Author's Note: You guys are a tough crowd. I guess I'm gonna have to step up my game. Maybe not in this chapter, though. Heh. I'll try for the next one.
· x ·
"Here are the files you requested, Dr. Lewis. I also took the liberty of scouring the library." A young human intern set a box of notes and books down on the corner of Lauren's desk. He patted the top book affectionately as she looked up. "There's some stuff on the restricted list that might interest you, but I can't access it. I made notes, though, so you'd know what to look for if you wanted to."
Lauren smiled distractedly. "Thank you, James."
He beamed and waited perhaps a beat too long before realizing she had already gone back to studying the monitor in front of her. In peripheral, Lauren saw his shoulders roll forward in dejection as he stepped back. His eagerness to please her had been evident and she had dismissed him with a half-hearted thanks. Feeling guilty, Lauren pushed back from her desk and stood up. He had already crossed half the lab by the time she spoke.
"James?"
He turned, a puzzled look overshadowing his disappointment. "Yeah?"
She gestured to the box of books on her desk. "Are you busy this afternoon? I could use a research assistant on this project."
The truth was that the books were actually very important to her and she didn't relish the idea of sharing them with anyone. She couldn't wait to crack them open, to spend hours poring over them. The idea of someone else touching them made her personal green monster rear its ugly little head. She wrangled with jealousy and ultimately won.
Given the way his eyes lit up with excitement, Lauren knew she had made the right decision. He all but scampered closer to her. "I'm free now," he said.
Lauren chuckled at his enthusiasm. She patted his arm. "Okay. Find an empty conference room and get started. I just have a few things I need to finish up before I can join you."
James nearly trembled as she picked up the box of books and delicately delivered them back to his awaiting embrace. As he departed, Lauren couldn't help the grin that spread across her features. She idly wondered if that was how she had appeared when she'd been younger. She decided she definitely had and her grin stretched wider.
As she sat back down, the cell phone in her pocket vibrated. She took the phone out and looked at it, puzzled by the unknown number showing on the screen. Lauren thought about the piles of work she had yet to do and contemplated ignoring the call. With things as precarious as they were out in the world, Lauren decided it would be irresponsible to let the call go to voicemail, especially considering only a small handful of people had her private number. One of them could be in trouble.
"Hello?" She listened quietly, a sense of unease quickly burning through her good mood. "Can you come here? No. Don't do that. Listen, I'll send a car. Stay at Union Station and wait for it, okay? Cleo? Thank you for calling me. I'll let the Ash know to expect you."
Lauren's hand trembled as she set the phone down. The presence of an Erised was bound to make everyone at the compound nervous. A stigma was attached to them due to the lack of knowledge. They were feared and reviled. Erised were known to be able to capture any fae's ability, rendering their victims, for all intents and purposes, human for the duration. What Erised fed on, however, was their prey's most base desires. To that end most Erised had been hunted to extinction. To Lauren's knowledge Cleo Silsbury and one other were the only two remaining. The other had been missing for a long time, prompting Cleo into a never ending search for her kin.
When they had met Cleo, Lauren and Bo had learned the hard way what an Erised was capable of. Consequently, Lauren was one of the very few who had witnessed Cleo's innate gifts at work. In that time, she had gained a healthy respect for the woman, even if she hadn't entirely been able to forgive Cleo for what she had done to her.
Lauren had made a gesture of friendship, however, as an exercise in absolution and to aid in healing her own guilty conscience. She was glad she had, because it would be better to have an Erised on their side, rather than working against them.
The air felt thicker as Lauren worked through her dread to pick up the phone. She first placed a call to the garage attendant to send a driver for Cleo. Next she called Lachlan.
· x ·
Dyson laid his pool cue on the table and glared at Hale as he threw a twenty down next to it. The Siren had beaten him yet again, leading him to realize how distracted he'd really become.
"You got a burr stuck to your butt fur, or something? I never beat you twice. Hell, I rarely beat you ever," Hale said, following his friend to the bar where he paid for a round. Dyson raised his eyebrows at the thought of drinking a mid-morning shot, prompting Hale to shrug and say, "Well, it is five o'clock somewhere, isn't it? Besides, you look like you could use one."
"I have a lot on my mind," Dyson confessed, tossing back the shot. The pretty blonde bartender who replaced Trick when he wasn't around raised the bottle and winked at him. The shifter shook his head, refusing a second round. The first still burned his gullet.
"Hmm," Hale hummed as he eyed the bartender. "A piece of that would go a long way to solving anyone's problems."
Before he met Bo, Dyson might have agreed. Now? Not a chance in hell. He didn't like to admit it but he was having a hard time stomaching blondes these days. As an unfortunate side-effect of coming to terms with Bo's relationship with Lauren, Dyson had begun avoiding blonde women as sexual partners. Not that it mattered because there were plenty of brunette and redheaded fish in the sea. And he fished a lot, trying to somehow fill the hollow inside him. His exploits had the adverse effect, making him surly. He had even failed miserably at his chance with Ciara, a woman he once thought he loved. He suppressed a growl and clenched his fists.
"No? All the more for me," Hale said, still appreciating the bartender's voluptuous curves. At Dyson's insistent silence, Hale turned. "Seriously, bro, what gives?"
"I don't want to talk about it right now," Dyson snapped.
Hale put up his hands, startled by the fervor of Dyson's tone. "Fine. Sorry I asked."
Dyson thawed a little. "I'm just trying to deal with some personal crap right now."
"Succubus related?" A sharp glance confirmed Hale's suspicions and the siren nodded understandingly. "Look, you don't have to explain. That woman would be a handful for anyone."
"It's not her fault, really. I made a deal with the devil and now that I know the consequences it's too late to renege."
Dyson could see that Hale felt for him, but he didn't want his buddy's sympathy. The only thing that would help him now would be to break the Norn's hold over him and he couldn't fathom a way to do that. In a delicious twist of irony one of the few people who could possibly help him with a viable answer was Lauren herself. As a walking, talking Fae encyclopedia she could likely find some sort of loophole for him.
Saving him from travelling further down that dark corridor of thought, Kenzi shambled up to the bar. Most of her face was eaten up by a large pair of sunglasses, which she slid down her nose to regard Dyson. "Whoa. Who pissed in your cornflakes?"
Noting her extremely bloodshot eyes, Dyson shook his head. "It's not my cornflakes I'd be worried about, Kenz. You look to be dragging ass this morning. Drink too much wine last night?"
"There is never enough wine to appease that lush," Bo piped up from behind Dyson. He had been expecting her, but the sound of her voice in such close proximity startled him. The succubus put one hand on his shoulder and leaned forward to finger the empty shot glass on the bar. He could feel the warmth of her chest pressed against his back.
Kenzi noticed the empty glass, too, and said, "Dude, it's only eleven."
He breathed deeply and felt his stomach sour with regret. He could smell Lauren all over Bo. He wanted to say "yeah, well my hell starts the moment I open my eyes," but refrained. Instead he clenched his teeth, struggling for control. Shoving off from the bar to get away from Bo, who had to move quickly to the side to evade, Dyson gathered up the case files and moved down the bar to spread them out. The Norn may have taken his love for Bo, but she hadn't taken any of his other emotions and those were the ones he was having the most trouble dealing with now.
Bo, oblivious to the fact that she was the source of his discomfort, snorted, "You don't waste time getting down to business."
"Not when it comes to fae casualties, Bo," he grated.
Bo and Kenzi shared a glance, but wisely kept their mouths shut. Bo defaulted to a professional persona that she normally reserved for prospective clients. Kenzi retreated to whisper to Hale, likely to beg him to charm her headache away.
"What am I looking at?" she asked.
"Sprites. These ones are dark fae. They are nasty little buggers that have been plaguing The Pantages Theatre for the last century. I think one of them even had a thing for Neve Campbell when she danced in Phantom of the Opera; used to leave dirty notes in the dancers' dressing room for her. The authorities never did figure out who her stalker was."
Bo looked puzzled. "Do I want to know why you know that?"
He shrugged. "Probably not."
She took the file from his hands and peered closer at the photo. "What's wrong with them?"
"They've been petrified," he replied. "See the ashen pallor of their skin? Normally they're a bluish-green colour."
"What could do this?"
"That's what we need to find out."
Kenzi chose that moment to return with renewed vigor, the sunglasses perched on top of her head. "Hey, those are really lifelike garden gnomes. Where can I get one?"
Bo snickered. Dyson snatched the photo away and stared sternly down his nose at the human. "They're Sprites, Kenzi, little dark fae that were once alive. And no, you can't have one."
"Hold on, hold on… if they're dark fae why are we dealing with this?" Kenzi asked.
"The Ash asked me to as a favor to the Morrigan. I guess she's got her hands full, too. Some really bad stuff has been happening to both sides and no one really knows what's going on. For once both sides are attempting to cooperate with one another."
"Can I take the file? I'll go ask Lauren if she can tell us anything," Bo asked, holding out her hand. At the mention of Lauren's name, Dyson's nostrils flared but he handed the file over readily enough.
"I sent the bodies to the lab. She may have already begun the workup," he said in a carefully clipped tone.
Bo hugged the file to her chest and shifted from foot to foot, as though she had something more to say but didn't quite know how to broach whatever was bothering her. Eventually she reached out and slid a hand down his arm. "Are you all right, Dyson? I'm worried about you."
Schooling his features into an expression he hoped passed as nonchalant Dyson said, "I'm fine; nothing to worry about."
Disbelief registered on her face, but Bo merely nodded. The stubborn shifter would tell her what was bothering him when and if he felt it was necessary. Until then, Bo had enough on her plate to last one succubus a lifetime. There was no sense in adding more complicated drama.
When she and Kenzi had gone, Dyson returned to the bar. Under Hale's watchful eye, he ordered two more shots and downed them rapidly. He had his work cut out for him if he planned to cull his emotional baggage.
· x ·