Wolves at the Door - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,25

it had the overhead tank like early toilets do, so gravity would give the flush a little more force.

Jake turned on one of the bathtub taps. It creaked, and then it clonked, and then a thin stream of water reluctantly emerged.

“I don’t know if it ever gets hot,” he said. “Now if you tell me we have to save this room because it’s so beautifully authentic…”

“Nooo. It is sad to tear out these old fixtures, but this is a gut job, no doubt,” I said. “It’s fascinating, but I would never ever bathe here.”

“So we have a house with no kitchen and a bathroom that has to be gutted,” Jasper said. “We’d better focus on those two rooms and just do what we can with the rest because those two things will cost a lot. We also need to demo the servant’s house. It’s unsalvageable.”

“Yeah, I agree with you,” I said. “If we make the kitchen and bathroom beautiful then we’ll just fix the damaged bits and call it a day.”

“Didn’t you say the faeries have to find a human bride, though?” Billie said. “You said you were going to work these bedrooms, right? At the very least. They’re just so ugly. And some of the paint downstairs is just too much. That pink in the foyer?”

“We have a lot of painting to do,” Jake said. “No way faeries have this bad of taste.”

I pouted a little. A part of me actually liked the cheerfully audacious colors downstairs. They seemed so French and so…optimistic, or something. Like I could feel the energy of how the original builders must have been excited to settle in the New World, to tame the Mississippi River, and put coffin bathtubs inside their house. But the pink would look way better if we took it down a notch.

“You’re right,” I admitted.

“Well, no time to waste,” Jake said. “Are you girls teaming up? I know you said you don’t do reno, Billie, but no better time to learn. Hel can teach you.”

Neither of us loved this idea. I worked alone. Billie was usually just the boss of her crew, and that didn’t bode well.

“I can paint,” Billie said.

“Okay, great,” I said, relieved. “We can just make you the painting queen.”

“What colors do we want?”

“Jake’s going to fight me on this, but I’m inclined to riff off the original wall colors, just make them much lighter and more subtle.”

“I am going to fight you,” Jake said.

“It’s not your house,” Billie said. “And I like that idea. All right. I’m going to peel some samples off the walls and then I’ll go to the store.”

I groaned. “You can’t just start painting, you know,” I said. “Old walls were originally painted with calcimine paint and you have to strip off the old paint and then treat it or else the old paint will mess with the new paint.”

“We already have some stripper and sealer,” Jasper said. “In the van. The last house we did needed the same treatment.”

“Oh…okay,” Billie said, clearly daunted now.

“Those room are huge,” Jasper said. “That project alone is going to take forever.”

“Well, I guess it’s all right if we get eight hundred grand for this house,” Billie said.

Oh god, I hoped I was right about that. Why did I make all these bold pronouncements?

“While you do that, I’ll be back soon. Graham rented a restored old house for the weekend before he goes home and I want to get a look at it for inspiration.” Back soon? I don’t know why I said that. I couldn’t seem to admit I was going to sleep there.

“Y’all have fun,” Billie said.

Jake and Jasper were giving me twin looks, their golden eyes possessive, pinning me in place like prey caught between them.

“Alone with an incubus?” Jake sauntered up to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m not here to toy with your heart, Hel. I’m here to win it. And I think you know that. Graham’s going back where he came from? Good. But what does that say about your future together? He’s already tied down. We’re here to stay from the first square of carpet tossed on the trash heap to the installation of a working refrigerator.”

“Sexier words never spoken,” Jasper laughed.

But…they kinda were the sexiest words. To me, at least.

“I’m just looking at the house,” I said, as Billie looked at me and I remembered that she told me it was my job not to make it weird. “Maybe overnight,” I added, in the