Page 27 of By the Fae

“What are the choices?” said a shower-fresh Taurin, dropping himself down onto the other end of my sofa.

I leant forward, retrieved the tin, removed the two joints, and passed him the larger one. Not Ludo jumped into my lap and settled himself down. The cat had been there half a second, and he’d already shed an entire winter-coat onto my jeans. “Go to Daddy,” I said, ineffectively shoving the ginger puddle towards Taur.

Dima spoke. “Would you rather drink a pint of your own sweat, or eat a bowl of your hair? Goldie and I both went for the sweat.”

Taur’s laugh rumbled through the whole building. He was massive, though apparently small for his kind. A minotaur shifter. The only known minotaur currently living in Borderlands. Seven-feet tall, with horns on top of that, and the man had muscles on muscles on muscles. It’s a crying shame we’d never fucked, but I couldn’t begrudge his newfound happiness with Sugar Paste.

He ran a hand through his wet, shoulder-length hair. “You guys are seriously underestimating the power of my sweat. I swear when it mixes with the sunshine, there’s some sort of chemical reaction. It will bleach the colour straight out of my shirts. It’s why I rarely wear any at work.”

“I’ll still opt for the sweat. Maybe I’d enjoy the sensation of having my oesophagus melted,” Dima said.

“You ordered food?” Taur said, getting out his phone.

“Yeah, Carly’s,” I replied.

He returned his phone to his pocket, smiled, and leaned his head back on his massive arm, knowing full well what that meant. Not only eating the best falafel known to man or mythic, but also that he’d get to see his wife while she delivered our food. Which pretty much happened every Friday evening, but Taur always behaved as though Sugar Paste had been away for months on active duty.

We were quiet for a few moments. I figured Dima, whose tolerance to any kind of mind-altering substance was akin to that of a child’s, had simply zoned out. I was wrong. I realised this when Taur replied out loud to a conversation he and Dima were apparently having telepathically.

“And she’s human?”

I snapped my attention to him.

“Nothing,” he said, but Dima obviously spoke into his mind, because the minotaur laughed, shot the vampire a look, and hefted a huge shoulder.

“Tell me now, or I’ll kill both of you.”

“That’s a terrible threat. I’m already dead,” said Dima.

Taur narrowed his eyes, but his grin was moreaha. “D told me you enlisted him to tidy up your room. For a girl . . . A human girl.” He leaned forward and took a huge drag on his joint.

“Dima, can’t you ever keep anything private?”

The vampire pulled his gaze to me, his eyes wider than headlamps, he opened his mouth to speak but what actually came out was a terrible case of the giggles. After that, he became unable to answer any more questions.

“So, who is she?” asked Taur. “Feels like only a few weeks ago we were sitting here having this exact chat about Peaches.”

“She’s literally no—”

I wanted to say no one, but the last word wouldn’t come out. Fuck. No, it didn’t mean anything.

We were quiet for a while. Taur obviously realising it was something I didn’t want to talk about, me not finding any alternative subject to deflect the conversation, and Dima still giggling like a schoolboy looking at an anatomical illustration of a vulva in a biology book.

She’s literally no one. Holly Briar was no one to me.

I could say it inside my head.

“Who ordered falafel?” came Sugar Paste’s voice from the hall, as she let herself in. Taur jumped to his feet and left the room.

Dima smiled at me. Dima was perpetually smiling, but this was a little different. It was a sickly, sleepy, stoned smile. “I’m so jealous of them,” he said.

“Of who? Taur and Sugar Paste?”

“I just want someone whose thoughts I can tolerate, or someone who knows how to put a barrier up in their mind, so I don’t have to listen to them all the time.”

Tiny feather-like cracks snaked across my heart. I didn’t know Dima was so lonely.

“Well, I am,” he said, obviously having heard my thought. “I don’t see my kind very often because I can’t stand the noise pollution, but I am lonely. Have been for a long time. I’m too fussy about who I penetrate. Mentally,” he added before my mind could make the quip. “Or physically. I haven’t had sex in three decades . . . And you thought your four-month drought was a record.”

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