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“Might be worth talking to Lugh—he did chase off a couple of your so-called boyfriends.”

Which echoed what our ruby-wielding elf had said earlier. “Do you know why?”

Sgott smiled. “It is the job of a big brother to weed out unsuitable suitors, and that’s what this elf sounds like.”

That would certainly explain the hasty departure of several boys I’d been keen on when much younger.

“I’ll get this elf’s description out immediately,” Sgott continued. “You never know, we might catch him before things escalate any further.”

“It’d be nice if things were that easy for a change.” Even as I knew they wouldn’t. “If Kaitlyn has anything of interest to say, I’ll let you know.”

“Do, and then go home and rest, or you’ll end up in hospital again.”

I smiled and rose on my toes to kiss his hairy cheek. “I’m sorry to be worrying you so much.”

He raised an eyebrow. “No, you’re not, not any more than your mother was. Now, be gone so I can clean up this mess.”

I smiled and headed for Falkner Street, Mathi silently falling in step beside me.

Like most of the other buildings along this portion of the street, Kaitlyn’s was a two-story red brick and, aside from the bright blue color of its wooden front door, rather unremarkable. A full-height window dominated the shop front to the right, although a privacy film had been placed over the lower portion of it. A small brass sign in the middle of the door said “Kaitlyn’s Kurios”, along with an intercom on the brick wall to the right. I tried the door handle and wasn't surprised to find it locked. I dare say most of the businesses along this street had locked their doors when the proverbial shit had hit the fan.

I pressed the buzzer with one hand and placed my other against the door. I knew the building’s layout well enough, having been here a few times now, but the altering song of the wood would tell me where exactly she was.

After a moment, I found her. She was in the basement, though there was an odd heaviness in the area that prevented me from pinpointing her exact location.

“She inside?” Mathi asked.

“In the basement.” I kept my finger on the buzzer. It would eventually annoy her enough to answer.

“Probably a security bunker. Most of her ilk have one.”

“A bunker wouldn’t have protected her from a determined dark elf, let alone our elf. She should have heeded our warning and left.”

“Except few dark elves can manipulate concrete, and those witches capable of magic powerful enough to destroy it wouldn’t need her services. She wouldn’t have known this was different.”

“We told her it was different. That should have been enough.”

The speaker crackled briefly, then a soft voice said, “If your sole aim is to annoy me, Bethany Aodhán, you have been successful. What do you wish?”

Her low, sultry tone had surprised me the first time I’d heard her speak, and it shouldn’t have given she was of Myrkálfar stock. If rumors were to be believed, she’d used her inherited ability to charm and seduce her way to the top of the contractor tree.

“We need to talk.”

“A brief warning of danger does not give you access privileges, my dear woman, and I believe I’ve talked to enough people for one day,” Kaitlyn replied. “I have no desire to strain my vocal cords any further, especially by talking to you.”

“Shame, because your place continues to be watched by the enemy, and I’m guessing the minute we step away, the elf mage will finish what he tried to start today.”

“He will not succeed. I am well enough protected?—”

“Not against this man,” I cut in. “I saw you dead, Kaitlyn, buried under the debris of your concrete bunker. But hey, happy to walk away and let you chance the odds.”

There was a long pause. “You saw this?”

“I did. It’s the reason we came here rather than simply ring the cops or IIT. I saw them bloodied and broken. I saw Sgott dead.”

And she was well aware of what Sgott meant to me. There’d be few in the underworld who didn’t.

She didn’t reply, but a buzzer sounded, and the door clicked open. It had, I noticed as I walked through, been recently reinforced by iron—no doubt to keep us troublesome pixies from breaking in.