Chapter Forty-Three
Of course he fucking went down to where Bitty was.
As L.W. strode through the rustic hall, he couldn’t lie to himself.
He wanted to see her while he still could, his mind’s memory banks literally where he was going to keep the most precious things: The way her auburn hair curled around her face, and the color of her eyes, and the way she smiled.
And the sound of her voice wasn’t a bad chaser.
His body was like a tuning fork for that shit.
Stopping at the head of the corridor, he looked past all the cultivated Adirondack crap.
The female was standing under one of the recessed lights, and the planes and angles of her face were so blurry that her scent was what told him who she was.
In response, his eyes became desperately restless as he tried to settle the pockets of focus on the whole when all he got were snapshots of the parts: Her eyes, her lips, her high cheeks, her gentle chin.
In the periphery, her white parka and black snow pants registered and were the kind of thing the protective side of him approved of.
He didn’t want her cold, ever.
“—hard on you.” She shrugged. “Just felt the need to check in.”
Shuli cleared his throat like there was a lump in it. “You’re such a female of worth.”
That’s when it happened. The male stretched out his arms and stepped up to her.
As L.W.’s vision abruptly sharpened, his body moved of its own volition, shooting into the open, his dagger hand going immediately to one of the steel weapons strapped, handles down, to his chest—
Bitty looked over Shuli’s shoulder in shock, and the instant she saw him and his aggression, all the warmth and compassion went out of her face. The mask that replaced it was something he had made. He had done that.
As he halted, Rhamp hissed, “Are you insane?”
Well, yeah. He was.
And the only way he could convince his hand to let go of his weapon’s hilt was to remind that hard grip that he was just making things worse. Proving he was even more unhinged. And wasn’t that a skill he’d excelled at.
Bitty stepped out of Shuli’s hold and pulled her puffer back into place. “Yeah. So.”
“Thanks for coming,” Shuli muttered. While he no doubt shot a glare in L.W.’s direction, not that he could see that aristocratic face clearly enough. “Oh, yeah, Mr. Cheerful’s still with us. You know, he just brightens up every room he walks into, doesn’t he.”
“Like an H-bomb,” Rhamp agreed.
Ignoring the peanut gallery, L.W. nodded at the female. “Good to see you.”
An acrid scent hit the airwaves, a sure sign she was pissed. “Mm-hmm. Well, I just wanted to come by because I was thinking about you all.”
“We’re okay,” Rhamp said firmly, as if he were drawing a line in the sand. “There’s no report that you need to file on our mentals.”
“Oh, this is not a professional visit or anything,” she said. “I mean, just because I work at Safe Place with—well, anyway. It’s as a friend. I came here… as a friend.”
“You’re welcome anytime.” Shuli motioned around like he was trying to sell the joint. “But I’m going to warn you.”
“About the food?” Rhamp interjected. “Because we have none?”
“Nah, Willhis is due back any minute from Hannaford’s Kingston. I’m just saying, chances are we’ll be out climbing the mountain and enjoying winter sports.”
“Have I mentioned how much I love your butler?” Rhamp put his palms together and victory-waved them at the ceiling in such exaggeration, even L.W. saw it. “Thank you, Lassiter.”
Shuli shouldered up one of the bags of weapons. “I told you he was fooding up the place for us—”
“Did you?” Rhamp picked up a duffle that rattled like it was full of metal. Because it was. “When?”
“Around noontime—”
“Oh, my bad. I was drunk.”
“Huh. So was I.” Shuli headed for the stairs that vaguely registered over on the left. “Maybe I thought you’d read my mind?”
“Maybe I did and forgot.”
Still chatting, the pair of them descended to the lower level, and as L.W.
listened to their back-and-forth, he realized it was the kind of thing that he usually drowned out.
Yet with Bitty a couple of yards away from him, he hung on the retreating words because it was easier than dealing with the awkward silence that slammed in between him and the female, solid as a stone wall.
Down below, a door closed, and he wondered whether the boys were giving him some privacy on purpose or if whatever room they were going into had a weighted panel that closed on its own.
L.W. refocused on the female, and braced himself for her to say something that tore him up.
Something that was insightful and kind, that beat back the defensive bullshit that he put out to the world.
And it was as he waited to hear her voice that he realized that what he liked best about her, even more than her eyes and her hair, her simple way of being beautiful, her soft smile…
Was the way she saw him. Really saw him.
And that was a pussy move in a lot of ways, and also shouldn’t have mattered. And he’d tried to tell himself, over and over again, that it didn’t.
His sleepless days proved otherwise, and so did his need to explain himself. Which, like worrying about anybody else, was another thing he never did.
Taking a deep breath, he knew he’d been waiting to see her again, so he could explain why, when he’d been injured and she’d offered him her vein, he’d had to refuse—
“Bye.”
With a casual lift of her palm, like he didn’t matter to her in the slightest, Bitty turned away and opened the front door. And then she was gone as soon as she stepped over the threshold, dematerializing between one heartbeat and another.
Leaving him with nothing but the winter night.
And the reality that what he had to offer was way too little, way too late.
Back at the Audience House, Vishous was still keeping quiet.
Unsurprisingly, Saxton was going to help the Queen and iAm set up some responses to the humans’ bright fucking ideas, and Fritz was going to file the papers right up the assholes of the attorneys-at-law who had been hired to intimidate the s’Hisbe.
They were just going to switch the butler’s formal black-and-white uniform for a navy blue pinstripe and a power tie. Not a problem.
And there was no one better than Fritz at holding a line with pleasant firmness.
Those humans weren’t going to know what hit them.
But that wasn’t what V was thinking about while the meeting broke up. As with when the royal couple had arrived, he hung back as everybody goodbye’d, and then he made like he was just doing the escorting thing as he led the Shadows out of the Audience Room and into the core as the VIPs they were.
With a pair like this, you weren’t going to run them out by the waiting room. Not with everything that was going on with the aristocracy these nights.
V promptly showed them out of the secured interior, but instead of leading them into the kitchen and to the back door, he walked the Queen and her consort into the little TV room where he and Butch watched the Sox play during breaks when it was baseball season.
Then he launched into it.
“Listen, I don’t mean to stick my nose into your business.” He glanced back and forth between them. “Is Dennesha okay? You need anything with her?”
Again, he had to wonder if they knew about Allhan. And then tried for a second time not to feel like a little bitch as he thought maybe her parents had been told but not him and Jane.
As if the information was a parenting trophy.
Annnnd what do you know… they weren’t answering him.
Abruptly, iAm looked at the Queen. When she just started walking around, and pretending to be looking at the shelves full of carved wooden ducks and framed pressed flowers from the Victorian era, V thought, Well, fuck. This is gonna be great news.
But come on, how bad could it be?
“Denne’s fine,” iAm hedged as he also glanced away. “Really, it’s nothing.”
Maybe the young had met at Sal’s, V thought. Although how would Al have gone to the restaurant before his transition in the first place? He was always working and didn’t know how to drive a car.
Still didn’t, actually. Considering how he’d handled that truck.
“We just want her to be happy.”
V glanced back at the Queen as she spoke. Catra was leaning into a lineup of Charles Dickens books.
“She’s your daughter,” V agreed. “That’s how it goes.”
“Are these first editions?” Catra asked.
“Probably.” He took out a cigarette, but didn’t light it in the close quarters. “They came from Darius’s house. My brother would have had nothing less.”
“May I?”
“Yeah. G’head.”
The Queen’s elegant hand pulled out one of the volumes. “David Copperfield.”
“Real slice of life.”
“Yes, full of all kinds of characters. Good and bad.” She was gentle as she opened the cover and checked the title page. “Yes, first edition—and signed. Very, very rare. I wonder who Tomat was? That was to whom it was inscribed.”
“Old friend of D’s. Knew Dickens.”
“You probably read this when it first came out, didn’t you.”
“Yup.”
The Queen put the volume back, taking care that it lined up with the other spines. Meanwhile, V wanted to fucking scream.
And then there was only strained silence.
Until the bomb dropped:
“She’s getting mated,” the Queen announced. “To my Tretary.”
V blinked. And then lit his fucking cigarette so he could hide his expression. “Oh, yeah? Congratulations.”
Jesus Christ, Caldwell. Then again, he had given it a challenge by being in a good mood for once.
“Thank you,” iAm said in a dead voice. “We’re absolutely thrilled.”