him to shut up and pretend like neither one of us knew the other, so we could continue on in a shared existence of total denial.

  Will appeared in front of my desk. “Janitor is on his way,” he said breathlessly. “Sorry again, agent.”

  “Great,” I said thinly. “Thanks.”

  Hades, at this point, I just wanted to not smell like break-room coffee.

  TEN

  Quillan

  Christina grabbed me as I was walking by her office the next morning carrying two cups of coffee, each dangerously close to overflowing.

  “Hey!” I said, and nearly spilled coffee all over myself. Good, real coffee, not that muck-and-sludge nonsense they kept in the break room.

  “Sorry,” she whispered. But it was Christina, so really she was stage-whispering, and she wasn’t doing it very well.

  “You’re fine,” I assured her. Then I noticed the look on her face, like she’d just guzzled an entire gallon of straight lemon juice. “What’s the matter?”

  Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she was wearing black slacks and a really attractive white button-up, with the sleeves rolled up.

  Even though she looked beautiful, the expression on her face made her kind of look like she’d watched a puppy get drop-kicked over a fence.

  “Christina?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly, then sighed. “No, that’s a lie—lots of things are wrong, but I can’t tell you about all of them yet.” She pursed her lips, like she wanted to say something else.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “And?”

  She sighed heavier. “Just, heads up, Bram is here.”

  “Bram?”

  “Yeah. Osenna went to see him last night.”

  “To see Bram.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Apparently, he’s the one who helped Osenna and Dagan escape Dromir,” she explained, and then she started barreling through her words like they were rolling down a hill and she had to chase after them. “And you were right, Osenna did have a different identity before, and I was kind of right because she was running from something, just not something that would have granted her political asylum—which, you know, is why she and Dagan needed Bram in the first place.”

  “Okay, babe?” I interjected, gesturing with the two paper coffee cups in my hands. “That should have been, like, five different sentences, and it was maybe two. Or one with a semi-colon somewhere.”

  Christina sighed again, a thin stream of air puffing through her lips. “Sorry. Bram just dropped a bunch of stuff on me this morning that I super wasn’t ready for.” She took her coffee and drank deep. For several seconds, she stood there with her eyes closed. “Hades bless caffeine.”

  “Does Hades bless things?”

  “Sure. Actually, I don’t know.” She paused, frowned. “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Always.” I leaned with one hand against the door, standing over her. Not in a looming way, but like a willow hangs over a river. Or like a boyfriend hangs over his girlfriend to remind himself he’s still taller, even when she’s in heels.

  “Um. Okay, this is gonna sound weird, alright?”

  I laughed a little. “Alright. What’s up?”

  “Knight,” she said. “I need you to talk to him for me.”

  I felt my eyes narrow and I stood up a little straighter. “Um. Okay. Did he do something he shouldn’t have?”

  “Yes. I mean, maybe. I mean… I don’t know.” She took a small, almost self-conscious sip of her coffee. “I need to know why he and Dulcie broke up.”

  I frowned, my brow furrowing hard enough to jumpstart a headache. “Christina, am I snooping for you?”

  “Kind of. I swear it’s important,” she added quickly. “I just… I can’t tell you why it’s important.”

  I sighed. “What makes you think he’ll talk to me? It’s not like he and I are friends, by any stretch.”

  “I don’t know, you’re guys. Guys talk about this kind of stuff with each other, right?”
>
  “No,” I told her. “No, we don’t. Ever. Especially when we’re barely acquaintances, and super especially when we don’t like each other.”

  “Not even in a weird bro way?” Christina asked.

  “We men prefer to stuff our emotions into glass bottles and chuck them into the ocean for people on different continents to deal with.”

  “Bottles?”

  “Yeah. Like treasure maps of sadness.”

  “Treasure maps of sadness,” she repeated, nodding. “I like that. Hallmark should buy that one from you.”

  “Thanks,” I replied with a cheeky smile. “Point is—it’s bro code. It’s just how it goes.”

  Christina scowled into the wall for a second. “Okay, just, if you get a chance to bring it up with Knight, will you? Naturally?”

  I quirked an eyebrow at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Christina, literally no conversation I will ever have with Knight is going to be natural. Especially not one about Dulcie.”

  “Please?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  She bit the inside of her lip and looked down, then forced herself to look back up, like there was something she really, absolutely wanted to tell me but couldn’t… most probably for legal reasons.

  “Something Bram told me,” she informed me vaguely. “Just, I need to verify it, but I don’t want to launch a formal inquiry until I know a little more.” She sighed. “And I can’t just go up to Knight and ask because I’m sure he won’t tell me since I’m… HR, you know?” She took a breath. “And I can’t really go to Dulcie and ask her because she and I don’t have that sort of relationship.”

  “Okay, it’s touchy then.”

  “Yeah, really touchy. But I’m also wondering if it’s even true. Because, you know, it’s Bram, and he hates Knight. He’d say anything to get Knight into trouble, wouldn’t he?”

  I mean, yes, but this was such a weird way to do it. If Bram wanted to get Knight in “trouble,” he’d just drop Knight into one of his private portals into some place in the Netherworld. Bram wouldn’t go tattling to Humane Resources. But maybe he was feeling pettier than usual, I didn’t know. He’d done weirder things for dumber reasons.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “So, you’ll try?”

  I nodded. “I’ll do my best, babe.”

  Christina stood up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks, honey,” she said. “Okay, I have work to do, and so do you. Oh, I’ll send you the case file I have going for Osenna when I’ve updated it with all the junk Bram just told me.”

  “Okay.” I lifted my hand, wrapped my fingers around the back of her neck, and pulled her to me so I could really kiss her. Her hair was so soft, and the light was falling easy and making everything glow. Or maybe that was just her. “You know, we could just go home for the day.”

  She turned her head to reply, and I kissed my way down her throat. “Patience, silly. We’ll see each other after work. Plenty of time for naughty stuff later.”

  “Says you.”

  She laughed, pulling me close, and gave me this outside-in-the-dark-after-prom kiss that made me dizzy. I thought I was going to collapse right there.

  When she pulled away, the first thing to spill out of my mouth was, “Wait, no, come back.”

  She smiled and kissed my nose. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Um. Yeah.” They were the only words I could get myself to say. Christina had a way of making my jaw go slack.

  She smiled at me, like she knew exactly what she was doing, then kissed me on the cheek again and closed her office door.

  ###

  Knight was in the printer room, printing something. I was pretty sure he wasn’t used to having to print his own shit, owing to the fact that, once upon a time, he’d been the head of the Splendor division of the ANC.

  “Need help working that?” I asked. He was looking at the printer like it was a Rubik’s Cube he was trying to solve.

  It had only been like ten, fifteen minutes since I’d left Christina, but I’d kind of forgotten about talking to him. Mostly because I didn’t want to.

  “No, I’m cool,” he said, without looking back at me.

  I watched him press a few buttons and then curse under his breath.

  “You sure?” I asked.

  He sighed and looked over his shoulder and kind of nodded at me. “How do I work the fucking thing?”

  We were off to a great start.

  “Put your paper under there,” I pointed as I spoke. “Then press that button.”

  “I need it to copy front and back.”

  “Okay, hit that button.”

  “Thanks.”

  Okay, so Knight and I went back further than I liked to admit. I knew him way before he knew me, because I was working with Melchior when Melchior was still king of the castle, and Knight was one of the only ANC employees—one of the only anybody, actually—brave enough and dumb enough to challenge Melchior openly. Melchior had dragged both of us into his office (not at the same time) and told us everything about his crime-lording ways, and then it was either work for him or die. I decided I’d rather work for him.

  Knight decided he’d rather die.

  So, from the very beginning, Knight was on higher ground than I was.

  Every time we talked, I felt like some dirty street urchin talking to the chief of police, except the chief of police didn’t know I was a dirty street urchin. At the time, he had been a constant reminder that I was lying to literally everyone in my life. Especially Dulcie, because the second he showed up in Splendor, he was all over her.

  And then, you know, they got together, and it was kind of hard to watch—especially after Dulcie outed me and I had to leave the ANC. I became the rogue and the outlaw and the Jackass Who Lied to Literally Everyone, and Knight got to be in charge. And he got to be with Dulcie. I mean, he’d earned it, but still. It hurts to get your dreams stomped into oblivion. Even if you did most of the stomping yourself.

  Dulcie kept the dog I gave her, though. That had to mean something.

  Point was, Knight was everything I should have been, but wasn’t. So prying into their relationship just felt really out-of-bounds for me. Like, whatever went wrong between them wasn’t something I was supposed to know, and it wasn’t something I should get to know.

  I was on the outside of all of that now. I’d had my chance to take care of Dulcie, and I blew it—if they were having problems, I was sure they could work them out. Asking Knight about it would almost be an accusation. Or it would sound like I was asking so I could give him advice, which wasn’t any better. Maybe it would have been worse, actually.

  But Christina asked me. So… fine.

  Okay, there was absolutely no way to bring this up organically. Instead, I just jumped in. Conversational cannonball.

  Sorry, Knight, I thought. I’m about to be just as uncomfortable as you.

  “So, what happened with you and Dulcie?” I started.

  Knight paused. He looked down at his papers, and it was like all the words came off them at once and crammed themselves into his mouth. He inhaled through his teeth, a thin whistling sound like he wasn’t getting any air. His fists clenched. The machine started shaking and I realized he was bouncing his leg against the side of it.

  He scoffed, and made this strangled, hyena-laughing noise. I thought it was the printer for a second, like it was choking on ink cartridges or something.

  “I mean,” I continued, “it’s none of my business, obviously. Just, if you want to… you know… talk to somebody who’s definitely done worse.” I shrugged. “I’m here, I guess.”

  You could say I was extending the olive branch.

  It was a courtesy. I was sure we’d never be friends, but at this point, hating each other just seemed like a waste of energy. We’d all been through so much. I’d loved Dulcie once, and Dulcie had loved me, but now they loved each other, even if they’d hit a bump. At the least, we could b
e civil colleagues even if we couldn’t be friends.

  I wanted to try a little, you know? See if I couldn’t actually help with whatever was going wrong with them, or at least get him to talk to Christina about it. I wanted to build a bridge. Or at least, like, a zipline. Maybe a catapult.

  The hyena sound cut off like something had died. Knight stood up a little straighter, looking stiff. And weirdly, dramatically determined. He had this Tom-Cruise-the-martyr scowl thing going on, and he was shaking his head.

  “Why are you asking?”

  I shrugged. “I thought you looked like you could use a fr… someone to talk to.”

  He chuckled. “Am I that obvious?”

  I was surprised. In all my experiences with Knight, he’d never shown me a particularly sensitive side. That had to mean he was hurting even worse than he was letting on. I felt sorry for him.

  “Yeah, I guess you are that obvious,” I admitted with a shrug. “What’s going on?”

  He nodded and was quiet for a few seconds. “This breakup has been hard.”

  “I’m sure,” I said with a nod.

  “And I’m pretty sure it’s all my fault,” he continued.

  “So, why don’t you apologize and make things better?” I frowned. “I mean, that’s what most people do when they care about the person they’re with.”

  “I care about Dulcie,” he insisted with a nod. “I mean… I love Dulcie.”

  “So…”

  “It’s not that simple.” He looked at me, meeting my eyes for the first time since we’d started this conversation. “Fucking Christ, I can’t believe I’m talking to you about this.”

  “Am I so bad?”

  “No. It’s just… I never thought in a million years we’d be doing… this.”

  “Then you’re obviously in the dumps, man.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, again, why not just apologize for whatever the fuck you did and figure things out?”

  He shook his head. “It’s not about apologizing.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Yes and no.” He let out a pent-up breath of frustration and then ran a hand through his hair, which looked like it hadn’t been cut in months. “Do you remember… after I arrested Dulcie?” he started.