“Liar,” Cash said. “You hit your head on the wall.”
“I knew in general,” Arkady said. Old amusement twitched the corners of his mouth, a hint of almost sweetness. “I didn’t expect you to just go ‘fuck it’ and try to climb me.”
Cash laughed. He felt guilty about it a second after, a bitter chaser to the humor. Sex was one thing—sticky, memorable, and satisfying to the bones but limited by the simple fact it wasn’t compatible with his life—but these unearthed shreds of old affection were dangerous. They made him remember all the things he used to want.
Things.
That was dignifying what a single-minded asshole he’d been back then. He’d wantedArkady.He’d have taken the life that came with, but nice pillows and servants hadn’t been what woke him sweaty and so hard he ached from his dreams. Like the Prodigium, Cash hadn’t liked to complicate things.
His inner monster didn’t even bother to come up with a dig in response to that. It just snorted.
“Simpler times,” Cash said. It would have been better to sour the moment, but he couldn’t quite stomach that along with the sushi. “Simpler us.”
Arkady reached out and tucked a dark curl behind Cash’s ear. His hand lingered. “Can’t say your moves have evolved.”
Cash spluttered out half an objection. “That’s not…. You haven’t seen my—”
“Sir,” the server interrupted Cash’s disagreement. He was pale. They wereallpale. No one who worked in the under-hotel was allowed above again. Most of them were night-struck—obsessed with fucking, being eaten, or all of the above by monsters—and eagerly accepted the limitations. Others were dying, but the payment plan made the drawbacks worth it. Once they had been down here a while, there was a texture to their pallor, a greasy rind that fake tan couldn’t hide, but this guy was grayish, and his eyes were wide and anxious. “Milady Abascal said to apologize for interrupting, but you’re needed.”
Arkady brushed his fingers down Cash’s throat with a featherlight caress and then sat back. There was a grim cant to his mouth as he drew reserve around him like a coat. He folded his napkin and leaned over to brush a cool, empty kiss over Cash’s cheek.
“It’s another leak, another monster exposed,” he murmured grimly into Cash’s ear. “We need to find who did it.”
He drew away from Cash and slid out of the booth, tossing the napkin down on the table. An impatient gesture of his hand directed the server to lead the way, and they left. It was a different direction to the one that Donna had taken, but that meant nothing. The under-hotel was a maze of tunnels and switchbacks, and only the Abascals knew all the shortcuts.
Cash looked away before anyone noticed he wasn’t just admiring Arkady’s ass. He picked up the wine bottle and stared at the label. It was an Abascal Grand Cru Blanc, vintage 1820, bottled in heavy green glass.
There wasn’t enough left in it to knock Cash out if he finished it off, but maybe if he could convince someone to crack him over the head with it….
He considered it. It might not solve any of a human’s problems, but monster lore was full of stories where someone passed out after drinking a bathtub of gin and woke to find their problems had sorted themselves out. Usually it was a hundred years on and they had a whole new crop of problems, but that wasn’t the point.
But Cash had Ellie to take care of. In a few years, she should be thinking about going to college, stealing her first hearts—or souls, if that’s how the gene pool threw down. She didn’t need to be stuck luring travelers to a cave for her comatose father to feed on their despair.
He was saving that for his retirement.
Cash put the bottle down and took a deep breath. He hadn’t wanted to come back here—and he’d already managed to prove why it was better he stayed away—but here he was. The only way he could justify it was if it was for Ellie, so maybe he should focus on finding the link. Instead of Arkady’s ass.
Why not both?
He ignored that. There were times his monster could be useful, an internal narrator who punctured the lies he tried to tell himself. But not when its stomach was rumbling.
Cash slid out of the booth and followed the flow of the servers toward the kitchen. He took his fancy jacket off as he wove through the tables and fished a stray band out of his pocket to pull his hair back into a ponytail.
“Sir?” one of the servers protested as he ducked through the doors after them. “This is the staff area. The guest exit is—”
“I know,” Cash said. “Don’t worry about it.”
The server looked like he was anyhow, but another man in livery pulled him aside and muttered into his ear. It could be that people around here still remembered Cash, or just the good advice that stopping monsters doing what they wanted was above a server’s pay grade.
Cash left them to it as he headed into the tunnels.
Only the Abascals knewallthe shortcuts, but everyone knew some.
THE WAITRESS,Abigail, flicked the ash off her cigarette into the gravel and gave Cash a sheepish look.
“I know,” she said. “It’s bad for you. I’m going to stop, it’s just….”
She trailed off with a defeated shrug and took another quick drag before she stubbed the butt out. It went into the nearby bucket, and she pulled a minibottle of perfume out to give herself a quick spritz.
