Page 97 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“You know, I really love this ring you made me,” he says. “I just stare at it all the time. I’m starting to feel like Gollum.”

“My precious...” I joke.

“That was fucking uncanny,” he says. “And somehow seductive. Do it again.”

“Absolutely not,” I say, laughing so hard that Gloam flees my stomach with a petulant quack of a meow for disturbing her sleep again.

“Oh, come on. One more time.”

“Why can’t you just ask for nudes like a normal slutty musician?”

“Are you adding kink-shaming to your slut-shaming now? We’re not supposed to yuck each other’s yums, Lillith,” he says. “I’m starting to think I have to hide my proclivities from you. If you can’t take me at my desire to be seduced by a decrepit hobbit, then you don’t deserve me at my edging pleasure Dom.”

“Those things should be oxymorons,” I retort.

“The duality of man,” he says.

“You contain multitudes,” I agree.

“When are you heading out to work with Bastion BilliardBall?”

I snort a laugh and sigh. “Probably around three. Shop closes early today.”

“Do you have service in The Buried City?”

“For the most part, except for a few places,” I say.

“How does that work? With the whole interdimensional thing?”

“Magic.”

“Right, right,” he says with a chuckle. “Man, it’s hard getting used to it. That all this stuff is just... real.”

“Does it ever freak you out?” I ask.

“No, actually. Which surprises me. Now that I’ve seen it all, I just sort of take it for granted as fact. Hard to describe. I guess I can’t really float the cognitive dissonance now that I’ve been there in the flesh, you know?”

“Mhm,” I say. “Everything’s easier to accept when you can touch it.”

“Why don’t you tell everyone? Like—why not just be honest about it?” he asks.

“On average, about how well would you say the general populace treats people who are strange, or different, or even just not as pretty as other people?”

“Touche,” he says. “It’s just... kind of a bummer, you know? I wish the guys could know. I wish they all knew how incredible you are.”

I smile into the phone, my heart doing somersaults. “As long as you think I’m incredible, that’s all I care about.”

“I do, Lillith. You’re a damned miracle, I swear.”

We continue on like that for a while. Taking turns being embarrassingly into each other. I hear the chirp of birdsong in the background after he puts me on speaker. We fall into a companionable silence, and after ten or so minutes pass like that he stops responding to my gentle prods for his attention. He must have fallen asleep.

I leave the call going as I check the weather to make sure it’s warm enough for him to be sleeping outside, then I text Wren and ask her to look in on him if she’s feeling up to it when she wakes up. After a while, I fall asleep too—getting a couple more hours of shut-eye before my phone buzzes next to my ear and wakes me up. When I squint at the screen in my dark bedroom, I see that Damien has texted me.

Thanks for the long-distance morning doze, Little Bird. I’ll call you after the show tonight. I love you so fucking much.

I smile at the text message and am about to reply when a haughty voice makes me practically leap out of my skin.

“Gods, I hope you never made a face like that when I texted you,” Bastion says.