Page 38

Calisto

Asher didn’t get up to do Tai Chi the next morning. Instead, I found him propped up against the pillows, scrolling something on his phone when I woke. When I asked him about it, he simply smiled and said he was rethinking his priorities, and that perhaps he didn’t need to do it every day. I was glad. Having him there helped with not thinking about O’Reilly. Or Baxter.

We’d barely gotten breakfast out of the way when the knock at the door came, both of us freezing in a fight-or-flight response that said we might have been doing a great impersonation of pretending the previous day had never happened, but that it would be a long time, if ever, before it was out of our systems and we could truly relax.

“She’s dead,” I said. “And I should know because I killed her. Janessa is still dead, and Flynn is in prison.” For the first time, I truly appreciated what the last few months must have been like for John and Bellamy, with the constant fear of her turning up on their doorstep. It triggered the first stirrings of being glad I’d done what I had. If not for me, then for everyone else her continued existence had affected. Perhaps I could live with the consequences more readily if I thought about them rather than myself.

Asher nodded, but made no move to answer the door. I jumped as his phone rang, barely daring to breathe as he answered it with a curt “hello.” There was a moment of silence while he listened to whatever the other person had to say before he let out a breath. “It’s Cade,” he said. “I’ll let him in.”

He was gone for less than a minute, my boss following Asher back into the kitchen. It wasn’t until Cade looked between the two of us with a smirk of amusement that I appreciated how unprepared we were for visitors. Asher, seldom seen without a suit, had donned trousers and a shirt, but left most of his perfect chest on display by fastening only a few buttons.

At least he had technically dressed. My only concession to modesty was a pair of sweatpants borrowed from Asher’s friend, who apparently was considerably larger than I was. As a result, they hung dangerously low on my hips.

Cade’s amusement grew as I reached down in what I’d thought had been a covert way to hike them up a couple of inches before Cade copped an eyeful he hadn’t bargained for. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he said with a quirk of his lips that said he knew full well he was.

“You’re not,” I said, to make him feel more at ease.

“You are,” Asher said simultaneously, “so I hope it’s important.”

Cade took a seat at the kitchen table and looked pointedly at the kettle.

“I can make it,” I offered when Asher only stared at him.

“It’s fine,” Asher said, waving me back into my seat. “I just figured I might get a break from the constant endeavor to turn Cade’s blood to pure caffeine if I wasn’t at work.”

Cade grinned unabashedly. “I’ll succeed at it one day. Either that or drop dead of a heart attack before I get that far.” He sobered slightly as Asher set about getting mugs out of a cupboard. “I thought you might appreciate an update.”

“We would,” I said. “How’s Ben?”

“Ben’s fine. A doctor has checked him over and most of his injuries are surface level. No broken ribs or head injuries. Recovering should be child’s play compared to the concussion Flynn O’Reilly left him with a few months back.”

“Griffin must be relieved,” I said.

Cade nodded. “He is. He’s desperate to speak to you, but I convinced him to hold off for a while and give you some time.”

“He’ll want to talk about his sister. I can understand that. I’ll call him later. Hopefully, it’ll give him some closure.”

Cade nodded. “They raided the tower block.”

I frowned. “Who did?”

“The police.”

Asher turned back to face us. “You’re joking, right? They couldn’t do anything while she was alive, but suddenly now she’s dead, they can get their hands on a warrant. How convenient.”

Cade grimaced. “Yeah, I know. I think Ben’s statement had a lot to do with it. One of their own revealing details about their detention location and captor’s identity carries significant weight. Anyway, it was empty.”

“Empty?” I queried.

“No people. No drugs. No guns. Nothing. Everyone and everything had been cleared out.”

“O’Reilly’s body was there, though, right?”

Cade gave me something of a sympathetic look. Or at least that’s how I interpreted it. “That was gone as well.”

“She’s dead,” Asher said before I could say anything. “You told me a demon ate her soul. There’s no coming back from that.”

“I don’t…”

“Right?” Asher repeated, more firmly. “Think about it using logic, rather than emotion.”

I followed his advice, forcing myself to breathe slowly and not give in to the panic threatening to rise to the surface while I did so. “She can’t come back without a soul.”

“Well, there you go, then,” Cade said as Asher deposited a mug of steaming liquid in front of him. “I expect it was just part of their clean-up operation. No point in getting rid of everything else and leaving her there. Plus, I’m sure she had some dedicated followers enough in her thrall to want to give her a funeral of sorts. Ben doesn’t think the body will turn up again, and I think he’s right.”

I accepted my mug of coffee with a smile of appreciation to Asher. “What will happen to the building?”

“Demolished, hopefully,” Cade said. “I can’t think of any good use for it beyond starting again. Can you?”

I pondered the question while I sipped my coffee. “A house of horrors, maybe. They wouldn’t even need to do much to it. Just stick a ticket booth at the door. Maybe…” I stopped dead as Asher lifted a mug to his lips and took a sip. Cade followed my gaze and frowned, our minds obviously running along a similar path.

“If you’re drinking caffeine,” Cade stated, “then I’m going to have to revise my opinion that the world didn’t end yesterday.”

I went one step further and tried to tug the mug from Asher’s grasp. He held on fast, not about to relinquish it anytime soon. “Yesterday,” he announced, “I was one twitchy finger away from wearing my brains on the outside. So…” A shadow passed across his face as he recalled the moment. “I’m thinking fuck it to a lot of things today.” He held the mug up in an ironic toast before taking another sip. “I am having problems with it tasting like shit, though.”

I laughed. Asher was an adult. He could do what he wanted. Even if that meant acting like one person had stepped into that tower block and an entirely different one had stepped out.

Cade’s slight headshake said he’d reached the same conclusion. “I had another reason for coming here today other than just updating you.”

Asher arched a brow in question. He’d placed the mug down and I had an inkling that for all his bravado, it would stay there, that his rebellion had been momentary and had already fizzled out.

“I’m aware,” Cade said with his gaze fixed on Asher, “that you only took the personal assistant job so you could be close to Calisto.” Asher inclined his head in recognition of the point. “But… no one can dispute you being damn good at it. And while I recognize you don’t, nor have you ever, needed the money, I’m hoping you might consider staying on?”

To my surprise, Asher looked to me. I held my hands up. “It’s completely your decision. I will support whatever you decide. Want to carry on? Great. Want to quit and take up fishing? Still great. Whatever makes you happy will make me happy.”

Asher gave a slow, contemplative nod. “My honest answer at the moment is I don’t know. I’ll continue for now, and I won’t leave you in the lurch should I decide to step away. That’s all I can promise at the moment.”

A smile twitched on Cade’s lips before he masked it. He knew that was the best he was going to get and while he might not admit as much, he was grateful for it. The PPB would be a very different place without Asher making sure everything ran smoothly. He might have engineered us never meeting, but even I knew that from his name rarely being off everyone’s lips. Thinking of work brought me neatly to something Cade hadn’t yet mentioned. “What about the necromancy department?”

“With O’Reilly out of the picture, I see no reason to keep it closed. I figured you could all do with some time, though. Especially Griffin. Although, give Ben a day or two and I reckon he’ll be begging me to find Griffin something else to do other than fuss over him. It reopens on Wednesday. I’ll have a work schedule drawn up by Monday at the latest.”

“You will, will you?” Asher said drily. “That, I’d like to see.”

“ You will,” Cade corrected. “And no giving your boyfriend preferential treatment.” He looked between the two of us, lingering on our semi-clothed state. “I assume that’s an appropriate label?”

“You assume correctly,” I said, unable to keep the smile off my face. I reached for Asher’s hand and laced our fingers together. “For now.”

“Sweet!” Cade said, making it sound like it wasn’t sweet at all.

“You’ve missed something,” I pointed out to Cade.

His brow furrowed. “Have I? What?”

“You missed the part where you ask me if I still want to be a necromancer.”

While Cade looked surprised at the idea, Asher didn’t. “What else would you do?” Cade asked.

I opened my mouth to answer, but Asher beat me to it. “He has a rich boyfriend. If he wants, he can spend years contemplating that question and never have to come up with an answer. And you seem to have forgotten that you’re asking him to return to a place of work where someone nearly kidnapped him.”

I let Cade stew for a few moments. If I’d been John, I would have dragged it out for longer. Hours, at least. “I am coming back,” I announced. “But it’s nice to be asked.”

“I apologize,” Cade said. “I’m used to you being less trouble than the other two, but I have a feeling things might have changed on that front.”

I smiled. “I will never be a bigger problem than John.”

Cade laughed. “True.” Even Asher laughed.

We were still laughing when the knock at the door came. We exchanged glances, Cade shaking his head at our unspoken question that he might have directed someone else here. The person lacked patience, knocking twice and then three times while we were still figuring out who it might be.

“I’ll get it,” Asher announced, already halfway to standing.

Is that what my life would be now? Asher always answering the door while I cowered inside, scared of the boogeyman showing up on our doorstep? I stood, squaring my shoulders with a newfound determination. If I acted like that, O’Reilly still won and I refused to let that happen. I’d walked into a tower block full of armed men knowing I might never walk out again, so I could answer a door and deal with whatever lay behind it. “No,” I said. “I will. It’s probably a concerned neighbor wondering why they can hear noises coming from here while your friend’s away on business.” Asher nodded and sank back down, his expression saying he knew why I needed to be the one to answer it.

Despite my assurances, I took a moment to gather myself in front of the door, knock number four coming while I stood there. I had a feeling I was going to have a new appreciation for Asher’s security measures when we returned to his house. It reminded me I needed to call and tell my family they could go home. Some would be relieved. Some disappointed. And some might need the SAS to get them to leave.

The lock on the unfamiliar door was awkward, one or two curse words and a lot of fumbling required before I got it open. And then I forgot how to breathe as I stared at the man on the doorstep. Dark brown hair with a slight curl to it. Blue eyes. Three earrings in each ear. Less familiar were his mismatched clothes that were too small for him in terms of the trousers he wore, and too big for him with the T-shirt and jacket, the mixture of pink, fluorescent green, and khaki something of an assault on the eyes, and that was before you got to the flip-flops with a large flower on the front clearly meant for a woman.

“About bloody time,” he said as he barged past me, the actual bodily contact even more jarring than the sight of him. “Could you not hear me knocking?”

“How?” I asked, still staring at Baxter like he was an apparition I’d conjured up out of thin air.

He turned on me. “You know how. You decided to play god. You plucked me out of there and you dragged me here. Only you fucked up again. Do you even know where you dropped me?” I shook my head, words in short supply while I sought to recover from the shock. “In the middle of the Yorkshire moors. Not near a house. Not near anywhere. Literally in the middle of nowhere. Oh, and did I mention I was naked?” He plucked at the front of the T-shirt. “I stole these from various washing lines after walking miles naked. I’ve had to rely on the kindness of strangers to get me back to London. Unfortunately, that kindness didn’t extend to any of them giving me their clothes.”

“You should have called me.”

Baxter laughed. “I don’t know your number. Crazy, I know after years of literally living in each other’s pockets. But then we never needed to call each other, did we?”

I reached out tentatively, still not convinced that Baxter barging me out of the way could have been anything but my imagination. My fingers fastened around the curve of his shoulder, drifted down his left biceps, and then moved across to his chest, every inch feeling firm, muscled, and all too real.

“Are you going any lower?” Baxter teased. “I always knew you were desperate to cop a feel. Buy a boy dinner first, would you?”

I snatched my hand away, my head such a mess of swirling thoughts and emotions that I didn’t know which of them to deal with first, or if I could deal with any of them.

Baxter yanked me toward him and pulled me into a crushing embrace, his lips warm against my ear. “You brought me back to life,” he said. “I don’t know how you managed it, you clever bastard, but you did. I might be angry about the finer details, but I am not, and will never be, annoyed about being alive again.”

He pulled back so I could see his beaming smile. “I get to live again, and that’s all thanks to you. I can eat. I can drink. I can have sex. I can go bowling and do various other things I hated doing when I was alive. And then I can complain about them.” He grabbed hold of me again, apparently not done with the hugging. “And yes, there are a few things taking some getting used to. Like the whole having to knock on doors instead of walking straight through them. Having to worry about things like clothes. Needing to use transport again. People being able to see me. The list is endless, but I’ll adjust.”

“I’ll help you,” I said.

“Calisto?”

Asher’s voice from behind had me extricating myself from Baxter and putting some space between us. The last thing I wanted when we’d only been together for two minutes was Asher jumping to conclusions about me throwing myself into other men’s arms.

Luckily, his face said he knew exactly who Baxter was, and I recalled him telling me that Baxter had featured in some of his visions. Plus, he had the advantage of me having told him what I’d done.

Cade, meanwhile, seemed understandably nonplussed by the whole thing. “This is Baxter Stuart Canmore,” I said, waving a hand at the smiling man next to me. “I kind of brought him back to life.”