Page 22 of Elven Prince

“Should’ve gotten one of your own,” the big guy called back. His booming voice needing no amplifying, but shouting across the garage made it sound ten times bigger anyway. “Save us all the pain of looking at your shit-ugly mug.”

Archie laughed as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Come say that to my face, you handsome bastard.”

Another explosion of laughter was Titus’s only reply as he and Rebecca reached the Honda.

She couldn’t stop sneaking extra looks at him, somehow still expecting to find the enormous vuulbor beside her like a giant walking hunk of stone. “Wow. That new tech guy really knows what he’s doing.”

“You like it?” Titus stretched out his left arm to show off the thick band of shiny gold now adorning his wrist. “Custom job, too. Apparently, changing a guy’s size falls under ‘advanced illusionary spellwork’ or some shit. But I guess it does the job.”

“Definitely a different vibe. Which is the point, I know. Pretty amazing he cut you down to size by like a foot.”

“Eight inches,” he corrected, fixing her with a suddenly deadpan stare. “Thank you very much.”

Rebecca lifted both hands in concession and managed to keep a straight face, “My bad. It doesn’tactuallychange your size, though, right?”

He patted his belly with both hands, which now looked nothing like Titus’s normal wall of solid muscle. “Nope. All me on the inside. Just the outside that got a makeover.”

“So you’ll still have to duck through the doorways and everything.”

“Yep.” The manicured eyebrows of his new illusion drew together as he studied her face. “Whenyouthink you’re looking me in the eye, still feels like you’re staring at my throat.”

Rebecca barked out a laugh and unlocked the driver’s-side door before hitting the automatic unlock for the passenger side. “I’ll try to remember to address half a foot above your head, then.”

“But hey. Other than that, can’t say I’ve got much to complain about.”

“The gnome does decent work.” Rebecca opened her door and slid behind the wheel, bracing herself when the vehicle rocked sideways beneath Titus’s enormous weight as he settled into the passenger seat.

“Just like the witch sisters said he would.”

Rebecca paused with the keys in the ignition and frowned at him. “Maddie and Lacey?”

He shot her a sidelong glance with a knowing smirk that made this human-illusion version of Titus look smug and full of himself. Normally, she found the look on therealTitus endearing. When he didn’t look like a reincarnated Viking in Chicago.

“We got any other witch sisters I should know about?” he asked.

“No. But I thought they were from Boise.”

“I heard it the same.” Titus grunted as he fought with the seatbelt, struggling to pull it out enough that it reached ridiculously far around his human illusion. “Guess they’ve been in Chicago long enough to make a few friends along the way.”

Rebecca shrugged. “Benefits of taking on new members.”

They stared at each other, then burst out laughing before she started the engine and got them on their way.

When they passed the eighteen-wheeler, Archie rolled down his window to wave, then offered another wolf whistle at the blond-haired, blue-eyed, six-foot-four-looking human Titus in the passenger seat.

The big guy laughed and flipped him the bird.

Stepping through the front doors of Chicago’s Nexus building filled Rebecca with the same sense of eerie abandonment and impending doom as the two other times she’d been here.

They found the immaculately clean lobby, polished marble floors, expensively tasteful décor in hues of gold and off-white as unchanged as she’d hoped they would. Once again, the pristine concierge desk remained empty, with no sign of anyone having ever manned that desk at all.

After all, employees were completely unnecessary in a magical storage vault where customers helped themselves to their own units and the built-in magical security ensured a shortage of break-ins or identity fraud.

Unless, of course, one murdered their predecessor in self-defense and inherited his vault key along with everything else he left behind.

As Rebecca eyed the lobby, a low whistle from behind echoed off the high ceilings and polished white marble comprising nearly everything.

“Don’t know what I was expecting,” Titus murmured. “But this ain’t it.”

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