“Right,” I say.
“Right,” Felix agrees. He gives my shoulder a brief, businesslike pat that is his version of a hug. “Just thought you should know. Keep your eyes open.”
He goes back to the register. I go back to the machine. I make a flat white with slightly more concentration than it requires.
Keep your eyes open.
I have been keeping my eyes open. I have been keeping them very open. Haven’t I? Fantastic sex and witty banter hasn’t made me forget that Hex is a dangerous, otherworldly being with all the complications that must entail, has it?
The bell above the door chimes.
I look up automatically, ready to smile, and my stomach drops straight through the floor.
Mr Peterson is standing in the doorway of Coffeelicious. Not a thug this time. Mr Peterson himself, with the expression of a man who has never once in his life not got what he wants.
He spots me immediately. Of course he does.
He walks to the counter with the slow, deliberate pace of someone who owns every room he walks into and knows it. Hestops in front of me. He doesn’t queue. There are two people in the queue and he simply walks past them as if they are furniture.
“Hey!” says the woman he cuts in front of.
Peterson ignores her. His eyes are on me.
“I want a word with you,” he says.
My heart is doing something dramatic in my chest. Last time this happened there were two very large men and a locked door involved. Peterson on his own, in daylight, in a coffee shop full of witnesses, is considerably less frightening. I tell myself this firmly.
“I’m working,” I say. “If you’d like to join the queue, I’ll be with you shortly.”
Something shifts in Peterson’s expression. He wasn’t expecting that. People like Peterson are never expecting that.
“I don’t think you understand the situation,” he says, and his voice has dropped to something quieter and more dangerous. “I have contacts in this city. Serious contacts. The kind that can make problems disappear. And right now, you are a problem.”
Felix has materialised beside me. I don’t know when he got there. He is holding a coffee tamper with the calm energy of someone who is not going to use it as a weapon but wants Peterson to know that it is available as an option.
The woman Peterson cut in front of is filming on her phone. Bless her.
I look at Peterson. I think about Hex. I think about shadow creatures and dinner parties and family dinners and my mother’s voice on the phone telling me I’m a disappointment. I think about the man who sent thugs to my workplace because I wouldn’t fawn over him. And something very calm settles over me like a coat.
I’m sure Hex will come if I need him, but I don’t think I do. I think I’ve got this.
“Mr Peterson,” I say pleasantly. “You’re being filmed. By at least three people in this coffee shop, I’d estimate.” I watch him glance around and clock the phones. “You sent threatening men to my workplace last week. That’s on camera too, the whole thing, andso is this.” I lean forward slightly on the counter. “If you have contacts, I suggest you use them to find yourself a good solicitor. Because you’re going to need one if you keep this up.”
Silence.
Peterson stares at me. His jaw is doing something complicated.
“I want an apology,” he says, but the certainty has gone out of it.
“I’m sure you do.” I straighten up. “Would you like a coffee while you wait for that to happen?”
Felix makes a sound beside me that he converts, very professionally, into a cough.
Peterson looks at me for a long moment. Then he looks at the phones. Then he turns and walks out of Coffeelicious without another word. The door swings shut behind him.
The woman who was filming gives me a small round of applause. Her friend joins in. The two students look up from their pastry.
Felix turns to me with an expression of absolute delight. “A solicitor,” he says reverently. “You threatened him with a solicitor.”
