Twenty-Seven
- Redric
I smiled smugly as the shop keeper rang up the random items Evangeline had taken into the changing rooms with her. If he suspected anything, he didn’t say. Nor did he look us in the eye though as he handed the bag of clothes over.
As we stepped out onto the street, Evangeline grabbed my hand, dropped the shopping, and cloaked us in a spell of invisibility. As we headed to Elanora’s Lady Club, I scanned all around us, looking for any sign of a trap. Ashema could have prepared anything in a week, and now that I knew Evangeline was carrying my child, every passerby who walked a bit too close to us, who glanced at us a bit too long made me nervous.
Once we were only a couple buildings away from our destination, I murmured, “You should stay out while I –”
“Fuck no. Don’t be getting all weird on me. I am a much better fighter than you. Plus, I’m all inked up.” She’d tattooed rune after rune onto her skin over the last week, building up her magical defences in this body now that her cover in it had been blown.
“Now be quiet before someone notices us.”
Clenching my jaw, I didn’t argue. There was no point. I’d have better luck convincing a rock it was a caterpillar than getting Evangeline to worry about her safety.
Sneaking in through the door of the lady club on the tight heels of someone else, we entered a dark strip club with soft red lights that did little to brighten up the place. Men moved on stage, grinding their hips against poles. Shadowy bodies fucked in corners. Moans and whistles mixed with the music that sang softly in the background.
She pulled me to the right, following the sign for the restrooms. I scanned the crowd of patrons as we neared, seeing if anyone was looking our way.
I was just about to tell her all was clear when she pushed open the door and stepped inside. It was empty, the stall doors all partly open, and she led me to the middle one. Pushing inside, she let go of my hand. The toilet lid in front of me hovered, the invisibility spell only working on what we had on us or were carrying when it had been enacted.
She passed me the ceramic to hold. “Got it,” I said, so she knew when to let go. A moment later, a bag was lifted out of the back of the toilet seat and then shaken free of water. She opened it and pulled out a rolled up piece of paper. “Awww. That’s sweet.”
Suddenly visible, she turned the note around to show me. “Ashema took a bounty out on us. Sixteen million pebs each if we’re brought back alive.”
“I don’t see how that’s sweet,” I said.
“She could’ve asked for us dead. Plus, this makes my score well above hers.”
“Your score?”
“Yeah. The amount of all my bounties added together. For a while there, she was catching up.”
I shook my head. Of course she’d be competitive about how many people were trying to kill her too. “Did she give you the other information?” I asked.
She nodded. “We seem to be in business. You can put the toilet seat back.”
As soon as I did so though, the door to the bathroom opened and shut.
I spun around to try to get out of the stall first, to stand in front of her just in case, but she was already standing beside the sink, and the look on her face wasn’t one of casualness or innocence. It was tight with fear. I stepped out of the stall just as she hissed,
“What are you doing here?”
“Me? What did you do, Mother, to piss off nearly half of the fucking underground?” a woman said as I burst out, skidding to a stop at the word ‘Mother’. My eyes darted between the two of them, but neither one paid me any attention.
Her hands on her hips as if she was scolding a small child, Aurelia said, “I’ve lost count of how many people have contacted me this last week about teaming up to kill you given how good the payload is.”
“What’s it at?”
“That is not what you should be focusing on.” She finally glanced at me with light-green eyes that judged me in an instant. “So I see you’ve knocked my mum up.”
“Aurelia,” Evangeline said, exasperated.
“You going to be there for this kid unlike my shitty dad?”
“How did you –”
She held up a half-eaten cake box – the one we’d left in the changing room on accident. “I’d been following you since you left FI-9. You two seriously need to be better about watching your tail.”
“I was preoccupied,” Evangeline said. “And I knew you would probably be around somewhere. Why do you think I hung around headquarters for a week until you got back from your mission in Everton?”
“Ew, gross are you saying, you had sex knowing I was around?”
“You are so her daughter.” I grinned, then stepped in and held out my hand. “I’m Redric.”
She stepped back, shaking her head. “And I’m not shaking that until after you’ve washed. That is disgusting.”
“Aurelia.”
“So are we all moving in together now? Because I just got evicted from my flat for killing the landlord’s wife.”
“If you want to.”
“No,” Evangeline said at the same time.
I talked over her. “My house is big enough. And you irritate your mum. Works for me.”
“Dammit, Redric, don’t indulge her. Aurelia, we are not moving in together.”
“Why not?”
“Because –” She stopped, then sighed in exasperation. “Because this is all too fast. I don’t even know if I like him.”
She snorted. “I don’t remember ever seeing you with a man. Now you end up pregnant, and what is this I’ve heard about you being married, assumingly to him?”
“It was an undercover –”
She waved her off, the answer clearly not cared about. “You clearly like him enough for that.”
Evangeline breathed out heavily again, and I liked how annoyed she was getting. There was nothing that could frustrate a mother more than her daughter.
“We are not having this discussion in the bathroom of a strip club.”
“So we can have it somewhere else?” Aurelia asked innocently.
Her mother’s jaw clenched. “Don’t you have someone to kill or something?”
“Yep, and the next act out there is going to get messy. Pay is double if I cut off his dick. Tip for you, mate,” she said, turning to me. “Don’t piss off a crazy woman.”
“Noted,” I said, not that it really meant anything to me. Everything I’d tried had only made Evangeline happy not angry.
Shaking her head, she turned for the door, waving her fingers in the air in a way that told me she’d spelled the room for silence.
Breathing out heavily, Evangeline turned to me. “Sorry about that. She has no sense of boundaries.”
“Wonder where she got that from.”
“Fuck if I know,” she said deadpanned and I had no idea if she’d meant it or not. “And I’m not moving in with you. I don’t even like you.”
“I don’t like you either,” I half-lied, still coming to terms with what exactly I felt for her. “But I’d still like it if you came home with me.”
“So we can what? Be one big happy family? Adopt Ziny and Dee too?” She shook her head and snorted. “It’s fairytale nonsense.”
“Maybe. But I meant what I said to the Dame.” I took a step forward, holding her gaze. “About feeling something between us.”
She took a step back, pressing into the sink.
“Come home with me, Evangeline.” I placed my arms on either side of her, my hands gripping the counter as I leaned in. “Give me nine months.” My lips kissed her neck as I moved a hand to her belly. “Give us nine months…”
I lifted my head just in time to see her eyes squeeze shut. She held them scrunched up for a few seconds, then released them on a shaky exhale.
“Nine months,” she said. “Just until the baby is born.”
Grinning, I kissed her. Then grabbed her hips and lifted her up onto the counter.
“You are insatiable,” she complained, but there was a quickness to her breaths and she lifted her hips easily as I slid down her trousers.
“I have twenty-five years to catch up on.” Pushing inside her, I cupped her breasts and kissed her.