Page 61 of A Fae in Finance
I wondered what he wasn’t telling me—probably that she was waking him up every two hours to propose some new harebrained scheme to spring me from Faerie. Probably that they were falling apart at home, worried and terrified.
My dad cleared his throat. “How’s my grandcat?” he asked.
“Delightful,” I said. “And chaotic. He’s made friends with a few birds.”
Doctor Kitten had quickly become a favorite of the birds, who liked to sit on the other side of the window and taunt him until he stood up on his hind legs and scrabbled uselessly against the magic barrier.
“We miss you,” my dad said. He sounded uncertain.
I stared across the room, at the waterfall shower. “I miss you, too,” I said. “I have to go. I love you, Dad.”
“Love you, too,” he said. I hung up and got out of bed, crouching over the suitcase still on the floor where I’d left it. It seemed that nobody intended to give me a closet or any sort of dresser, so I’d be living out of my suitcase for the rest of my life. I pulled out a pair of jeans, stared at them, and threw them over my shoulder. Why did I need to look nice? It didn’t matter. I grabbed black sweatpants covered in white cat hair and pulled them on.
When I used the toilet, I looked at the shower but didn’t get in. And at the sink, I glanced at the makeup bag but didn’t open it. I did take Doctor Kitten’s water bowl, empty it out, and refill it. The food stayed full no matter how much he ate. I kicked the litter box, but there were no clumps.
There never were. It must have been faerie magic, because I’d started watching to make sure he went, and he definitely went.
“Breakfast?” I asked Doctor Kitten, who’d sat down in the warm spot I left on the bed. He looked up from his grooming. “Lene will be there,” I added.
He raised a cat eyebrow. “Fine,” I said. “You stay here.”
I knocked on Lene’s door, and she opened it immediately. “Breakfast?” I asked, feeling a little shy.
“Of course!” she said, stepping into the hallway. She wore a jumpsuit, a loose, sleeveless blue thing that didn’t restrict her movements. Her tail stuck out a hole at the back. “I knew you would retrieve me, so I waited.”
“You waited to eat breakfast with me?” I asked, touched.
“Yes,” she said. “I am good at waiting.” She stopped in front of the dining hall doors. I pushed one open, and she stepped through in front of me.
I’d decided that this was an opportune time to revisit my questions about different types of faeries.
“So if Gaheris is a fire faerie, and Sahir is a dryad,” I started, but she giggled.
“Sahir is not adryad,” she said. “Oh, that is so funny. You should call him a dryad. He’s a woodland Fae.” We went to the buffet line. I scanned the three people working it—Milo was on the end.
“Ah, I’m sorry,” I said to Lene. “Is it rude to ask people what type of faerie they are?”
“Well, usually we can tell,” she said. “So I have never thought about it. But you can ask me.” She held her tray out and the first faerie—the one with snake scales on her face—put a bowl of hot cereal onto it.
I did the same. The faerie gave me a single piece of buttered toast.
“Okay,” I said, choosing to ignore this—she gave me something boring and bland whenever she thought she could get away with it. And anyway, I loved toast. “What type of faerie are you?”
“Well, some call us therianthropes, but we are just faeries with a particular affiliation for a type of animal. We tend to become more like them as we age.” The second faerie served us both, some type of quiche thing. Milo put a bowl of fruit on Lene’s tray. I stopped in front of him.
“Good morning, Milo,” I said.
“Good morning, Miri.” He put a bowl on my tray as well: Today the fruit salad was composed largely of slightly spiky fruits that looked like rambutans but had no peel. I didn’t enjoy them at all; the fibrous exterior caught in my throat.
Lene and I went to the usual table. I wasn’t entirely surprised to see the Gray Knight sitting there, eating something that looked suspiciously like a normal human-world banana. She had popped in and out of the rotation a few times over the past few weeks, usually to criticize my interpretations of human behavior during class.
“So you believe you were poisoned,” she said, by way of greeting.
It took me a moment to understand what she was talking about.
“Good morning,” I said, still clinging to my manners. “It’s lovely to see you. Yes, it’s rude to eavesdrop on people’s predawn phone calls with their parents.” I stared at her severely, to see if she would apologize.
An apologetic frown didn’t mar her delicate features. She stared back, imposing even lounging splayed-leg on a wooden stool. “It is not eavesdropping when you shout it down a hallway.”
