As he reached that conclusion, the woman in question stepped into his line of sight, and he looked pointedly in the opposite direction. Several ceiling tiles were missing, the innards spilling out. Old computer equipment had been left behind on the desks, likely nonfunctioning. Holes were gouged in the walls. Dust and decay lingered in the air.
“It’s perfect, yes?” Bowenn asked proudly.
“It’s…something,” Sean answered.
The pixie released a hearty laugh. “Have you no vision,Ashanta?” He pointed to an area that used to function as a conference room. “The weapons cache lives there.” He pointed to the desks and cubicles. “The mortal equipment goes here. We’ve been studying them as you asked. Everything is done on this apparatus here.” He pointed at an old computer monitor.
Grimacing, Sean said, “There’s a little more to it than that?—”
“And there”—Bowenn pointed at a series of offices—“can be the sleep quarters. This is the best outpost we’ve found yet.”
Sean pressed his lips together. “How’d you even locate this place?”
“We chose a region of medium Indy activity,” said Trystian, one of the pixie warriors who volunteered for this mission. “We’ve monitored the area for weeks. Humans don’t enter this establishment with any regularity.”
Right. Because it existed in a rundown part of town filled with vagrants and drug dealers. David knew places like this well. They could have done worse, he had to admit. Once cleaned up, this would probably work well.
While Sean and Kywyn ran through lists of necessary items with Bowenn, David chanced a glance at Isobel.
“Antsy to get back?” he asked, always keen to remind her how little she liked Viterra.
She scrunched her nose at a dead rodent nearby. “It’s aesthetically oppressive.”
He repressed a sigh.
Her gaze skated his way. “I noticed your little toy is no longer sleeping in my bed.”
David’s mind went quiet. His body rooted to the floor. Even his heartbeat slowed at the sudden crack of anger. “Toy?”
Bel rolled her eyes. “It was a joke.”
“Do you know what a joke is, Isobel?”
She ignored him. “I heard you scared her off.”
David had no idea what this meant. What had she heard? Who had she heard it from? How much of it was true?
The memory of tear-filled blue eyes struck like a whip, paired with undiluted pain as Anna had pushed past him to escape. She’d been desperate to get away from him, from the pain he’d caused.
David squeezed the bridge of his nose to rid himself of the images. “She felt better, so she left. I didn’t scare her off.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he sensed Sean’s incredulous stare, but he refused to acknowledge it.
Fuck off, he wanted to say.
You first, came the immediate reply.
Once again, David’s gaze fell on Bel’s swollen stomach. The dress she wore seemed to highlight all its glory. The dichotomy of knowing that child wasn’t his butfeelingas if it was had begun to fray David’s edges.
“Do you remember Meléan’s daughter?” he asked, trying for any subject that would eradicate this sudden edginess filleting his chest.
“Bits and pieces. Those memories are hazy.”
“Meléan had her young, too.”
“Notthisyoung.”
Touché. “What was her name? She didn’t belong to Galadaine or Lhynion.”
