Tear Down Heaven: Urban Fantasy Action with Witches and Demons, page 39
He insisted the changes were for Mara’s sake, that a man seeking to woo a queen couldn’t possibly do so while looking like a starved vagabond, but Bex suspected that Adrian had a great deal to with it. He’d been stuffing food into Leander like a worried grandmother from the moment his brother arrived in Seattle. She wasn’t sure if it was brotherly affection or allowing anyone to be underfed in his presence went against Adrian’s nature as a Witch of the Flesh, but Leander was looking much better for it. He was also looking impatient, so Bex turned all the way around and gave him her full attention.
“What’s up?”
“I would like to ask a favor, if I may,” the prince said, looking up at Bex with mirrored eyes that would never stop creeping her out.
“Name it,” she told him. “We owe you big time for fixing our home.”
“That is good to hear,” the prince replied. “Because your home is what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m about to begin renovations on the topmost story, and I was wondering if you’d be willing to let me use the master suite.”
“The master suite?” Bex repeated, crossing her arms over her chest. “You mean my master suite?”
“That would be why I’m asking you instead of someone else,” the prince answered drily.
It made sense when he put it that way, but, “Didn’t Adrian already build you a whole bedroom in his loft?”
“My youngest brother has been most hospitable,” Leander acknowledged. “But while my new room is perfectly adequate, I find living in a witchwood to be… emotionally unpleasant. I’d much rather be here where I can’t feel the forest, and where I’m closer to Mara.”
As always when he said her name, Leander’s face softened, making him look almost handsome. “I’d like to be as close as possible when she wakes up,” he continued. “I’d also like a private bathroom, and since you never seem to spend the night in your own room anymore these days, I thought it’d be more practical if we switched.”
By the time he finished, Bex’s face was so hot, she was shocked she hadn’t burst into flames. Embarrassment aside, though, Leander had a point. Since Adrian had brought her home after their victory in Heaven, he and Bex had gotten much closer. So close that she couldn’t actually remember the last time she’d used her suite at the top of the RV. Her guitar, toiletries, and all her clothes had already migrated over to Adrian’s. The only things left in her room at this point were the furniture and the first aid kit she no longer needed to use.
“I don’t have a problem if you want to live in the RV,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck in an attempt to hide how flushed her face still was. “You’re here all the time anyway, so it’s definitely more practical, but I should probably ask Adrian if he’s okay with it first.”
“I’m sure he won’t mind,” Leander replied with utmost confidence as he walked back to Mara’s bedside. “I’ll go ahead and start on the renovations tomorrow. Make sure you move anything you don’t want crushed out of the way before then. Stretched space has a low tolerance for preserving obstacles.”
“You could wait until I actually say ‘yes’ first,” Bex called after him, but he was already making himself comfortable in his chair, so of course her complaint was ignored.
Muttering under her breath about arrogant princes, she turned around and stomped up the stairs, heading through the ground floor of the RV, which still looked pretty much the same as it had before. Leander hadn’t cared about this level nearly as much as he had about the place where Mara would be, so he’d just repaired things back to the way they’d been originally. This included Norma, who was right back in her usual seat up in the driver’s cab, humming off-key to herself as she happily read through the new road atlas Iggs had bought for her. She greeted Bex with a cheerful “Howdy!” as the queen walked by, but otherwise paid no attention as Bex opened the aluminum side door and stepped out into the forest.
Even after all these weeks, it felt amazingly good to be home. It was now full-on winter in Seattle, but all the rain and cold in the world couldn’t make Adrian’s Blackwood look anything less than magical. Even the drips building up on the branches over her head looked like crystal beads, and the air smelled of rain and woodsmoke. Bex found it all incredibly cozy, though the small group of demons shivering in a line on the new path that led up to the clearing didn’t look like they agreed.
Since they all shared a portion of her divine presence, every demon in the world had felt it when Ishtar left. Bex had worried that would be a crushing problem, but while there were definitely a few crises of faith, Ishtar had always been a dead goddess to the vast majority of the demon population. Bex’s wrath demons were the only ones who actually remembered a time when Ishtar was around acting like a goddess. They were taking the loss the hardest, but everyone else, especially the demons Bex had freed from the Hells, barely seemed to care. There were still a few who wanted divine guidance, though, and since Bex and her sisters were the closest things to gods that remained on Earth, most of those seekers ended up on Adrian’s doorstep.
He'd been extremely understanding about the whole situation, even going so far as to make the pilgrims a safe path through his forest so they’d stop leaving offerings on the roadside where they could become a traffic hazard. All that worship still made Bex wildly uncomfortable, though. Fortunately for her, Lys had four hundred years of experience controlling access to the queen.
Her lust demon had jumped on the new worshipers before they could become a problem, taking their offerings, writing down prayers, and so forth. They’d even made Bex a schedule so she could meet with her new faithful during a controlled time window and tell them everything was going to be fine. That was all most of them wanted to hear anyway, and for once it wasn’t even a lie. Compared to how things had been for her people before the fall of Gilgamesh, life was freaking fantastic.
Bex was more than happy to tell them so, though she wished they’d stop bringing her so much stuff. Even with the new wealth her demons were enjoying thanks to all the gold they’d stripped off Gilgamesh’s palace, setting up new lives for an entire population was expensive. The pilgrims always looked especially threadbare, proof that they needed their gifts much more than Bex did. No matter how many times she told them to stop, they never did.
At least the line was shorter these days. Lys was in their normal position under the wooden shelter Adrian had built for them, but only a half dozen people were waiting in front of their desk when Bex walked over. They all bowed low when the queen approached, but Lys was too busy glaring at the tall blond fear demon leaning against one of the shelter’s support beams to give Bex more than a nod.
“Hello, Your Majesty,” Desh said with a lavish bow, dumping all the rain that had pooled on the hood of his rain jacket straight onto the middle of the plastic folding table Lys used as a desk.
“Could you not?” they growled, slinging the water back at him.
“Sorry,” Desh replied, sounding like he meant it for once. “Just trying to pay my respects to the queen who saved us all.”
The line of pious demons who’d come to see Bex nodded wildly, and Lys sighed.
“Yes, yes, we’re all very respectful,” they muttered, grabbing a towel off the back of their chair to wipe up the water they hadn’t managed to sling at Desh. “Though I’d respect you a lot more if you got to the point.”
“No need to be touchy,” Desh chided, digging into his coat. “I just dropped by to say hello and to pass this on.”
He handed Bex a heavy packet of thick, seemingly homemade paper wrapped in waxed cloth and tied with a black string.
“What’s that?” she asked curiously. “It looks like a challenge letter.”
“It’s a bill, I’m afraid,” Desh said sheepishly. “As I told you in my report last month, the Battle for the Blackwood was a total rout in our favor. Gilgamesh’s army didn’t even have a prince, just a bunch of Heavenly pigs who hadn’t left their troughs in eons. They were powerful sorcerers, but they were so used to living in Heaven that they had to guzzle quintessence like cheap beer just to stay upright. Enemy supplies were already running low before word even got back that Gilgamesh had died. As soon as they realized they no longer had a king in their corner and there’d be no more quintessence coming, the whole front folded like a cheap deck chair.”
“If it was that easy, why are we getting a bill?” Lys growled.
“Because the sorcerers weren’t the ones who did the most damage,” Desh explained, keeping his orange eyes on Bex. “That honor went to Ishtar’s bull. The battle-maddened bastard flattened ten hectares of old-growth forest on his way to the fight. He also flattened a bunch of sorcerers, so nobody’s mad at him, but the damage still has to be covered, and since you’re the one who sent him, the witches asked me to bring you the bad news once they finished healing me up from my heroic war wounds.”
He pulled his dripping hood back to show Bex the new notch missing from one of his horns, and she smiled.
“I suppose that’s only fair,” she said, untying the packet of handmade paper to find a carefully itemized list of expenses that looked like it had been written by a very annoyed person using a feather quill. “I mostly sent the bull to the Blackwood to get him off my back, so I don’t mind paying for the damages.”
“I mind,” Lys snapped, hauling themselves up with the cane they unfortunately had to use now, since even Adrian’s witchcraft hadn’t been enough to heal all the damage left by their fight with the prince. If having a cane slowed Lys down, though, Bex couldn’t tell. They’d already snatched the papers out of her hands, their amber eyes going huge as they flipped through the seemingly endless list of numbers.
“Those greedy witches want seven figures!” they cried. “There’s no way trees are that expensive.”
“It’s really okay,” Bex insisted. “But I’ll talk to Adrian about it if it makes you feel better.”
“You’d better talk to him,” Lys grumbled as they flopped back into their chair. “What’s the point of shacking up with the head witch’s son if it doesn’t get us a discount? Do those witches understand how much it costs to find new housing for an entire population?”
“Sounds like the matter’s settled, then,” Desh said cheerfully as he stepped back out into the drizzling rain. “Lovely as always to see you both again, but I’ve got to get going. I left Streya with some old mates of ours from the Hells, but she’s still got major separation anxiety. It’ll be better for everybody if I get back quick-like, so I’m off. You know my number if you need me!”
“No one needs you,” Lys told him, but their voice held no venom for once as they added, “Don’t fall off the ferry.”
Desh waved over his head and jogged off down the path, vanishing into the dripping forest the second he reached it like a deer into the mist.
Shaking her head at the seemingly obligatory fear-demon need to make a dramatic exit, Bex took a seat at the table next to Lys and spent a few minutes accepting prayers from the demons who’d come to see her. When they were all satisfied that their queen had heard them and were safely on their way out of the forest, Bex told Lys to go get some dinner and made her way at last to Adrian’s cabin.
She still wasn’t sure how the building had made it back here from the Holy City. The last time she’d seen it, the cabin had been sitting high in the branches of his giant tree. When they’d finally come back to his forest after pizza, though, the cozy witch hut had been right back where Adrian set it up the first day he’d come to Bainbridge.
That had seriously freaked her out. As with all the weird happenings in his forest, however, Adrian had taken it in stride. Or maybe he’d just been in a hurry to get her inside. That had been their first night back together and alone. Thinking back on it now still made Bex a little giddy, a feeling that was only amplified when she saw Adrian waiting for her.
He was right where he always was when she got off work: sitting in one of the two new wooden Adirondacks he’d made for his porch so they wouldn’t have to sit on the stairs now that it was the rainy season. Not that Bex wouldn’t have gladly sat on the ground if it meant being next to him, but the new chairs were insanely comfortable for something made from wood. Adrian was hard at work making something else out of wood right now, carving down a large stick of maple while Boston snoozed beside him next to the clay chiminea Adrian had set up on the porch to take the chill out of the wet air.
His whole face lit up when he spotted Bex walking over. He sprang out of his chair at once, setting his woodworking down on the armrest to give her a kiss that tasted faintly of sawdust.
“Hello,” he whispered in a warm voice before giving her another kiss on the neck that made Bex’s whole body shiver. “Your tea is on your chair.”
“Thanks,” Bex said as she staggered to her seat. She didn’t know when Adrian’s kisses would stop making her stomach feel like a swarm of butterflies, but so far, the answer seemed to be never.
Still blushing furiously, Bex groped for the tea he’d made for her, which was exactly where he’d said it’d be on the arm of the chair that he’d also made for her. He’d made her a whole ton of stuff now that he had time, including a hand-thrown pottery mug sized exactly to fit her hand with a leaf-shaped lid to keep her tea warm.
“Thanks,” she said again, cupping the warm cup between her hands as she relaxed into the smooth, sturdy chair that put her at the perfect angle to look up at the forest’s dripping canopy. “Can I talk to you about—”
“If this is about the bill, I’m on it,” he said as he plopped back down in his own chair. “I already told the Old Wives I’d replace the trees last week, but my cousin Arachne is the coven’s accountant, and she’s a stickler for this sort of thing.”
He picked up his woodworking project again with a sigh. “I’ll go through the roots tomorrow and take a look at the damage myself. At the very least, you shouldn’t have to pay what she’s asking. Market value for the lumber is just ridiculous, especially since you’re not even getting the wood.”
“I really don’t mind paying for damages I incurred,” Bex insisted. Then she smiled. “But I don’t want to spend the money if I can avoid it. We probably won’t be getting another Heavenly palace to strip, and being queen isn’t exactly raking in the cash. I need to make the funds we’ve got last, so thanks for looking out for us.”
Adrian huffed as though he were insulted she thought he wouldn’t, and Bex’s smile grew wider.
“Did you want to talk about the scales, then?” he asked instead. “I read Iggs’s report about the baby. It really looks like the spell that put scales in every human’s eyes at birth ended with Gilgamesh. That doesn’t affect the scales that are already in people’s eyes, of course, but things are going to get very interesting in the next few years when all the babies who can see magic their scale-eyed parents can’t get old enough to talk.”
“Very interesting,” Bex agreed. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about either.”
“I’ll stop guessing blindly, then,” Adrian said, giving her a sheepish look as he put down his woodworking and turned to give her his full attention. “What’s on your mind?”
It was actually much harder to broach the subject now that he was looking at her so intently, but Bex had faced princes, gods, and a god-king, and she managed this, too, eventually.
“It’s about your brother, actually,” she said, putting down her mug so she could give him her full attention as well. “Leander wants to move into the RV.”
“That would be a relief,” Adrian admitted. “Not that I mind hosting him, but he’s not the most pleasant roommate. Also, three’s a crowd.”
He finished with a slow smile that made Bex blush to the roots of her hair, which was ridiculous considering what she was about to ask. Her shyness must’ve been truly baked in, though, because Bex couldn’t stop nervously fidgeting with Drox’s ring as she forced herself to continue.
“He asked me if he could have my room upstairs,” she said, spinning the heavy black loop like a pinwheel on her finger. “Since, you know, I’m not in it much these days.”
“Sounds sensible,” Adrian replied with a beaming smile that told Bex he already knew where this was going. “But if he’s taking your room, you’re going to need somewhere else to live.”
“Yeah,” she said, letting go of her ring to tug on her black hair instead. “I was hoping, that is, if it’s okay with you, maybe I could—”
“Move into my place?” he finished eagerly. “I thought you’d never ask. I would love for you to move in with me, Bex.”
“I’d love for you to move in with him,” Boston added lazily from his spot in front of the chiminea. “Maybe he’ll actually be able to focus on work for once if he’s not pining all day waiting for your return.”
Adrian shot his cat an irritated look, but Bex just smiled. “Well, if you’re both okay with it, I’m in. It won’t even really be moving, since most of my stuff’s already here.” She flashed Adrian a nervous smile. “Thanks for letting me invade.”
“Thanks for wanting to,” he said, reaching out to grip her still-fidgeting hand. “Thank you for everything.”
“That’s my line,” Bex said, blushing furiously but keeping her eyes on Adrian as he pulled her captured hand over to his chair. “I get to move into a custom house on an island. All you get are a bunch of demons knocking on your door at all hours.”
“They were doing that anyway,” he reminded her, leaning down to press a kiss against her knuckles that somehow managed to go straight through the rest of Bex as well. “But I’ve never minded the demons. I love being part of your team, and I love that you moving in means I’ll get to see you even more. I love you in general, just in case you needed a reminder.”
