"Good morning," I say, giving him an unusually big smile as I step out of my room into our living area.
"Morning. Good morning," Cal says, like he's a little startled. "Did you sleep well?"
He's speaking unusually fast. From across the room where she's sitting cross-legged on the couch with what seems to be a bowl full of coffee, Morgan cocks her head just slightly at me. I catch her eyes, widen mine imperceptibly, sending a kind of we-need-to-talk signal. She licks her lips and nods.
"Callahan, if you don't mind," she says airily.
"Huh?" Cal says, looking at her a little dazedly.
"Um, I slept fine, thanks," I answer. "And I kind of want to talk to Morgan. Alone."
"Oh," Cal says. "Sure."
He doesn't move.
"Cal," Morgan says pointedly. "Leave, or else I'll flash my boobs and make you break your vow."
Callahan startles, nods, and folds up his coat to dash out the door. When it clicks shut behind him, Morgan sets her coffee on the table.
"What?"
"Hang on," she interrupts herself. She snaps twice, and from some unseen speaker, music starts up, something fluty and orchestral, like off-brand Enya.
"That's better," she says, "just to cover things up."
I nod, slinking into the armchair across from her. "Is that magic?"
"What?" She frowns, then looks at her hand. "Oh, no, it's Alexa or something. I don't know." She appears at me. "What do you want to talk about?"
“Um…” I chew my lip, stretch my hands down my knees, splay all of my fingers into space. How do I even begin to describe the proposal, proposition, that the four of them made to me? “It’s kind of weird.”
"I've heard a lot of weird shit," she says. "Try me."
I can’t argue with that, I guess. So I just plunge ahead. I explain, as best and as briefly as I can, what the meeting at Camlann House was about last night—although leaving out the part where I reveal that I have, in fact, made it to at least first base with 75% of the men in question. That feels like more of a…need-to-know basis thing. And I’m too awkward to go there, besides.
When I'm done, Morgan gawks at me.
"I take it back," she says. "That is definitely stranger than what I was expecting."
"I know," I say, chewing my lip and working my fingertips together. "Iknow, it's just..."
"It makes sense," she says, throwing an arm over the back of the couch. "I mean, not for any normal sane person, but for the four of them, I can see the logic."
I frown. "You can?"
"Sure," she says. "They're just breaking out of the consistory's control a little bit, right? They're all supposed to kind of be on each other's case about this, right? But if they all agree that they're not, and they all have, you know, compromising information on each other, then it's like..." She screws up her mouth, thinking, what's that thing where the Russians don't nuke us and we don't nuke the Russians because both sides know that if the other one does, the response will be just as bad? She crosses the line, two pointed fingers in midair.
"Mutually assured destruction," I say. I wish she hadn't mentioned the Russians. Alexei Moroslav’s grin flits into my mind’s eye.
"That's the one," she nods. "It's that, basically. I don't exactly know why they need you specifically to be their cover, but I guess that's how courtly love or whatever works."
My stomach does a flip. "Yeah, about that," I say. "It's, um, it's not exactly courtly in that sense."
Morgan's jaw drops open a little as she realizes. "What are you..." She blinks, shakes her head. "Which one?" she cries, almost sounding delighted.
"It's... that's..." I stammer. It's a hard question to answer.
"Gwenna!" she shrieks, slamming her palms on the couch. "I need more details."
