Page 60 of A Fae in Finance
“Sure,” I said, once I was reasonably sure I wasn’t choking anymore. I unplugged my laptop from the docking station and joined him on the bed. We sat side by side, my shoulder against his upper arm. He smelled comfortingly like cinnamon, warm and earthy.
I felt myself melting into his side, my piano-wire-tense muscles relaxing as the adrenaline faded from my bloodstream. I waited for him to inch away, but Sahir had already proven himself very touchy. He put his arm around me and pulled me against him, his eyes still on his work.
I glanced at his screen to see one of the bank’s newest climate change campaigns, centered on the reuse of the provided single-use plastic utensils stocked on every floor. It was calledPla-STICK It in a Drawer, and I couldn’t decide if the responsible copywriter should be fired or promoted. I ran my thumb along the gold ring on my index finger, and then twisted the ring from one hand to the other.
“Has that campaign had any impact on our office’s waste?” I asked, jerking my chin at his lap.
He rubbed his fingertips along my elbow, dragged the rough fabric of my shirt across my forearm in a soothing circle. “None whatsoever.”
I leaned my head against his shoulder, relieved to have some kind of contact with another person. The hours passed, the two of us tapping away at our keyboards, and by the end of the night I’d become inured to his presence on my bed.
After that, he came and worked next to me most nights. We sat in silence and typed on our computers. Sometimes I felt him looking over my shoulder at my email exchanges.
Usually I fell asleep next to him before he left, sliding down the pillows with my laptop still on my lap. Doctor Kitten always lay between us, the world’s hairiest chaperone.
Another week passed this way.
The Gray Knight sat on the edge of the bed, staring at me.
“You are someone special,” she said, “and I cannot stop thinking about you.”
She changed, lengthening and darkening, and was the Princeling. “Your mortal mind cannot comprehend my plans,” he told me. “And there is no reason to try. You serve me best here. Isn’t that what you always wanted?” He smirked, cruel and so, so beautiful. “To serve your faerie lord?”
His shoulders hunched and he became the Crone. “A strand of yarn does not know it is part of a cloak,” she said, in a voice like my father’s.
I woke up and grabbed my phone from the pillow beside me. I’d dialed my dad before I even checked the time, but it didn’t matter. He was on his way to work, of course.
“Miri?” he asked. I heard the rush of air and the whir of his tires on the cement. He was on the highway.
“Dad?” I said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yeah. Are you okay? Your mom’s getting worried.”
I pictured him sitting in his car, his left arm on the window and his right on his thigh, hands loose around the wheel.
There was a loud noise from the hallway.
“I’m fine, Dad.” I stood up and went to the door. “I’ve just been busy with work stuff.” A technically true statement.
“And with your pedagogical responsibilities?” Dad sounded amused.
Of my parents, my dad was the less concerned about my relocation. He found the Princeling entertaining as a concept, and he seemed unshakably certain of my ability to finagle a way out of Faerie in time for the holidays in three months.
Another noise from the other side of the door, like a ball bouncing down the corridor. I sighed, opened the door, and stuck my head out into the hallway.
“Mostly busy with my regularly scheduled poisonings, actually.” I swung my head around, but I saw no potential source of noise. “I was sick again last night, and I’m pretty sure it’s the food.” This fact hadn’t impacted my staying up until two a.m.
One last glance around the hall yielded no evidence of a perpetrator. Maybe Schubert was getting some rounds in. I closed the door and went back to bed.
“You probably just aren’t used to magical food,” my dad said dismissively. My dad was a surgeon and consequently believed that if he couldn’t operate on it, it wasn’t a problem.
“Maybe… but I don’t really want to talk about it. How’s stuff at home?”
“Same old,” my dad said, and didn’t elaborate.
“Is Mom okay?”
“She’s fine.”
