Filthy Rich Fae

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Haley had hesitated to let us work in the underutilized private laboratory reserved for the personal use of Gage associates until she saw Sirius. Apparently, the true gift of the fae was the ability to charm any human with a single smile. I couldn’t blame her. I was hardly immune.

So, the three of us had spent the last week feigning shopping trips and lunches while Ciara ferried Sirius to the hospital every available hour and we worked on getting as many samples of clover for him to test as possible. She had even sacrificed her personal, century-old stash to the cause, ensuring we had a base specimen to compare the newer strains against, including the tainted product Lach had seized. I had no idea who she had sweet-talked into giving it to her against her brother’s wishes, but I’m sure it was the result of that irresistible fae charm and her resolution to find a way out of her betrothal to Bain.

The morning of her handfasting ceremony—something she willfully refused to talk about—we were no closer to an answer. Sirius had stayed at the hospital, working overnight in a desperate attempt to find something useful. All of us were keenly aware that time was running out when we arrived to deliver coffee. No one stopped us as we cruised past the reception desk, but my heart sped up. I hoisted my new Gucci purse onto my shoulder, grateful no one had asked to look inside it. It was the least flashy option that had arrived at my room a few days earlier, along with a box containing my own 9-millimeter and a very convincing note from Lach. After the redcap attack, I’d decided he was right, but I didn’t like it.

But even with the gun weighing down my handbag, I was more worried about Ciara. I stole glances at her every few steps.

“I’m not going to snap,” she hissed as I scanned us through the rear security doors that opened into the emergency room.

I schooled my features into mild surprise. “I never said you were.”

She huffed. “I know when I’m being watched. I have everything under control.”

In fairness, Ciara’s yellow Porsche was parked haphazardly in the ambulance bay, so close to the entrance that someone was likely to give it emergency resuscitation. I’d bitten my tongue, knowing no one would tow a vehicle registered in her name. Still, her erratic behavior worried me. The fact that she wouldn’t talk about it only deepened my anxiety.

But she paused a few feet from the lab. “I’m sorry. I have a temper sometimes.”

“It’s cool.” I had tried to shoot Lach when he tricked me into a bargain. I had no idea how she was keeping herself this calm in the face of marrying a man she didn’t love. In fact, it was increasingly clear that she loathed him.

She let out a rough snort. “Fae all have tempers. Luckily, mine cools off the fastest. My mother used to say I was a firecracker and Shaw was a pistol and Fiona was a blizzard.”

I couldn’t stop myself. “And Lach?”

“Lach is a bomb.” Her mouth twisted into a grim line. “That’s why he stays away from the rest of us. He’s afraid he’ll go off.”

A wet, dark alley flashed to mind. The only time I’d truly seen him lose control. That night, he’d slipped that delicate—but always dangerous—leash he kept on himself.

“You know he loves you, right? All of you?” I wasn’t sure why I said it. Maybe because as someone who’d never had her own family, I couldn’t bear to see the strained relationship between them all.

“Oh, I know that. I just wish he trusted us more.” Her eyes darted to me as we continued toward the lab. “After our parents died, it was his job to protect us. He’s so worried that he’ll lose one of us, too, that he’s forgotten how to do anything else.”

And the result was crazy ideas, like marrying his sister to another court and telling himself it was a solution when I suspected that the situation in his city made him believe he would eventually fail her, too. I still didn’t know how their parents had died. Only what Sirius had told me about the war. None of them talked about their deaths. It had been decades ago, but I suspected that wasn’t very long to immortals.

We found Sirius hunched over a microscope, but Haley stopped us before we made it past the lab’s threshold. “I would advise you to come back later.” She collected the cup of coffee we’d brought him. “I’ll give this to him. Later.”

“Is something wrong?” I squinted over her shoulder, trying to see what he was working on.

“He bit my head off fifteen minutes ago for saying good morning.”

The three of us shared a look. It was impossible to imagine him doing that.

“He’s tired,” Haley explained. “I know this is important, but he needs a break before he actually breaks.” We’d shared enough of what we were doing to secure her support. As far as she knew, he was looking into trinity in an attempt to find a better treatment for overdoses, working to isolate whatever had tainted the strain. None of us had let the word “magic” slip, so Haley thought Sirius was a genius scientist visiting from Prague.

But despite working around the clock in the underutilized lab, we were running out of time to find answers and both of my friends were on the verge of collapse. So much for my brilliant plan.

“And”—Haley continued—“Garcia keeps trying to give him lab work to do. He’s going to figure it out, but I’m not sure how much longer you guys have. We’re only getting away with it because Sirius is squeezing in the lab work. But if Garcia realizes what Sirius is actually doing, he’s going to call Lachlan Gage. So I have to ask. Does he know what you’re up to?”

“Let me worry about Lach.” He might be a bomb, but I knew exactly how to defuse him.

Haley and Ciara shared a knowing look. “Still refusing to admit you two are dating, eh?”

“We aren’t.” Not exactly a lie. I hadn’t seen him for more than five minutes at any given time in the last week. Although he’d made very good use of those five minutes each and every time, that hardly qualified as courtship.

Ciara snorted, hitching a thumb at me. “Look at that stupid grin. She crossed that bridge and burned it behind her. She is fucked.”

That snapped me out of my daze. “I already told you that—”

“I didn’t mean literally.” She looped her arm with mine, but she winked at Haley. I’d grown used to Ciara and Haley discussing my sex life like it was a matter of public record. Nothing I said dissuaded them, and it had brightened Ciara’s mood.

“Just invite me to the wedding.” Haley paused, biting her lip. “Has your brother called you back?”

My stomach began to churn as I shook my head. I’d been calling and texting Channing since I discovered he was out, but he was clearly ignoring me.

She shot me a sympathetic smile. “He’ll come around. Don’t worry.” Haley glanced at the coffee cup she was holding and cringed. “I guess I should try to drop this off. Maybe I’ll just slide it on the table and run.”

We took her advice and left before she even attempted the delivery. Ciara teased me relentlessly about my relationship status as we returned to her Porsche, but she grew quiet again on the way back to the court. Her driving was erratic and fast—very fast—but, thankfully, she kept her eyes on the road. I checked my seatbelt as she raced past a twenty-mile-an-hour speed limit sign.

She finally broke the silence as the car skidded through a left-hand turn. “Why do you act like nothing is going on with you and my brother around her?”

I blinked, surprised she was worried about my…whatever this thing was with Lach. “Haley doesn’t know what you are.”

“And what are we? Charming? Gorgeous? Talented?” She flashed a dazzling smile in my direction.

Apparently, egotism ran in the family, but I grinned anyway. “Fae.”

“Oh, that.” Ciara laughed, glancing out the window with a breezy shrug. “Why does that matter?”

I didn’t know where to begin with that question. There were a million reasons why it mattered that he was fae—a million reasons we would never work. But I knew she was talking specifically about why I wouldn’t talk about him with my human friends. “Because it’s hard to talk about him like he’s human. If I slip and say the wrong thing, she’ll know something is up.”

“So, you’re just going to act like you two aren’t together.” She rolled her eyes, reaching to fiddle with the radio station.

Well, there was no other way to interpret that. “I don’t think anything about us qualifies as being ‘together,’” I said with air quotes. Nothing had happened. Not really. Not for lack of trying, a little voice said in the back of my head, and I told it to shut up. “We just have a bargain.”

“I seem to recall something happening last week.”

She tossed a saucy smile at me.

“And nothing has happened since.” Almost nothing.

“Every time I see him, I smell you.” She scrunched her nose.

“He’s always in meetings.” I tried and failed to sound nonchalant. “Sometimes we run into each other in the hall.”

Her eyebrows lurched up, something triumphant lifting the corners of her mouth. “When you say run into each other—is it against the wall, like repeatedly, without clothes on?”

I wished. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Look, I’m all for it. Nobody needs to get laid more than Lach.”

I bit my lip, torn between saying something that would only lead to more questions and wanting to ask one of my own. Curiosity won out. “Does he…not…often?”

Her eyes flashed from the road to me. “If you’re trying to ask if he sleeps with a lot of women, yes and no.”

Only half of that was the answer I was hoping for. I swiveled in my seat to face her entirely. “What does that mean?”

“He goes through periods,” she said, shrugging. “Lots of hookups. Nothing serious,” she added quickly, as if this mattered to me. “Absolutely no one since he made that bargain with you.”

“He must be getting off on pissing me off,” I grumbled.

“I think that’s only part of it,” she said with a laugh.

I couldn’t believe I was about to go there, but I couldn’t stop myself. “So has he had any serious relationships?”

Her smile was now saucy with an extra side of sauce. Great. “Not for, like, a century.”

My heart clanged at this piece of information—both the reminder of how old he was and how long it had been since he’d cared about someone. “And I thought I was having a dry spell.”

“He likes you,” she said, eyes darting over to me again, “and I think you like him, too.”

“I can’t decide if I like him or if I want to kill him.” That was true, at least.

“Now I’m beginning to wonder if you’re in love with him.”

I patted her shoulder. “I’m starting to worry about what you look for in a relationship.”

“I see the way he lights up when he looks at you,” she said, sailing past my joke. “And how do you explain the way he’s acting?” She dangled the question without explanation. The trap was obvious. If I really didn’t care about him, I wouldn’t press her to explain what she meant. It wouldn’t matter to me how he was acting. There was only one problem…

I took the bait. “How is he acting?”

She smirked. “Like he’s off the market.”

Before I could tell her she was imagining things—as much for my benefit as her clarification—a call came over the speaker. My heart skipped when I saw his name on the touch screen.

“Speak of the devil.” She accepted the call. “We were just talking about you.”

I cringed, sliding down in my seat and praying she didn’t tell him why we were talking about him.

But Lach was not in a playful mood. “Can I assume my…Cate is with you?”

My what? What was he about to call me? Why had he paused? Had any simple question ever raised so many other questions?

She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Yes, she is.” She shot me a look.

“How far are you two from home?” Annoyance seethed in his voice. “Where are you?”

Ciara cursed, and I knew she was thinking what I was. Had our luck run out at the lab? Because he sounded pissed, and I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to upset him today.

“What’s wrong?” I cut in. I was already at my overanalysis quota for the day. I didn’t need to spend the rest of the drive home obsessing over why he was angry.

“Your brother just walked into the lobby of the Avalon and threatened the first person he saw, who just so happened to be Bain.”

Shit.

“In front of every other court.”

Double shit.

“I’m on my way home,” I promised, suddenly thankful for Ciara’s lead foot.

“I’d hurry.” His voice was strained. “I might have promised not to hurt him, but I can’t vouch for Bain. We’re in my office.”

What the hell had Channing done now? The call cut off, and I turned to Ciara. “How fast does this thing go?”

Considering she was already clocking eighty according to the speedometer, her blinding smile made my stomach flip. She didn’t speed up. “Unbuckle.”

“That seems like a terrible idea.” But she was already reaching over to do it for me.

“Trust me,” she said, clicking the release on my seatbelt. I tried to stop the sash as it slithered off my shoulder, but her hand lifted, fingers poised to snap. “By the way…girlfriend.”

“What?” I blurted out, preparing for whatever fresh hell nipping from a speeding car would bring.

“When he said my, he was about to follow it with girlfriend.”

Before I could shake my head, before I could quash the surge of hope I felt at her words, Ciara snapped her fingers. The world warped, and I found myself in front of a familiar desk with four enraged fae staring back at me in the dim, smoke-filled room.