growing on me, although last week she’d tried to be helpful and used steel wool on one of my knives. I’d explained that I liked the guy who sold me my last sword more than her. I certainly liked my actual friends better, but Alice waved all of those facts away.
“I’m going to do your face.” She opened her bag, designer and expensive, and started pulling out her torture devices. “I was afraid you’d look terrible for the party.”
“The party was last night,” I admitted. Then I closed my eyes, pretended not to be able to think of all the ways my life could be better if I simply stabbed Alice. She took more energy than anyone had a right to do, but my choices were either kill her or keep an eye on her.
Only one of those was actually an option.
“I don’t understand what Eli sees in you,” Alice said, staring at me as if I had become a math problem she might could solve. “Let’s at least get some eyeliner and rouge—”
“Alice, I was injured. I lost a lot of blood and—”
“That’s why you look so pale!” She thrust her wrist between my lips, scraped the skin on my teeth. “Here. Top off.”
I shoved her away, hard enough that she stumbled, even as my teeth descended to bite. “Stop that. I don’t need the taste of your perfume in my mouth.”
My so-called best friend pouted. Perfectly outlined, perfectly painted, smudge free lips jutted out like a child denied a treat.
“I’d be sad if you died, you know?” Alice flopped onto the bed beside my feet. “Tres gets impatient with me. And Beatrice is scary. And”—she darted a guilty look toward the doorway—“I don’t think Eli even likes me.”
“You belonged to a hate group opposed to him,” I pointed out once my teeth retracted. “And you tried to kill me. He likes me.”
“I said I was sorry!” Alice sounded genuinely upset. “And no one told me SAFARI was a hate group.”
“It’s called the Society Against Fae and Reanimated Individuals. That wasn’t a clue?”
Alice patted my feet through the duvet. “I wasn’t enlightened then. I am now. . . but Eli is still so grumpy with me. I like you, now.”
“Alice, honey,” I said, keeping my voice very level. “You tried to kill me just a few months ago. To a faery, that was yesterday.”
She stared, blinked, and finally whispered, “He time travels?”
I opened my mouth, and then I closed it without saying a word. What was there to say? If she wasn’t really as gullible as she appeared, this was the longest con ever. Her stepson, Tres, swore she’d been exactly the same since they were in school together.
Yeah. She went to the same college with him and then married his dad. Of course, my own parents were a special sort of wrong, too. My deadbeat dad wasn’t even alive, much less anywhere within range of my mother’s age, when I was conceived.
Alice wandered away while I was thinking. Honestly, I wasn’t recovered enough to deal with her. I could hear her, presumably washing her wrist from the sounds of the bathroom sink.
“She’s willing to help you,” Eli said when he walked in. “I had her delivered here—”
“She’s not a take-out meal.”
He leaned in the doorway, giving me enough space that I figured I must be looking less like death. He was polite when I was healing, pushy when I was well or bleeding.
“Do we even know that blood would help?” I tried to stand, not quite pushing to my feet but sitting upright and swinging my feet to the floor. I was preparing.
Eli came to my side as I stood, not infantilizing me but near enough to catch me when I tumbled—which I would’ve if he wasn’t there. He’d swept me into his arms, cradling me for a moment. “You are the least obedient patient I’ve met, Geneviève.”
“I waited for you before trying to stand.” I rested my head on his shoulder.
He said nothing, and we stayed there listening to singing from elsewhere in the house. Eli and I exchanged a surprised look. It was the sort of voice that should be immortalized, twangy enough to burn up country music charts and soulful enough to make sinners repent.
“That’s Alice?”
“I had no idea.”
We stayed there, listening. Perhaps it sounded a little better because the acoustics were so phenomenal here, but either way, she could sing. I enjoyed it. Eli obviously did, too. He began to waltz, as if we