15. Sabine #2
Jagger doesn't move. He sleeps like something carved from bedrock, one arm locked around me, the other dangling off the side of the bed because the mattress is a full-size and he is emphatically not.
The Snarbo is draped across both our feet, all eyes sealed shut, producing a sound like a diesel engine idling underwater.
I silence the alarm. Jagger's arm tightens.
"Work," I say.
"No."
"Jagger."
"Counterargument.No."
"That's not a counterargument. That's a single syllable."
"Efficient. Like Orcish."
I extricate myself through a series of measured rolls that would impress a gymnastics judge.
He lets me go with a grumble that vibrates the headboard.
I stand. Assess the damage. My blouse from Friday is draped over the ceiling fan.
One of my ballet flats is on the bookshelf. The other is missing entirely.
The bathroom mirror confirms what I suspected. My sharp bob is no longer sharp. It is a bird's nest assembled by a bird with ambition but no spatial reasoning. I shower, condition aggressively, and blow-dry until something resembling professional competence emerges.
When I come out, Jagger is sitting on the bed, elbows on his knees, as I move through the room with that expression again. The one that makes my ribs feel too small for what's inside them.
"I need to call the DMI," I say, pulling a fresh blouse from the closet. "About the annulment papers."
His jaw tightens. The rune along his neck flickers.
"To tell them we're not filing."
The rune steadies. Brightens.
"Unless you've changed your mind in the last eight hours."
He stands. The room shrinks by half. He crosses to where I'm buttoning my collar and his hand covers both of mine, stopping them.
"I have not changed my mind in eight hours. I will not change my mind in eight years. Or eighty."
"Orcs live to be eighty?"
"Two hundred and forty, generally."
I stare up at him. "You didn't think to mention this before?"
"It did not seem relevant when we were discussing pizza toppings."
"A lifespan discrepancy of roughly one hundred and sixty years seems relevant to any long-term domestic arrangement, Jagger."
"We will discuss it over breakfast." He kisses my forehead and ducks into the bathroom. The shower groans in protest as six and a half feet of bounty hunter steps into a stall designed for someone my size.
I finish dressing. I then make coffee and place the call to the DMI.
The hold music is eleven minutes of panpipe renditions of popular Elvish ballads. When the clerk finally picks up, I explain that we will not be filing the annulment and request the appropriate form to convert our bond status to voluntary continuation.
"Form 16C," the clerk says. "Filed in triplicate. Notarized by a licensed blood-magic officiant. Processing time is six to nine business weeks."
"Is there an expedited option?"
"Form 16C-Expedited. Filed in quintuplicate. Notarized by two licensed blood-magic officiants. Processing time is five to eight business weeks."
"Five to eight weeks?" I pinch the bridge of my nose, glancing at the annulment papers that had arrived overnight. "A Penalized Severance processes in a matter of hours."
"The Department prioritizes punitive actions and supernatural incarcerations, ma'am," the clerk recites, sounding incredibly bored. "Voluntary continuation is considered a non-essential status change."
Bureaucracy is bureaucracy, regardless of species. The government is always infinitely faster at punishing people than it is at helping them.
Jagger emerges from the shower wearing a towel that barely qualifies as a washcloth on his frame. Water tracks down the rune lines, pooling in the grooves of old scars. He smells like my lavender soap. On him it reads less spa day, more extremely well-groomed siege weapon.
"I need to go to the office," he says. "Pick up my open case files. Renegotiate my contract terms."
"What terms?"
"No overnight hunts. No cross-border pursuits. Home by seven." He says this while rummaging through his gear bag for clean clothes, like he is listing grocery items rather than completely restructuring his career.
"You'd do that?"
He pulls a black shirt over his head. Looks at me like I've asked whether gravity works.
"Sabine. I have eaten your eggs. I have slept in your bed. I have read three chapters of my book on your couch while you scratched behind my ear." A pause. "I am building a life in this apartment. The bounties will fit around it. Not the other way."
Something hot presses behind my eyes. I blink it back and take a very controlled sip of coffee.
"I'll draft a revised budget tonight. Dual income projections. We should discuss retirement fund allocations, given the lifespan issue."
"I accept your terms."
"I haven't stated terms yet."
"I accept them in advance."
I grab my bag. He grabs his weapons belt. We leave the apartment together, splitting at the lobby. He heads north toward the Flats, where his office sits above a pawnshop that exclusively sells haunted jewelry. I head south toward the firm.
At the corner I turn back. He's already standing on the sidewalk like a boulder in a stream, pedestrians parting around him without making eye contact. He raises one hand. I raise mine.
Then I walk to work.
I'm three spreadsheets into a quarterly report for an enchanted bakery chain when my phone buzzes Jagger's name. I pick up.
No greeting. No preamble. Just him, flat and controlled in the way that means the opposite of calm.
"My office is on fire."
I'm already standing. "What?"
"Korvan." The crime lord. The one whose accounts I gutted. "His people torched the building. My case files are inside. My equipment. Everything."
Through the phone, sirens. The crack of something structural giving way.
"Where are you right now?"
"Across the street. Watching it burn."