Page 19 of Smoke & Ashes
“Fisher?”
“I am not really here.” He didn’t look at me. Instead he stood staring at the boats that sailed past. I saw he had a staff in one hand, a pair of serpents twined around it.
“Neither am I.”
“You are. This is your place, not mine. Your mistress is sleeping and the time soon comes when she must be woken.”
“I don’t know how.”
He kept gazing out over the river—was this the docklands, or a version of the docklands? I saw a hospital on the other bank, its facade floodlit in the night, a splendour of white and gold. “You know. You have always known.”
“That doesn’t help.”
“It isn’t meant to.” He reached inside his bloodstained jacket and drew out a single playing card. The ten of spades. “This is yours.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted it. “I’ve kind of got a lot on right now.”
“Nothing more important than this. You will seek the blessed castle and retrieve the Sangreal. You will heal the land and awaken the one who is sleeping.”
“Before or after I stop the Prince of Wands from murdering everybody I care about who he hasn’t murdered already?”
“It is one and the same.”
The cock crowed.
* * *
Tara had barely moved in the night, and my arm had gone to sleep underneath her. I wriggled myself free and thought seriously about actually getting up. I was normally a big fan of staying in bed as long as I could possibly manage, especially if I had company. But now the spooky dreams were back sleep had lost its attraction, and Tara had enough on her mind that I’d have felt bad asking if she fancied fucking me senseless before she got on with her very important werewolf duties.
“I might need to go into town,” I told her.
She rolled around to face me. Something about supernatural beings meant that they didn’t look anywhere near as messed up and sloppy in the morning as regular humans. “I understand.” Her hand came to rest on my cheek and she breathed soft against my lips. “There will be a council of war, to which you will not be invited.”
“I don’t know if I’ll be around this evening. It’ll depend on what happens. I need to warn some people about the Prince of Wands, ring a bunch more estate agents, and also maybe find the holy grail.”
She kissed me. There wasn’t exactly sadness in it, but she was still clearly coming from a complicated place. “Then it sounds like you have a busy day ahead. I’d like it if you came back, but I’ll understand if you don’t.”
“And you’ll be okay?”
She hooked her very long, very supple legs around me and drew me towards her. “I’ll miss having you near me.” Her hand slid under the shirt I was suddenly painfully aware I’d slept in. “I’ll miss touching you.” She kissed me again—this was getting more like the Tara I was used to. “I’ll miss your taste in my mouth and your scent on my skin. But I don’t want your loyalty, Kate Kane. Just your trust.”
I was suddenly much, much less convinced by thatit would be inappropriate to beg her to fuck youidea. “I trust you,” I told her. And I did. Which was weird because I trusted basically nobody. I hadn’t even entirely trusted Julian, although I’d hoped she’d have my back anyway. Boy had I been wrong on that one. But for all Tara Vane-Tempest had her flaws, for all she was a domineering, controlling, arrogant ball of primal instinct wrapped in a couture frock, she’d never lied to me. She’d never let me down.
“Good.” She sat up sharply and swept back her hair. While I appreciated the view of her body the gesture gave me, I’d been enjoying the bit where she was lying down with her hands on me. “Then when you next visit, we can build on that.”
Yeah, she was back on form. “Oh comeonyou can’t be allmy mouth my skinone minute and then allkay thanks byethe next.”
“Sorry, remind me which one of us is running around the city fucking anything in a skirt?”
I literally facepalmed. “I banged one estate agent.”
“As I understand it you’d onlymetone estate agent.” She was already dressing and ringing for breakfast. “I’m not sure you get credit for only having sex with one other woman in the twenty-four hours you were out from under my roof.”
Okay, she had a point. And now I was looking more closely I wasn’t sure if I hadn’t been right the first time. She was making a good show of it but I doubted that either of us wanted to be getting that level of physical while Tabitha’s flayed corpse was still in the garden. “You’ll call if you need me?” It was half a question, half a promise that I wouldn’t flake. “For business stuff, not sex stuff. Well—you could also call me for sex stuff—but I am actually on your side on this one.”
Tara had changed into a sparkling white gown that made her look like royalty is supposed to look, instead of how it looks in real life, which is some variant of bald, scruffy, gawky, drunk on gin, or surprisingly similar to Emperor Palpatine. “You’d better be, since everybody on the other side seems to want to torture you to death.” She sat on the bed beside me and took my hand. “But thank you. I’m choosing to believe you’d be with me even if it wasn’t in your naked self-interest.”
The serving person arrived with the tray. I still wasn’t completely sure that steak so rare it should have been on the IUCN Red List was quite the breakfast-of-champions Tara seemed to think it was, but I was definitely appreciating the bacon, the eggs, and the pastry. I was also appreciating her, and not just in a wanted-her-to-tear-my-clothes-off-and-eat-raw-meat-off-my-naked-body way. But in a she-was-a-nice-person-to-have-breakfast-with way.
