“These are the good guys, Wiley.”
“But I’m not one of them.”
“You’re my— You’re with me.”
Oh, okay, he wanted to put a label on me. I smiled up at him, maybe a little bit daring him to just say it out loud. Could that be the conversation he wanted to have later?
Hamilton huffed a laugh and took my hand. I switched it from holding on to lacing our fingers together because if we were going to be anything, everyone was going to know. He gave my hand a squeeze, and I felt myself calming down.
“The people we need to talk to about what happened to me,” he said, “are down here. This half of the building is more reactive to problems. Tactical. Strategic.”
I just nodded, feeling a little dumb for freaking out. Especially since, hello, there was a scary thing who liked protecting me riding the elevator with me.
When the doors opened, there were more receptionist-type people and more guards, the lighting was definitely not fluorescent, and every single person stood at attention when Hamilton stepped into the room. They didn’t salute or holler anything, but they stood still and straight, looking like they awaited orders.
“Thank you, everyone,” Hamilton said in a pleasant tone and not at all loudly. They all heard him, though, because each person returned to whatever they had been doing like he’d dismissed them.
Well, everyone except the woman whose black hair was in a messy bun and stabbed by at least ten pens and maybe a pearl-handled letter opener. She wore a perfectly normal gray pencil skirt, white shirt with ruffles on either side of the buttons down the center of it, and black stilettos with gleaming metal heels that looked like they could act as ice picks in a pinch. She made ating-ting-tingsound as she ran over.
“Lord, Fawkes! Where have you been? They sent a team out to investigate, but no one could follow your scent passed the city limits.”
I didn’t know what Hamilton thought about that, but I thought it was nice to know people had been worried abouthim. The people who’d be wondering where the hell I was either wanted my labor or my money.
Shit. That was depressing.
Hamilton gave her a tiny smile that had a blush blooming on her pale cheeks. “I need to speak to Quillan,” he said pleasantly, but it had the effect of making her eyes bulge and that blush vanish.
“Right away.” She hustled back to her desk and picked up the phone. “I’ll let him know you’re coming.”
Still tethered by our linked hands, I followed Hamilton past all these desks and through a sliding glass door. We had five different halls to choose from, and he chose the second from the left. Clearly, he knew exactly where he was going, but my mind was still on the woman.
“Who was she?”
“Liana.”
“So when Liana doesn’t look like that…”
He grinned at me. “Mermaid.”
“No shit? That explains her eyes.”
He slowed his stride. “Her eyes? You could see her eyes?”
“Of course, I could see her eyes. Two of them. Huge. Right there in her face.”
“Ah.” He started power walking again.
“And full of ocean waves.”
He smiled at me like he was really pleased about something.
I mentally whacked myself in the forehead. “Oh, that’s what you meant about her eyes.”
“It is. Not everyone can see the small tells that reveal us.”
“Cool.” I looked him over. “What’s your tell?”
He smiled bigger, showing more teeth, and there was a pair of fangs peeking into view. “And my eyes reflect red in low light.”
