19. Leif
Leif
The door is right there. I’m not going up.
I’ve crossed a realm and a city and one moving death box that I’m choosing not to revisit, and the last twenty feet might as well not exist. I’m on the sidewalk. This is where I am.
Assessing the perimeter.
I don’t pace. Pacing’s a tell, and I’ve spent four hundred years making sure mine don’t show, so I’m not pacing — I’m walking a deliberate line from the front steps to the fire-escape sightline and back, which is work, and work has never once failed me.
I keep counts. The number is information. Tonight’s numbers: eleven circuits of a perimeter that was clear on the first one. Two cabs. One raccoon.
Entry points. Front door, a formality, opens on a key card nobody checks.
Fire escape on the north side, minimal lighting.
The roof across the street holds a clean line into her window, and her light’s still on, so she’s awake up there.
On top of it all is Gunnar, the loudest thing in thirteen realms, and if he’s got her cornered by that bookshelf—
The front door opens.
Brock steps out and says nothing. He’s about to and whatever it is, I probably won’t like it. He’s never once stopped at bad when worse was sitting right next to it, and the maddening thing about him is that he’s usually right.
He stops beside me. Looks at the same stretch of street I’ve been looking at all night.
“Perimeter’s clear,” he says.
“I know.”
A cab goes by. Somewhere down the block a car alarm goes off.
“So there’s no tactical reason you’re standing on the sidewalk.”
“I’m assessing.”
“You’ve assessed. For a while.” His mouth tilts. “It’s clear, Leif.”
“The fire escape needs eyes. The lighting on the north side—”
“You’ve checked it twice. I watched you from her window.”
He’s had her window all night. I’ve had the raccoon.
“The roof, then. Clean line straight into her—” I realize how bad it’s about to sound. “Into the third floor. Somebody should hold it.”
“Somebody should.” He doesn’t move. “You want to spend the night guarding the view of her window?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Mm.”
Her light’s still on. I confirmed it last circuit, and the circuit before that.
“She’s still awake,” Brock says.
I keep walking.
“You checked.”
I keep walking.
“Twice.”
“The door—”
“Not salvageable. There’ll be a new one on it by morning.” He runs his hand through his hair. “It’s also upstairs.”
“The Vestry expects word tonight.”
“How’s the report coming along?”
It’s in six drafts, none of which survived, because the sentence after identified the disturbance doesn’t exist. Every version reads like somebody else wrote it.
“In progress.”
“Mm.” He tips his head at the building. “Erik owes you three years. That conversation’s ready whenever you are. He’s also upstairs.”
“I’m aware of where Erik is.”
“You’re at twelve, by the way.”
“What?”
“Circuits.”
I had eleven.
I don’t answer that. I have kept accurate counts through two collapsing buildings and an actual war, and somewhere tonight I dropped one.
I know exactly where, too. Fourth circuit, north corner. Her light came on.
“So,” he says. “The door’s upstairs. Erik’s upstairs. The report needs one sentence and the sentence is upstairs. You’ve spent an hour holding the only ground in the city with nothing on it.”
“I’m running the perimeter.”
“Thoroughly,” he agrees.
He’s not wrong. He’s rarely wrong. It’s his worst quality.
“She made us coffee,” he says.
I don’t ask.
“The men who broke her door.” He pauses like I need time to digest it. “She was a mug short, so she used a measuring cup.”
I don’t want to smile at that, and I don’t. But my mouth tips up as I consider the fact that she’s prepared even when everything is chaos around her.
“Rayner’s got it. Took it with both hands.” He laughs. “You should have seen it.”
I’m picturing it before I agree to. Rayner — all six and a half feet of him, inked to the knuckles — holding a measuring cup with the care of a man who’s been handed something breakable. And her watching to make sure he’s comfortable with it.
I’d like to stop picturing it.
“She apologized for it,” Brock says. “Twice.”
I’m not going to stop picturing it.
“She gave us names. I’m a trap, apparently. Gunnar’s trouble.” The tilt widens. “Rayner’s a problem.”
Trap. Trouble. Problem. She nailed every single one of them, immediately.
I don’t want to be impressed.
I also don’t want to know if she’d have given me a name too.
It doesn’t matter.
“Gunnar’s upstairs,” he says.
“I’m aware.”
“With her.”
I’m moving before I decide to. Three steps toward the door.
I stop.
Brock hasn’t moved. He’s watching me with the look he’s had since somewhere around our second century. He already knows how this ends and he’s just waiting for me to catch up.
“That was unfair,” I say.
“It worked.”
He doesn’t push it. He wants to gloat. We’ve been through enough that he knows better.
“She’s fine,” he says. “Gunnar’s behaving. Mostly.” He shrugs. “But the ex knows the building.”
“Ex?”
It’s out before I clear it. Brock is kind enough not to look at me.
“Don’t know the whole of it. But it’s why Erik was there in the first place.”
He doesn’t look happy about it.
Neither am I. Somewhere in the last four seconds the ex stopped being background. I’ll have his name by morning.
“Tell Erik—”
Three years of setting his place, and I don’t have the end of that sentence either.
“I’ll tell him myself.”
Brock nods and leaves it alone, which from him is a kindness with a price on it somewhere down the road.
He looks down the street, at nothing in particular. “Why’d you leave the room, Leif?”
I can’t answer him. I know I can’t and that’s a problem.
In all of our time together I’ve never once lied to these men and I don’t intend on starting now.
My hand finds the back of my neck and squeezes. He’s been toying with me since the moment he stepped out of the building tonight. Maybe before that.
I can’t tell him the moment I smelled her in the elevator I was done for. It wasn’t even the box at that point. And once I walked through her doorway, saw Erik’s hands on her…
After seeing those green eyes make their way toward me I knew I couldn’t stay.
Ten more seconds and those eyes would’ve gotten to mine.
That can’t happen. Not yet.
I don’t know what to do with her, which is new.
I don’t say any of it.
Brock watches me not say it. Then he looks back at the street, which from him is mercy.
The door and the ex, I can do something about. The way my thoughts keep moving back to her, I can’t. So I deal with the problems that are mine to solve. Brock knows exactly what he handed me. Neither of us says it.
And none of it gets me up those stairs.
Because up those stairs I get seen. By her. Up close, and I can’t let her see. Not yet. I don’t need to be one more body in that room, one more set of eyes she can feel on her. That’s worse than useless.
All true. I could stand on this sidewalk until sunrise stacking reasons.
If I go up, I won’t leave.
Because every plan I made for the rest of my life has already gone up in smoke.
So I don’t go up.
I don’t have to go up to protect her with everything I am.
I’ll put eyes on her she never feels. I’ll stay in control. And I never have to find out what my face does, because she’ll never get to see it.
It’s the cleanest plan I’ve made all night.
Also the kind of plan a man only makes when he’s already lost. I know the difference. I’ve decided I don’t care.
Brock’s still on the steps when I move. He doesn’t ask where I’m going.
Good.
It’s better that way.
I leave the light, and the sightlines I spent an hour mapping.
And I go to work.