Page 28

Home Again

“O h my Heavens, did you see Mr. Tirrell’s face!” Helena crowed as they exited the elevator on their floor. “It was everything I could do not to chew on my nails; I was so nervous. But you did it! We won!” She hugged him again around the shoulders, inhibiting his ability to pull their room key out of his pocket. Giggling and wiggling, she did not let go until they were almost to their door. “Also, your dish was soooo good! I was nervous when you did the pie thing, but it came out so tasty, I about lost my mind. Oh, I should call Cindy and tell her that we won the contest! I was texting her the whole t ime and …”

Helena came up short, just as he managed to tap the key to the door reader, another bit of modern magic he wasn’t entirely sure hadn’t come about via demonic influence.

As angry as he was at her, he had managed to tamp it down into hot burning coals in his stomach, until he figured out how to deal with it. So, his voice sounded mildly concerned when he asked her, “Wh at is it?”

“I missed a call. It must have come through when we were in the elevator.” She pressed her device to her ear and waited, listening. A second later her eyebrows popped up. “We can go back to my h ouse now.”

My house.

She continued. “That was the BDI. They are giving us the go-ahead to go home. Oh, huzzah!” She grinned; her excitement renewed. “This day just gets better an d better.”

He didn’t say anything to that; he simply spun around and went to set their suitcases on the bed. Clearly the maid had come in at some point during the day while they had been gone, as the bed was made up fresh.

“It seems a shame not to stay one more night,” Helena said as she followed him in, scooping dirty clothes piled to the side of the room. “The agency will have to pay for it either way, but I also just really want to shower in my own shower and sleep in my own bed, you know?”

She dumped the load into the nearly empty side of her suitcase, stuffing it down so she could zip it behind a panel. “It’s lucky, too, really. We were going to need to do laundry again, and my work clothes are dry cl ean only.”

“Whatever it takes to win the game,” Rafferty muttered as he turned on his heel to fetch the toiletries bag they were sharing, stuffing the brushes of various sorts into it, along with the other necessities of this mo dern life.

“Rafferty? What’s wrong?” she called after him. “You don’t seem alright. Why aren’t y ou happy?”

“Why should I be happy?” he shot back, the internal anger bleeding into his words.

That took Helena back a half step. “Well, for one, you just won your first cooking competition, and for some pretty amazingly high stakes,” she said, following him into the bathroom and leaning into the shower to retrieve the soap they had b een using.

He took the opportunity to leave the small room where she was too close to him. “No, I didn’t.”

“What the hell do you mean? Of course, you did!” she cried, chasing after. He worked at stuffing the toiletries bag into his suitcase, but it wasn’t fitting correctly, which led him to jamming and jamming it some more until her hands stopped his. “Will you please look at me and ta lk to me!”

The second he did, however, the anger retreated back into its cozy cave in his stomach. He didn’t want to have this fight now. He didn’t even really understand what the fight was about, so how could he tell her?

She bit her lower lip, clearly worried about his behavior, and he didn’t blame her.

Forcing a breath in, he blew it out. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He looked into her beautiful gray eyes, begging him to give her answers she could understand. “I’m not mad at you, ” he lied.

“Was it Richard Tirrell? I was wondering if he wasn’t triggering something in you,” she offered, and he accepted.

“He reminded me so much of the nobles I used to serve,” Raffer ty agreed.

“Oh, I was thinking he would be like the masters who used to summon and use you,” she said.

“T hat, too.”

She nodded, calmer now, more reassured by his explanation. “Well, let’s get out of here and go home. Get as far away from anything to do with that pomp ous jerk.”

He nodded, and they continued with their hasty packing. Helena kept talking the whole time, going over the events of the competition in detail. He listened and nodded or agreed when needed, but he wasn’t really listening. Instead, a feeling of dread settled over him. One that seemed like it would stretch on and on for the rest of his life. At least, the rest of his life wi th Helena.

“Oh, dear Lord,” she said as they entered through her front door and snapped on the light. After a second, she added, “Well, I guess it could have be en worse.”

It was clear that people had been in her house. Everything was slightly moved out of place, for one thing. As Helena rolled her bag through the door, she paused by one of her pictures onthewall and adjusted it back to straight. Then she turned a vase that to Rafferty didn’t look like it mattered which way it pointed, but to her, it looked better.Then she shoved on the front of her couch with her knees, pushing it back an inch until it was back against the wall.

“If I wasn’t sobusy, I wish I could just take tomorrow off and straighten everything up, make sure nothing is missing. Not that I think they really would take anything, but you know.”

“I will do it,” Rafferty declared, shutting the door be hind them.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Helena said, waving her hands as if that would wipe away the suggestion. “You’re not a servant anymore.”

“I don’t see it like that,” he answered.

“Oh! And I need to let the BDI’s Pet Care know that we’re home, and I can come get Pooka back!” She grabbed her phone to do just that.

A doorbell interrupted whatever she was going to say next, and he was grateful.

Annoyed, Helena looked up from her phone. “Oh, come on!” But the bell rang again, so she pocketed the phone and went t o open it.

A muffled voice came through the door before it opened. Then there was chaos as Charlie, followed by Cindy, dragged suitcases into Hele na’s home.

“I’ve left him, that’s what’s happening!” Charlie declared, clearly answering something Cindy had asked.

Rafferty didn’t care. Cindy was saying something in response, while Charlie was trying to wrangle a small yapping dog that was refusing to forget about the squirr el it saw.

“I’m sorry. Wait, I’m sorry,” Helena repeated, though what she was apologizing for, Rafferty hadn’t the faintest idea, “What has happened?”

“No, we’re really sorry,” Cindy interjected, shooting a harsh look at Charlie. “We should just go to a hotel.”

“How did you know we were here?” Raffe rty asked.

“We didn’t! That was my point!” Cindy declared.

Charlie picked up his little dog. “I just… didn’t know where to go. I wasn’t thinking.”

Cindy scoffed and rolled her eyes, exasperated since she had literally just told him to go to a hotel. Rafferty guessed she had been “just telling him” for a while now.

“No, don’t be ridiculous, come in,” Helena invited, now stepping back to clear the door. Rafferty left her side and grabbed the handles of two suitcases crowding the entry. Apparently, Charlie brought a tot al of six.

“Sorry,” Cindy said, this one directly to him. “He’s been freaking out for the past hour, and since I was staying w ith him…”

“It’s okay,” Rafferty said. “You are Helena’s friends. I am not a stranger to people freaking out.” He was being serious, but it elicited a smile f rom Cindy.

“You’re a good guy, Rafferty,” she said. Her words hit him in his heart sharper than they should have, but Cindy didn’t seem to notice as her attention was pulled back to Charlie as he recounted his story.

Charlie had been talking the whole time to Helena. “I mean she was just standing right there, in our apartment, wearing my bathrobe. To be fair, she looked as surprised as I was, but why would he do that!?”

“You mean, this girlfriend of his, she was in your a partment?”

“Yes! I mean, has he lost his d amn mind?”

“I think he wanted to be caught,” Cindy said, crossing her arms. “Like a cry for help or something. He knew we would be com ing back.”

“I don’t know what he’s thinking, I just know… I just can’t!” Charlie’s face twisted up and Helena threw her arms around him. He didn’t start crying, just shuddered and let himsel f be held.

“Charlie!” a shout came fro m outside.

Because Rafferty stood nearest the door, he looked out to see Chris, Charlie’s husband. He ran from where he had badly parked his car on the street, the lights still on, the driver’s side door stan ding open.

“No! I don’t want to talk to him,” Charlie said. “I can’t just yet. I can’t.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” Helena’s face was full of determination, a battle look settling on her features.

“No, I’ll take care of it,” Rafferty said, not at all prepared to let her go anywhere near this so-called friend who had already threatened Helena a few times already. He didn’t wait for her to agree; he moved out onto the small bit of porch she had and met Chris at the bottom of the steps.

“Charlie, I’m sorry. I mean it. Can we just talk about this? Please!” Chris shouted, even as Rafferty stopped him bodily from proceeding up the steps.

“No,” Rafferty said firmly, blocking the other man’s way. “He doesn’t want to talk to you. You should go.” Again, Rafferty thought to reach for his demonic energy to work on the human’s emotions and compel him to obey. Even if such a thing would have been expensive, Rafferty knew how to make it work. As a man, his words lacked that sort of c ompulsion.

“Get off me!” Chris struggled, at first simply trying to push past the human obstacle, but when Rafferty proved to be determined, Chris laid his own hands on him in a weird ineffectual slappi ng motion.

“I said, ‘No!’” Rafferty shouted, ignoring the slaps, as he seized Chris’s shoulders, determined to walk this jilted lover t o his car.

“Chris, please, listen to him,” Helena called from the top of the steps, not daring to get any closer yet, for which Rafferty was grateful. Chris seemed determined not to listen to eithe r of them.

It didn’t help things that Charlie came out onto the porch at that moment, his own face tear-streaked. “Chris, you have to go! I n eed time!”

“How dare you do this to me? Do you understand you are humiliating me?!” Chris shot back, his rage replacing his pleas. “I said ‘Get off me!’” he shouted inches from Raffer ty’s face.

Chris broke away from his grasp just enough to whirl back a fist. It landed across Rafferty’s face as a haymaker punch. His head whipped to one side, and a wave of nausea roiled his stomach as the world spun. Like all the other sensations he had experienced since coming to life, this one was intense as well. His eye felt like it had exploded. Cupping his hand to it, the ground came up to meet his butt, and he decided to stay there until everything else in the worl d settled.

For his part, Chris loomed over him, cupping his hand in his other one, swearing in pain, having taken as much damage as he had given out. From what little Rafferty could see through his other eye, Chris’s knuckles were split and bleeding.

Then another person stood bet ween them.