Chapter 19
Always
Iwake up to daylight and the smell of something burning.
Not dramatically burning. Not fire and smoke and Felix on the fourteenth floor. Just the particular smell of toast that has been left slightly too long by someone who is not entirely familiar with the temperament of my toaster, which is old and erratic and hates bread.
I lie still for a moment and let the ordinary settle over me like a blanket.
Toast. Daylight. Bristol doing its morning thing outside the window. Somewhere in the flat, Hex is conspiring with the toaster and committing minor crimes against bread.
We are fine. Everything is fine.
I get up.
Hex is standing at the kitchen counter looking at two pieces of very dark toast with the expression of someone who has faced down a shadow enemy and won, but has been comprehensively defeated by a small domestic appliance. He looks up when I come in.
“The toaster,” he says, “is broken.”
“The toaster is not broken. You have to watch it.”
“I watched it.”
“You have to watch it the whole time. You can’t look away.”
He looks at the toast. Then at me. “That seems inefficient.”
“That’s just the toaster.” I take the burnt toast from him, scrape it over the sink, and put two more slices in.
I stand directly in front of it. Hex watches me watch the toaster with the expression of someone learning an important lesson about the gap between his realm and mine.
Or maybe the gap is more royalty and normal people.
The toast pops. Perfect. I hand him a plate.
We sit at the table. The morning light is thin and grey, the kind that Bristol does in November, not committing to anything in particular.
The kitchen looks exactly the same as it always does.
Mugs in their enforced descending row. Coffee jar on the right.
Crystals on the windowsill facing whatever direction Hex decided they should face.
The only difference is the light fitting above the table, which contains a blown bulb. One of seven throughout the flat, all casualties of last night. I have a box of replacement bulbs somewhere. Under the sink, probably. I should replace them today.
I look more carefully at the table, and then the floor. I recall my sleepy journey from bedroom to kitchen.
“Did you sweep up the broken glass from the bulbs?” I ask. Because there are no shards anywhere, and that seems strange.
“Yes. While you were sleeping. Glass can cut humans, and humans are very soft and squishy, and their insides leak easily.”
I blink. I bite my toast. I delete the horrific mental image from my mind. And replace it with one of a shadow prince wandering around my flat with a dustpan and brush, being all diligently domesticated.
I shake my head. That image is also disturbing. Just in a completely different way.
So I’m not going to think about it either. I’m going to think about my to-do list for today, the first task being replacing the bulbs. Normal things. I am going to do normal things. Because I’m still normal.
My phone rings.
Felix, says the screen, and I answer it so fast I nearly drop it.
“Before you say anything,” says Felix, “I am completely fine.”
“You don’t sound completely fine.”
“I sound like someone who inhaled a quantity of smoke and then spent the night in a Premier Inn in their pyjamas, which is exactly what I am.”
“Why didn’t you go to the hospital!” I exclaim.
Felix huffs. “Because I didn’t want to. Hospitals are full of bad energy. And, you know, Big Pharma.”
I sigh and wonder exactly when my strange goth co-worker became my friend. I suspect it was around the time a shadow being started flirting with me and my whole neatly ordered life went sideways.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask, because, despite all reasonable objections I might have, I’m happy that I have a chaos gremlin goth barista for a friend.
“I told you I’m fine.” A pause, and then, slightly more quietly. “My flat is gone, Adam.”
I close my eyes for a second. “Felix.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. Most of my stuff is gone, but stuff is just stuff.” He says it in the tone of someone who has been telling themselves this all night and is nearly convinced. “I’m going to need a sofa to sleep on for a bit though, if that’s okay. Just until I sort something out.”
“Obviously. You don’t even have to ask.”
“I know. I’m asking anyway.” There is a pause, the kind that means Felix is choosing his next words carefully, which is not something Felix does very often. “How are you? Did anything happen?”
I look at Hex across the table. Hex looks back at me.
“A bit,” I say. “Nothing we couldn’t handle.”
“Adam.”
“Felix.”
A long pause. “Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Is the insufferably attractive shadow prince keeping you safe?”
Hex, who can apparently hear both sides of this conversation perfectly well because he is a supernatural being with whatever senses that entails, looks insufferably pleased by this description. I give him a look that tells him not to get comfortable.
“He’s doing his best,” I say.
“Good.” Felix’s voice has shifted. Lighter now, the practicality reasserting itself. “Right. I need to go and talk to someone about getting my deposit and rent money back, and also possibly locate some clothes that aren’t pyjamas. I’ll be round later.”
“I’ll make up the sofa.”
“Make sure the shadow prince doesn’t reorganise it.”
Hex, entirely unrepentant, picks up his toast.
I hang up and set my phone on the table. The morning carries on around us. A pigeon lands on the windowsill, eyes my crystals with interest, and leaves again. Someone in the flat above is having a shower.
“Felix is coming to stay,” I tell Hex.
“I know. I heard.”
“He’s going to need the sofa. Which means you’ll need to be…” I wave a hand, not quite sure how to finish that sentence. More discreet. Less present. Not so shamelessly sexy and inappropriate. Generally more manageable for a person who hasn’t signed up for the full shadow prince experience.
Hex looks at me with calm red eyes. “I will be the embodiment of good behaviour.”
I roll my eyes. “He’s met you. He won’t be fooled.”
A pause. “He called me insufferably attractive.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.”
I almost smile. I manage not to. I pull my mug towards me and look at it instead of at him, at the small chip on the rim that has been there since I dropped it in February and that I keep meaning to replace and haven’t.
“Hex,” I say.
“Adam.”
“Last night.” I stop. Start again. “What Wraith was doing. When he reached for my face.” I think about the cold. The wrong cold. The emptiness of it. “What would have happened if you hadn’t come back?”
Hex is quiet for a moment. He sets down his toast. “He would have taken you to Dis.”
“Alive?”
“You would be useful as leverage. It would also be useful if you were gone, and I couldn’t feed.”
He says it matter-of-factly but there is something underneath it that isn’t matter-of-fact at all. Something that has been sitting in him since last night, since he came back to the flat and found Wraith in the hallway and did what he did.
“Right,” I say.
“Adam…”
“I know.” I look up at him. “I know. It’s okay. You came back.”
“I was nearly too late.” The same words as last night, the same weight behind them. “I was with Felix, I had him, and then I felt it through the bond. What was happening here. And I…” He stops.
“You came back,” I say again, simply.
He holds my gaze, and something in him settles, very slightly, like a knot loosening by one degree.
“Did I scare you, My Love?” he asks softly.
I shiver. My eyes close, and images of Hex’s presence filling up the hallway and flinging Wraith away as if the other shadow man was nothing more substantial than a broken doll, come into full focus.
It was terrifying. Hex was terrifying. He was saving me, but what if he ever decides to fling me down the hallway? What if we argue and he loses his temper? My… lover, or whatever he is, is a literal monster.
He was my nightmare, and now he is something else, and I’m not really sure how those two parts fit together.
“Yes,” I croak hoarsely with my eyes still closed.
Hex’s cold, semi-solid hand covers mine. “I would never hurt you, My Love.”
My heart thumps. My stomach squirms. “I know. I think I know. You scared the crap out of me when we were kids and you lurked under my bed. I got over it. I’ll get over this. I think I just need time to process.”
Soft lips brush over my forehead. “Then take your time, My Love.”
I suck in a breath. “Right. Let’s sort these lightbulbs out.” There are only so many emotions I can deal with at one time. It’s best to keep busy.
I get up and go to the under-sink cupboard and rummage around until I find the box of replacement bulbs. I set them on the counter. I look at them. I look at the blown fitting above the kitchen table.
“I’m going to need the stepladder,” I say.
“Top of the wardrobe,” says Hex, which is where I keep it and which he knows because of course he does, because he has memorised the location of everything in this flat and probably has opinions about all of it.
“Right.” I don’t move immediately. “Thank you,” I say, to the packet of lightbulbs. “For last night. For going to Felix. For coming back.”
A pause. Then, quietly, “Always.”
I pick up the bulbs and go to get the stepladder.
The morning continues. I replace the kitchen bulb, then the hallway ones, then the one in the living room.
Hex holds the stepladder steady without being asked, which is the kind of thing that makes it very difficult to maintain any sort of appropriate emotional distance from a shadow prince, but that is a problem I am choosing not to examine right now.
By the time Felix arrives in the afternoon, the flat is full of working lightbulbs and the smell of fresh coffee, and Hex has reorganised all the toiletries in the bathroom, which I choose not to comment on.
Felix appears in the doorway, looking immaculate in borrowed clothes, a small bag over his shoulder and the particular expression of someone who is fine and intends to stay fine through sheer force of personality.
He looks around the flat. He looks at Hex, who is leaning against the kitchen doorframe with a mug, looking for all the world like he belongs there. He looks at me.
“Right,” he says. “Someone put the kettle on and tell me absolutely everything.”
I put the kettle on.
Hex, for once, does not reorganise anything.