“Lucky me.” Maya kept her eyes on her current pointless task: cleaning already clean glasses.
A few tense seconds passed before Angela cleared her throat. “Aren’t you going to ask why she keeps bringing you up?”
“Not interested.”
“You should be. Getting on Natalya’s radar is either great or deadly. Since you’re still standing, congratulations might be in order. She must have liked whatever you did in St. Louis.”
It wasn’t the first time Angela had brought that up. It had been three godawful days since Maya had come back to Chicago, and every one of those days Angela had stopped by the bar and forced the topic into conversation.
If Maya had thought her capable of it, she would have suspected Angela was just being cruel.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Maya said.
“That’s a worrying trend. You’ve barely spoken since you got back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. The only person you talk to around here is me, unless you and Diana have patched things up. Which I’m guessing you haven’t, based on how curt you’re being.”
Maya sneered. She and Diana hadn’t talked in weeks, and Diana didn’t seem interested in breaking that streak. She had even requested a transfer from the bar, preferring boring busywork over them even sharing a floor.
“Don’t you have some arcane doodles to get back to?”
“If I have to remind you that they’re incantations instead of doodles again, we’re going to have a problem.” Angela fidgeted in her seat. “Besides. Visiting you has become an evening ritual. One I’ve been missing for a while, so forgive me for being talkative. With everything that happened in St. Louis, I just—”
Maya set down the glass she was ‘cleaning’ so hard it was lucky it didn’t break.
“I don’t want totalk. And neither do you. I don’t need your attention or your pity, so stop wasting your time and leave me the hell alone.”
Angela frowned, looking more surprised than hurt at the stern tone. Maya had never raised her voice at her, or even gotten close, but it clearly didn’t matter. Hard problems had never discouraged the witch of Chains. In fact, those were her preference.
“Something happened with Harper. Didn’t it?”
Maya stiffened. “How did you—” She stopped herself. Asking Angela how she knew something was pointless. Angela knew fucking everything.
“You weren’t subtle,” Angela said flatly. “I could only read so many texts about how funny, charming, and interestingHarper is before I caught the hint. You’re into her, and all this brooding is a super mature way of handling it, too.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Oh, shut up,” Angela said with a scowl. “You’re afraid of the results, so you’ve given up without trying. Based on plentiful written evidence, Harper won’t even care what people are saying. You told me yourself that she doesn’t scare easily.”
Maya’s jaw clenched. She started stacking the glasses. “Sheshouldbe scared.”
Angela scoffed. “Oh, here we go.”
“I’m serious. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know what I’m feeling, what I’mthinking. If you did, you’d see that being scared is a perfectly reasonable reaction.”
Angela’s expression didn’t change. She looked as irritated as before, even elevating the emotion by sipping on her drink.
“You should talk to Aleksander about that.”
Maya rolled her eyes. Other than when she first joined the Court, she hadn’t had a single conversation with the vampiric King of Chains. Partly because she was so low in the Court hierarchy that he had no reason to talk to her, but she had also avoided him. Same as with every other Chains vampire.
“I don’t want to talk to Aleksander.”
“And I don’t want to deal with your moping, yet here I am. You might be one of a kind, but that doesn’t mean you’re alone. If you talk to him, he could help.”
Helpwas the last thing Maya wanted. That would involve accepting that her current state of being was permanent, and just the thought made her nauseous.
