Page 12 of By the Fae

Chapter 5.

Holly

Like I’d promised myself, I saved Seth until last.

The rest of the trial meetings with the other five designers were . . . underwhelming. I mean, compared to Goldie, they were birthday picnics in the park with balloons and cupcakes and face painting. But there was something missing from all of them. The other senior designers were accommodating enough for fae, only the slightest bit patronising, only tried to trip me up with their words fewer than a dozen — two dozen? — times, and they were, of course, all inconceivably gorgeous.

And I know I technically wasn’t boyfriend hunting with the other designers, but I didn’t get those weird butterflies-at-a-rave feelings that I got when I was near Seth. And now, irritatingly, Goldie. As much as I loathed the guy, he gave me the same manic fluttering.

People say love and hate are two sides of the same coin. Maybe this was simply what undiluted hatred felt like.

I took a few steadying breaths, rubbed my sweaty palms onto the front of my pinafore dress, and knocked on the door.

“Yeah?” came the sexy drawl from within.

I pushed it open, stepped inside, and almost lost my very tenuous grasp on my composure.

“Ah, good morning, human. I’ve been wondering when you were going to visit me.” Seth stood from his small sofa, identical to Goldie’s. He spoke with an affluent accent. Money, education, probably horses, maybe palaces.

“Good morning,” I eventually squeaked out through the driest mouth known to womankind.

I had either forgotten how beautiful he was, or else he’d gotten more beautiful. His brown skin was positively glowing, his week-old stubble looking as though I wanted it scratching my face and . . . my thighs.

Don’t think about things like that at work, Hols. Save it for later. When you can do . . . absolutely nothing about it.

Unlike Goldie’s office, Seth’s had a large, almost conference style desk. He pointed to the chair next to it. A gamer style leather thing with a high back and speakers built into the headrest. An ancient-looking laptop blinked from the desk.

“How’s your command of English?” he asked, in that abdomen-cramping timbre.

Weird question considering the language we were currently conversing in, but whatever. I’d let him read Mermish to me with that baritone. “Yeah, it’s okay.”

“I thought I’d get you to look through these scripts. For grammatical errors.”

My stomach sank, the butterfly wings drooped.

My trial with Goldie had been a disaster. He hadn’t expected me, hadn’t prepared anything. He was the only one. The other guys were different. Each had “work” — in inverted commas — ready and waiting for me. Though their definitions of work could rewrite the dictionary. Each task, with each designer, was more tedious than the previous. Almost as though they were in competition with each other to see who could bore me the most. No doubt their tricksy fae attempts to ensure I did not select them as my shadow partner.

One fae had me replying to his emails. Another had me signing his signature on promotional postcards of his latest driving game. I wasn’t their fudging PA, but I shut up, did the tasks, and got the heck out of there because I knew at the end of it all, I would choose Seth anyway. I mean, I’d still choose him, but I couldn’t pretend that his participation in Bore Holly to Death version 1.0 wasn’t a punch to the gut.

“Aren’t there other departments that do that sort of thing? Story boarding? Quality control? Um, the actual script writers?”

His head cocked to the side like a puppy, one of his beautiful eyebrows shot up. “You’re human.”

Right. It wasn’t a question. I had no idea how to respond.

“You can’t build games like we do. You have to do human tasks.” At my, perhaps, impatient expression, he added, “I’m going to do it with you.”

“W—You are?” The others had pretty much left me to my own devices until I’d completed whatever humdrum task they’d set, or else until I’d gotten so bored, I’d thrown in the towel.

“Of course.” He glided over to the desk, sat himself in the gamer chair, and from under the tabletop, produced a small, three-legged, and highly uncomfortable looking stool. “Come, take a seat.”

Okay, it was unfair of me to be disappointed by that. I had a terrible habit of expecting too much from people. Mentally placing unreasonable demands on them, and when they didn’t live up to them, feeling unjustifiably dejected. He was going to do the task with me. It was already a gajillion times more involved than any other trial so far.

I sat on the stool. Seth smiled at me. My insides turned to jelly.

That smile, though. That smile could paste over any manner of sins. And I was okay with that.

He pointed to the laptop and shrugged a shoulder. Did he not know how to operate it? I turned it on, and he smiled again. Somewhat condescendingly, but I still melted a little further.

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