Page 24 of A Fae in Finance
“I-interesting?” I asked, in a squished sort of voice.
My neck started to ache. Doctor Kitten, who’d borne all of this with remarkable calm, twisted his head and bit the Princeling on the wrist.
“Demon creature!” he shouted, jumping backward.
“He’s not a demon,” I said proudly, cradling Doctor Kitten’s head. “He was just annoyed because you were in our personal space.”
“Space cannot belong to a person,” the Gray Knight stated. She’d been so quiet I’d forgotten her presence. But if I didn’t know better, I would have thought she was fighting a smile.
“Perhaps one day I will ask for your opinion on these matters,” the Princeling said. “But for now, allow me to worry about…feelingsin the human realm.” He ran the pad of a finger over his wrist, the red scratches disappearing beneath green vines of light. “And please consider my request. Your cooperation is desired.”
He turned away from me, presumably to go back to staring at the ceiling.
Without anything more to say, I backed out of the room, my left hand over Doctor Kitten’s head, just in case.
And then I stood in the hallway and waited until the Gray Knight deigned to join me.
She came out quietly, after enough time that I was fuming.
Ignoring my glare, she led me back the way we’d come, right and then left. I tried to count the doors between mine and the turn but couldn’t keep track.
“How many people live here?”
She stopped in front of a door. I looked at it and saw that it had my name burned into the wood:Miriam Geld. It was a punch in the gut, a brutal reminder that threatened to shatter me.
“You will understand, Miriam, why I do not answer that question.” She didn’t even look at me as she spoke.
“I won’t understand, actually,” I snapped. “I haven’t understoodanythingyou’ve done. What am I going to do with the information?”
But she’d already started down the hallway.
Chapter 5
In Which I Call My Mother
When I got into the bedroom and put Doctor Kitten down, I realized I had no idea how to log onto the internet. The desk had three monitors now, and my computer had already been hooked up to them. My key card sat on the desk next to the external laptop and mouse they’d left me.
And there, next to the computer, my cell phone sat on a wireless charger. I didn’t remember what I’d done with it last night.
But they’dleft my phone for me. That told me, more than anything else, the truth of my captivity: They weren’t worried who I told about my imprisonment.
Theyshouldhave been worried; I wasn’t sure if the Princeling realized what he had done, what he was risking in taking me this way. If I revealed that I wasn’t here voluntarily, human-faerie relations—already tenuous at best—would sour rapidly.
Frustratingly, it seemed like I cared more than he did about how faerie integration went. I’d taken this job in the first place because I believed business success was one of the fastest ways to integrate supernaturals into human society.
Obviously, I hadn’t been listening when Jordan tried to explain that investment banking probably wouldn’t build the bridges I thought it would. I missed his oversized fashion glasses and his always-right attitude so much right now. I missed Thea, too, her natural way of understanding others, and her warm hugs that were just the best.
Would I ever get another hug from my best friends?
I walked over to the desk and tapped on my phone screen. It lit up. Eight forty-five a.m., six text messages from Thea, forty-five messages in the Games Games Games chat, and a missed call from my mom. My throat tightened. What could I even tell her?
I stared out the window. In the daylight, I could see more clearly. Despite my impression that the corridor was flat last night, I was high up in the hillside, towering over an unfamiliar landscape. As in Central Park, there were gray uncovered rocks and winding dirt pathways among wide green swaths of meadow, but unlike the human side, the foreboding edge of a dense forest bounded one horizon. My eyes felt weird—I almost thought I could see individual blades of emerald grass swaying in a breeze, like the window was magnifying what I wanted to explore. I tried to reach through the window and slapped my hand into an invisible barrier.
Magic.I was touching magic.
Something in my stomach fluttered. I shouldn’t be pleased about anything, of course. But—I imagined a conversation with myself at eight years old.
Eight-year-old me would be sitting at our kitchen table, in one of our wooden chairs with the rounded backs, her bare feet kicking at a table leg.
