reconsider that idea. Maybe lonely was a good thing. Lonely certainly got more sleep. In my blackest moods, I tried to tell myself the increased sleep was the one good thing about losing my mortal family; living with Cliff and Gilly forced me to pretend to be diurnal and left me with a coffee addiction that verges on the epic. I don’t know how much caffeine it takes to kill a changeling, but I may someday find out.
The cats fell back once I reached the hallway, letting me walk unencumbered to the kitchen, where I filled their bowl with kibble. As they descended on their feast, I put a pot of coffee on to brew and made myself a quick nighttime breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs. Protein, carbohydrates, and best of all, cheap as hell. Combine minimum wage with the San Francisco housing market, and that sort of thing becomes an issue.
My food was still cooking when the cats finished theirs. Cagney wandered out into the living room while Lacey sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and started to wash her paws, purring loudly.
“Laugh it up, brat,” I said, eyeing the level of the still-brewing coffee as I waited none too patiently. “We’ll see how much cat food you get after we’ve been kicked out for not paying the rent.” None of my magic was strong enough to make the landlord believe I’d paid him. I’d be out on my ass if I gave him the slightest excuse, and he’d be fitting a new happy couple into my previously rent-controlled apartment before I had a chance to find myself a cardboard box to live in. Evening wouldn’t solve my housing situation twice.
The fog in my head cleared as I ate, and I almost felt like myself by the time I’d finished my second egg on toast and third cup of coffee. I tossed the dishes into the sink, rumpling my hair with one hand as I walked back toward the bedroom. The answering machine light was still flashing. I paused.
“It’s probably Stacy, but it could be work,” I mused. “If it’s work, it probably means coming in on my night off. But it also means there might be money left after I pay the rent. Guys? Opinions?”
The cats didn’t answer. Cats are good that way. Their lack of answer saved me from needing to explain my secret, lingering fantasy, the one that woke every time the answering machine flashed: the hope that Gillian might have found my phone number forgotten on her father’s desk somewhere and decided to reach out for the mother she hadn’t seen in fourteen years. It was never going to happen, but it was a wonderful dream.
What the hell. I needed the money, and it wasn’t like my creditors could threaten me with anything I hadn’t heard before. If it was Stacy, I could just delete the message. I leaned back against the wall, sipping my coffee, and pressed the button marked “play.”
The speakers crackled, intoning, “You have three new messages,” in a bland mechanical voice that cut off with a strident beep. I winced and reached for the volume control, intending to turn it down. I was still reaching when the playback began, and I forgot about everything but the message.
“October, this is Evening. I believe I may have a problem. In fact, I’m nearly sure of it.” Her tone was clipped, tight with some unacknowledged worry. She always sounded repressed, but this was new; I’d never heard her sound scared. It takes a lot to scare most purebloods. It takes a lot more to scare someone as naturally scary as Evening herself.
“Evening?” I straightened.
Evening wasn’t just someone I called to fish me out of jail cells: she was Countess of one of San Francisco’s smaller fiefdoms, and sometimes, she was even a friend. I say sometimes because she and I had very different ideas about what social standing meant. She thought it meant she got to order me around because she was pureblooded and I wasn’t. I disagreed. So we hated each other about half the time, but we spent the other half helping each other survive. I found the man who
The cats fell back once I reached the hallway, letting me walk unencumbered to the kitchen, where I filled their bowl with kibble. As they descended on their feast, I put a pot of coffee on to brew and made myself a quick nighttime breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs. Protein, carbohydrates, and best of all, cheap as hell. Combine minimum wage with the San Francisco housing market, and that sort of thing becomes an issue.
My food was still cooking when the cats finished theirs. Cagney wandered out into the living room while Lacey sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and started to wash her paws, purring loudly.
“Laugh it up, brat,” I said, eyeing the level of the still-brewing coffee as I waited none too patiently. “We’ll see how much cat food you get after we’ve been kicked out for not paying the rent.” None of my magic was strong enough to make the landlord believe I’d paid him. I’d be out on my ass if I gave him the slightest excuse, and he’d be fitting a new happy couple into my previously rent-controlled apartment before I had a chance to find myself a cardboard box to live in. Evening wouldn’t solve my housing situation twice.
The fog in my head cleared as I ate, and I almost felt like myself by the time I’d finished my second egg on toast and third cup of coffee. I tossed the dishes into the sink, rumpling my hair with one hand as I walked back toward the bedroom. The answering machine light was still flashing. I paused.
“It’s probably Stacy, but it could be work,” I mused. “If it’s work, it probably means coming in on my night off. But it also means there might be money left after I pay the rent. Guys? Opinions?”
The cats didn’t answer. Cats are good that way. Their lack of answer saved me from needing to explain my secret, lingering fantasy, the one that woke every time the answering machine flashed: the hope that Gillian might have found my phone number forgotten on her father’s desk somewhere and decided to reach out for the mother she hadn’t seen in fourteen years. It was never going to happen, but it was a wonderful dream.
What the hell. I needed the money, and it wasn’t like my creditors could threaten me with anything I hadn’t heard before. If it was Stacy, I could just delete the message. I leaned back against the wall, sipping my coffee, and pressed the button marked “play.”
The speakers crackled, intoning, “You have three new messages,” in a bland mechanical voice that cut off with a strident beep. I winced and reached for the volume control, intending to turn it down. I was still reaching when the playback began, and I forgot about everything but the message.
“October, this is Evening. I believe I may have a problem. In fact, I’m nearly sure of it.” Her tone was clipped, tight with some unacknowledged worry. She always sounded repressed, but this was new; I’d never heard her sound scared. It takes a lot to scare most purebloods. It takes a lot more to scare someone as naturally scary as Evening herself.
“Evening?” I straightened.
Evening wasn’t just someone I called to fish me out of jail cells: she was Countess of one of San Francisco’s smaller fiefdoms, and sometimes, she was even a friend. I say sometimes because she and I had very different ideas about what social standing meant. She thought it meant she got to order me around because she was pureblooded and I wasn’t. I disagreed. So we hated each other about half the time, but we spent the other half helping each other survive. I found the man who
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