Page 3 of Caroled
“Thank you. And if I don’t see you before then, well, Merry Christmas.”
For several minutes after Townsend had driven away, Charles looked at the heavy gold ring. It was inset with an attractive pattern that might have been script in a language he couldn’t read. The inside of the band had a line of silvery metal that seemed to emit a faint glow.
He almost slipped the ring onto his finger—just to test it, he told himself. But if he did, he feared he’d never be able to take it off.
Instead he wrapped his fist around it, shrugged off the blanket, and rose slowly to his feet. As he reached for the doorknob, he caught the sound of pans rattling in the kitchen, and he smiled.
Jingle Bells
The kitchen smelledof coffee and strawberry jam, and Tenrael stood at the stove, gently moving his wings, dispersing the good scents more widely. He was naked, of course. He wore trousers only when necessary, and never shoes or a shirt. He looked over his shoulder at Charles and gave a broad, sharp-toothed smile. “Have some tea. Warm yourself up.”
Sometimes Tenrael called him Master, and in most matters—inside the bedroom and out—Charles made the decisions. But not when it came to the kitchen. Although demons didn’t need to eat, Tenrael liked to cook. And he also liked to dote over Charles, making sure he ate regularly and took good care of himself.
Charles poured a mugful, but before he sat at the little round table, he paused to rub Tenrael’s muscular ass, which bore faded red marks from the night before. “There are better ways than tea to get warm.”
“Eat first. Besides, you have news to tell me.”
Unlike Charles, Tenrael didn’t possess particularly acute hearing. “Were you listening in?” It wouldn’t bother him if he had, and it would save him from having to repeat what the Chief had said.
“No,” said Tenrael, busily flipping pancakes. “You have that look about you.”
“What look?”
“The look that says you have news.”
Charles snorted and stirred three portions of sugar into his mug. He’d always considered himself poker-faced, but Tenrael never had difficulty reading him. At first Charles had resented that and maybe even feared it a little. He’d never wanted people to know what he was thinking. But of course Tenrael wasn’tpeople—he was Charles’s lover. As Charles grew to trust him, he realized that being understood so easily by Tenrael was, in fact, a gift.
Charles sipped his tea, feeling the heat travel through him, and a few moments later Tenrael set down a plate containing a tall stack of pancakes slathered thickly in jam and topped with maple syrup. When Charles was a boy, he used to eat sugar by the spoonful; his mother would sigh and shake her head. Sometimes she’d smooth the white feathers on his small wings. “I’ll make you some carrots and peas,” she’d say, and he’d dutifully eat them, mainly to please her. She knew better than to feed him meat, which made him violently ill.
Tenrael knelt on the linoleum floor next to Charles’s chair, his hair barely brushing against Charles’s left arm. “Your news has made you pensive.” He had a rich accent but spoke English fluently. As well he might—he’d been speaking it since the language was born, the bastard child of Germanic, French, and Latin parentage. Because Tenrael’s use of English had evolved along with the language itself, he occasionally slipped in a word or phrase that had nearly gone extinct. That always made Charles smile.
“Have you ever been to San Francisco, Ten?”
“A long time ago, before whites were there. I brought the people dreams of waves washing them to sea or of bears chasing them.”
“I imagine today’s residents have different nightmares than that.”
“I would not know. I no longer carry nightmares.” Tenrael sounded only slightly wistful.
“No. But that’s not why I’m asking. Townsend wants us to stay there for a few weeks to keep an eye on things.”
“He does not have agents there already?”
Charles shrugged and took a bite of pancake. It was delicious. “Some are off to war. One of the others—a fellow named Donne—was injured, and Ferencz is taking care of him.”
“Injured?” Tenrael looked concerned. He tended to worry about Charles who, unlike him, was burdened with mortality.
“Busted leg.” He took another bite and washed it down with tea that was now barely warm. “I used to work with them sometimes, Donne and Ferencz. They joined the Bureau roughly when I did, although they’re older than me. Before that, Ferencz was a magician and Donne was a private dick.”
“Did you enjoy working with them?”
“I guess. I prefer you, though.”
“Good.”
The pancakes disappeared almost like magic, and then Charles had a second mug of tea. There were some things he should do if they were going to leave town in the morning, but he felt too caught up in memories to do more than sip. “I guess I owe Donne and Ferencz a debt.”
“How so?”
