few decades old, and swallowed a slightly hysterical giggle. I was standing in the middle of a real live cliché. The only thing missing was getting murdered in my sleep, but who knew—there was still time for that.
Ruse strolled up to the reception desk with its patchy varnish and shot one of his smooth grins at the woman there, who had bags under her eyes big enough to hold spare change. “Hello there, darling,” he said in the same voice he’d used on the cab driver.
The woman gave us a look of utter boredom, but as Ruse drew out the companionable chitchat, a friendly warmth came into her eyes. By the time he asked her for “two rooms, side-by-side, with an adjoining door if you’ve got that,” she was so happy to help that she handed him two keys off the wall without the slightest hint of skepticism about a young couple asking for completely separate rooms.
“We could have made do with one,” I said to him after we’d stepped back outside. “It’s not as if the three of you need beds.”
Ruse clucked his tongue at me. “I was respecting your privacy. Besides, I need to get my fix of late night cable TV, and I wouldn’t want to keep you up.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but the truth was, I did feel better having a little space that the shadowkind weren’t invading. And even if the incubus and I were on better terms now, I wasn’t interested in doing anything other than sleeping tonight. As we reached our rooms, a yawn stretched my jaw.
“Let’s have a look at them before I decide which is mine,” I said.
There wasn’t exactly much to choose between. Both boasted similar flower-print curtains that were more gray than any other color now, moth-bitten carpets, and bed covers dappled with faint stains bleach hadn’t quite eliminated. A chlorine-y scent clung to them, but at least that meant they should be somewhat sanitary if not pretty to look at.
The first room had a slightly larger TV, so I left that one to Ruse and set my bags down on the bed in the other room. Thorn followed me in through the adjoining doorway. He closed the door and studied the knob.
“We should leave this unlocked on both sides,” he said. “None of us will disturb you unless there’s urgent need—but if we should have to escape in a rush…”
“No argument here.” I sat down on the end of the bed and eased open my purse. Pickle sprang out with a distressed but ineffectual flapping of his clipped wings. He shot a steely glare at the purse, as if it were to blame for his troubles, and bounded into the bathroom to put as much distance between it and him as he could.
Thorn prowled through the room, eyeing every wall, corner, and piece of furniture for signs of danger, going as far as swatting at a spiderweb so tattered I suspected the spider had abandoned it months ago.
“I’m pretty sure there aren’t any actual serial killers hiding under the bed,” I teased, but that only prompted him to actually check under the bed just in case.
While he occupied himself with that, I slid the deadbolt on the outer door into place and went into the bathroom to fill up a glass of water for Pickle. The little dragon took a sip, allowed me to stroke his neck a few times, and then tugged one of the towels into the tub to make a fuzzy nest for himself.
When I came back out, Thorn was still there, now standing near the door between our rooms. As I flopped down where I’d been sitting before, he stayed in place, his pose oddly hesitant.
“M’lady,” he said, and paused. When I lifted my head to meet his gaze, he cleared his throat and glanced briefly at the floor before continuing.
“When we first came to you, I intended to keep you out of danger. I didn’t anticipate that our presence would propel you so much further into it. You have lost your home, most of your belongings, been drugged once and nearly captured twice in a span of three days…”
“I do remember all that,” I said when he trailed off. “I was there.”
He made a frustrated sound, his hands clenching. His voice came out even gruffer than usual. “I’m trying to say that I apologize for misjudging the threat—and that you may have been right to wish us gone in the beginning.