He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “What do you mean?”
“Zrakovi went straight to Quince Randolph.” I told him about the dream visit from my non-husband, and my follow-up call to Eugenie.
“Maybe it wasn’t Zrakovi,” Alex said. “Maybe Randolph pulled the information from you since you share your secret elven mating bond.” He managed to put an extra dose of snark into those last four words. He’d better watch his step; I was the queen of snark and he couldn’t out-snipe me even on his best day. I could skewer him and smoke him on a spit.
“Alex.” I took my most patient tone. “Rand told me he learned about it from Zrakovi.” I paused. “That was right before he chastised me for not telling him myself since he and I were going to be raising this child as our own.”
Heh. That got his attention, and his brows lowered in an appropriately outraged expression. “Is he fucking nuts?”
We both pondered that a few seconds, but the answer was an obvious yes. “Look,” I finally said. “He’s going to be an ass, and that’s no surprise.” What I wanted from Alex was an apology, damn it. “Just admit that you misjudged how Zrakovi would react, apologize for putting Eugenie in an awkward position where Rand heard about the pregnancy from someone besides her, and we can move on to damage control.”
I thought I was being mature about the whole thing. An apology wasn’t too much to ask for, although he really should apologize to Eugenie.
His chocolate-brown eyes hardened. “I’m sorry that Eugenie got put in a tough situation by Rand, but I won’t apologize for doing the right thing. That awkward conversation with Randolph would’ve happened eventually anyway because he’s an entitled jerk. How Willem reacted was out of my control.”
Willem? Well, wasn’t that chummy.
I examined the subtle pattern in the carpet and took a deep breath. To let this disagreement escalate into a full-blown fight would be taking the easy path. We’d both say things we couldn’t take back, things we’d have to work to overcome, maybe even things we couldn’t overcome. “Weigh your battles and then use everything you’ve got to win the ones worth fighting,” Gerry used to tell me when I’d be impatient or fly off the handle at something insignificant.
This wasn’t a battle I wanted to fight. We didn’t disagree in principle, only in the timing and execution.
“Okay.” I got up and pulled my interrogation chair back to the desk, stopping to look at the dense curtain of snowflakes illuminated by the light from my window. Darkness had fallen, but I could barely see the streetlights below.
Suspicion infused Alex’s voice. “Okay? That’s it?”
I looked back at him and smiled. “That’s it. We disagree. It’s done. We’ll deal with whatever comes next.”
He stood up, brows lowered over squinty eyes. “Did Lafitte ply you with brandy, or have the body snatchers been here?”
I laughed. “No brandy and no body snatchers.” I pondered whether or not to tell him about Christof being at Jean’s house and about my summoning the fugitive Adrian, but decided against it. I didn’t know what the Christof thing meant, I’d promised Adrian that I wouldn’t turn him in, and despite my new and improved maturity, Alex had lost a bit of ground with me in the trust department.
It wasn’t fair for me to tell him something with potential impact on prete politics and ask him to keep it to himself. In matters of keeping my secrets versus supporting the Elders, especially Zrakovi, I’d always lose. It’s what made Alex good at his job, and that sense of responsibility was one of the things I loved about him most of the time. The rest of the time, I’d just have to live with it. Or keep my own secrets, as long as they didn’t hurt anyone.
When he saw that I really didn’t plan to start a fight, his tension level went down, which in turn helped me relax. I hadn’t refreshed my mojo bag in a while, which meant a trip to the unheated house in Lakeview, assuming I could get there in the snow. I needed to set up a transport from the Monteleone to my house.
“Where is your oversize French babysitting charge?” Alex pulled a bottle of water out of the minibar. “I half expected him to be here in your room.”
Alex sat on the cream-colored upholstered chair wedged into the corner, which left me the bed or the interrogation chair. I sat on the bed; too bad the Elders hadn’t gotten me a suite like Jean’s, complete with wet bar, entertainment area, and two windows big enough to drive a bus through.
“He’s still in Old Barataria, where it’s warm. If he’s smart, he’ll stay there until the snow melts. Forget Jean. You said you had something else to tell me.”