Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ari
The surge of debilitating relief I feel when I walk into the DEA offices the next morning is a little shameful.
I’ve been in battles, for fuck’s sake. I’ve been trained to deal with truly heinous situations—and I have.
I faced down the potential end of my world without flinching.
It’s ridiculous that I’m relieved I don’t have to deal with hockey people today. With… him.
I wave to Dáithí like I always do and turn toward the hallway that will bring me to the security office. We have a team meeting this morning, and th—
“Ari!”
Uh-oh. Dáithí wants to talk to me.
Could be a good thing, I remind myself as I turn back around and slowly cover the ground between us.
Maybe he wants me to distract Eoin so he can plan a surprise, or something like that.
Something benign. Something that has absolutely nothing to do with me, the ridiculous internal angst I’m going through, or the hockey people.
“So?” Dáithí asks expectantly when I’m standing in front of the reception desk. “How did it go yesterday?”
Disastrously.
“What do you mean?” I need to be careful. Dáithí and Felix Ansas are friends, which seems like one of those things that shouldn’t be allowed by nature. Too much chaos energy in the one place.
He huffs and rolls his eyes. “The program, Ari! Do you think it’s going to work out? Did you get any of the players involved? Did you meet everyone at the club, and were they nice?”
Oh. So just, like… general stuff. I can answer that.
Still… “That was a lot of questions,” I tease with a straight face.
“Where do you want me to start?” It’s only because I’ve got amazing reflexes that the pen he throws at me doesn’t put my eye out.
I set it—the pen, not my eye—down on his desk and smile.
I like Dáithí. He’s genuinely one of my favorite people.
“It was a good start,” I tell him. “I met most of the people in the management office, and they were pleasant. Some more interested in this program than others. Erik and I nailed down a plan and a schedule of events, and we got some of the players to volunteer.” I hesitate.
Should I tell Dáithí that his friend was opted in to the program before we even asked for volunteers? Or would that be a breach of ethics?
“That’s great,” he says, maybe a little too enthusiastically. I watch him closely. It’s possible a scheme is afoot, and I’m determined not to get caught up in it. “Did Felix volunteer? He said he was going to.”
Damn, back to that question. “He must have, because his name is on the list,” I prevaricate.
Dáithí nods. “Well, whatever you assign him to do, he’ll give it a hundred percent effort. He’s great with animals, if you do some kind of pet drive or whatever.”
“Is he really?” I’m not sure why that surprises me. I don’t know Ansas well enough to guess whether he is or not.
“Sure. The bunnies and Jared’s cat love him. He’s a felid shifter, you know.”
“That doesn’t automatically make him good with animals.” I learned that a couple of years after the migration, when I watched a hellhound—in biped form—back whimpering away from a squirrel. It wasn’t even looking at him.
“I know that. I’m just saying, how cute would a pet drive be with a giant kitty sitting among the regular ones?”
A vision of everything that could go wrong rises in my mind’s eye, but I don’t explain to Dáithí why it would be terrifying. “Very cute,” I say instead. And, honestly, it would be. “But we don’t have a pet drive on the list.”
“You should add one.”
Did I say Dáithí is one of my favorite people? I wonder what was happening on the day I decided that. “I’ll talk to Erik about it,” I promise, hoping that will buy my freedom.
Dáithí opens his mouth, but the phone rings at that precise moment, and he waves me off. “See you later.”
With a wave and a smile, I flee to the relative sanctuary of the security office.
“Well, look who it is!” Brayan shouts as I walk in. “The hockey consultant.”
That’s so far from what I’m actually doing that it would set off a lie-detection spell. Facts don’t matter to my teammates, though, who’ve started delightfully ribbing me about my new career in public relations for a sport I don’t even understand. Maybe I should have stayed with Dáithí after all.
Thankfully, it’s not long before Eoin comes in and snaps at us to settle down so he can start the meeting.
I’m grateful for his bad mood that prevents him from joining the teasing…
even if it surprises me. Since he and Dáithí worked things out, he’s been all smiles and sunshine, and if they’d had a fight, surely Dáithí wouldn’t have been so cheerful and chatty?
Has something else happened? Something work-related?
It’s not until the meeting’s nearly done that we get a clue.
“Schedule change,” Eoin announces. “Niamh, you’re off Thursday night.”
“I am?” She raises a brow. “Why? Did I—”
“It’s nothing you did,” he assures her, somehow managing to sound grumpy while he does. “Raeulfr and Jared have made plans and decided that Dáithí and I should join them. Since I’ll be there anyway, you might as well have the night free.”
Wait… Thursday?
Niamh beams. “No complaints here.”
Oh fuck, Eoin’s bad mood is my fault. Well, Ansas’s fault, technically, but I’m going to be the one who bears the brunt of it.
He wraps things up, and we all disperse, half the team heading out to the breakroom to find coffee. I haven’t had a chance to check my email yet, so my first stop is my desk. There’s probably piles of work from yesterday to catch up on.
“Free your schedule for Thursday night,” Eoin orders, stopping beside me. I open my mouth to apologize, then realize what he said. That doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s my fault… or that I even know about it.
“Thursday night?” I parrot. “Why?”
“You’re on duty.” His tone heavily implies that I lack deductive reasoning skills.
“But you said you were going. That’s why Niamh’s off.” Am I pushing it? I feel like I’m pushing it. If he finds out I knew about this the whole time, I’ll be doing shit jobs for the rest of my career.
“You’re coming too. His Majesty’s idea. Or maybe it was Jared’s.” Eoin shrugs. “Either way, you’re on duty Thursday night.”
I scowl. “Based on how happy you look, it’s clearly going to be a fun time.”
Sighing, he perches on the edge of my desk. “It probably won’t be so bad,” he admits. “I just never figured that I’d be socializing with my boss.”
I huff. “Yeah.” When he doesn’t say anything else, I add, “So what is it? A gala? Fundraiser?” Maybe I’m wrong about this. There’s a super slim chance it’s—
Eoin shakes his head. “A hockey game. The human kind.”
Ansas pulled it off, then. “Don’t I have to deal with hockey enough already?” I whine, earning a glare.
“That’s partly why we’re going. Jared and his friends want a night out, and he figured this would be a good way for you to learn about the game. Plus he had an extra ticket.” He shakes his head again. “I don’t know—I disassociated while Raeulfr was telling me about it.”
Alarm begins to stir in me. “It can’t be that bad.” Admittedly, I’ve only seen bits and pieces of training and a few YouTube clips, but it’s a popular sport.
“We’re going to a human game, Ari. In an arena full of humans… and Raeulfr.”
I do a fast risk assessment in my head. “It’s going to be fine,” I assure him, mostly convinced of it.
“Jared’s human, and the rest of us are elves.
There’s no chance of horns or anything accidentally being revealed.
The king and Dáithí are sensible, and even if they decide to have a wild night, between us, we can manage them. It’s all good.”
“What about the kitten with anger issues? How are we supposed to manage if an adult felid decides to shift and have a tantrum in the middle of all those people?”
Angry denial surges, shocking the heck out of me. Taking a steady breath, I push down the instinctive emotions. I can unpack where they came from later.
“Do you mean Felix Ansas?” I ask carefully, still not wanting to give away just how much I already know about these plans.
“Who else would I mean?” Eoin gets off my desk and starts pacing, and I’m grateful that everyone else left. “He’s known for having a short fuse, Ari. I don’t need him going off while he’s with our king.”
“Be fair. He’d never hur—”
“No, I know.” He waves me off. “I don’t mean he’d hurt the king. But we don’t need him fighting with anyone while he’s with the king and consort.”
It’s an unfamiliar feeling, this urge to defend Felix, and I’m pretty sure if any of my teammates knew about it, they’d be shocked. Everyone knows how hard I was on him.
“I doubt he’d want to endanger his friendship with Jared by putting Jared’s partner at risk.
And he might be known for his short fuse while he’s playing hockey, but we didn’t find evidence that he’s violent any other time.
Not unprovoked, anyway,” I add, because there was that time he beat the crap out of his boyfriend’s house.
Eoin turns to look at me, his brows raised. “Since when are you his champion?”
I shrug awkwardly. “I’m not. I’ve caused enough trouble for him that I think I owe it to him to be a voice of reason. But if you think my judgment is—”
“Relax,” my boss chides. “I was worried about your judgment when you were frothing at the mouth to string him up. This”—he gestures to me—“is the Ari I’m used to. If you believe we can trust Felix not to be a security risk, then I trust that.”
Now I feel bad for not telling him from the outset that I knew about this plan. “Eoin—”
“So, Thursday night. Hockey game. With the king and consort, Dáithí, and a felid shifter who has every reason to hate us both. Not to mention the twenty thousand humans we’ll be surrounded by.” He pulls a face. “Sounds fun, right?”
When he puts it that way…