Ellisandre
Ellisandre opened their eyes to Ash standing over them.
He had his arms crossed and he was wisely not standing close.
There was a good six feet of space between him and the couch on which Ellisandre had thrown themselves early in the morning.
But he was staring. Ellisandre dropped their arm back over their eyes.
“You’re sleeping on the couch.”
Ellisandre waved their fingers in a way that should signal complete disinterest. It was too early in the afternoon after a night of no sleep to explain.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
Ash moved away. Ellisandre slipped back towards sleep, visions of the way Sevastyan had been cradling the dark-haired younger man in his arms painting themselves on the backs of their eyelids.
Rei.
Sevastyan’s slave. The one with whom he had been walking through hell. The boy who clearly had his heart.
His heart and his dominance.
Ash’s footsteps tugged Ellisandre’s consciousness towards the surface again. It sounded like he was carrying a teacup on a saucer.
Ellisandre let their arms slide off their face and squinted at the teenager. Ash lowered his knees to the carpet and set the cup on the table.
“Two sugars. Earl gray.”
“I can smell it.”
“Well, drink it.”
Ellisandre groaned.
Ash sat down on the chair facing the couch. They eyed him. He had his stubborn expression on. And he was dressed. Jeans with slashes cut out of them and colorful upcycled canvas sewn into the gaps.
“You finished.” Ellisandre waved at the jeans.
“Yeah.” Ash straightened one leg and ran his hand over the slashes.
“You and Alice went out without me. Dana and I sewed all night. We made T-shirts.”
He pulled back his jacket to show a long-sleeve tee with anime characters from ten different shows cut out and stitchery-witcheried onto the surface.
The edges were sealed with an embroidery stitch.
Ellisandre sat up. “I thought Dana would be all sewed out when she got home.”
Ash shrugged. “She wanted to cut things.” He pulled on the T-shirt to indicate what she’d been cutting. “Ms. Linda was working.”
Ellisandre growled. “How late did she work?”
Ash squinted with one eye.
Ellisandre huffed and took the tea. Linda really needed a minder. “Please tell me she went to bed before midnight.”
“I put Dana to bed at midnight. I don’t know when Ms. Linda went to bed. I slept on their couch. And then I came down this morning to find you on ours.”
Ellisandre buried their nose in the tea.
Ash snorted. Of course he was too fixated to give up and go away. “There’s breakfast in the oven if you want it.”
“What is it?”
“What I made everyone else. Pancakes.”
“Give.”
Ash shook his head and got up. He came back with a tray. There were warmed pancakes, cottage cheese in a bowl on the side, maple syrup, and stewed apples in cinnamon.
Ellisandre’s stomach growled. Getting rid of so many bodies and ripping up a carpet might have been a workout. They’d missed dinner entirely.
“How’s Alice?”
“Mysterious. And fine.” Ash glared.
“I needed her help. With a mess.”
“And you didn’t need me?”
“Can you hack into Richard’s building and delete security footage?”
Ash’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Did you kill someone?”
Ellisandre narrowed their eyes, their spoon pausing halfway to their mouth, full of stewed apples. “What do you think?”
“I think you killed someone.”
Ellisandre shrugged.
“You’re a real bitch sometimes,” Ash muttered. “Yes, I can break in. It’ll be easier if I’m in the building. Do you want me to replace the footage with anything?”
“Just empty hallways would be good. Go back and grab something that they’ve already recorded.”
“Sure.”
“How long will it take you?”
Ash grimaced.
Ellisandre studied the teenager. He was flushing and his toes were pointing inward.
“You’ve already hacked them.”
“Maybe. Fine, yes. I hacked that building like two years ago. And . . I . . . might have left myself a back door. It was part of my Reevesworth project. I was hacking everything Reevesworth back then.”
“And you just happened to not turn that one over when you cut the deal.”
“I forgot. Do you know how many systems I hacked?”
“Just how many did you forget?” Ellisandre made air quotes with their fingers.
Ash twisted himself into pretzel shapes, his elbows wrapping around each other as he gripped his hands between his knees. “You mean ones I left backdoors into?”
“I guess those are the only ones that matter.”
“A few.”
“Like what?”
Ace rattled off the names of a couple of buildings and finished off by whispering the name of a major government agency.
“Ash.” Ellisandre stared at the teen. They’d known he was good. They hadn’t realized how good.
“I thought if I confessed to that one, they’d never let me out of prison. So I just . . . didn’t mention it. They didn’t find it. I haven’t done anything with it. Been too scared to. And it’s not open for anyone else.”
“What did you even do in there?”
“Read emails.” Ash shrugged. “Most of it was boring. There was one user watching porn at work. So I infected his computer.”
Ellisandre’s lips twitched towards a smile. “Ever hacked foreign governments?”
Ash curled up in a ball. “Of course. Those are the ones I practiced on. I didn’t want to get arrested.”
“My former boss would have loved to have gotten his hands on you.”
“So you did kill someone, and you want me to cover it up.”
Ellisandre glared at the teen. “The less you know, the less you can repeat.”
Ash hunched up his shoulders. “I can’t delete what I’m not looking for.”
“Fair point. But none of the murders are on tape.”
“See. You did murder someone—someones!” Ash pointed at Ellisandre.
“Can’t prove it.” Ellisandre lopped off a large section of pancake and stuffed it in their mouth.
Ash groaned and sagged down into the chair until his back was nearly on the same level as his ass.
Ellisandre chewed and swallowed. “For someone you’re accusing of murder, you don’t seem very afraid of me.”
“I’m surrounded by psychos.” Ash threw his hands in the air. “Ms. Linda is the most normal of all of you, and she’s currently mocking up a skyline on the kitchen counter with celery. Also, she’s wearing your clothes from two days ago.”
“But we’re your psychos.”
“Yes, for better or worse. You’re all my psychos.” Ash threw his arms wide as if to encompass everyone who was not currently in the room. “Since when did I become the normal one?”
Ellisandre chuckled and mimed flicking a bit of food at him. “You, Ash, are not normal. You’re Dana’s monster.”
Ash narrowed his eyes at Ellisandre. “So I’m the monster but you kill people?”
“Some people are fond of monsters and not fond of people.”
Ash snorted and stood up. “Psychos. All of us. I’m going to get a computer and go erase that footage. It would help if you could tell me when and what.”
“Take Alice with you to watch your back. She knows what you need to erase.”
Eating breakfast only took up so much time. They were delaying the inevitable, facing Sevastyan in the light of day. Yesterday, under pressure, things had been simple. There was a mission. And there still was a mission. One that had expanded significantly. But the pressure wasn’t in the red zone.
Sevastyan had a slave. Sevastyan had a slave he loved. A slave he was prepared to die for. No, a man he was prepared to die for. Why did they keep thinking of Rei as a slave?
Because Rei was one. He registered as different. His mannerisms, the way he looked to Sevastyan, the way he deferred even to the other slave. He triggered instincts in Ellisandre that felt wrong.
The rules were not clear. And Lisa was a complication on top of it. He was close to Rei. He had reached some sort of understanding with Sevastyan as everything had come apart. But he wasn’t part of whatever was between Sevastyan and Rei.
Layers upon layers.
Ellisandre scrubbed their plate. They preferred it when they knew the rules. When there were no rules, they made the rules. But there were rules here. They just didn’t know them.
They were going to have to discover them.
Ellisandre fetched their phone and logged into their security system for the Bolthole, put in a headphone and brought up the audio and video feeds, then finished cleaning the kitchen and forced themselves into their room to change.
Nothing interesting was happening in the Bolthole.
It looked like the three men were taking turns helping each other shower.
Ellisandre surveyed their closet, preparing to do the same. It was a “fuck it I want to intimidate the world” kind of day, but they were also going to see Sevastyan’s slaves again. While the taller one, Lisa, acted tough, and was actually tough, he was just as scared as Sevastyan’s other one, Rei.
Ellisandre dithered for a moment, considering a soft pair of jeans and a brown turtleneck or a pair of black parachute pants in distressed jean material with strategically placed buckles and straps.
Never make yourself small for anyone ever again. Ever.
If Lisa and Rei were going to become part of their lives, they might as well start off on the right foot.
They’d get over it. Ellisandre grabbed the parachute pants and snagged a black skin-tight turtleneck and a men’s lace up corset vest in black leather to go over it.
The outfit was monochromatic, but they could add jewelry and spray some temporary color into their hair, maybe blue.
Ten minutes later they were showered, dressed, and in front of their makeup mirror waiting for their moisturizer to settle into their skin while they sprayed a tint into the ends of their hair.
It was almost time to get their sides shaved back again.
The conversation in the Bolthole had become interesting.
Sevastyan was trying to explain how he’d met them.
Lisa was asking the obvious questions. Whatever that man had been through, he hadn’t lost his mind or his tongue.
Ellisandre shot off a voice to text, correcting Sevastyan’s version of events.
He’d been so focused on protecting the two kidnapped children from the violence going down around them that Ellisandre hadn’t been one hundred percent certain at first that he’d been one of the criminals.
He’d done a good job, too. Those children were grown adults now. Well adjusted and successful.
The color set while they touched up their face, using green-tinted cream to smooth out any redness.
They added leather arm garters to their upper arms and a brutalist silver neck ornament made up of wide bars in various lengths spread out like a solar array in three hundred and sixty degrees.
It was too heavy to be a necklace, more like a fashion collar, the way people had once had detachable lace collars they added to various outfits when lace was expensive.
It went well with the buckles on the parachute pants.
Lisa called them a creep over the audio feed; Ellisandre grinned in the mirror as they answered, “My house, my rules.”
But then they needed to focus on adding weapons to their outfit.
It took almost as long to do that as it had to get dressed, but when they were finished, all the necessities were strapped down and out of sight.
The last thing they added to one of their pockets was a strong plastic bag, large enough to wrap around a body.
If the Merchari wanted to send trash their way, it was annoying, but they’d incinerate it for them.
Ellisandre sailed out of their room, military boots in one hand, black Stetson in the other. Their leather bag was on the couch where they’d left it.
Time to face the music.
Fuck. Why couldn’t the Merchari just attack again? That, at least, would be straightforward.
Shopping. They should go shopping. Bring dinner. Lunch. New pants to replace the ones that were destroyed yesterday. Cake. Get better soon cards. Check on Linda and her celery city. Give Dana a sewing lesson.
Ellisandre closed their eyes and growled behind their teeth as they locked their door.
They hadn’t raised themselves to be a coward. They weren’t going to start now. One stop at the cafe for coffee and baked goods, and that was all the procrastinating they would allow.
How long would it take to have the entire display case wrapped and ready to carry out?