A Local Habitation
Page 20

“Come back later!” I shouted, sitting upright and trying to finger-comb my hair over my ears. I could pass for human long enough to slam the door, if I could get my hair to behave. “I’m not decent!”
The sound of muffled laughter drifted through the door. “I didn’t know decency was a requirement for breakfast.”
“Alex?” I lowered my hands, scooting out of the bed and reaching for the hotel robe. “What are you doing here?”
“Currently? Shouting through your hotel room door. I brought breakfast.”
“Yes, but what are you doing here?” I shrugged into the robe, tying it shut as I moved to open the door. “I don’t remember ordering room service.”
Alex smiled, holding up a paper bag that smelled of eggs and melting cheese. He had a tray in the other hand, with two large paper coffee cups prominently displayed. My stomach rumbled. “Ordering, no, but needing to? Definitely yes. I told you I’d see you at breakfast.”
“I guess you did,” I said, and held the door wider. “Come on in.” I was taking a chance by asking a man I barely knew into my hotel room, but somehow I doubted that anyone who could be incapacitated with a cafeteria door was going to be much of a threat. If he’d been a pureblood, I might have thought differently. I’d take my chances against another changeling, even one whose bloodline I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
“Nice digs,” said Alex, walking past me. I watched him as I closed the door. He was clearly one of Faerie’s rare morning people, making a tidy contrast to my own bedraggled and half-awake self. I was in robe, oversized T-shirt, and socks, with my uncombed hair raked unevenly over my ears. Suddenly, I found myself wishing desperately for some excuse to sneak off for a shower and a change of clothes.
“Luna booked our rooms,” I said, giving my hair another swipe with my fingers. “I probably wouldn’t have asked for anything this nice.”
“Well, then, my compliments to the Duchess.” Alex put the tray down on the desk, opening the bag. “Egg and ham croissant, or egg and sausage croissant? Please don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian. I’d die of embarrassment.”
“I am definitely not a vegetarian. Can I get the egg and ham?”
“Egg and ham it is.” He tossed a waxed paper-wrapped breakfast sandwich toward me, and I caught it easily, sitting down on the edge of the bed as I did. Alex beamed. “Nice reflexes. How do you take your coffee?”
“Black is fine.”
He walked over to offer me one of the cups. “Sleep well?”
“Fairly,” I said, sipping the coffee. It was hot, strong, and about the most wonderful thing I could have wished for. I let my shoulders relax. “You?”
“It was a good night.” He walked back to the desk, picking up the second cup.
Sipping at my coffee again, I watched him. He looked perfectly comfortable. Whatever was bothering Jan, it didn’t seem to have touched him at all. “So how’re things back at ALH?”
“Oh, the usual. Mornings are essentially downtime—once the graveyard shift goes home, things slow down. I probably won’t get paged to fix anything for a few hours.”
“What is it that you do, exactly?”
“System maintenance. I’m a code monkey.” Seeing my blank expression, Alex explained, “I tell the computers what to do, and when they do something they’re not supposed to, I correct their instructions.”
“And Terrie? She does the same thing?”
“Pretty much. She works nights and I work days, but our jobs are essentially the same.” Alex quirked a smile, one eyebrow raising. “Just so we’re clear, has breakfast suddenly turned into a game of twenty questions? Because if it has, I think it’s only fair that we both play.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll answer yours if you’ll answer mine.”
“Fair enough.” I put my coffee down next to the clock, unwrapping my sandwich. “Start from the top. January O’Leary. What do you know about her?”
“A lot, considering I’ve been working for her for about twelve years. She’s focused. I mean, scary- focused. Once she starts a project, she sticks with it until it’s finished or until she’s managed to beat every possible solution into the ground. She can get a little twitchy when she doesn’t have a handle on things, but she means well. Do you have a boyfriend?”
I nearly choked on my sandwich. Swallowing, I managed, “What?”
“I answered one for you, now you get to answer one for me. Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Not right now,” I said, cheeks starting to burn. I coughed to clear my throat and said, “Elliot. He does what around here, exactly?”
“He’s the County seneschal. He does administrative stuff, like the bills and talking Riordan’s people out of challenging us to single combat in the middle of the local computer store. He’s been with Jan for like thirty years. What’s the deal with your sidekick?”
“Quentin’s a foster from Shadowed Hills. Duke Torquill asked me to bring him along, since this is a pretty straightforward diplomatic job.”
A shadow crossed his face, there and gone before I could identify it. “Straightforward,” he said. “Right.”
“Is it going to do me any good to ask what that look was for?”
His grin was only a little bit forced. “Nope. Your question.”
“All right: April.”
Alex blinked. “April?”
“Sylvester didn’t say anything about Jan having a daughter. What’s the situation there?”
“April is . . . a special case. She’s adopted. Sort of.” Seeing my blank expression, he shrugged, and said, “She’s a Dryad.”
This time, there was no “nearly”; I literally choked on my coffee, coughing for several minutes before I managed to croak out a startled, “What?”
“She’s a Dryad.”
“How does that even work?” Most Dryads are sweet, reclusive bimbos who avoid people whenever possible, preferring the company of woodland fauna and other Dryads. They’re not the sharpest crayons in the box. Most of them probably don’t even realize the box exists.
“It’s a long story, and it happened before I got here, so it’s sort of secondhand . . .” Alex looked at my expression and continued without missing a beat, “But I guess I can try. April was an oak Dryad. She lived in a proper Grove and everything, with about a dozen others. Then some developers bulldozed the place—including her tree—to put up condos.”