“Sure.” I took Midas’s hand, which was warm and strong, and guided him. “The kitchen is this way.”
“The kitchen is a common area,” Reece reminded me. “There are antibacterial wipes under the sink. Use them.”
“Midas didn’t pop in a for a quickie.” I wiggled my eyebrows at Midas. “Or did he?”
Anca chortled, a merry sound, and covered her mouth with her hand as I led him away.
The set of his lips informed me a handwashing wasn’t all he was after in requesting a semiprivate room out of view of the monitors.
“We’re going to practice the whole carving out time to talk in the middle of a crisis, yes?”
“Yes.” His gait remained stiff, his expression dark. “I think that’s wise.”
“Give me a second.” I dipped a hand into the cross-body bag, retrieved the jar of ink and a brush, then painted a circle around the table. I shooed Midas onto a seat and then closed it around us. “They’ll be able to see us, but they can’t hear us.” I studied one of many cameras, this one nestled in the corner of the room. “Fair warning, I’m willing to bet Reece can lip-read or code a program to do it for him.”
Elbows on the table, Midas beckoned me closer with a crooked finger.
Mirroring his position, I sat and leaned in until his bristled cheek rubbed mine.
“Bishop,” he whispered, his hands easing under my hair to cradle the back of my head.
“Yeah.” I returned the gesture, scratching his scalp with my fingernails. “That was…intense.”
“Does Linus know who he’s hiding?”
“I don’t know.” I angled my mouth toward his ear. “I don’t know who he is either, do you?”
“No,” he breathed, “and that worries me more than what he is, which we also don’t know.”
“Bishop is my friend.”
“Bishop is more than your friend.”
“I’m more than Hadley,” I argued. “You’re more than Midas.”
“Hadley.” He sighed my name, but there was so much love in the sound it was hard to take offense.
“We both have predatory natures.” I kept hammering away at him. “Who are we to judge his dark side because it scared the bejeepers out of ours?”
“You understand where he took us.”
“Yes.”
“You understand it’s no different than how the coven travels, only on a smaller scale?”
“No?”
Until he mentioned it, I hadn’t viewed it in that light. I had assumed we were in Faerie-Faerie, not an offshoot or pocket realm or whatever the kids were calling it these days. But Midas would know the difference. If he said Bishop’s wintry road was a construct of his making and not a naturally occurring path, I believed him.
“You’re not worried there’s a connection there?”
“Between Bishop and the coven?” I snorted. “Um, no.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Monsters don’t care that they’re monsters. Bishop was ashamed of who he became in that place. He left rather than face me.”
“The coven loves theatrics,” he countered, but without heat. “It could have been for show.”
One of us needed to remain objective, so I didn’t blame Midas for preventing me from compartmentalizing away what I didn’t want to see or hear. He forced me to look, to see, to think. And, as much as it hurt, I was grateful for it.
“You saw him,” I said quietly. “Do you think it was for show?”
Midas was silent for a few seconds before he shook his head. “No.”
“I’ll have Reece test him.” I kissed Midas’s cheek to show there were no hard feelings. “Just to be on the safe side.”
It was the smart thing to do, the necessary response, but it would wound Bishop. He had given me a glimpse of himself, his true self, and my response was to jab him with a needle the same as I would any potential enemy.
But, I reminded myself, our friends and allies get tested daily too.
I wasn’t singling him out.
Sure, I wasn’t.
Goddess, I hated the coven.
Aside from my mother, I wasn’t sure I had hated anyone in my life, but these guys definitely ranked.
“Moment over.” He breathed me in and then withdrew. “We need to start planning for the archive.”
“Yeah.” I drummed my fingers on the tabletop. “We have to figure out how to sever it from Buckhead.”
We rose in unison, and I smudged the line to lower the circle so the others could hear us again.
“Oh good.” Remy strolled in wearing a lime-green tutu over a white jumpsuit sparkling with sequins and red-orange combat boots to complement the lily still in her hair. “I was starting to think you wanted privacy.”
Frowning, I asked, “Why does everyone think Midas showed up at my job for a quickie?”
For the first time ever, we had an outsider at HQ. Okay, fine. Not the first time, Remy was proof of that, but still. Did they not know me at all? Bad example. Did they not know Bishop at all? He would never allow a lapse in protocol for the sake of a make-out session.
“You haven’t told her she stinks of eau de Midas, eh?” Remy pegged Midas with a knowing stare. “Everyone can tell exactly how mated you two are lately.”
Embarrassment stung my cheeks, and I debated hiding in the empty storage closet, anything to avoid having this conversation. I settled for rushing to wipe up the ink with paper towels and spray cleaner.
Eyes crinkling at the corners, Midas read my unease and attempted to rein in his amusement. I could tell he was quite proud of himself. It made me want to thump his ear. But, I suppose, knowing wouldn’t have saved me from alerting every gwyllgi in sniffing distance how we spent our alone time.
The heads-up would have only mortified me that much sooner and resulted in a relapse of using the fire escape to get in and out of the building without being noticed—or smelled—by the pack.
Deftly changing the topic, Midas asked, “Any clue how we implode the archive?”
“You can’t without swaying a witchborn fae to your cause. Even then, you would need hundreds of them to overpower the spell keeping that place humming. It’s ancient, full of power, and used on the regular.” Remy moved around the small kitchen, helping herself to a bowl of cereal. “The best you can do is sever its connection here.”
“The coven would just move it somewhere else.” I followed her example and poured Midas and myself sugary bowls of fruity loops with a splash of milk. “They could anchor it outside of town and do as much damage or more.” I took a bite, and before I knew it, the bowl was empty. Midas pressed his into my hands and went to make another for himself. “We can’t dump the archive in someone else’s lap anyway. It’s unneighborly.”
“So cut its cords all around.” She slurped her pinkish milk. “Leave it adrift.”
“Do pocket realms work that way?” I didn’t say no to a third bowl when Midas gave me his fresh one too. A glare from me as I handed him the other empty warned him he better eat the next one or I was spoon-feeding it to him. “Can you cut them loose?”