Page 33 of Tusks And Conditions

"I have a copy in my bag," I say, still not turning around. "If anyone needs to reference it."

Dead silence.

Then the motor-oil voice again, distinctly smaller. "No ma'am."

Something is happening to Jagger's face. The runic tattoos along his neck and jaw are doing that faint glow they do when he's experiencing big emotions, pulsing in a rhythm that matches the heartbeat under my hand. But his expression. I have cataloged every expression this Orc has made over three days of cohabitation. The scowl when the Snarbo chewed his boot. The soft crinkle when he reads his enormous fantasy novels. The blank mask he wears for violence. The raw, unguarded look he gave me three nights ago when I traced his collarbone runes and his breath stopped like something inside him cracked open.

This expression is new. This one is all of them at once and none of them. His amber eyes are too bright and his jaw is set but the muscle in it keeps jumping, and his nostrils are flared, and if I didn't know better I would say that Jagger Ironjaw, the most feared bounty hunter in the Thornwall District, is about thirty seconds from crying in front of his colleagues.

He is also still not speaking.

"Right." I peel my hand from him. The absence of that hammering pulse against my palm is immediately, physically wrong. I fold the crumpled list and tuck it back into my bag with the composure of someone wrapping up a quarterly review. "Here's what's going to happen. You are going to settle your tab. You are going to collect whatever gear you brought. And you are going to come home, where there is actual food and a functioning shower and sheets that are not made of concrete."

"This is not a negotiation, Jagger. This is an audit finding. You are in noncompliance."

From somewhere behind me, a low whistle. Then the hatchet-voiced woman mutters, "Marry that one twice."

"Already legally, magically, and eternally bound." The words leave my mouth before my brain clears them. My cheeks catch fire. "That's. The paperwork. That's a bureaucratic fact, not a. I'm not. We're in a cohabitation agreement, it's purely administrative."

Nobody in the bar believes me. I don't believe me. The sticky floor doesn't believe me.

Jagger reaches behind the bar. His hand comes back holding a battered leather pack, already stuffed. He's been sitting here with a packed bag. He never unpacked. Three days of living in my apartment and the Orc still keeps a go-bag like he's always one conversation away from leaving.

Or one conversation away from coming back.

He stands. The bar stool looks like children's furniture beneath him. Every bounty hunter in the room goes very still as he rises to his full height, slings the pack over one shoulder, and looks down at me.

"You picked my lock."

"I watched a tutorial."

The corner of his mouth twitches. Not a smile. Not yet. But the ghost of one, haunting the space between his tusk and his cheek.

"You came to the Thornwall District. Alone. At night."

"I took a cab for most of it."

"Most of it."

"The driver had boundaries. I respected them. Then I walked."

The glow on his runic tattoos pulses brighter. His pack is on his shoulder but his boots haven't moved. He is doing the thing he does when he wants to argue but knows he's outmatched. The jaw clench. The slow blink. The slight flare of his nostrils like he's trying to inhale a counterargument from the stale bar air.

I reach up.

His ear is surprisingly warm. Thick cartilage, slightly pointed at the tip, with a texture like worn suede. I get a firm grip on the lower curve of it and pull downward.

His head follows.

"Ow."

"Walk."

"That is my ear."

"Astute observation. Walk."

He walks. A slate-grey bounty hunter, shuffling forward because a woman a full foot shorter has his ear pinched between her thumb and forefinger and is steering him toward the door like a shopping cart with a bad wheel. His pack bumps against the doorframe. He ducks. I don't release my grip.