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“Saving the city from mysterious fairies?”
“Chores.”
“What?”
“This isn’t a hostel for underprivileged vampires. You stay in my house, you work for the privilege.”
I opened my mouth, itching to argue, but couldn’t really think of anything to say. “Please don’t make me clean a toilet.”
• • •
No toilets, and no cleaning. But there was an assemblage of bowls and ingredients and a steaming waffle iron on the kitchen island.
“Waffles? Nice.” I sat down on a stool, then frowned at her, because her expression was very serious. “Are you making me breakfast, or are you preparing me for something?”
“Both, kind of.” A buzzer sounded, and she opened the waffle iron, pulled the waffle out with a pair of tongs, and put it on a plate that she slid to me across the island.
Then she poured batter into the iron’s now-empty wells from a large glass measuring cup. She closed the lid, turned the dial on a timer, and looked at me.
“I’ve done some thinking,” she said, then lifted her gaze to me. “If you’re going to live here, we need to have some ground rules.”
I lifted my brows. “Am I going to live here?”
Her lips quirked. “Do you have a better alternative at the moment?”
“I do not. I mean, I’m not even entirely sure if I’m going to stay in Chicago. I promised Dumas a year, assuming they’d actually take me back, and who knows about that? Their leaving without me wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence.”
“But you made a promise, and that matters to you.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s assume for the purposes of this conversation that you’re going to live here.” The timer buzzed again, and she pulled out the second waffle, then proceeded to bury it under syrup.
“So assumed,” I said with a smile as she passed me the syrup, began to cut into her breakfast.
“One, no more pity parties. We might be emotionally damaged, but we aren’t going to dwell on it. We’re going to be who we are, and that’s fine.”
Lulu didn’t have a clue how much I was grappling with that.
“Two, you’re going to share the work, the rent, and the responsibilities.”
“Okay. How much is the rent?”
“Less than it could be, more than it should be.”
“That is vague and unhelpful.”
“Three,” she said, “Steve lives here. And so does Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
“They’re going to gang up and murder us in our sleep.”
“So assumed,” she said with a grin, and then chewed contemplatively. “And finally, we get to have some normal.” She cut another cube of waffle, held it up. “Breakfast. Conversations. Food we cook ourselves. Trips to the zoo. Self-damn-care. Stuff that’s completely mundane. We both grew up surrounded bysupernaturals and magic. If we live together, we’re probably signing up for more of it. I’m probably committing to more of it.”
I frowned, put down my fork. “Lulu, I don’t want to put you—”
But she held up a hand. “I can’t run from it, Elisa. I can’t hide away and pretend it’s not out there. I don’t have to use my magic. But I have to acknowledge it exists. Maybe I can live on the outskirts of it. We can be roommates, and you can tell me about your adventures. I get the good stories, but don’t actually have to immerse myself in the drama.”
She flipped off the waffle iron. “I think we’re entitled to some normal. And I think maybe that’s the kind of thing I can help with. I can do the normal. I can try to make sure you have breakfast and all that other stuff.”
