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“Well, yes.” I inclined my head. “Unless you want to handle this alone?”
Matt chewed his lip, looking unusually sheepish and vulnerable. “No. I’d rather not.”
“Right. So. We.”
“Thanks.” He smiled flicker fast, then sighed. “Ugh, I don’t imagine any new deal will land in my favor.”
“Probably not. But maybe you can live with those terms instead of… um…” I gestured at my own shoulders.
Matt glanced at each of his tiny companions. Then he sighed and pushed himself up off the couch. “Let me go make myself a little more presentable.”
“All right.” I got up too. “Let me get some coffee. I’ll drive.”
Chapter 3
Matt
Cory did end up driving, but we took my car. Suddenly those tinted windows I’d splurged on didn’t seem so pretentious. Not when they blocked Raziel and Andras from view. And I couldn’t exactly tell them to take their fifteen-minute break because they’d done that while I’d been getting dressed.
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Raziel said indignantly after I explained that to Cory. “We saw it all while you were sleeping last night.”
Andras gave a snarky little chuckle. “He just doesn’t want to listen to you talkin’ about his willy again.” Then, in a high-pitched voice and a badly imitated version of Raziel’s accent, he added, “Wouldja lookit that, Andras? I had no idea the hair down there turned gray, too!”
Beside me, Cory snorted, though to his credit, he at least tried to muffle it. When I shot him a glare, he managed a not terribly sincere, “Sorry.”
I just rolled my eyes.
“What?” Raziel still sounded as indignant as ever. “I’ve never seen gray hair down—”
“Okay, okay.” I put up my hands. “No more discussing anything you guys saw while I was asleep, all right?”
They both grumbled. Cory suppressed another laugh. And I thanked whoever was listening that I’d been able to send them on a “break” while I’d taken a shower.
“So. Um.” Cory cleared his throat and shifted a little in the driver seat. “Where exactly am I going?”
“Do you know where the Unseelie Building is?”
He shot me a wide-eyed look.
“Don’t worry—we’re not going there.” I motioned vaguely ahead. “Her office is across the street. It has a parking garage, too. I’ll point it out when we get there.”
Cory exhaled. I didn’t blame him. There was nothing overly sinister or dangerous about the Unseelie Building. Like all the fae, the Unseelies were required by treaties to abide by human law, and they generally wouldn’t fuck with anyone who didn’t fuck with them first. But if a rogue faewasinclined to fuck with someone unprovoked, they would almost certainly be an Unseelie. Most of us treated them as respectfully as we did any of the other magic beings living among us, but anyone with any sense of self-preservation regarded the Unseelies with the same sense of caution we did goblins and that one clan of particularly antisocial ogres: don’t harass them, don’t confront them, and—most relevantly here—don’t go wandering through their territory uninvited or unescorted.
“Have you, uh…” Cory glanced at me. “Have you ever gone into the Unseelie Building?”
I nodded. “I represented a changeling a couple of years ago, and I went to his office a few times to discuss the case.”
“Really?”
“Mmhmm. It was… I don’t remember all the details, but he had a dispute with a couple of fauns running a travel agency, and his schedule didn’t allow him to come to me as often as I could come to him.” I half-shrugged. “It wasn’t as big a deal as people make it out to be. Probably because everyone who saw me knew I was there to help one of their own, so they left me alone.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” He adjusted his grip on the wheel. “I probably wouldn’t be very popular there.”
I studied him. “Why’s that?”
Cory laughed softly. “Dude, I make my living helping people who’ve had their identities stolen by tricksters. Sometimes that includes getting law enforcement and the legal system involved.” He grimaced. “Not exactly a line of work that endears me to that crowd.”
“Eh. You’d be surprised.”
