He looked up from the bag. “You have met yourself, right?” He zipped the bag closed.
“So should I get a gun too?”
“I’d fear the day.” He grabbed a blazer and pul ed it over his shoulder rig. “You do have a good blade,” he said, nodding toward the dagger concealed in my boot.
“It was a gift.”
“I never doubted as much. If you’re going to carry a
“I never doubted as much. If you’re going to carry a dagger, you need to learn to use it.”
I frowned at him. “I know how to use it. I stick the pointy end in things I don’t like.”
That earned a cocky eyebrow lift and he picked up his duffel bag. “Ready?”
“You do know I haven’t invited you to crash at my place.”
“You’d rather stay here?” He gave an open-palmed wave that encompassed the smal apartment.
“No, that’s—” I stopped as one side of his lips twitched in a grin he couldn’t hide. He was hitting my buttons on purpose. “You’re insufferable, you know that?”
“And you’re a danger to yourself.” He grabbed my keys off the dresser where he’d tossed them when we first walked in. “Come on, let’s go.”
“Did you hire a maid?” Falin asked as he stopped in the doorway of my apartment.
I hadn’t walked much farther than the threshold myself.
The bed, which I’d put sheets on this morning, but nothing more, was now made, with a comforter I hadn’t seen since last winter tucked in and turned down. The clothes that usual y lived in a pile in front of my dresser were gone, and the books I’d left precariously stacked on different surfaces in the room were now lined up neatly on my bedside table.
The dishes in the sink were missing, and PC, who was bouncing at my knees, had a large pink bow in the thin crest of hair on the top of his head.
“Who was here?” I asked the dog as I scooped him up from the floor. I attacked the bow one-handed. Someone had come in my house. Had entered my space, violated the masculinity of my dog, and . . . and . . . cleaned?
I couldn’t get the bow loose. Picking up on my agitation, Falin stepped forward to try to help. Of course, three adultsized hands trying to attack one very smal bit of twine adultsized hands trying to attack one very smal bit of twine securing the bow didn’t actual y help. PC squirmed in my arms, also not happy about the situation.
“You hold him. I’l get the bow,” I said, shoving the dog at Falin.
“I take it you didn’t request your house cleaned?” Falin asked, his voice a whisper near my ear as I leaned over PC.
“Of course not. I—” I stopped because I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. A mug jumped out of the dish drainer and headed across my kitchen floor. I threw open my mental shields as the mug hopped up to the counter and the cabinet opened.
As my grave-sight fil ed my vision, the bow under my fingers rotted, the fibers fraying and the twine holding it in place eroding to nothing. But across the room, in my little kitchenette, I caught sight of a smal round figure as it jumped to the bottom shelf of the cabinet and used stubby arms to careful y set the mug next to the rest. Green quil like hair trailed down the creature’s back, over the counter, and fel almost to the floor.
“Ms. B?” I cal ed, which made the smal brownie turn. She hopped to the counter, then down to the floor.
“Just finishing here,” she said as she scurried across to the other counter. She grabbed another mug out of the dish drainer and headed back for the cabinet.
I stared for a moment, feeling strangely disconnected.
Then I stumbled toward the bed, which in my grave-sight sagged under the rags covering a mattress with exposed springs. “I think I need to sit down,” I mumbled.
Falin caught my wrist as I reached the bed, and tugged me upright when I would have sunk onto the sagging mattress.
“Don’t you think you should . . .” He pointed at my eyes.
Right, I didn’t want my apartment rotting away around me.
I closed my shields, annoyed at the sudden darkness pressing around me. Only then did I sink down onto the pressing around me. Only then did I sink down onto the bed. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes and said, “I’m guessing Rianna sent you?”
“That she did,” Ms. B’s surprisingly ful voice said from the kitchen. “Came to find you and discovered cream on the doorstep but no one keeping the house.”
I heard her bare feet scurrying over the hardwood floor, and then the bed shifted as she jumped up beside me. I opened my eyes to find her looking over the dingy and rotted bow that my magic had destroyed. It was large enough that she used both of her smal hands to grip the frayed material, and the way her lip protruded made me feel guilty about destroying the damn thing.