Chapter 6
brADLEY
As we ran, feet sliding out from under us, the world all darkness and noise and flashing lights and partygoers pushing back, Griffin slammed against the panic bar of the emergency exit.
Just as we managed to escape into the brisk air, emergency lights began flashing, the alarm triggered, causing a stampede.
For a moment, I felt the press of bodies, the shoving, and I was sure I was going to go under.
And of course, this was how I died. Or got trampled. And either way, it was a piss-poor way to go. A poor way to go after a poor career and a poor attempt at being a good son and a poor—
Someone grabbed my hand, holding tight, and I wrapped my fingers even more firmly.
I followed, blindly at first, before glancing up and seeing Griffin looking back at me.
I squeezed hard as he tugged me along behind him.
He was safety. He was the life vest that was my only chance to weather the storm.
Between my stumbling and Griffin’s retrieval expertise, we managed to get lost within the chaos of the rest of the partygoers and made it out onto the street, gasping for breath and panting.
I stared at him, mouth open. My free arm was still clutched to my chest, holding in place the book I’d managed to slide under my shirt during our mad scramble.
No sense in making such a fool of myself and then losing the very prize we’d come for.
“Thank you,” I said.
He grinned at me… and were those dimples? The way he smirked, I knew I was gone. I knew if he asked me to be one of his ports of call, all I’d be able to say would be, “yes, of course, and would you like Bernadette to do your laundry while you’re here visiting?”
“We need to get out of here,” he said, his hand still warm in mine as he dragged me down the street with him, glancing back, looking for the security that had been fairly useless when it came to defending JA Williams’s property.
I still remembered the sound of impact, the crunch of bones or other important bits when Griffin had hit them, and was that… Was I enjoying the violence?
I let Griffin pull me a few blocks before shaking my head and pulling up short. “We need to work on this right away.”
“Bradley, it’s close to midnight, and you’re…
covered in glitter.” Both of his eyebrows shot up, and he reached out, drawing a thumb down my cheek.
I flushed hard, my heart pounding. In the crush, I must have been pressed too closely to one of the glamorous partygoers enjoying a night out before it all turned to chaos.
“Yes, well.” I traced my eyes over his face, admiring the sheen of sweat, the way the exertion had only made him seem more rugged and handsome. “Would you like to come home with me?”
Griffin stared at me, and I swallowed hard. Pull it together, Bradley. What a fool I must seem to a man like him. What an absolute—
“Sure,” he said finally. “Let’s see Chez Bradley Brooks. I have to warn you, your mom set the bar pretty high for interior decorating.”
“Well, I can’t win against my mother,” I said, realizing that I was flirting, that he was flirting back. “But I can promise you a very well-hung Live, Laugh, Love poster.”
Griffin laughed and raised his eyebrow in interest. I hurried to flag down one of the taxis that had converged on the area after the collection of clubgoers had abandoned the Vault.
After giving the driver my address, my ability to flirt abandoned me altogether.
I sat awkwardly, hands twisting together in my lap, as the silence in the cab became unbearable.
Griffin seemed lost in observation, his focus entirely outside the car.
Likely he was busy making sure that JA Williams’s goons hadn’t followed us, but it still felt distinctly like he was ignoring me.
No, this wasn’t some schoolyard or boarding school. I wasn’t being ignored in favor of the more popular boys.
By the time we arrived at my apartment, I’d remembered all the reasons the other boys had excluded me at school and all the reasons I didn’t have to care. I’d also remembered that I was paying Griffin Gallows, and his ability to like me didn’t matter at all.
Yes, as long as he did his job—
“This is where you live?” Griffin asked.
“Er.” I looked up, truly seeing the building for the first time. “Yes.”
My apartment was on the third floor of an older downtown building. It was only a few blocks from the magical studies department at Moraira City University, which meant less chance for me to get lost when I was engaged in reading a particularly complicated translation on the way home.
Mother had had fits when she saw the decaying brickwork. And Elaine had simply noted that someone should see to the gargoyles at the top of the building before the poor things went “positively feral, and after that, it’s all bloodshed, Bradley. I would hate to see you go that way.”
Father had mostly been concerned with whether he could buy the building before I informed him that I had no interest in owning it. I was going to be renting.
That had induced Mother into another fit of vapors, and then Elaine had to dig out the smelling salts, and that was about the time that I decided I wouldn’t be informing any of them about the starting salary for a magical studies postdoc.
“Huh,” was all Griffin said before gesturing for me to open the front door.
I spent an embarrassing amount of time standing in front of the door, trying to fumble my keys out of my pants.
Too tight, but when I’d asked Elaine what a person would wear to a club, she’d taken one look at me and simply said “No” before walking out of the room.
She reappeared half an hour later with outfits for me and Griffin, extracting a promise not to tell her what we got into.
A lifetime later, I wrestled them free, and thankfully my key slid easily into the front door lock.
As we walked in, the motion sensor lights flickered on.
“It’s not that it wouldn’t be nice to live at home,” I said quickly. “Or that they wouldn’t be happy to have me, but I wanted some…”
“Independence?” Griffin asked, and the relief made my shoulders drop. After a row of mailboxes, we arrived at the elevators, and I pressed the call button.
“Yes, exactly.” I waited for him to enter the elevator car first out of politeness.
“Can’t blame a man for that,” he said. “Even if most people would kill to live in whatever cage you feel like your parents have you trapped in.”
“It’s not trapped. Or, not exactly.” I sighed. I supposed it was too much to believe he’d truly understood. “Have you ever had everything about you known before you even opened your mouth? No, before you even entered the room?”
A strange expression flitted across Griffin’s face, but then, like he was putting on a mask, he covered it with a twist of his lips.
“You know, in my line of work, the key is not to be known. Or if you are, make sure it’s for the right reasons.
There was this one time when I met a blind Croatian mage on a cliff, and if he knew one true thing about you, he could throw you off. ”
“Did he know one true thing about you?” I asked, even though the answer was clear.
“He knew my hair color, but I knew the switch for his magic catapult, and I knew how to reverse it.” Griffin winked at me. “Trust me, he didn’t like being thrown off the mountain any better than the rest of his victims.”
The elevator doors opened, and I led the way out, keys still clutched tightly in my hand like a lifeline.
The entryway opened into a narrow hallway, with the kitchen branching off just before the hallway ended at the living room. Griffin stood at the junction of the hallway and living room, surveying the only space I could really call my own. “Is there a couch under there, or is it just more books?”
I winced. “Here.”
Setting the text from Williams’s club on the coffee table, I picked up a handful of books and stacked them on the already precarious piles of books and papers covering the dining room table.
A pile of undergraduate papers slid to the floor, and I bent to clean them up.
Griffin watched with amusement, before he said, “Listen. How about I make us something to drink?”
“Tea is in the drawer next to the sink,” I said.
“Yeah, because I was really thinking about tea,” he muttered, but I heard the sink turn on and the water flow into the pot.
By the time he brought out a couple of steaming mugs, I had exposed the couch, ugly fabric and all. We sat down on opposite ends of the couch, and I cleared my throat.
“I can… that is… I’ll need to translate the book and do more research to determine what, exactly, Williams is planning. You don’t need to stay. If there’s somewhere else you’d rather be…” I trailed off.
His eyebrows went up, and just as I was reminding myself ‘not boarding school. I’m paying him.
He has to be nice to me,’ he said, “Listen, I don’t exactly have…
a place to stay in the city. It was meant to be a layover at best. And I wouldn’t be earning my paycheck if you ended up dead before we got to my area of expertise. ”
Griffin smiled, and the expression did things to his face, did things to his eyes, which were tracing up and down my body, over my arms and up to my lips. I cleared my throat.
“Oh, uh, of course you’re welcome to… stay.” I cleared my throat. “It would be good to have you available if I have any questions about blind shamans who throw people off cliffs or how to punch things really hard.”
The joke flopped, and the smile dropped off his face. “Yeah. That’s me. Mister Punch It Into Submission guy.”
“No, that wasn’t what I meant.” I sighed. “I know our first meeting wasn’t under ideal circumstances, but that is… I suppose I made the same assumptions about you as people do about me.”
His eyebrows furrowed, and he said, “You keep talking about that.”
“You met my family.” I shrugged. “All of them are tremendously powerful magic users. I’m the only one who isn’t.”