Call of Water (Madame Tan's Freakshow #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,17
teeth.
“What does she want? Why are they here?”
“That I wish to know. This city is mine. As long as you and I remain here, we are supposed to stay safe. If things have changed, I was not informed.” He opened the side of his custom-made suit jacket, getting a new cigarette out from the chest pocket. It trembled slightly in his fingers.
“Well, maybe that’s what they came here for?” Zeph offered. “To inform you of some changes?”
“Then why stalk you, instead of coming to me?”
“Maybe that’s what they’ll do next? Come to you?”
Lero nodded, lighting the cigarette.
“Whatever it is that Ghata wants, her business is with me. She can’t touch you.” Taking a long pull at the cigarette, he leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment, as if letting the calmness of the womora spread through his system while its smoke permeated his lungs. “Still, you need to be careful, Zeph.”
“I told you I am.” Zeph appreciated Lero’s concern for his wellbeing, however the decades of listening to the same old warnings made them sound more like nagging at this point.
“Why do you need a day off tomorrow?” Lero opened his eyes, nailing him to the spot with his questioning gaze once again.
“I said it’s personal.” Zeph shifted uncomfortably. “Since when do I have to tell you how I’m planning to spend my days off.”
“Since you were six years old,” Lero deadpanned.
“Lero, I’m no longer six.” Zeph huffed, his patience wearing thin. “I’m forty-seven, for fuck’s sake, which would be a very mature age for a human, you know.”
“For a human.” Lero’s voice hardened to granite. “Not for us. I am twice your age, and you act barely half of yours,” he pronounced every word slowly, loading it with weight and meaning. “So, when I ask you to listen to me, you do it. Especially now that bracks are in the area, for whatever fucking reason!”
A flash of the afternoon sun appeared to reach into the dark court, reflecting blood red in Lero’s glare.
“Do you understand, Zeph? Ghata knows I care about you. I don’t want anything to happen to you because she may get the idea to use you against me. Is that clear?”
“Yes.” Zeph didn’t mean for his reply to sound as harsh as it did, but the irritation at limits being imposed on him got the worse of him. “I’ll be careful. Promise.” He made an effort to soften his voice this time.
“Are you planning to spend tomorrow with that girl?”
“Her name is Ivy,” Zeph muttered, raking his fingers through his hair. “And yes. I’m meeting her at ten.”
“She is a human.”
“Of course she is!” The irritation flared up again. “What else could she be? There are no Fae girls, are there?”
“Not in this world,” Lero conceded. “But a human female would never be a suitable partner for a Fae.”
“Well,” Zeph let the sarcasm instill his voice, “Since the pickings are slim in terms of Fae partners here—”
“I mean it, Zeph,” Lero interrupted gruffly. “Humans live much shorter lives. And they are just...” He winced. “Much weaker, in every sense. There aren’t many of them—if any at all—that would be capable of dealing with the challenges of spending a lifetime with us.”
“I know.”
These kind of warnings Zeph had been hearing ever since he had brought home a girl from his high school and introduced her to Lero as his girlfriend. Impeccably polite while she was there, Lero nearly lost it once she’d left after dinner.
Humans were weaker, physically and emotionally, Lero had passionately explained to him then. Most did not allow in their minds for a possibility of sentient beings other than themselves populating their world. And in a way, they were right—Zeph and Lero were not of this world. Technically, they did not belong here at all.
They came when Zeph was six, taking refuge here more than four decades ago. Zeph was an orphan, with nowhere to go, and Lero was on the run from the consequences of a murderous rampage he might have taken part in during a fit of Moon Madness.
Once Fae left Nerifir—their world—there was no way back. Bracks were the only species capable of travelling between the dimensions. And even then, they would never make it to the same time and place twice. The two worlds shifted constantly, finding new touching points and abandoning others, making it impossible to come back to the same “what” and “when” that one had left behind.