“I thought we’d agreed that was the Company’s fault,” Davy said. He tapped one of the images and bounced his heel impatiently as he waited for the information to load. “And I didn’t know he had a deli, I was just fucking him.”
At the table next to them, the woman sniffed over her croissant. “Now that sounds likeyoursister.”
They glared at each other. Hill felt briefly guilty at being the unheard cause of contention, but then got distracted as Greg Tannenbaum—and yes, he was a bit smug that Davy had been so wrong about the name—appeared on the phone.
“I…um…didn’t expect that,” Hill said. “Was it serious?”
Davy glanced up at him, raised an eyebrow, and then went back to the phone.
“You’ve met me,” he said. “What do you think?”
Hill braced himself for that to sting worse than finding out Davy used to have a thing for a guy that would call his restaurant “Delilicious.” After all, it wasn’t like Hill had thought Davy was a virgin. If he dismissed someone he’d actually been with like that, though, what did it mean for some sad little orphan he couldn’t even touch?
It should have hit Hill in every nerdy, neurodivergent, never-fitting-in insecurity he’d built up over the years. Except…
You don’t need to miss me.
Because Hill had met the man, and that was up there with “I know” on the declaration of feelings by the emotionally incompetent scale.
Whatever the force that approved or denied opening the Veil had expected this to be? It wasn’t nothing. Probably a tragedy, and definitely time-limited, but it was still more of Davy than Greg Tannenbaum had gotten.
Hill leaned on Davy’s shoulder—well, on a handily placed tentacle in the same general area—and squinted at the screen.
“Imeant,was there any reason for Fraser to think he mattered?” he said. The tentacle he was leaning on curled up his arm and along his shoulder. It idly caressed his jaw as he talked. “That you’d have told him something? Or he saw something?”
Davy snorted. “I’d be fucking offended if he did,” he said. “It wasn’t like we were dating. We just fucked sometimes.”
He paused and glanced over at the eavesdroppers next to him. “Now you either commit to the fight and bring up someone’s mother, or get the fuck up and go pay your bill.”
The man bristled. His partner had the good sense to think better of it and grabbed his arm. A quick glare and a tug at his sleeve gave him enough time to decide she was right. They got up in a huff and stalked off.
Davy stared flatly after them to make sure no one had second thoughts. Then he went back to flicking through web entries on Greg while he picked up his phone. Hill glanced at him and then after the cowed couple.
It was times like this that made it hard to remember that, to the rest of the world, that was Hill.Hecould see Davy’s lean body and heavy, brutally handsome face. All they saw was Hill…a man who’d never successfully intimidated anyone unless it was over the Erie doctrine.
Apparently, the spirit did make the man.
“Maybe Fraser was jealous,” Hill said.
“Of Greg?” Davy said skeptically. “I doubt it. Fraser didn’t bother with his dick much, but when he did, it liked smarts and pussy.”
Oh.
OK, there was the horrific price that Hill had to pay for violating the natural order. Those words were not going away.
While Hill swallowed bile, Davy frowned over the phone. Then he made a rude noise and swiped the screen closed. “There’s something there. You were right about that,” he said. “The man’shouse burned down. That’s a bit too much bad luck to be natural. But we’ve only got a day left, so there’s no time to dig into it. I’ll see if I can get Gallagher on the job.”
“You told her you only wanted one thing,” Hill said.
“I lied,” Davy said. He drained his coffee cup, head tilted back and throat working, and grabbed his bag as he stood up. It got slung over his shoulder, whatever costume was inside straining the plastic handles. “I do that. You should try it. In fact, why not start now?”
He smirked and headed off across the forecourt. Hill tried to hesitate, but the tentacle already had hold of him, so he just got hauled along for the ride.
Hill paused on the street and stared at the flat facade of his stepfather’s brownstone.
It had been a few years since he’d last been here, so he’d not noticed before, but… The house his stepfather lived in wasn’t that different from the one his brother had been buried under. It was in better repair and was in a better neighborhood; the bus driver hadn’t hesitated to let Davy disembark at the nearest stop.
Still a strange coincidence.
