Page 79 of A Fae in Finance
I felt something on my knee and jerked away. It was the Gray Knight’s hand. I frowned at her but didn’t want to call attention to it.
“Milo was just telling me how a human can get out of Faerie,” I said brightly. “Do you happen to know if there is another way?”
“I know that the Princeling has need of you, and so do I,” she said.
I was done being polite. Something about Chad—who’d gone absolutely still and locked his eyes on my face—had beaten my obeisance out of me. “Even if that’s a euphemism, my lady, I am not interested.”
“It is a euphemism,” she said, “as I’ve said one thing in place of another.”
I sighed. “Please, for the love of god, let’s not do this right now. I’m very tired and grumpy, and I want to go home.”
The Gray Knight stood up, her jaw setting with the solemn finality of the tomb. “Then let me escort you back to your room,” she said. “As that is your home.”
I kicked the stool away and got up, too, my eyes still on Chad, who finally had the good grace to look down at the remains of my porridge. The Gray Knight and I left the room together, the doors of the hall swinging behind us.
She reached for my hand again as we started down the hallway, but I pulled away. All of the faeries were touchy—Sahir held my hand or arm all the time, and Lene curled into me whenever I sat nearby. Gaheris often sat at my feet while I worked, leaning against my knee while tearing tiny holes into the wall beneath my desk with the assurance that a portal there would be:
unnoticeable to the room’s inhabitant (i.e., me);
unlikely to expel hungry tentacles, grasping hands, an animated mouth full of gaping shark teeth hungry for human toes, or anything else harmful; and
super fun for Doctor Kitten, once Gaheris got the magic right and stopped conjuring swamps by accident.
I had at this point determined never to try my luck escaping through a portal Gaheris created.
This to say, I often leaned on or cuddled my new friends. The Gray Knight may not have meant anything by the touch. But none of my friends had kissed me, or taken me on a romantic date, or fed me cheese.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I need time to sort myself out before I start, um, anything.”
She trailed a hand along the wall. “I do not take your meaning.”
“I don’t want to be your girlfriend right now,” I blurted, feeling mortified that I might have misread the signals.
“Girlfriend?” she asked.
I would not say the wordloverout loud.
“Partner?” I suggested.
And, of course, she looked at me, her gray eyes sparking. “I did not ask you to be.”
I felt myself flush. I was a moron. Of course a faerie woman didn’t want me to be her girlfriend.
Later that afternoon, distressed and demoralized, I logged into a two-hour meeting block on my calendar to review the presentation.
Jeff was in a foul mood. Levi was on but not talking.
“What is it, Miri?” Jeff asked, even though he’d sent the calendar invite.
“Oh, can we review the PowerPoint?” I asked, because it wasn’t worth mentioning.
“Page three,” Jeff said. “The footnotes are off. This stuff isn’t hard, Miri.”
I went to page three, where the footnotes were actuallynotoff.
“Some of these mistakes are actually improbable,” he added. “Like, you must have messed them up on purpose. How did you get every single color slightly wrong on page seven?”
The colors were completely right on page seven. “Jeff, did you check the saturation settings on your laptop?” I asked, trying to keep my tone neutral.
