her heels clicked against marble. The Dalroyle Building was pleasantly aged, its outside a granite monument to Art Deco and its inside worn but still shining with faded magnificence. The elevator worked, ancient and wheezing with complaints, and the brass wall sconces were restrained flowers. In some places they’d laid down cheap carpet, but the foyer was still marble and soft lighting, the restaurant opening off to one side exhaling a thin thread of coffee and roasted garlic.
“Why here?” Gallow trudged behind her like a clodhopping brughnie, though one of their ilk would have been following its nose to the garlic. And would probably receive a bite or two for its pains, a thought that cheered Robin immensely.
They had visited the bus station, where she gazed longingly at the ticket window while he stored his bag in one of the lockers. Now he wore his knives, but there was no sign of the pike he carried.
And he was asking her why here. Did he think her entirely brainless? “Because this is where I’ve led you.” She tapped down the hall toward the stairs. “If word has slipped out that I was carrying… well, any common hiding place would not be safe.”
“This is a hiding place? It’s gaudy.”
It is not. A sidhe who lived as he did—among mortals, in a trailer, perhaps he found anything else too luxurious. Maybe he hated Court’s deadly comforts, and any pleasure or magnificence would irritate him. “It’s secure.” And it has quite a few exits.
“This? Secure?”
“Very.” She pushed the stairwell door open, looked carefully through. Good. Clear, and no pursuit I can sense.
“What makes it secure?”
Could he truly not tell? “What do you smell?”
He inhaled deeply, coughed. Perhaps his senses had been dulled by living among mortals for so long, or perhaps she had grown so accustomed to danger, the slight glamour many predators employed unraveled under her attention.
“Christ.” He sounded a little pale now. “It reeks of brimstone.”
Only if you’re looking to smell danger. “Sometimes. There are kobold swellings in the basement, and a nest atop.”
“A nest?”
“Harpies. There’s good prey here, for them.” Among other things, some sidhe and some not. None of them, though, take kindly to Unseelie poaching upon their hunting-grounds. Her fingers ran lightly over the railing, layers of paint applied again and again chipping and cracking, a scaled hide. Come nightfall the stairwell would be dangerous, too, unless one was quick and lightfooted.
“That’s why you waited for midmorning.” Breathless now, as he climbed the stairs behind her. “Even nestguard kobolding won’t be awake yet, and the harpies—”
“They doze, this time of day.” Other things are awake. Her calves burned, but she did not slow. “At least, they generally do.”
“You’re insane.”
I won’t dignify that with a response. Though several burned and trembled inside her mouth, crowding for release. Her throat rasped with denying the song, too. Up the steps, quickly but not so quickly as to tire. She would need all her speed, soon.
The stairs stretched up, and up, twelve flights and one more. That was where she halted, and spread her hand against a fire door. The paint was a different vomitous green than the others, just a shade lighter.
To a mortal, there would be simply a blank wall. Unless whatever lay behind it was hungry.
She concentrated, and found, to her relief, that the tingle of too-dangerous-to-risk did not run along her nerves. “Come.”
“No.” He caught at her arm again. “I’ll go first. I’m to keep you alive.”
“Only until you know I have the cure.” Then it’s a quick knifing, and back to Summer with your prize. Their faint kinship would not make him hesitate, not when her death was his ticket back to Court.
Besides, he did not seem the hesitating sort. And he had served Summer once. She knew better than to think such a service was easily cast aside.
Especially for a man.
“You think me faithless, Ragged?” He didn’t sound even slightly insulted, merely curious.
What had Daisy seen in him? Had she softened him, or had her death turned all of him to bitterness, as it had done for Robin? He did not speak on his grief, and she would not either. So she settled for the truth. “I think you a man.”
“Is that an insult?”
“No.” Anything male is dragged around by its breeches, and she holds the string attached to them. Besides, you served. You need only a look or a tone to understand what she wishes done with me. As do I. She touched the doorknob, found