With a grunt, he picked the reel up and hefted it out of the bushes. Making sure he had a good grip on the thing, he went on a discus-thrower spin and let the fifty-pound holder with its green hose go flying—
Through the air with the greatest of ease.
Or . . . not really. It was as aerodynamic as an armchair, but it got the job done, crashing through the lead-lined glass windows of his father’s study, shattering things, creating a jagged hole about four feet in diameter.
Looked kind of like a shark’s mouth, with all the sharp parts in a bad circle. But at least he didn’t have to climb through the mansion’s new entry. Dematerializing into the house through the doorway he’d created, he re-formed just as Marquist came tooling in from some back room, obviously called by the sound of breaking glass.
The male was out of uniform. And dressed in one of Altamere’s handmade suits.
He was also wearing one of Boone’s father’s formal dress coats. “Nice outfit,” Boone remarked as he stalked off for the stairs.
As he passed the butler, he made sure he clipped Marquist with the same shoulder he’d tried on the door.
“I’ll see you in about ten minutes,” he said as the other male scrambled to keep his balance, all bowling pin and then some. “And I know you’ll get that hole fixed, given the liberties you’ve taken with the front door.”
Hitting the carpeted steps two at a time, Boone’s rage grew inside his chest and threw out tentacles, the toxic nastiness ushering away the peaceful glow he’d found with Helania. And courtesy of the anger, a part of him wanted to go down to the Audience House right now, just so he could beat the bastard butler there. But he was not going to walk in smelling like his female.
What he and Helania had done had been private—and that would have been true whether or not he was involved in that investigation of Butch’s.
When he got to his suite, he wondered whether he was going to have to bust open his own door, but things unlatched easy-peasy.
Inside, he didn’t waste time. Shower. Shave. Teeth brushing. He considered putting on a suit. But in the end, he yanked on the leathers and the weapons he wore out into the field.
Made sense. Given that he was going to war.
* * *
Helania took a long, leisurely shower, lingering over her shampoo-and-conditioner routine, taking her time with her soap, even sitting down in the tub and leaning back to let the warm rain fall on her body.
She was impossibly relaxed, her muscles and her bones limp, her skin glowing, her blood lazy in her veins. Which was not to say she didn’t have some aches and pains. The insides of her thighs twinged depending on her leg position; her core was a little raw; her lower back stiff.
All of it just made her smile.
So well earned, and what exercise. She looked forward to more of those kinds of workouts.
When the hot water finally ran out and things went from toasty to room temperature, she had no choice but to get out and towel off. Winding herself up in terry cloth, she glanced through the open door of the bathroom and eyed the cloak that she wore to Pyre.
On any other night, she would have gotten dressed in her black clothes, covered herself with those heavy folds, and headed downtown to watch the crowd. But she only had four hours until she was supposed to meet Boone and his friends at that all-night diner and she had work she had to do for her freelance editing job.
Trading the damp towel for a thick blue bathrobe, she went into her bedroom and stared down at the bare mattress. She’d thrown the quilt and the sheets in the washer, and as she’d stuffed the load in and hit things with some Tide, she had taken a subtle pride in the fact that she and her lover had messed things up.
She had a lover.
Not a boyfriend she’d talked herself into taking on, like a piece of luggage on a walking trip, but a full-fledged sexual relationship that was not a one-night stand.
Isobel would be so proud of her.
Frowning, Helania went back out to the little table by her galley kitchen. Sitting in the chair she’d tried to drape Boone’s jacket over, she pulled her laptop in front of her and opened the screen. Turning things on, she was aware of