“The alternative is to watch her hound you until you’re dead,” J.B. said. “Do you think that’s acceptable to me?”
“Do you think it’s acceptable to me that you are going there to be tortured and quite probably killed in my place?” I shouted. “And what makes you think she’ll leave me alone even if you do nobly sacrifice yourself? She’s already proven that no agreement is sacred to her. She’ll kill you and then come after me anyway.”
“I love you,” he said, and I froze.
“I love you,” he repeated. “So I will do whatever I think is necessary to keep you safe.”
“J.B.,” I said, closing my eyes.
He took both of my hands in his. “Don’t say anything. Don’t tell me that I’m just a friend to you. Don’t tell me that you still love Gabriel. Just don’t. I know all those things, but it doesn’t change the way I feel. And it can’t change the fact that I’ll always look at you and think that if I had just tried sooner, if I just stopped being afraid that you would say no, that you might be mine now instead of grieving him.”
“What can I say when you tell me things like that?” I asked, my heart breaking for both of us.
“Tell me that you’ll keep yourself safe, that you’ll stop taking crazy risks,” he said.
“I can’t promise that. My enemies will make sure of that.”
He put his hand on my face, on the white scars that covered my cheek. I nestled my head in his hand for a moment; then I pulled away.
“If you insist on going to Titania’s court, you’re not going alone,” I said.
“You don’t need to piss her off any more than you already have,” J.B. said.
“You’re not going alone,” I repeated. “Besides, I think I have an ally in court. Maybe. Possibly. Of course, his help comes with a price.”
We started walking again and I told J.B. about Puck. When I finished he seemed stunned.
“Why would Puck take an interest in you?”
“That seems to be the question of the hour,” I said as we approached the front doors of the Agency.
“Puck never takes an interest in anything except himself, and maybe Titania,” J.B. said as we entered the lobby.
We had to go through the usual screening process—biometric scan, metal detector, abandonment of anything that resembled a weapon. I was glad I’d left Lucifer’s sword at home. It really bothered me to leave it with security. And now that the Agency management had decided I was persona non grata, it was possible that they might decide to confiscate it, and then I’d really be up a creek. That sword had saved my life more times than I could count.
“I don’t know why he’s interested in me,” I said as we entered the elevator just past the reception desk. “But I should tell you that I’m not certain he’s a faerie. Or at least, not only a faerie.”
“What do you think he is?” J.B. asked.
“He told me that he was older than Titania and Oberon, and said he’d been Lucifer’s enemy forever,” I said. “What could possibly be as old as Lucifer?”
J.B. looked troubled. “Not a lot.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too. Either he’s an angel or a demon in disguise, or he’s some creature we’ve never seen before.”
“Why would a creature of such power hide himself in Titania and Oberon’s court for centuries? Why would he pretend to be inferior to them?” J.B. asked as the elevator rose to our floor.
I shrugged. “You got me. Apparently I don’t think the right way. Every time I turn around I find machinations within machinations, and in case you haven’t noticed, being sneaky is not my strong suit.”
The elevator opened and we stepped out. There were still a fair number of people working at their cubicles, even though the hour was late. Death never slept.
“I’ll call you when I’m finished,” J.B. said, heading toward his office. “Be a good girl for an hour or so, will you?”
“Define ‘good,’” I said, but he was already out of earshot.
It was hard not to notice that other Agents gave me a wide berth as I walked to my cubicle. Chloe had told me I’d developed some kind of reputation in the Agency. I was hardly ever there anymore, and when I was it seemed that something crazy had happened around me, so I could see why nobody was interested in saying hello to me.
My desk was covered in a thin layer of dust. Apparently even housekeeping was afraid to enter my space.
There were a bunch of forms in my in-box, most of them related to pickups that I’d done over the last two months. I hung my coat on the hook in the corner of my cubicle and sat down with a sigh, pulling the papers toward me and taking a pen out of my drawer.
The Agency is pretty well locked in the mid-twentieth century, technology-wise. The forms have to be filled out by hand or typed on a typewriter, and there are four copies of each attached in different colors.
Many Agents had suggested that paperwork would be less onerous and more efficient if we could fill out the data on a computer, but upper management was not in the least interested in efficiency. They did not like change. Change implied that something had been done incorrectly before, and management did not like to be told that they had done something incorrectly. Which was probably one of the many reasons why they didn’t like me.
After about forty minutes of laborious printing, I dropped the pen on my desk and pushed my chair back. I was rubbing the cramp out of my right hand when I realized someone was standing in my cubicle behind me.