‘You and that bloody book,’ he muttered. ‘Sometimes I almost get jealous of it.’
I cupped my hands around his beautiful face. ‘Well don’t. I’m marrying you, not the book. Which reminds me, you and Mum were talking venues last night, weren’t you? Did you narrow it down?’
‘Yes. We’re down to two places that your mother and I both like.’ He pulled out his phone and showed me the picture of aridiculously stunning country mansion. ‘This is Capesthorne Hall. It’s an eighteenth-century Jacobean-style country house.’
‘You can’t call that place ahouse!It’s a huge sprawling mansion!’
‘Yes, it’s big and would certainly have the capacity we need. We’ll need space not just for key ogre families here, but some foreign ones as well.’
I blinked. ‘Right. It’ll cost an arm and a leg.’
‘It’s actually very reasonable.’ He shrugged. ‘Even with exclusive use.’
‘Okay, and the other?’
He pulled up another image. ‘Peckforton Castle. Built in the nineteenth century but with a deliberately gothic feel.’
I gaped at it. A castle. I could marry Robbie in a freakingcastle.
I looked at my fiancé. It suited him, a castle. Not just because he was a warrior king, but because he deserved to relax on his wedding day, and with key ogres placed around the battlements, he could let his guard down in this beautiful fortress.
‘The castle,’ I blurted. ‘Let’s do it there.’
He lifted an eyebrow. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’ I leaned across the table and kissed him. ‘I’ve got to get going or I’ll be late.’
‘You’re the boss,’ he pointed out. ‘You can be as late as you want.’
‘What I want,’ I said primly, ‘is not to be late.’
Looking amused, he started packing up the pastry boxes. ‘We don’t want that then, do we? I’ll drop you and the boxes off, Inspector. We may as well start your team’s day with a sugar high.’
‘You better not be bribing them with pastries.’
He batted his eyelashes at me. ‘Who? Me?’
I burst out laughing, loving this man all the more.
Chapter Six
I had come to like my small box of an office on the third floor of No. 1 Bridge Street. Though we’d only been in the building for a couple of weeks, it already felt cosier than my other office ever did. The uneven floor and low ceiling gave it charm.
After leaving the many boxes of pastries in the break room, I sent a Unit 13-wide email, informing them to go and stuff their faces courtesy of the ogre king.
Loki napped while I spent the morning impatiently awaiting Ed and Crane’s reports. In the meantime, I filed one of my own regarding the vampyr attack. I contacted Amber DeLea and requested that she attend the office to scry an image of the vampyr from my head, so I could look into the matter.
At lunch, I popped into the break room and was truly impressed with the dent everyone had made in the pastries. I picked through the remains and found myself a chocolatetwist. Yum. With my lunchtime treat secured, I headed back to my office.
I’d barely sat down at my desk when my door opened without so much as a knock.
DSU Thackeray filled the doorway, his expression set to carefully neutral. His shock of white hair was trimmed into a sensible crew cut, and his uniform was pressed neat, not a button missing, not an inch of shoe unpolished. His piercing blue eyes took in the small confines of my office in one sharp sweep before pinning me.
‘Wise,’ he said gruffly.
Without hesitation, Loki turned himself invisible. He wasn’t a fan of authority figures. I didn’t blame him. From the look on Thackeray’s face, this wasn’t going to be a pleasant chat.
I didn’t have a visit or an inspection – or whatever the fuck this was – in my diary. I set my chocolate pastry down and surged to my feet. ‘Sir.’
