Page 17

She took me into the little office behind the bar and put me in a chair, then put a glass of red into my hand.

“Drink.”

“I have fed.”

“You’ve sipped. You do that every year. You come to my city for five weeks and eat like a bird with a grudge. It isn’t sustainable, Maks.” She sat down on the edge of the desk, dropped one boot on my knee, and looked at me with her head cocked. “So. The hockey player.”

I drank the wine. It tasted, as always, like nothing very much.

“His name is Lex Pendleton,” I said. “He is the enforcer for the Kings. He is twenty-six. He is a spoiled, loud, arrogant boy who cannot stop talking and cannot stop hitting things and has been assigned, as a joke by a committee, to my room.”

“Oh, no. “

“I did not hear a question.”

“You said ‘assigned,’ which means he arranged it. You said ‘twenty-six’ like you’d looked it up. You said ‘boy’ with a face I haven’t seen since the year you tried to adopt that horrible dog.” Her boot pressed my knee. “You never tell me anything. Nine years, and I know your favorite wine and that you hate lilies and that you once fought a bear. So it’s got to be something big for you to be sitting in my office looking like someone stole your car. What is it?”

I turned the glass in my hand. I did not know I was going to speak until I did.

“He smells like my mother’s kitchen.”

The lamp buzzed. Somewhere out front a laugh went up, and the piano started something slow.

Tamsin did not laugh. She did not say anything at all for almost half a minute, which for her is a personal record. She reached over and took the glass out of my fingers, and set it down, and took my hand in both of hers.

“Oh, Maksim,” she said quietly.

“It is a coincidence.”

“It isn’t.”

“I have met thousands of humans. Some of them have baked.”

“Maksim.” She squeezed. “I’ve worked in this room nine years. I’ve heard the stories in the back. The old ones talk about it when they’re drunk. You know what it means.”

I said nothing.

“So what did he see?”

“Everything.” I closed my eyes. “I did not smell him until it was too late. I have never been so careless. Two hundred pounds of stupid hockey player following me across a city, and I did not hear him once, because I was too busy trying to work out why my hands were shaking in the car.”

“He followed you. That’s stalking.”

“Yes.”

“You should be furious.”

“I am.”

“You don’t look furious. You look like you swallowed a lightbulb.”

There is no defense against a woman who has seen you unprepared. I opened my eyes. She was smiling, very gently, and I found I could not hold her gaze.

“What is he like?” she asked.

I considered several answers.

“He put half his pizza on my plate,” I said at last, “and told me to eat.”