Page 45 of Malice in e minor

Harlowe stopped walking, so I stopped walking. She stared at me for a minute. Too much? Then she broke into a deep belly laugh. She had a beautiful laugh. I wanted to make her laugh all the time.

“Thank you. I needed that. Why is Belinda gone? I thought Faustus thought she couldn’t harass Misha. I’m not complaining, but why isn’t Isobel gone too?”

I had no idea, but I had a pretty good guess. Her patron was technically my patron. He was hands off for the most part, but occasionally got involved. I hadn’t met Misha yet, but he told me Lucifer was the one who got him out of the asylum when things went arse up for him. He got me out of jail too.

He wasn’t a tame lion and there was no rhyme or reason when he decided to get involved. Sometimes, we desperately wanted his help, and he wasn’t there and sometimes, he meddled when we didn’t want him to.

Topher appeared out of nowhere like he liked to do. I didn’t have anything to throw at him except for Harlowe and I didn’t want his stupid hands anywhere near her. I knew what he said about not sleeping with students, but he looked at her how he used to look at me.

I clutched her to me tighter.

“I rebuke you, demon!” I yelled, making a cross with my fingers.

“I’m not a vampire, you fucking nutter.”

“Hi, Topher.”

No, not hi, Topher. I needed her to say get the fuck away from us, Topher. I wanted her to tell him she found him as sexually attractive as a dirty diaper and thought he smelled like feet that stepped in one. I didn’t like how they were looking at each other. I should tell her he had dick cheese and would give her a UTI if he came near her with it.

Just to be safe and keep him away from her.

“Shouldn’t you be doing something away from here?” I asked.

“I walked Isobel to rehearsal and fucked with her a bit. I left her tuning her violin. That should keep her busy, though honestly, I could probably tune that thing better than she could and I’ve never had a single music lesson in my entire life.”

That…could work. Most people thought Faustus was the one who made people famous before they got here. He liked rubbing elbows with smart people and he loved kissing the arses of rich people.

Faustus was an academic with no appreciation for the arts. He was good at numbers and keeping the doors open, but Topher was the one who knew artists and how to deal with them. He also made no secret of that. He told everyone who didn’t ask his was the arse they wanted to kiss, not Faustus’s.

Topher had this way of making someone feel like the center of his world and he had a lot of pretty promises. I knew what it felt like when his attention was on you and how empty your world felt when he took it away.

I wouldn’t usually wish that on anyone, but I heard what Isobel did to Meadow and what she was planning to do to Harlowe. I wasn’t sharing my plans with Topher, but it sounded like we had similar ideas.

I didn’t want him to walk to the theatre with us, but I guess he was coming. We got her there with no incident and then I had to leave her with my original nemesis. I only crashed Nutcracker auditions to keep an eye on Belinda, but then I got cast and I was having a blast.

I’d give it up to protect her, but Isobel couldn’t do anything with a good bit of two departments here.

And as much as he hurt me and I didn’t want him around her, Topher could look out for her when we couldn’t.

Ihad sat in on numerous rehearsals now. Klaus refused to learn my name and kept calling me a succubus spy, but I was wearing him down. He was a minutiae less hostile to me. Usually after I brought his coffee and I could understand that on a deep, emotional level because I was less hostile after coffee too.

Isobel was out of tune nearly every rehearsal. Hot and cold weather could put a stringed instrument out of tune or even destroy it if you left it out there too long. But the temperature in the theatre was comfortable and Isobel should have been doing this long enough to adjust to anything.

Klaus hadn’t asked me what the problem was again when he stopped rehearsal to yell at her, but I guess tonight, he decided to put a massive target on my back.

“Succubus spy!”

Yeah, that was officially me now. Fuck my life. I stood up and moved closer to Klaus. I hadn’t actually done anything and aside from having extremely bad aim when he was throwing things, he only singled out people who fucked up once the music started. He thought Faustus sent me to spy on him, but he wouldn’t interrupt the music about that.

“Aurelia showed me your subway video. You are competent, succubus, but you re-tuned your violin to play the Devil’s Tritone, which means you aren’t completely tone deaf. For the sake of the orchestra and every dancer in the cast, you are going to tune Miss Shackleton’s violin for the remainder of the run since she insists on making the rest of us deal with it.”

Wonderful. That was embarrassing as fuck for someone at this level. When I started violin lessons as a child, my teacher tuned my violin. She started teaching me to do it when I was eight and I was doing it on my own when I was thirteen. Based on the looks from the other violins, violas, and cellos, they were pretty put out.

If she wasn’t capable of doing it by ear, there were a variety of tools she could buy and there were even apps for cell phones. Using any one of those would have prevented all of this.

Isobel looked like she’d take my eye right now if she had a melon baller, but she wasn’t because she had witnesses. Orion was watching her like a hawk and Topher had moved closer.

I didn’t make a big deal about it, even though it was a big deal to need someone else to handle this for you. Two of her strings were half a step lower than they were supposed to be. I easily fixed it and handed it back to her.