Page 48 of A Fae in Finance
“Yes.”
“So?” I crossed my arms, bracing myself for some reproach.
“You did a kindness, unbidden and without request of fair return.”
“He looked like he needed help.”
The Gray Knight nodded. “And this was sufficient for you,” she said. “He needed it and was therefore worthy of your aid.”
I sighed. “A guy was drowning in a magic bathtub in the middle of my bedroom. There’s no mystery here.”
She stood up, her gray eyes locked on mine. Without looking away, she put her hands on either side of her chair. The gray magic sparked in my periphery—I could see the chair shrinking out of the corner of my eye as we looked at each other. “There are more mysteries than you see, Miriam Geld.”
I stood as well, suddenly tired and longing to be alone. “Thank you for your assistance. It sped my review greatly.”
The acorn chair had shrunk back to size in her hands, and she pocketed it. I glanced at the lump it made against her leggings.
“We can work together again, if you are inclined,” she said, bobbing her head. Without waiting for a response, she turned and strode from the room.
Chapter 8
In Which I Have an Enchanting Encounter
I watched the Gray Knight leave, her silver hair flying behind her like a pennant, and then finally let myself look at my bed. Gaheris lay at the foot of the bed, one leg bent at an awkward angle. Lene and Doctor Kitten sprawled in the middle, taking up the bulk of the space.
Lene had considerately left a triangle of free space the size of my torso at the top right-hand corner, closest to me.
My room was trashed. Gaheris appeared to have opened at least four different portals and closed none of them. A hole in the floor near the foot of the bed was spouting periodic gouts of ash, and the two initial portals near the door kept flickering between the appearance of flames and thin slivers of roots and decaying leaves.
None of this made me excited about the idea of stepping through a portal Gaheris created.
He hadn’t yet made it to the window, so the outside-facing wall was at least still unscathed.
Something glooped through the fourth portal, but it didn’t seem imminently harmful. I glanced at the bed again; Doctor Kitten was safely ensconced between the two faeries.
This chaos was not mine to deal with, I decided. I was going to go for a walk instead.
I checked once more for any emails, grabbed my cell, and left through the door, closing it gently behind me. Lene seemed like she’d take good care of Doctor Kitten, and I had reconnaissance to perform. For the first time since I’d gotten to Faerie, I was both fully composed and fully unsupervised.
This time, I turned right down the hallway, heading in the direction we’d come from the first night. I counted doors and came to twenty-seven before the light changed. Most had numbers on them, but a few had titles or names. I came acrossSun Guardian,Charlene,Pogo the Proud, and my personal favorites:King of Thieves Who Do Not Steal Material Goodsand his next-door neighbor,Lord of Omission.
There were a few corridors off the main hall, too, like the one that led to the cafeteria. I decided against exploring those for the moment. I kept my right hand on the wall, which felt like packed dirt but didn’t crumble away against my fingertips.
Seven doors later, I came to the archway that led into the Court. It was as I remembered it: as tall as the corridor, open to the sky outside, and hewn into the dirt side of the mountain. I wondered how it stayed up—whatever it was made of didn’t seem sturdy enough to survive centuries.
But I didn’t wonder for long, because then I was outside, standing in an opening a little way up the hill, staring down at the clearing where we’d had our client dinner only two days previously. The sight made my stomach churn, but it was nice to have fresh air.
I hadn’t anticipated so many people outside. A small family was using the side of the hill to teach a child to fly—their black raven’s wings glittered as the two older ones jumped, showing the little one how to flap to get airborne. Beyond them, some sort of circle dance had sprung up, and a cadre of laughing Fae spun in whirls of unbound hair and fluttering cloth; loose feathers drifted in their wake.
Nearest the entrance, a trio of tall, slender faeries with willow bark skin stared at me. I stared back: They had long branches sweeping from their scalps and shoulders, covered in thin oval leaves.
No one moved to usher me indoors. I surveyed the landscape for a few moments, trying to understand how—or if—it related to the human world.
Most of the nearby area was open, a series of low hillocks and wide plains full of grass and wildflowers. It was cut with stony paths and bare gray outcroppings of rock. It stretched out into the middle distance, where the edge of a wide forest encircled us for as far as I could see.
I stepped out onto the path and came upon another group of faeries—five people lying in the grass together, sans blanket, with their heads on each other’s stomachs. They looked like the contented aftermath of a game of Jenga. One of them was reading, but for the most part they appeared happy to lie beneath the sky and do nothing. I glanced overhead for the sun; I’d begun to suspect that Faerie didn’t have one.
“My lady,” one of the faeries in the grass said. He disentangled himself from his companions and stood. It was the faerie from the cafeteria who’d served me cake last night and looked like a twenty-seven-year-old actor portraying a heartthrob in a teen movie. He came across the lawn to me and stopped a respectful distance away, bare feet in the grass. “I didn’t see you at breakfast this morning.”
