Page 56 of By the Fae

“Don’t wave, for crisp’s sake.”

“Hey daddy, I’m up here!” she yelled, and pulled away from the window, crumpling onto the singular desk-chair in a fit of giggles.

“Abby, you don’t even know what a daddy is,” I said, secretly hoping she wouldn’t ask. I knew it was a sex thing, probably, but beyond that, I was clueless.

“That car though,” she said longingly when her giggles had subsided.

“I know,” was all I said back.

We were quiet for a few moments. I cleaned my glasses on my special microfibre cloth.

“How old is he?” she asked.

“I think about seven hundred. Or, nearly seven hundred, I heard his flatmate say.”

Her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. “Now that’s an age-gap romance.”

I laughed, shook my head. “You’d never believe he was nearly seven-hundred. He behaves like a teenager. And it’s an arrangement of convenience, not a romance.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Chapter 19.

Goldie

I pushed the coffee table against the wall so I could pace my office. Drew the blinds so that the people in the building opposite — a werewolf dating app namedHowl Ya Doin’?— wouldn’t see me argue with myself. Not that I would argue aloud. That would be far too risky. I’d probably end up saying something idiotic again.

Ooh, Holly Briar, you are not making this easy for me.

Why? Why would I say that? As soon as the words left my lips, I heard them bounce around in the empty chambers of my mind. Gods, what was I thinking? What did I even mean? Make what easy for me?

“Don’t answer that, you utter, utter prick,” I said, breaking my no arguing out loud rule.

I had driven her home to get changed for work, and she had swapped out dungarees for more fucking dungarees. This time with tiny little birds all over. Like seriously, how many pairs of this offensive garment did the woman own?

When we’d eventually arrived at the office, Holly was whisked away to take part in some training course or another. I’d half wanted to make a joke about manual handling, but I pulled my defences up before it could slip out. Outside of my bedroom, I needed her to think of me as an adversary. Not making dick jokes and making her laugh. Dammit, even if a tiny — insignificant, really — part of me wanted to hear that laugh.

So, she had been in training all morning, and I had been wearing a tread in the grey polyester carpet. I was thankful for the respite from the infuriating human.

There was a knock at my door.

“Yeah,” I called out, and in walked . . . Seth, with his subtle but tell-tale silver glow around his deceptive form. Like a dirty, smoking halo. “What do you want?”

He glanced around my unnaturally darkened office. “Just came to see Molly, actually. She not here?”

“It’s Holly, you fucker, and you know it, and she’s in training all day. All week I think.”

“No need to get defensive,” he said, smiling, and plopping, uninvited, onto my couch. He spread his arms, which in his current form did not reach either armrest. They fell, rather pathetically, back to his sides. I didn’t bother to hide my laugh.

“What do you want with her?”

Seth paused. His eyes locked onto mine. His tongue traced his top teeth. “Heard you had a cosy little slumber party this weekend.”

My heartbeat ramped up. How did he find that one out? I said nothing.

“A fuckboy like you should know the golden rule.” He inspected his fingernails.

“Yeah. So that we could discuss the game.”

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