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The shiny side of the knife trembling between us reflected a coldly handsome face, so pale that it didn’t look human—which was fair, since it wasn’t. A mass of silver-blond hair obscured most of the features, but I didn’t need them. The eyes glittering between the strands were more than enough. Like twin stars, they were the most unusual color I’d ever seen—solid opaque pewter. And narrowed and angry and terribly familiar as they met mine.
For a split second, until he threw off my hold, vaulted back into the office and slid across the desk.
“What the hell?” Marlowe cursed—from behind me, because I was already moving, hurling myself across the room and reaching out—
And missing, because the damned cat ran underneath my feet. “Shit!”
“I asked you a question!” Marlowe barked, and a bloody hand fell on my shoulder as I leaned out the window—the one his attacker had just thrown himself through. And either Marlowe had forgotten that he wasn’t handling another vamp, or he didn’t care if he cracked bone.
Luckily for him, I was too busy scanning the street far, far below to do more than shake him off. But there was no badly dented car, no body painting the sidewalk red, no sign of his attacker at all. Until I looked up.
And was clipped on the chin by the hard end of someone’s boot.
Son of a bitch.
I went staggering back into the desk, bounced off and started for the window again. Only to stop at the sight of a fey perched on top of a struggling pork chop doing a Superman impression. The pork chop was Slava. The fey was Æsubrand. And they were levitating outside the window like it was no big thing.
Chapter Twenty-three
For a moment, I just stared. Not because of the hovering in midair thing. Levitation charms aren’t exactly rare, although using them in full view of norms is a no-no. But human laws aren’t so easy to apply to a prince of the fey, and anyway, that wasn’t the problem.
No, the problem was that this particular prince hadn’t stuck his charm on a chair, a bookcase or a rug à la Aladdin. No, he’d stuck it on Slava. Which meant that both of them were about to be roadkill because the magic they were using didn’t work that way.
But Æsubrand obviously didn’t know enough about human charms to realize that. Or that he would need a propulsion system, or at least a good push, if he wanted to go anywhere. Which he hadn’t gotten because he’d been too busy kicking me in the head.
Leaving them stranded—for the moment.
I stopped staring up at them and started looking around the office, hoping for a grappling hook—preferably one attached to an M16. But I guess Slava kept the weapons elsewhere, because I didn’t see one. Of course, there was another option.
“Pull us in when I grab him,” I told Marlowe, who had just staggered up behind me.
“Grab who?” he rasped, and then stopped, staring in disbelief at the insanity outside the window.
“Æsubrand,” I said shortly, jerking down the office blinds and stripping off the cord. And thankfully, Slava’s impressively tall windows extended in here, and they had cords to match.
“What? There are fey now?” Marlowe demanded, outraged.
And I had to admit, it did seem a little unfair.
“Looks that way,” I said and threw myself out the window.
I ignored the stream of cursing from behind me because I had about a second to time this right or I’d be a greasy spot on the sidewalk. Luckily, it looked like Æsubrand hadn’t expected company. At least he hadn’t until I grabbed tubby’s belt and held on for dear life.
A pair of silver-bright eyes met mine over a pin-striped mountain for a second, before their owner sent a fist crashing into my jawline. Looks like he remembers me, too, I thought grimly, spitting blood. And then the fist was back for an encore.
I ducked and looped some of the slack of the cord I’d tied around my wrist through Slava’s belt. And waited for Marlowe to jerk him over and plant a fist in Æsubrand’s face. And kept right on waiting, because nothing happened.
Maybe because Slava’s bodyguards had finally gotten a clue that, hey, you know, maybe there’s a problem with the boss. A glance at the office showed that three of them had joined the fun. And while that wouldn’t normally have mattered, they were probably the only senior guys still upstairs. And Marlowe wasn’t having a great night.
Of course, neither was I.
“There’s a reason—oof—that levitation charms aren’t used on people,” I gasped, twisting to avoid the fist of doom, and sending us into a spin that had Slava cursing in Russian and trying to bite me. “Not live ones, anyway. Every time—ugh—the aura fluctuates, there’s a chance—damn it, listen to me!”
But Æsubrand wasn’t. And I didn’t think that was likely to change. I didn’t have a lot of persuasive ability and he didn’t have a lot of respect for humans—or any at all.
But it looked like someone else did.
Slava stopped his attempts to throw both of us into the void long enough to glare at me. “What you say?” he demanded, in heavily accented English.
