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The fae woman’s usual sarcastic tone was angry and urgent. Whoever she was talking to, the conversation was not going well.
I stopped outside the door, just out of sight. My stomach churned as guilt wormed its way through.
Eavesdropping on something like this wasn’t something I would normally do, but I also didn’t want to interrupt what seemed to be an important discussion. The only way to my room meant crossing her line of sight, and I wasn’t sure how she’d react if she saw me.
“You can’t just change dates like that,” she said, exhaustion evident in her tone. “That’s not the way deals work.”
I heard a scratching sound inside, but I couldn’t tell what was making it.
“Mmhmm, and I’m just supposed to be okay with that? C’mon, man. This is my home.”
She snorted and the sound of her phone slamming shut nearly startled me enough to gasp. Thanks to her lack of tech-savviness, she was one of the few left in the world with an actual flip phone—the original kind.
Her chair creaked. “Fuck me sideways, backwards, and everywhere in between.”
Well, that was a new one.
I peeked around the corner to find Frankie’s head in her hands, her elbows on the desk. A hunting knife lay beside her right elbow, and a brand new “X” had been carved into the wood. It was one of many such designs, a visible outlet for her anger.
“Boo?”
A blade thunked into the doorframe next to my head. I yelped and threw myself sideways, banging into the wall.
“You’re lucky I realized it was you at the last second.” Frankie’s narrowed violet eyes relaxed, and her irises faded back to brown. “Get my knife, will ya?”
Grumbling at her casual remark about my near-death experience, I tugged the still-quivering blade from the wood. “You shouldn’t try to kill someone without knowing who it is first.”
“My motto is maim first, ask questions later.” She took in my outfit with a satisfied smirk, and I couldn’t help the accompanying blush. “Well, well, well. Someone cleans up nicely.”
“Oh stop, this is all your fault.” I dropped the knife on her desk with a clatter and studied her face. She looked more tired than usual, the lines around her eyes deeper. “Who was on the phone?”
A fleeting look of resignation passed over her features. “What’d you hear?”
I sat across from her. “Enough to know something’s changed. I wasn’t trying to listen, I just didn’t want to interrupt.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “No need to fret, my pet. I’ll figure it out.”
“Frankie, what happened?”
Leaning back in her chair—which protested with a loud, drawn-out groan—she kicked her boots onto the desk. She was trying hard not to show the worry that was all too evident in her gaze. “The collection date’s been moved up.”
“To when?”
“Three weeks sooner.”
Shock surged through me, and I jerked my head back as if I’d been slapped. “What? But we won’t earn enough from the massages in a week.”
“I know, kid, I know.” Shaking out a cigarette from the box on her desk, she lit it and took a deep drag before exhaling. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out. You know I always do.”
An uneasy feeling crept into the pit of my stomach. Smoking and Frankie went hand in hand like seagrass and krill jam, but never in her office. An ashtray lay within reach, and it was full of fresh ashes. She kept the gym smoke-free, which meant this situation was way more serious than she was letting on.
There was an easy way to fix our problem, but it meant letting the land world know exactly what I was. Possibly even who I was. My throat constricted, stealing the oxygen from my lungs.
Was I ready to out myself like that? To put my sister in danger again?
Without lowering her boots, Frankie leaned forward and plucked a picture frame off her desk. She flipped it around to show me, a grin on her face. “Remember that day? You two were so green to bein’ landlubbers.”
I knew the picture like the back of my hand. It was the three of us—Frankie, Marissa, and me—getting ready to take the Metro for the first time.
