“Sod off,” Jesstin hissed.
The woman’s head popped up in alarm.
“Not you,” he grunted, waving a hand at her.
She squinted dubiously but obliged, though he may as well have excused her. Maintaining his erection with his mind so distracted was less likely than Gennady returning to life.
Gennady prodded. “You don’t think your chattel already know you hallucinate?”
Jesstin’s hands went white on the chair arms. He closed his eyes and bared down in futility, but he felt nothing more heady than his ex-best friend’s phantom breath against his ear.
“Or is it that you don’t want them to know you correspond with men you’ve killed?” Gennady’s shrill laugh echoed so piercingly, it was incredible only Jesstin could hear him. “You hide here to keep the bogeyman away, when we both know there’s none but the one you created.”
“Not me,” Jesstin said, forgetting himself again, but the woman didn’t notice this time. “My father.”
“The one who made you a bastard or the one who raised the bastard?”
It would have been easier if the visits were hallucinations, but Gennady Hawthorne was not the first ghost Jesstin had corresponded with, just the one most determined to drive him insane.
“You’re worried about what Ellie will do. You should worry. Five men she took down, and she was miles away when it happened.” He swept his arm in a wide swath when he said the word miles. “There’s nothing more dangerous than a storm without control.”
Jesstin switched his response to his thoughts. Even you can’t believe the ridiculous rumors. Miles away? Really?
“How do you think she’ll find out? By accident? One of Taven’s convenient ‘clairsights’? Your own conscience conspiring against you?” He tsk-tsked. “Only a matter of time.”
The upbeat organ music switched to a boot-stomping, raucous melody that drowned out the deals and gambles in the background. Speculation, dice, prostitution, cockfighting, tax evasion, gold smuggling... Nothing was out of bounds for those who traded their troubles for something more satiating. Not in a thousand years would any of it have been allowed to propagate in pious Riverchapel, but in Mythgarde, everything was lawful, except running one’s mouth about what happened in the shadowy hamlet.
It was all his, built upon an altar of the guilt-laden sum Mathias Skylark—the father who had raised a bastard, as Gennady had so eloquently put it, not the one who had made him one—had bequeathed upon him when he came of age, as well as the shame that lingered a step behind him. It wasn’t the life he’d imagined for himself, but he’d outgrown the daydreams of a wistful boy. He was proud of his sordid achievements, which he wasn’t open about, especially not with his sister, Rhiain, who loved him more than his parents ever had. She was forever disappointed that he spent his hours in the infamous village, but the rules of the place protected his full truth; he wasn’t just patron but proprietor. To speak of the doings in Mythgarde was to find oneself dragged back to the village and hanged, for all to witness what happened to traitors.
That secret was safe.
The other one, the bigger one...
“The one where you killed your best friend in a fit a childish rage before he could defend himself? That one?” Gennady was never far away with an unwanted answer.
The woman between his knees yelped as she was pulled away. Jesstin opened his eyes and found Raegnar, one of his two personal protectors, waiting to be addressed.
“What have I said about laying hands on our workers?” Jesstin snapped. He fixed his glare on the burly man as he slid his trousers up without standing. “And interrupting me?”
“You said not to harm them.” Raegnar flicked the faintest nod over his shoulder, at where the woman was already charming another patron. The brief pass of his eyes downward was enough of an answer to Jesstin’s second question.
“Even Raegnar knows you can’t stay hard anymore,” Gennady said before bowling over in laughter. “How much should we bet they all know? I’ll double my money that they know you’re a virgin too.”
Jesstin grunted under his breath. “What, Raeg?”
Raegnar sniffed hard and drew closer to lean in. “There’s a woman here to see you.”
Jesstin tilted his head back with a humorless snigger. “Is that not the point of the Azure?”
The guard licked his lips. He seemed almost amused. “Not that kind of woman, boss. She doesn’t want to be...” He turned to glance behind himself. “Seen in such a place. Asked for you to come meet her in private.”
“I think fucking not,” Jesstin said, wondering if Raegnar detected his uneasiness. What woman would visit him there under such covert intentions? If it was Rhiain, she’d storm in like a hurricane, though she’d never come to Mythgarde. That was good, because it would probably break her heart.
“You are well and bloody done if it’s Elloven,” Gennady said helpfully.
Jesstin vowed to find a way to make his old friend corporeal, so he could throw him into the street and be done with him, like he would any other nuisance. Maybe murder him again, for the fun of it. “Who? Say it already.”
“The widow Hawthorne.”
