Page 43 of By the Fae

Something, fear of putting her foot in it perhaps, tightened her mouth. “Well,” she said after a moment, drawing out the word. “You can’t let on I said anything. He, uh, talks about you often. And, well, he doesn’t always say the nicest things about you.” She offered me an apologetic smile, and I gave her one that hopefully saidit’s mutual. “But . . . he tidied his room for you . . . And I . . . He told us about this deal. I mean, it sounds like he’s getting the better end here, but it’s just not like him to offer help. To anyone.” She thought about what she’d said. “Except us lot really.”

I wanted to ask her about the cat. Did he really steal it? Or had he found some way around the fae-no-lie thing and said it just to irritate me? Or did he do it with great reasoning? But surely there was no great reasoning to steal someone’s pet. Unless it was simply to make Joey happy.

It was obvious he loved his flatmates, by the way he spoke about them, buying Joey her favourite doughnut from the bakery, stealing a cat for her. Hewascapable of love. Whether he saw it that way was another thing.

Instead, I said, “So, Elvish doughnuts? Are they really that good? I’ve never tried one.”

“Ah mate, this’d be my death row supper, you know? I’m not sharing this one, but I’ll get you your own tomorrow morning. You are staying tonight, aren’t you?”

I thought about the bet Goldie and I had made last night, and heat swooped into my abdomen. “Yes, I guess I am.”

“Awesome! We usually all have dinner together on Sunday nights. Well, breakfast for Dima, I suppose. It’ll be so nice to have another woman there for once.”

“Dinner? With, um, your husband, and the vampire, and . . .”

“The incubus?” She started laughing. Proper belly shaking laughter. My face heated. “Oh my, okay, of all the guys, Goldie is by far,by far, the scariest. So, if you can handle him, you will have no problem with the others. You see these quilts?” She pointed to the back of the sofa draped in old-lady patchwork blankets. “Dima made them. He loves quilting. And Mal is literally the nicest man you’ll ever meet. He gives the best hugs.”

I nodded, not sure what to say to that. Not sure whether to apprehend dinner or look forward to it. A vampire that quilted and an incubus that gave great hugs . . .

“And I’ll be there, so you’ll have a friend to help guide you through.”

A friend.

I liked the weight of it. It had been a long time since I had a friend. Or somebody refer to themselves as my friend.

“Do you want to play Goldie’s game?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said, reaching for the second controller. “He never lets me play them. Calls me a bot. Says I button-lash, and it spoils the fun. Boys.”

I laughed nervously, secretly agreeing with Goldie, while on screen she selected his character.

“Oh, there’s a surprise. He’s semi-naked again.” She frowned. “Wait, has he made you both into game-people?”

I nodded. “Does he normally do self-inserts?”

A snort escaped her nostrils. “Gods, he’d be all over that innuendo. But, no, I don’t think so. Like I said, he rarely lets me play his games. They’re not really my sort of thing. When I first started seeing Horns—Taur, Goldie made me shoot humans in the face. With a fucking crossbow. Come on! Apparently, my inability to do it more than once was, and I quote, ‘The most stressful thing he’d ever had to witness.’ To be fair, I did scream a lot. Like, a lot. Is there much murdering in this game?”

Oh no, I really liked her. Putting aside her button-lashing and screaming, I wondered if there was any way we could remain friends after this business with Goldie was through.

“No, there’s no murdering. Yet. Unless you count the homicidal moose. I’m going to convince him it doesn’t need all the killing.” It was never my favourite part of the Magic Thief games, anyway. For me it was always about the characters.

The unlikely pairing of Colin, the bumbling, slightly inept human, and Spiritus the wize-cracking, arrogant, yet extremely handsome fae. There were no explicit in-game mentions of their shipping, but that didn’t stop the online fanfiction authors from writing detailed, blow by blow descriptions of their hypothetical shenanigans. And it certainly didn’t stop me devouring every new paragraph on the pair. Even if I didn’t always understand everything I’d read.

“So, how did you and Taurin meet?” I said before my face heated too much.

“Ah, well, I was supposed to go to speed class because, well, all the tickets, and Taur was going to cake decorating class because he smashed up an Ichor and needed to prove he could control his temper, and I got the wrong room, and wound up on Taur’s desk, and he imprinted on me.”

My mouth was hanging open. I snapped it shut.

“That’s the short story anyway.”

“Oh.”

“You want the long story?”

“Yes, please,” I said, realising I wanted nothing more than to snuggle on this ridiculously comfortable sofa, sip expensive coffee, and listen to Goldie’s beautiful flatmate.

She scooped up Not Ludo and scooted onto the cushion next to me. “With pleasure. Do you want the clean version, or do you wanna hear all the filthy bits too?”

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