Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
Beck
Room service was a must. Not once or twice, but three times.
Zephyr sampled every vegetarian option on the menu, and every dessert too. Lucky for him, most sweets were naturally meat-free.
We spent a fair amount of time in bed. Sure, we fucked, but we also talked, cuddled, and simply stayed close. Not for long, though. Zephyr wasn’t great at staying still.
Restless and curious, he roamed the seven hundred square feet of my suite. He paused to admire the view out the window, commenting on the sights below. Then he moved on to exercise—stretching, the splits, and walking on his hands across the floor.
Watching his body move never failed to stir me. He could flex and twist in ways I would have thought impossible, and I realized I may have been taking it too easy on him all this time.
Colette came through with a wardrobe refresh.
She must have guessed Zephyr’s sizes, or maybe the clothes were forgiving since everything was elastic.
They were similar to what he’d worn on our last day away from the club.
Leggings and crop tops that were as mobile as he was, and I couldn’t deny he looked cute.
Like a model for a fitness magazine or the latest Lululemon catalog.
As content as I may have been to keep Zephyr stashed in my suite for the entire forty-eight hours, we had work to do. Maslow would turn up at the end of our allotted time, demanding the return of his property, and I needed to be ready when he did.
If Zephyr had a list of must-see sights in Las Vegas, I could guarantee my office didn’t make the top ten. But I had files there. Decades worth of records, contracts, and memos, all filed in neat chronological order. More importantly, it was where I did my best thinking.
The sticking point was the dancers’ contracts.
I didn’t know who owned what, who owed what, and how deeply the hooks were set.
If I could read them, I might find a loophole.
A breach. Even a little wiggle room. But they were out of reach, almost certainly stashed in Maslow’s office and not likely to be unearthed at my request.
That meant I needed a workaround. Maslow had asked for my assistance securing the property on Fairmont Street, but I didn’t work for free. The wraith made me pay through the nose for a day with Zephyr. This time, it was my turn to set the price. All I had to do was convince him to agree.
I sat behind my desk, having forgone the computer in favor of more antiquated methods of research. Namely, thumbing through my hanging files while Colette and Zephyr cozied up on the sagging couch.
He sat cross-legged, always so nimbly bent, with his crimson hair in a half-pony and long bangs framing his face.
Well fed and appropriately dressed, he was practically luminescent in the midday light.
His pale skin was graced with a healthy flush, and his eyes were sharp and sparkling.
He was a thing of beauty, like I’d always known.
Beside him, Colette wore her usual work attire, suit jacket removed and the sleeves of her button-down rolled up. Her blonde hair was swept into a messy bun, and her expression was nothing less than delighted.
Their chatter was a pleasant drone in the background.
It began with a lesson in conversational French, which they took a break from to jointly botch the daily crossword.
Last I’d heard, she was trying to teach him Sudoku, but it was clear they’d moved on from that when Colette spoke up about something other than numbers in boxes.
“So, tell me, mon petit,” she began. “What is your earliest memory?”
Zephyr cut an anxious glance my way. I caught it, ready to call off Colette’s snooping even though I was the one who’d put her on the scent of Zephyr’s lost history. But it was meant to be a gift to him, not a cause for distress.
After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “Before Maslow?”
Colette shook her head. “Before Hell.”
Zephyr stared at the floor, brows knitting. “I think I fell,” he said. “Is that what it’s like when you die? Everything drops out from under you?”
Colette tilted her head. “I wouldn’t know.”
“Right,” he mumbled, sheepish.
Sunlight striped through the blinds, illuminating them where they sat. Colette nibbled the end of her ink pen, staring at the puzzle in her lap but clearly thinking of something else.
“What about people?” she asked. “Your mother?”
I knew what she was getting at, but I wasn’t sure it would work.
Memory loss was common in young demons. The transformation from a form of life to a form of death was jarring and often traumatic.
I’d heard it described as pouring the contents of one jar into another.
Everything inside got jumbled, and some things were buried.
It took time to dig them out. Or a very persistent hellhound.
Zephyr’s gaze drifted around the office as though searching for a memory hiding in the walls. “She sounded like you,” he said quietly. “I can’t picture her, but her voice…”
His smile was nostalgic. So tender I wanted to kiss it off his lips.
“She was kind,” he concluded.
Colette smiled too. “She loved you.”
He nodded.
“What about your father?” Colette prompted. “Sisters? Brothers?”
Zephyr answered more quickly than I expected. “Brothers!” He blinked, and the surety wavered. “Or maybe just one?”
Colette hummed. “The first answer is usually correct,” she said, then scribbled something in the margin of her paper. “Well, your English is impeccable, and you don’t have an accent, so I don’t believe you were raised in France.”
Her voice had gone soft. Fishing, but gentle. She was good at this.
“What about your performance?” she asked. “Where did you learn that?”
He was quiet for a long time, rooting around in the dark places in his mind. Then quietly, he said, “There was a circus.”
I glanced up from my file drawer, and Colette stilled beside him, pen hovering midair.
“I grew up there,” he murmured. “By a red and white tent. We lived out of wagons. Everything smelled like straw and sweat and dust. The music was always real, not like at the club. It was all brass and drums, and it echoed.
“I don’t remember learning how to climb. I think I always knew. The rigging felt safer than the ground half the time.” His smile was small, wistful. “But I do remember letting go for the first time. No harness. Just chalk on my hands and a net below. And I flew.”
He looked down while hugging one of the sofa pillows against his chest.
“I practiced every day after that,” he continued, his voice gaining confidence with each word. “My hands would bleed from the rope burn, but I didn’t care. I learned to twist, to flip, to hold myself midair like it was nothing. I could land on a wire, light as a bird.”
His smile was wide and unguarded, and it lit up the room. I’d wanted to know him, and to know about him, but I hadn’t realized how gratifying it would be. How satisfying to see him becoming complete.
“I was happy there,” he said. “I think I really was.”
The corner of Colette’s mouth curled, pleased. “Now that’s something. French family, brothers, and a circus in America. I can work with that.”
I leaned back in my chair, feigning interest in my files while watching them from the corner of my eye.
There was something in the way she handled him—gentle, assured, and undeniably maternal.
Had she ever mentioned having children? In our centuries together, surely the topic must have come up. Had she told me, and I forgot?
Damn. Maybe I really was hard to talk to.
Colette touched Zephyr’s arm, then leaned in conspiratorially. “Back to our lesson. I’ve thought of something you should share with Beck.” Her smirk made me immediately wary. She turned back to Zephyr and spoke in an authoritative voice. “Répète après moi: Je veux embrasser ta bite.”
Zephyr’s eyes widened, and a scarlet blush splotched his cheeks. He glanced at me, then giggled and repeated the words carefully, his accent light but passable.
I groaned. “No talking about me in your made-up language.”
“Comment oses-tu?” Colette gasped in mock offense. “It’s a very real language.”
“You’ve never tried to teach me,” I said.
“And I won’t,” she said with a wink in Zephyr’s direction. “This will be our little secret.”
Zephyr beamed.
They babbled on in words and phrases I didn’t understand, but it had a certain melody.
The cadence played through my brain like music, or maybe that was just the joy of it all.
The two people most important to me carried on, laughing, making clear what my life had been lacking all these many decades.
Love.
After a few hours, I found what I was looking for: a plan, and the wherewithal to carry it out.
It required flexing a few muscles I’d let atrophy, and the willingness to be slightly less than forthright.
But when I thought of how Maslow had conned the Dollhouse dancers into captivity, I was almost giddy at the prospect of karmic justice.
Standing, I smoothed the wrinkles out of my slacks and beckoned to the hellhound currently sharing a bag of M&Ms with Zephyr.
“Coll?”
She perked up with a blue candy piece pinned between her lips.
“I need you to get him out of here for a while.” I jerked my chin toward Zephyr, who frowned.
“Why do I have to go?” he asked.
I circled the desk and crossed the room, then offered my hand to help him off the lumpy, sunken couch. “Not far, and not for long,” I told him. “Maybe you can pick us up some lunch? I need to have a meeting with your boss, and I’d rather you weren’t around to see it.”
Or hear it.
Maslow had never minced words in my presence, ready to slander or demean Zephyr without a second thought. For this negotiation, I needed to keep my head, and I wouldn’t be able to do that with the wraith tossing out cutting remarks and making my Beauty bleed.