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“Oh. ”
“Standard boy-meets-girl story. ”
“I was going to tell you to stop boring me. ”
Siobhan smiled. “Do you want something to drink?”
Unless Shane had a stash of bagged blood in his fridge, she wasn’t going to offer me anything I needed at the moment. “No thanks. Do you know where Shane is? He was supposed to meet me after sundown. ”
“Hunting. ”
“How much did he tell you?” I asked. She knew about fae, so she couldn’t be too ignorant, but I wanted to watch what I said until I figured out how in the loop she was.
“About?”
Oh Lord, where to begin? “Everything. ”
“You mean about the vampires he hunts for the council? Or how you’re his boss, which makes you one of the three members of the Vampire Tribunal? That sort of thing?” Siobhan looked at her nails like she was bored.
“What are you?” I rephrased, changing my tactic. She was human—my nose told me that much—but no human I’d ever met would be so cavalier in talking about the council and vampires.
“Druid. ”
“A…what?”
She took a blanket off the back of the armchair and draped it over her head like a cowl. “Drooo-id. ”
“As in…Stonehenge and human sacrifices and dancing naked by the light of the moon?”
“The naked moon dancing is more of a Wiccan thing. ”
I had a witch for a grandmother. I could attest to the truth of Siobhan’s statement. Unfortunately. No one needs to see a woman pushing seventy years of age getting jiggy in her altogether to celebrate the coming spring.
“What does a druid do in New York?”
“I guard a fairy gate. ”
My eye twitched. It was an involuntary response, but I tended to react poorly to the word fairy these days. “There is only one fairy gate. ”
She raised her hand and made a peace sign, holding two fingers apart. “One in the fae realm, one in ours. ”
Interesting.
“So you’re the guardian of a magical gateway to another world, and you’re sleeping here?”
Siobhan didn’t bother looking around the room. She evidently didn’t need another glance at the apartment to know what I was alluding to. “A messy home full of affection is better than a grand house filled with people who don’t care about you. ” Her smile hadn’t faded, but it had lost some of its joy. There was sadness in her words she seemed all too accustomed to.
“You love him?” I hadn’t thought of Shane in romantic terms during the time I’d known him. He was handsome enough if you were into the whole scruffy bad-boy thing, but he was also my underling. It’s hard to think of someone as sexy when you had control over their life.
“Love’s a funny thing. ”
Oh yeah, it was a laugh riot. “If by funny you mean something only an idiot would participate in…then yes. ”
“I hear you’re quite the idiot. ”
I laughed, probably for the first time in a month. Being called an idiot had never felt so good. “Yeah, you could say that. ”
The front door swung open with a crash, cutting our laughter short. Siobhan and I pivoted,
