and re-gifting that would probably lead to awkward questions.” I shoved the box slightly toward him.
“You never bore me, my dear plum pudding. For someone with eternity ahead, that is a treasure.”
I thought more than a little about Eternity as I prepared for the trip to Elphame. Unlike my visits to Beatrice or my mother, this trip was a multi-day affair. Oddly, perhaps, time between the worlds was uneven. My first stay there had been a month, but in New Orleans a mere three hours passed.
Going there did not mean I missed anything at home. My city was not left unpatrolled, and it wasn’t as if the police did nothing. New Orleans had reconfigured their entire force. They protected the city, watched for the draugr and aided the citizens.
Still I was, for reasons that I was not pleased to admit, anxious.
Witches from the Outs were not a good fit for royal courts. I mean, sure I coped with the draugr queen’s soiree but that was because I figured I’d get to threaten or stab someone. Eli repeatedly stressed that neither of those were advisable at the Yule celebration with his uncle, the king of the fae.
Tonight, though, Eli and I were having a “date-night.” A few hours locked away in my home, surrounded by fight dummies and weapons. It wasn’t as romantic as his place, but it was my home. It was important to both of us that we spend time here, too.
I wasn’t the world’s best date, though, much to my frustration. My nerves were frayed, and it was making me filter-free. “What if I glare at him? Is that—”
“A terrible idea?” Eli said. “Yes, it is.”
“Can I hex him?”
“No.”
“Make a bargain?”
“No!” Eli gave me a look that everyone in my life did from time to time. It usually meant I was a lousy patient, but . . .
“I’m hungry.” I was both pleased to realize why I felt surlier than usual and surlier because I had the distinct feeling that a good bottle of gin wasn’t going to fix this.
Alice wasn’t there, and the martini shaker was still empty. Draining her energy had me on restriction, and I still couldn’t bring myself to ask anyone else. I knew my friends would tap a vein for me, but I just . . . couldn’t.
“I swore I’d die before I become like a draugr,” I said, admitting the thing that had been plaguing me more and more. I’d survived an attempt on my life a few times, bad luck, pretending to be more human than I was, but the injection of venom a few months ago was life-changing.
Eli walked out of my apartment without a word.
When he returned, he had a bag with the top of a dusty bottle of whisky sticking out.
He pulled the bottle out and put it on my coffee table with more force than he would’ve if he were calm. Then, he looked at me.
“What?”
“If I didn’t know how hard this was for you, I’d accuse you of trying to avoid my home country,” he started. He opened a bag again and pulled out two glasses.
When I opened my mouth to object, he caught my hand. “You are impossible, Geneviève Crowe. Difficult to get to know. Fierce to the point of recklessness. But you are not a draugr. You are not monstrous, by any definition.”
I nodded because what could I say? I knew he believed it, but sometimes I felt monstrous. I had draugr eyes, and I could flow. I was the only one of my kind, and the dead came to me at my will. The faery king called me things like “death” or “dead witch,” and more than a few people thought I ought to be dead because of being a witch.
I didn’t exactly feel loveable.
He poured whisky into both glasses.
Then Eli reached in the bag again, and when I saw what he held I was standing on the other side of the room. A small, gleaming knife. Mother of pearl handle. Thin blade. Watching me the whole time, he pushed up his sleeve and slid the blade over his forearm.
He turned his arm so the cut was over a glass. Still holding my gaze, he said, “Given freely.”
“Eli . . .” My mind said no, but my teeth were there to remind me that I was less witch than I used to be.
I shook my head no even as I stepped closer, watching blood—his blood, fae blood—drip into my glass.