Jesstin squinted at Gennady’s first appearance since he’d stormed out of the office. “Now you want a conversation?” he muttered under his breath. In a place as packed as the Azure, it was nothing to see a man talking to himself, but he didn’t have the same protection at the Ivory.
Nothing pissed him off quite like apparitions reading minds at their whim.
“Stay away from her, Jesstin.”
“Did you not...” Jesstin grimaced and cupped a hand over the side of his face to block the view of others. “Tell me to obey your mother and help her?”
“Now you’re done. She’s been through enough.” Gennady drummed his ghost fingers on the table. “Just get back to the Azure, will you? Doesn’t your limp cock have a show to put on?”
Gennady’s words didn’t sting the way he’d probably hoped. Jesstin’s celibacy wasn’t a flaw. It was a personality trait. “You think I’m a threat, but it doesn’t trouble you that Considine is breathing down her neck at all hours?”
“Of course it troubles me. It’s always troubled me,” Gennady retorted. “But Taven isn’t a murderer.”
“Then what? A bully? Everyone knows how your mother lives. That stable hand keeps her in squalor. So what does he do with Asterin’s gold?”
Gennady scoffed.
“You have some nerve warning me away from her when you’re not so different from the men who hurt your sister.” Jesstin jumped at the rare opportunity to strike a nerve. “She might even approve of what I did if she knew.”
“You don’t know a damn thing! You never did.”
Two of the Virtues walked by, arm in arm and beaming. Twins, from the look of it, both with striking blonde hair and crystal-blue eyes that gave him a moment’s pause. He forced a smile in return. A fellow proprietor had told him once that their memories had been spelled away. Stolen. It explained their empty-eyed bliss. Having had his own memories stolen as a child, Jesstin felt there was a special place in the bowels of damnation for anyone who would do that to someone. “I know she’s traded one nightmare for another.”
“You suddenly care about someone you don’t even remember?”
Jesstin did remember Elloven, but she hadn’t left an impression then. He wasn’t sure why she had now, other than that haunted look he recognized all too well. “Care? I don’t even know her. But I recommended she come here, so I just want to make sure she has the read of the place. Know where’s safe for her, where isn’t.”
“You really think she’ll come.” Gennady snorted so loud, Jesstin struggled to believe no one else could hear him. “You’ve never been a good liar, Jesstin. The only thing you’re worse at is being a friend.”
Jesstin’s face flamed with heat. Gennady’s charge was massively hypocritical, given what he’d done. But it had been the last of Jesstin’s childhood shed, his innocence lost. If the chain of events preceding the murder had not occurred, Jesstin never would have found his way, stumbling drunk, to Mythgarde. Never would have felt the inexplicable sense of being at home among fellow misfits. Never would have invested his money into the Azure when the prior owner had become insolvent. “Have I turned into a mirror then? Because I doubt it’s possible to dethrone you.”
“I know you, Jess. You’re interested in her.”
Jesstin shifted his hand higher on his face when one of the Virtues slowed and furrowed her brows at him. “Interested in her? When have you ever known me to be interested in anyone?” He’d never slept with a woman, hadn’t even entertained a relationship with one. Once, Gennady had understood the reasons, even been sympathetic. Now he used Jesstin’s weak points as weapons.
“You may be damaged goods, but you’re still a man.”
“It’s Considine you need to be concerned about.”
Gennady’s hard expression turned placid. “She’s here.”
He disappeared in a flash, leaving Jesstin feeling like he’d just been slapped with no chance to retaliate.
She’s here, he heard again in his head and conducted a frantic survey, skipping over groups of ordinary women and men, of Virtues flirting their way through the tables. He couldn’t find her anywhere and had decided Gennady was messing with him when he spotted a lean figure buried under a man’s cloak hovering near the arched passage between the entrance and the main floor.
The hood fell back. Soft waves, messy from the long ride but combed out this time, pooled around her rosy face. She’d seemed cool and confident the night before, despite the circumstances of her return, but standing in a house of questionable esteem, she immediately stood out in her uncertainty.
Maybe Gennady was right, and Jesstin did have a thing for her, but it wasn’t a problem, for either of them. He wouldn’t marry, wouldn’t have children. Any fancy he had for her was toothless, a problem for his left hand on long nights.
Jesstin started to stand and signal her, but she noticed him first. Her insecurity evaporated as she headed his way.
“You came,” he said as he gestured for her to sit. Too late, he realized he should have pulled her chair for her.
“You seem surprised.”
“And your shadow? He didn’t seem pleased with my suggestion.” Which was precisely why he’d given it.
Elloven smirked with a glance at the door. “I left when he wasn’t home.”
