I hadn’t needed Noble’s whispered words. As a person who hugged walls at social gatherings, I could nail power and social dynamics from a hundred paces away.
When a group of men with blue hats squeezed in, the tension spiked—two sides about to square off for a prize. Watchmen and Patrollers.
Noble nuzzled my neck. “Watch the leaders. Don’t make it obvious. You are my eyes. Tip your head back. That’s right.” The side of his face rubbed along my throat, his lips dropping kisses as he mapped me. His lips clamped around my pulse point and the men wavered in my vision as the vow marks thrummed under my skin. “No,” he whispered, nipping me back to awareness. “Don’t close your eyes. Softly, tell me what you see.”
“Green hat—” My breath caught. “—started an argument with blue.”
The conversation in the tavern rose then dropped in volume. The bodies shifted and other noise dimmed, as if the rest of the pub also wanted to be privy to what was happening. The enchantment narrowed its focus on the argument like a lens.
“I don’t care what youthinkyou can do—we handle that area.”
“Who?” Noble whispered into my ear as his hand worked up my side and one thumb grazed my breast.
“Green,” I choked out.
“—as if you can handle your own house, watchman.”
Noble’s thumb circled the curve through my dress, stays, and chemise. Thin protection against his hot hand. “Blue.” The word got strangled in my throat as he brushed the tip.
“Shh, shhh,” he whispered against the skin under my ear. “I’ve got it now. And I’ve got you. Just relax and watch. I’ll listen.”
Was relaxing possible? Outrage and maidenly virtue had flown the pub. My body was undulating, moving against his, like a snake charmed by its master. My eyes fought to remain open as his lips moved against my throat, under my ear, beneath my chin, and his hands wound a coil of heat that kept spreading farther outward.
“Stay with me.” His hand drew up my leg, between my thighs. My closing eyes flew wide. A hot palm resting on my thigh was the most innocent placement I was going to receive.
“Damn magistrates thinking they can run things. Stay in Helborn where you belong,patrollers.”
“Listen to them whine, Sam, you’d think the poor watchmen needed no help with their street fights,” the patrol leader said to a crony over his shoulder.
The watch leader visibly bristled, his shoulders rising and flaring out. He took a step forward. “As if you helped in that scuffle. You were in the way. Davey and the boys had it under control. You just made it worse.”
The other man stepped closer as well, putting their noses inches apart. “Dangerously close to Helborn territory. You know that’s our jurisdiction.”
“As if we’d forget, what with you whining about it all the time, as if you miss your mummy and she’s working the line.” A nasty smirk appeared.
“You keep believing you are capable and we’ll keep being amused.” The sentence was delivered calmly, but the man’s knotted fists said otherwise.
“Problem?” A new voice entered the fray, and Noble’s lips moved from my neck. A lock of his hair tickled my chin as he glanced at the newcomer.
The man was of average height, but the way he carried himself made him seem taller. He stood next to a few of the more hulking patrollers, and even though he was shorter, magic heavier, there was something distinctive about him. Not something necessarily nice, but dignified and powerful all the same.
“Here we go,” the man groaned, lifting his pint and tapping it against the side of a fellow watchman’s.
“No wonder crime in Midtown grows. Too busy drinking to patrol,” the new man said.
“Here now, the murderer’s been caught. And by one of our own. Didn’t see you catching him, and wasn’t that your job, inquisitor? Didn’t see you collecting the reward.” The green watchman leaned back, a sneer in his posture.
I tightened my grip on Noble’s hand and he gave mine a comforting squeeze back. We were in a tavern filled with watchmen, magistrate-appointed patrollers, and an inquisitor—and all of them were jockeying for position.
Noble’s lips found my ear again. “This is exactly what we want. Relax.”
“He was lucky,” the inquisitor said. “If Penner hadn’t needed to piss himself so badly, he never would have found him.”
“Call it luck all you want, Dresden.” Dresden, the man assigned to Kennen’s case? “But it’s not you that gets the glory. And the patrollers have to continue licking the magistrates’ balls just a few days more.”
The leader in blue and his fellow patrollers bristled, but Dresden replied first. “You think that stopping one man, one murderer, is enough to put you on top? To stop the might of Command Street?”
There was a forced dignity about him that filled me with dread—a competent man who felt the need to prove himself would be a dangerous foe for Kennen’s case.
