“Oh good.” She cut me off. “That would be terribly awkward. He’s been a patron here before I even started, which feels so long ago. But I have yet to get him in my bed. I will, though. I am determined.” She shimmied her shoulders. “Grrr. Just to have one night with that man.”
“Rosie.”
“He’s terrifying and so sexually charged. Gods, he must know how to fuck… He makes my brain melt. He has to be fae, right? There’s no way he can be human.”
“Rosie!”
She exhaled, shaking her head. “See? That man fries my brain.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.” Her back-length, dyed red hair slid over her shoulders. “He left a couple of hours ago, saying he had something to do. Practically demanded Madam post one of her guards at your door to watch over you. He was very insistent. You do not order Madam in her house, though. They were about to have a brawl when I volunteered.” Her lids tapered, and she paused for a moment. “You sure there is nothing between you?”
“No.” I scoffed, my head waggling. “Fuck no. Definitely not. Absolutely definitely not.”
She tapped a painted fingernail against her teeth, her gaze rolling over me, her lips puckering. “Mmmm-hmm.”
I glanced to the side, feeling chagrin flame my skin—good thing no one could see it through the dirt and blood.
“What is that smell? Ohhhh.” Her nose wrinkled as she bent down to pick up the bowl on the floor. “I’ll take this out, get the bath ready, and come back for you, all right?”
“You don’t have to do that.” I tried to stop her from retrieving my vomit. “It’s my mess.”
“Please, luv.” She rolled her eyes, stepping back with the basin in her hands. “If you think a little vomit even fazes me, you have no idea what I’ve had to clean up here.” She arched her perfectly curved eyebrow, winking at me before her heeled boots clunked across the floor as she headed for the door. “I’ll see if I can scrounge up a painkiller. I’ll be back in a few.”
The door clinked after her exit, and my shoulders dropped with fatigue. My frame curled back up on the bed, needing to sleep and hide from the pain.
Shutting my eyes, my mind buzzed with the information she told me.
Warwick and I had been free barely a few hours, so what had him running out of here so early? Weren’t we supposed to be hiding? What was he doing?
The questions swirled around in my head, falling down the black hole as my body succumbed to sleep again.
Tipping my head back, the cool water lapped just below my breasts as the liquid slowly sloshed around the old claw tub. I had been in here for at least an hour. Rosie already changed the water once because of the blood and dirt that had come off me the first round. Plumbing worked for the most part in the Savage Lands, but only cold water came out of the pipes and not always frequently, according to my new friend. She brought buckets of hot water up from the kitchen to get it warm enough to scrub my body and matted hair before leaving me to soak.
She had let me sleep most of the afternoon, stirring me around four so I could get the bath before the house woke up. This world woke with the darkness. Fae were naturally nocturnal but had conformed to rules of human society, fitting into our world unnoticed at one time. It was still this way in most places, but in this seedy world, they clearly preferred the darkness to veil their deeds. Opening their arms and curling their fingers, they beckoned the disheartened folks coming off their shifts who wanted to escape from life.
“It’s hard to resist the call of the night when the day is so brutal and cruel. Getting lost in the pleasure of flesh, drink, drugs, and greed is a mistress no human or fae can resist,” Rosie had told me before she left. “Be careful, luv, it is an easy hole to fall down, especially with that man around.” She blew me a kiss and shut the door.
Rosie was a lot, but she had been very kind to me. I kept forgetting what she did for a living. Where I was. In the daylight, the house was still quiet, most still sleeping, slowly coming to life again.
It was a struggle to be here without judging everyone I saw and not