18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
“When can you go through them?” I asked him.
“I can start tonight, get everything catalogued, and get you the list in a week or so. Pick out what you want for the private buyers and I’ll get the rest ready for auction.”
I nodded, my eyes tracking the boxes like I might see through them to whatever was tucked away inside.
My phone made a noise in my pocket and I fished it out to check it.
Rook: You’re doing something boring, aren’t you?
He must be doing something boring too, if he was bothering me in the middle of the day. The corner of my mouth twitched like it was thinking about smiling. Gray noticed and bit back a smile of his own.
“That’s the second time this week I’ve seen you almost smile. I didn’t realize your face could do that,” he said.
I tensed, eyes darting to make sure none of my other employees were nearby. He had a point though. Teddy was still a problem and there was a killer on the loose, but good things had happened this week. The Prague collection preparations were nearly finished and veilknight might not be full of shit.
And none of them tested my facial expressions the way Rook did.
I shrugged off Gray’s observation. “He’s amusing, that’s all.”
Don’t you have work to do?
Rook: Not until tonight. I just got out of bed.
I wondered what he looked like when he woke up in the morning, if he was handsome in a sleepy, disheveled way.
It’s noon.
Rook: I was up all night prepping for my new fighter’s debut match. Bastard isn’t half the fighter as the one you killed, by the way.
Your customers will show up and salivate for violence anyway.
Rook: They’re always thirsty for fresh blood. So what thrilling thing are you doing today?
I’m at my warehouse inspecting a new shipment.
Rook: Zzzzzzz
Some of us have serious business to do. I’m not playing at being important.
Rook: My bank account says I’m not playing, so fuck you, and also, I know you’re thinking about the next time your cock is in my mouth. Keep telling yourself I’m not important.
I breathed out a long, slow breath, and did something very not boring for a change.
Maybe next time it will be your cock in my mouth.
Gray made a sound that was halfway between chuckling and clearing his throat. I glanced over at him and raised my eyebrows.
“Are you sexting right now?” he asked quietly, no longer containing that grin he’d held close. “No judgment. I’ve got a whole library of them on my phone.”
“That is because you are what is known as a ‘man whore,’” I said.
“Yep, but I can guess who it is, and I think you having one special person to send naughty text messages to is way more interesting than me fucking ten different women at once.”
“I don’t pay you to take an interest in my personal life, and he isn’t special.”
“Bullshit.”
“Which part?”
“Everything you just said. For what it’s worth, it’s good to see you happy about something.”
“I’m not happy about something. I have too much else to worry about.”
“Yeah, okay. That smile was just a muscle twitch then.”
I paused, my phone still resting open in my palm. “It doesn’t bother you that I’m…that he’s a man.”
Gray shook his head and smiled like a wolf thinking about his next meal. “I don’t much care what other people get up to in their bedrooms. I’m too busy with mine.”
I nodded and hummed, distracted by another message coming in on my phone.
Rook: I look forward to it. Dinner this week?
You cook?
Rook: No, but I’m good at ordering take out.
For fuck’s sake. I’m not eating questionable food from cartons. Come over Saturday and I’ll cook something.
Rook: See you then.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I told Gray. “He’s an insufferable idiot and I don’t have time for those things. It’s just dinner.”
Gray laughed, his shoulders rolling beneath his leather jacket. “I never implied he was your boyfriend.”
“Good. He’s not.”
“Noted. I’ve got everything covered here if you want to go,” he said. “I’ll get the inventory typed up. Go have dinner with your…whatever the hell he is.”
It was only Wednesday, but I didn’t tell Gray I wasn’t having dinner tonight. If he thought I was with Rook, it bought me a few hours to sort through my online research until I had the grimoire in my hands.
***
I’d convinced veilknight to log on to chat at a scheduled time so that I could talk to him in real time instead of waiting for his messages to come through. I arrived in the chat five minutes early, but he was right on time.
veilknight has entered the chat.
j-aust13: Hello.
veilknight: Good evening. You must have a lot of questions. Where would you like to start?
j-aust13: For starters, how do you know so much about Death?
veilknight: I’m somewhat of an expert on the subject. It’s a life’s passion.
j-aust13: Tell me about the ritual. What do I need to kill her?
veilknight: Why do you desire to kill her?
J-aust13: A private grudge.
For a moment, no message came. Then:
veilknight: When summoned with the grimoire, Death will take her corporeal form and become trapped in a ritual circle. That’s when you have a window to kill her.
j-aust13: Do I need a special weapon?
veilknight: The blade that kills her must be coated in your blood and tears of grief, and the spell requires a sacrifice of love. Are you the sort of man who loves things?
j-aust13: I’m not sure what you mean.veilknight: Figure it out.
j-aust13: What do you get out of this?
veilknight: I have a personal interest in Death and those in her orbit. That’s all you need to know.
j-aust13: You’re an obnoxiously cryptic man.
veilknight: Bold of you to assume I’m a man.
j-aust13: Cryptic woman then. What if I have more questions?
veilknight: You know how to contact me.
I logged off without any kind of goodbye.
Hope is a dangerous thing, so dangerous I’ve sworn it off like a vice. Hope is addictive. Once a seed is planted, it grows like a flower, ready to fell a man when it shrivels and dies.
Trust is even riskier, but I had been searching since I was eighteen for an answer. What veilknight said about the book only made me more certain it would arrive from Prague.
Death was terribly close to her end.
***
“Do you dress up for everything?” Rook asked as he waltzed through my front door with an alarming amount of familiarity. I stopped chopping onions and glanced down at my button-up and slacks.
“I’m just wearing clothes. You are rather dressed up this evening…you know, for you.” I shrugged and tossed the onions in a hot pan.
While I sautéed them, I stole glances at him. He wore dark jeans and a button-up of his own, and I wondered if he had dressed up for me.
“What are we eating?” he asked, making himself comfortable on the couch.
“Stir fry,” I said, “since you were so eager to eat garbage from boxes, I thought I’d make something you might order. Mine will be better, obviously.”
“That was thoughtful.”
I glanced up and raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome.”
“So what do you do when you’re not ruling your empire, England? You like movies?”
“No.”
“Books?”
“Occasionally.”
“Fucking your enemy?”
The corners of my mouth did that weird twitching thing again. “Unfortunately.”
He looked pleased with himself as he leaned back. “For someone who pretends to be so social, you suck at conversation.”
“I don’t pretend to be social,” I said. “I am social.”
“But you don’t have any friends,” he observed, as if he thought he knew everything. “You’re too closed off.”
I turned to dice bell peppers. “Gray is my friend,” I said, even though I still wasn’t sure he was. He seemed to think so, with all his ideas about my sex life.
“Gray is your employee,” he said.
“How do you know who Gray is?”
He chuckled and came forward to lean his elbows on the island where I was prepping dinner. “Big guy. Good at blending in. Not so good that I didn’t see him scouting out threats at your gala. If you opened up, people might actually like you.”
“I have no desire for people to like me. Respect and fear go much further.”
“C’mon, it’s not that hard.” He placed his hand over mine and forced my knife to stop moving. “Watch. Hi, I’m Carter, but most people call me Rook. I grew up in Massachusetts, I’m better at chess than you, and I like—”
“Long walks on the beach and watching men get beaten to death?” His hand was still over mine, sending my stomach fluttering.
“Something like that.” He withdrew his hand and watched me resume chopping. “Your turn.”
I rolled my eyes with a dismissive snort, but humored him anyway, my voice coming out dry. “I’m Austin, I have a surname so bland no one needs to know it. I don’t eat take out, but I would literally murder someone for good home fries. It might be the best thing Americans have invented.”
“See?” he said. “That’s interesting."
"Why 'Rook'?"
"Chess—obviously—but I liked that it's a bird too, and it sounded good."
“Where did you learn to curse?” I asked. The question had occasionally poked at me since the night he broke my wrist. “It’s not exactly standard magic.”
“I’m a really competent magician,” he said.
“Yet you rely on fists and weapons.”
“Magic is a crutch.”
“—a gift,” I finished at the same time as him.
“Strip all that power away, and you have nothing,” he said. “I want it all—magic and physical strength. Magic didn’t save me when human kids were beating the shit out of me in high school.”
Because he wasn’t allowed to use it. He couldn’t reveal what he was, though I’m sure he was tempted.
“I went to a boarding school for magicians,” I said. “I didn’t have to hide what I was. I’m…” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry you had to.”
Magic came from the soul, some inner force like a battery of power. It was inseparable from our DNA, the advantage we had over humans. Without magic, we were nothing. To hide that…the thought was unbearable.
“Yeah, well, I don’t here. Don’t frown like that. You’re too attractive to start wrinkling in your twenties.”
That made me laugh, genuinely, so fully my hand slipped over the chicken I was cutting into cubes and—
“Fuck!” I hissed, dropping the knife. Red welled out of the slice in my index finger and dribbled all over dinner.