Chapter Seven
Greginald
We arrived at the Faust estate just in time, not a minute early and, much to my dismay, without time to obtain coffee on the way or dawdle. But, we’d solidified our union. No doubt about it. The bond between us hummed with both pleasure and satisfaction.
I moved to knock on the door, but Esmeray opened it without a word, inviting me in without a moment’s hesitation. Right. His father’s home.
The fact Esmeray felt so comfortable doing so brought me a modicum of comfort. Esmeray, for his part, marched forward, calling out, “Father! I’m here.”
“You’re on time.” His father’s comment came from a side room, a study, I guessed. The scent of old books drew me in as I followed Esmeray’s clipped step and stiff posture. The pride that welled in me needed a swift kick as I appreciated the slight lilt to his well-fucked step.
“I am.”
“Being late would have been excusable this time.” Draevus Faust stood from an old judge’s desk and stretched, his eyes full of questions and equal dismay.
“I like being on time.” Esmeray opened his arms and fell into his father’s embrace, breathing deeply.
The poverty that Esmeray had lived in and his humble dwellings I’d heard about didn’t match the opulence around us.
Marble floors and vaulted ceilings carried ancient scents and deep history as well as notes of deeper pockets.
“And your mate?” Draevus turned his attention to me, gaze flicking to the side, presumably at our shadows. I spared them a glance and found them to be behaving, if not grinning wide with jack-o-lantern smiles. Creepy, but otherwise behaved.
“Punctuality is structure and order, both of which are powerful things.” I offered my best smile but only earned a snort. Draevus had no more words to spare for me as he gushed over Esmeray.
“I’ve been house hunting. Calamisis can be persuaded to go back to hell, and I could purchase his manor for you, Esmeray.
I truly wish for you to be closer. I cannot bear to lose you.
Not like your father. I knew it was a horrid idea to let you move out.
” Draevus all but stroked his son’s head patronizingly, his voice holding a tone of command to it.
I remained silent. Whatever Draevus commanded, I likely would have no say in.
“Father, we’re fine where we are. He has a lovely home.” Esmeray pulled away from the hug and moved to his father’s desk wordlessly, gathering papers to eye them and sort them as a force of habit.
“No staff, no—” Draevus leaned against a bookshelf, watching Esmeray sort through things with a crimson eye out for anything odd.
“I have a chef if that counts and a few sprites that tidy things,” I added helpfully. It didn’t impress him.
“I insist, Esmeray.” Draevus didn’t give me a moment’s thought.
“His chef cannot leave the place, and I would sorely miss never eating Vincenzo’s cooking again.” Esmeray frowned as he thumbed apart some documents and stared at them then the clock, before he fished out his phone with a fumble.
“Father, what is this?”
“Some papers that were served this morning during all the hullabaloo?” He shrugged it off before Esmeray pushed a sheet into our gaze. It was a court date change. Draevus took the sheet as his eyes flared to life. “Gods alive…”
“We need to go, now.” Esmeray flailed his arms as he gathered one thing and another. “We have thirty-eight minutes.”
“Sixteen minutes to the courthouse,” Draevus said, wheeling about to a wall rack to pluck a set of rather glossy keys.
“I apologize. Am I missing something?” I glanced about as Esmeray pushed the paperwork into my hands. I needed to be in court. In… Thirty-seven minutes.
“I don’t have any of his papers. Father, can we file a motion to ext—” Esmeray halted when Draevus shook his head. “We’d needed to file that two days ago. What is he playing at?”
Draevus waved us over, and we followed as Esmeray typed in his phone, adding my home as a stop along the way and swearing. “I need your paperwork… You keep originals and copies, right? I don’t know where my documents were. I had them when—”
Draevus and I flinched as his face paled and he shook his head. Recalling one’s death wasn’t a pleasant thing, I imagined.
“Easy. The memory is fresh,” I said, moving to reach over and clasp his hand at the same time Draevus did. He gave me a territorial glare that spoke volumes of his affection for his son. Affection I don’t believe I ever had.
My biological parents had abandoned me, and my adoptive ones had used me as an accessory. Look how generous we are for adopting a mongrim!
They’d used that term until their later years when they understood how hurtful it had been.
“Deep breaths. We’ll have to wing it on memory and…” Draevus glanced around and pulled out a thick file. “I have some of the documents. Why specifically you, though? You were only named as one of twenty litigants, and that was far down the list.”
“I have a solution.” I smiled as I straightened up, my head swimming with pride and ease of keeping my giraffe form at bay.
Draevus and Esmeray shot me unconfident glances, eerily similar.
“I have a port leading back to my office at home in the trunk of my car. It’s not big enough for me to travel, but I can pull my documents and ingredients out with it.
” I led the way, puffing with a little pride at the convenient spell.
Under the floor mat of my car’s trunk, I kept a portal that I could switch to a few places back home, and upon presenting it, I pulled through the original copy of my work log and a legal pad of notes I’d taken on my entire arsenal of phallic spellwork.
None of which was negative. Diana herself might come down and tear up our contract.
Esmeray smiled, his lips turning up in a genuine twist. Draevus brightened, apparently impressed. Esmeray’s smile drew a long gaze from him, and he returned it, sadness fading from his gaze.
“Well done.” Draevus nodded as we made our way outside to my car. Draevus drove much better than I did, my vehicle being several years old but clean and impeccably maintained according to the manufacturer’s specifications. It kept the warranty intact, at any rate.
Lacking all the documents I needed in a quick grab, I huffed and glanced in further.
I shifted as I leaned farther into the trunk, pushing my head in deeper. “Apologies for the show.”
Draevus grunted in irritation as I stretched my neck through, the fuzzy spot in space yielding to my presence as my head hovered above my desk. There, I nipped a few things up, pulling them out one item at a time before I stacked them neatly.
I gathered my things and shut the trunk, walking away as I hit the lock button on my car. A slip of my thumb struck the automatic start button, and a sharp whine pierced my ears a second before I threw my hand out, instinct taking over. “Xira’ce!”
Magic poured from me and the usual blue light I had become accustomed to blossomed out with black and pink at the edges, a multifaceted shield folding out before me with a twist of ancient sigils in the air.
My shadow tainted the shield and reinforced it just in time for an explosion to ring out, the elastic surface of my magic bowing under the blowback as chunks of asphalt, landscaping, and brickwork sprayed around us and rained from above, sliding off my shield.
Draevus was a step behind me, fingers forming a shape in midair. Dark energy, not unlike my tainted shadow, flared up, a sigil of the eighth realm of hell forming a blockade to back up my shield. “Good thinking, mage!”
Mage. Even locked into a contract with his son and deserving of his ire, he didn’t refer to me poorly. He didn’t call me half-breed, hybrid, mongrim, just what I chose to be, a mage.
Esmeray, for his part, shrouded himself with Ausmius, the shadow cocooning him like armor that had no work to do, thanks to the dual nature of our shields. “What the hell happened? Did your spell backfire?”
“This isn’t magic. Spells don’t backfire like this… Well, not any spells I know of. There’s alchemy but by the scent…” I took a deep breath and frowned. “Accelerants.”
“You remote started your car… We were lucky it didn’t blow when we left earlier.” Esmeray sighed heavily as I dropped my shield with Draevus. The demon rested a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I’ll stay here. You and Esmeray get your asses to court.”
He pulled out his phone and dialed a number, letting it ring a few times before telling whoever was on the other end to bring the car around. It’d been in the garage all day and supervised. The town car needed to be inspected.
We’d wasted time. Someone really didn’t want us getting to court.
Which was all the reason we needed to be there.
We made haste, climbing into the car as it pulled around, documents clutched in my arms. We had time to spare, and I was tempted to get the coffee I wanted earlier, but spare time was something we needed.
“So, this is just a preliminary. Fuck. Father knows I’m better at data aggregation than cross-examination. And this is mage court, too, so traditional law and repose go out the window.” He rifled through my papers and grumbled.
“Seeing as you were dead just yesterday and my car blew up less than ten minutes ago—I think the judge might be willing to push this back.” I grinned hopefully.
“Fat chance. We have Judge Torsten. He wouldn’t care if the Rapture happened. He’d be shouting up at the sky telling you to get your keister back down here.” Esmeray patted his pockets down and growled. “I don’t have my phone!”
“You can borrow mine?” I offered him my phone, and he took it, fishing into my email to sign into his own account, brow furrowed.
“What happened to my phone when they found me?” Esmeray thumbed through his emails, downloading a few documents to peruse. Case notes, mostly. “And what happened to your files I had?”