Page 95 of Guiding Desire

“No.”

At the very top of the stairs, the skylight brightened the landing, the light bringing out the grain in the wood in detail. Orrey finally found himself put on his feet just outside the door where shoes sat more or less neatly on a plain black shelf.

“Shoes off,” he said and slipped out of his own while the procession of food moved through the open door ahead of them.

“Oh, look! We don’t have to order after all!” someone said from inside, then Karmine’s head looked out, a container already in his hand. “Your parents made this?”

“Yes,” Orrey said.

Karmine looked at the bottle floating ahead of him. “Is that”—he picked it up— “Fire berry wine? Yum. Homemade?”

“Note I was given it to underline the threat to my life, should I mistreat my Conduit,” Senlas said.

“Don’t misunderstand!” Orrey said, nearly falling over while he was working on the laces of one of his shoes, though Senlas quickly steadied him.

Karmine looked up from the bottle’s label and laughed. “Oh, the fucking hilarity! Guys, guess who was threatened!”

He vanished into the apartment with the bottle in his arms.

“You can’t go around and tell people,” Orrey whispered, tossed his remaining shoe onto the shelf.

“Pfft. I told you it’s fine. You can trust me, you know.”

Orrey stopped on the threshold. “I…am beginning to.”

When Orrey looked at Senlas next, the Guardian had that stormy look full of desire on his face again. His jaw was tight, his pupils wide.

“Seriously? You are still outside?” Col said before tugging on Orrey’s lapel. “Come on. You’re getting a tour. And you can cool off and remember why we’re here today,” he said to Senlas.

Orrey cleared his throat when he followed Col. “Hello, by the way.”

Col chuckled. “Right. Hi. Come with me.”

Orrey found himself led across creaky floorboards past prints of optical illusions stuck to the wall. It was painted a cool blue with tape half blended through it, very antique indeed. Most walls had at least the capacity to have them set to simple, solid colors.

Mounted with greater care than the prints were displays of weapons. There were so many of them, and Orrey’s eyes widened, seeing as how most if not all of the blades, cudgels, and pointy things he couldn’t even properly name would have likely been illegal if they’d been found in a regular’s home.

“Oh dear. You’re staring at those as if you want to fine someone,” Col said before pulling Orrey into what turned out to be a small corner room with cute round windows and an oddly slanted ceiling, given they were just below the roof here. The room had a fluffy round carpet and several plants with dark green leaves, none Orrey recognized as fruit bearing. Other than that, the room was bare. “Let’s sit,” Col said and dropped to the carpet.

Orrey followed suit. “Is this a meditation space?”

“Huh? Yeah. Nice, if you like this sort of thing. Anyway, you and I are having another talk because everyone else is already on top of everything we know.”

“This is about this Alesa thing,” Orrey said.

Col nodded. “I’ll say you got your Guardian at an unlucky time. Be sure to keep up and rise to the challenges. And I don’t know what exactly they are, but I have a rough idea.

“See, if I try thinking like Alesa, knowing that Alesa wants to get his greedy little hands on my much too distinguished ass, I too would come to the conclusion that our Guardians out there need to be made handsome corpses.”

“What? He didn’t really say that. It seems extreme. What we heard didn’t sound good, I’ll grant you, but what motive could a Guardian have to plot the murder of four other Guardians? There is no sense in it. You all keep this city safe. Alesa certainly seems to want to plot something, and he seems to have intentions on you, but murder is just…”

Col sighed. “Let’s see. You’re a former protector. You have a general idea why people commit murder, don’t you?”

Orrey shrugged. Deducing motive had always interested him most during his studies toward becoming a protector. “Love, thwarted or otherwise mismatched. Wealth. To hide a grander crime. And the aberrant. But that’s the cases protectors handle. Outside the Grounds. The most crime that happens here is when regulars try to get in.”

Col reached out and petted Orrey on the head. “You’re adorable. And wrong. We’re all just people.”

Orrey wasn’t sure what about that ticked him off, the notion that he was adorable or that he misunderstood Guardians.