“Go home,” I said, softer. An armature tidied the tray; another boxed the shards in labeled wells. “I’ll keep cutting. Ifanything resolves to something true, I’ll have it waiting with your coffee.”
Her hand rose to rest on the pendant as she spoke to the room. “But you’ll text me the scary parts,” she said, testing.
“I’ll text you the useful parts.” A beat. “And the scary parts when they become solvable.”
She snorted—concession disguised as disdain—and slid off the stool. “Don’t stay up all night,” she ordered, knowing I would.
I watched her go, then let the room change shape around the box on the tray. The lights tilted warmer. The fans deepened. Threads forked: tracer supplier maps, indium tail vendors, machine-mark registries, exhibit contractor invoices cached by web crawlers that never sleep.
I lined the ominous names up where only I could see them and did not speak them into her evening.
She needed a bath and a bed. I needed a map and a door.
We were both, in our own ways, very good at what we do.
8 /SIRENA
My place wason the edge of town, and yes, it was partially underwritten by my father, who understood the unique constraints my power put on me. There was no way I could afford the top three floors of a building otherwise. But once I got off the elevator at my penthouse I could taste the safety.
I kicked off my shoes and walked over to the window, as everyone else’s thoughts drifted away, leaving me with just myself and distant honking from traffic below, like the cars were metallic geese clamoring for attention.
And not for the first time, I sank against the window and rested my forehead on its cool glass pane, closing my eyes—reminding myself of the only windows and doors thatreallymattered: mine.
Not all the ones that were pressing in against me at Nocturne.
I got some glimpses through them, though.
I was smart enough not to concentrate on them at the time—if I gave what was behind a door or window in my mind too much attention, there was always a danger it might fly open. But some of their owners wanted to be seen so badly, and probablythey were physically closer than the rest, so I felt echoes from them still.
I remembered a panoply of skin, of hair, of vines, and fluids, and so muchwantandneed—like the two wolf-based therians who were sharing a much larger harpy. She was braced on hands and claw-footed feet against their onslaught, their proud members swording in and out of her slick hole. Her human lips shouted both compliments and obscenities as they howled in pleasure, as turned on by her as by the fact that they were jousting against each other inside her.
Or the buck waiting in some kind of rut-rack, looking like a forest god—I saw him as the women who were congregated at his feet did, tanned, tall, lightly furred, and gorgeous, with candles tied to his antlers, his chest bound to the wall behind him with a wide leather strap, while below it his erection strained.
I felt what it was like tobehim, to be a creature in wild, agonizing heat, at the same time as I felt the wild hopes and hunger of the three human women at his feet who were working him, licking, sucking, and slurping, until he shivered and demanded, “More!” stomping a cloven hoof, making wax rain down on their naked skin.
I let myself bathe in the aftershocks of their emotions, before rocking away from the window, sad to find myself in my own simple skin: the girl who’d never gotten any.
Not because I hadn’t had opportunities—I was surrounded by monsters who’d risked my father’s ire daily on missions. Surely some of them would’ve slept with me.
No . . . it was because I was scared.
I’d had a thousand orgasms through other people, walking down heavily populated streets at night.
But I’d never had one frominsideme.
Because to let that go—to be like that, to be as open to someone else as they were to me—would mean . . . I opened myeyes, shook my head, and stood to take my comb-crown off and get in the shower.
Nex hadn’t contacted me by the next morning, which I found incredibly suspect.
I picked up my phone before I got out of bed.
You mean you haven’t foundanything?I texted.
Was waiting for you to come in,he responded the nanosecond I hit send.
I thumbed the voice message button as I lurched upright in my bed. “Is that good or bad?” We’d been practicing this for almost as long as he’d been “alive”—I wanted him to consider other people’s circumstances and not be so convinced he was right all the time.
“Neither,” he responded. “Was just curious to see the look on your face when I told you.”
