I probably should have got the arm thing sorted out sooner, and yes it was probably unhealthy to be relying on a magic statue who was younger than most Netflix original series to force me to act like a grownup, but it worked. And bringing her back had worked. Which meant despite all the utter bullshit and the creepy visions and the fuckups on fuckups on fuckups, I’d done one unambiguously good thing.
And I could live with that.
Epilogue
Home & Dry
It had rained for a solid week after Nimue came back. I’d have said it was hard rain, but not only was that a horrible cliché but I had a weird feeling Eve had once told me it came from an episode of Star Trek. Either way it chucked it down—cue a bunch of hand-wringing from the Met Office and a whole lot of talk about climate change.
Things had got back to normal at casa de Kate surprisingly quickly. Elise was resilient as only a being made of a resistant material could be. She started making me eat bananas again, but I was so glad to have her back I couldn’t resent it even a little bit.
Tara had been around a lot more than I’d expected. She was too posh to ever completely make sense in my flat but it was nice not to have to drag myself out to Safernoc every time I wanted to see her. I thought she’d eventually get used to the lack of servants.
I was making coffee with my arm in a cast and steadfastly refusing to let anybody help me because I liked the feeling of independence, when there was an unexpected knock at the front door. Unexpected partly because we had a buzzer, so anybody who knocked at our door had already bypassed at least one layer of security, but mostly because the only people who might have any reason to visit me were already there.
Except Ashriel.
I found him standing on the landing looking dashingly dishevelled as only an incubus who’s just come in from the rain can.
“Hi,” he said.
I very nearly slammed the door in his face, but since he’d formally walked out on Julian, holding him responsible for her screwing me over went from petty to downright dickish. “Hey.”
“So I heard that—that she was back?”
I nodded. “Elise. Demon for you.”
I’d never worked out what the hell had been going on between those two and it really wasn’t my place to ask. I took Tara through to the bedroom and gave them space to talk.
“I’m not sure I trust him,” Tara said as she laid down beside me doing her best not to look too disgusted with the terrible state of the bedlinen and poor quality of the mattress. “Whatever they may say, he’s a demon first and foremost.”
I shrugged. “He’s had my back more than once. And from what I’ve seen of Hell he pays a hefty price for cutting out the soul-sucking, so I figure he deserves at least a little bit of credit for that.”
“Grandmama would disapprove strongly. But thinking about it that might be a point in his favour.”
We cut the conversation after that. I’ve never been the most talkative sort and besides, there were far better things to do with a hot werewolf than lie around speculating about your friends’ personal lives.
When we were done, and we were sure as we could be that they were done, we made our way back out into the living room. Elise and Ashriel were standing that awkward distance apart that you stood from someone when you didn’t want to look like you were encroaching on their personal space or like you were entirely repulsed by them.
“Good chat?” I asked.
“Inconclusive,” Elise replied. Which was kind of her all over. “We have agreed that we would both like to see more of one another as the saying has it. But we also agree that things should probably progress slowly due to the variety of factors at play.”
“Mostly, Elise was just telling me how you brought her back,” Ashriel explained. “Which—well—how did you?”
I flopped down onto the sofa. “Hephaestion gave me a copy of the Book of Living Fire, some professor got in touch and said she could translate it.”
“How serendipitous.” He didn’t seem to want to let this go.
“Yeah, but I’m a big believer in the gift-horse-mouth rule.”
Ashriel folded his arms rather more sternly than I’d expected. “Ask the Trojans how well that one worked out for them. Who was the professor?”
“Someone called Dr Bright. Does it matter?”
Ashriel’s eyes shifted from come-to-bed to oh-no-you-fucking-didn’t “Nicola Bright? Call me Nick? Always smoking in a way that looks far sexier than it should in the twenty-first century?”
He was going somewhere with this, but for my own sanity I was going to avoid thinking about it for as long as possible. “That’s the one.”
“Always has a light?”
He was definitely going somewhere with this. “Fuck.”
“Afraid so.” Ashriel looked surprisingly calm. “I wasn’t sure but I had word she was in town.”
I facepalmed. “Shit. Balls. Do you know why she’s interested in me, or in Elise?”
“I’m afraid not.” He gave me what I thought was an inappropriately cheeky smile. “Working out her game is, I’m told, legendarily difficult. There’s even a song about it.”
“The cigarettes should really have given it away.” I eyerolled at myself. “Fuck.”
“I’m sure you’re both enjoying being cryptic,” Tara sat down next to me and stretched her legs across me territorially. “But what, precisely, should the cigarettes have given away?”
“You know what they used to call matches in the First World War?” I asked her.
“I’m the leader of a pack of wolves, Kate, not a secondary school history teacher.”
Elise looked worried. I was glad she hadn’t backslid on the whole showing emotion thing. “I’m afraid I also fail to comprehend the reference, Miss Kane”.
I didn’t want to say it aloud. I also didn’t have much choice. “Lucifers.”
And she did say she was going to ask me for a favour at some point.
Well fuck.
Dear Reader
Thank you so much for reading Smoke & Ashes. If you enjoyed it, please do think about recommending it to someone else. Or maybe to someone you don't like very much if you didn't.
If Smoke & Ashes is the first Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator book you've picked up, and you have a particular interest in reading more books about a disaster lesbian and her supernaturally powerful ladyfriends, you might also like the rest of the series—Iron & Velvet, Shadows & Dreams, and Fire & Water.
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About the Author
Alexis Hall was born in 1764 and sustains his unnatural existence by the usual methods of drinking blood, avoiding sunlight, and brooding. He writes fiction from deep within a crumbling mansion with one wrist pressed to his forehead.