I paused a heartbeat before pulling open my front door, and sucked down a deep breath so I wouldn’t be panting when I answered. It barely helped. I opened the door.
“Briar,” I said, forcing a smile onto my face, mostly so I could suck down as much air as possible between my teeth.
Briar Darque was leaning against my porch rail, her arms crossed over her chest either in impatience or for extra warmth in the bitter, predawn November wind. That wind rushed through my now-open door, chilling the sweat beading at my hairline and making me wish I’d thought to grab a jacket. Or real clothes.
“Come in,” I said, stepping aside.
Briar stared at me, taking in my bare feet, my rather unseasonable camisole-top-and-silk-shorts pj’s, and my hair still a mess from yesterday’s activities as well as being slept on wet and windswept from my bike ride. My pulse pounded in my ears, and I wondered if she noticed my chest was heaving as I tried to get my breathing under control. Another cutting breeze swept in through the door, and I shivered, gooseflesh breaking out across my exposed skin.
“I’m going to shut the door now, so if you’re not coming in . . .”
Briar pushed off the railing and stepped inside. I gratefully shut the door, locking the chilly morning outside. She scanned the small room, not that it had changed much since the last time she was here. I hadn’t owned much—or nice—furniture to start with, and the castle was furnished, so I’d left all the big items here. As long as no one started opening drawers, the place still looked lived in.
Briar’s gaze caught on the bed—the still perfectly made, not even creased bed. Her eyebrows rose and she turned back to me, taking in my appearance again.
“What took so long?”
“I . . .” I faltered. She at least guessed I hadn’t slept here, but I obviously couldn’t claim I’d taken a moment to change or shower before answering the door. I silently cursed the panic that had me rush out of the castle without taking time to get dressed.
My hesitation had trailed a moment too long when the door behind me, the one leading down into the rest of the house, opened.
Briar’s posture changed, her weight shifting between her feet as her hand dipped into her coat. I whirled around as Falin stepped into the room.
He smiled, but he didn’t close the door behind him and his hand hovered near the Glock holstered on his waist. Which was fairly obvious because aside from the gun and holster, the only other thing he wore was a pair of faded denim jeans. No shoes and no shirt covering his expanse of pale chest. With his long hair loose and slightly mussed, he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed, and as I did as well, I could only guess what Briar thought.
I clenched my teeth to bite back my groan, and tried to make my face communicate for him to get out.
Either he didn’t notice, or I seriously needed to work on my expressions because he continued to smile and said, “You left so suddenly. Who is your guest?”
I rolled my eyes but glanced back at Briar. She had eased her hand away from the vials of potent magic stored in the bandolier across her chest, but her stance still indicated that she was prepared to move, and fight, if she had to. Her cocked eyebrow was even higher than it had been when she’d studied my un-slept-in bed, which I hadn’t realized was possible.
“Well, he’s definitely easy on the eyes, but what happened to the other one?” she asked, her gaze trailing over the taut muscles he’d left on display.
Yep, she thought I was sleeping with Falin. I sighed but didn’t correct her. It didn’t matter and supplied a plausible reason why it took me so long to get to the door.
“Special investigator Briar Darque of the MCIB, meet Lead Special Agent Falin Andrews of the FIB,” I said by way of introduction, waving a hand through the air between them. Then I walked over to my bed and sank down onto it, pulling my legs up to sit cross-legged on the now-not-quite-perfect comforter.
I didn’t like the way Briar looked at Falin like she wouldn’t mind seeing him with even less on while still holding herself in that slightly aggressive posture. But as I wasn’t actually sleeping with him, it wasn’t my place to care, so I tried not to notice.
Falin’s appraisal of Briar was much more businesslike. He couldn’t sense magic, so he couldn’t know exactly how armed to the teeth she was, but he took in her posture and outfit along with her official title before his hand moved away from his holster and he stepped out of the doorway, finally shutting the door to downstairs behind him and walking farther into the room. They were, theoretically, both working for the good guys. For now, that seemed good enough for him.
He stopped about a foot away from me, at the nightstand beside the bed. I was relieved he didn’t plop down on the bed beside me, because that would have been awkward, and considering I planned to let Briar continue to assume we were sleeping together, there would have been no good way to handle it.
“What can I do for you?” I asked, turning my attention back to Briar.
“Did you want to get dressed?” She cut her eyes purposefully to my pajamas.
I glanced down. The camisole was thin, and between the fact that we’d turned the thermostat in the typically empty house way down and that the front door had let in quite a bit of the chilly air, it was obvious I was cold. The problem was, there were no clothes in this apartment anymore.
I hugged my arms across my chest but shrugged. “I could meet you in my office when we open at nine.”
“If I wanted to wait that long, I wouldn’t have shown up at your door at the ass crack of dawn,” she said, scowling at me.
Great.
“Are you arresting me?” Because if that was the case, this was really going to suck as I didn’t even have a jacket in the apartment anymore—an issue I probably needed to fix. But if she planned to arrest me, I didn’t think she’d be nice enough to offer me a chance to dress first. Besides, this awkward intrusion seemed a little too informal for an arrest.
“Not yet,” she said, to my limited relief. “But go get dressed. I can see that you’re not wearing anything under that. I really don’t need to know that much about you, Craft.” She turned to Falin. “And it wouldn’t be amiss if you were not standing around like some Greek marble statue.”
One edge of his mouth twitched into the smallest amused smile, but he strolled across the room, toward my dresser. Crap, what was he thinking? I started to jump to my feet but then faltered. What was I supposed to do, yell that he couldn’t open that drawer? That would draw even more attention. Maybe I could claim all my clothes were in the wash? Except that would be a lie and I wouldn’t be able to utter the words.
Falin pulled open the top drawer, appeared to fumble with something, and then dragged out a small stack of clothing. I tried not to gape. Those drawers were empty. I’d emptied them myself.
Which meant the stack of clothes in his hands, which appeared to be a shirt for him and an outfit that looked a hell of a lot like one of mine, had to be pure glamour.
He turned to me, a mischievous smile touching his lips, and held out his hand to help me off the bed. I took it dumbly, not sure what else to do. Falin was good at personal glamours, but he wasn’t great at making lasting objects without some similar raw material to work with, and there had been literally nothing in that drawer. There was no chance I’d be able to accept that pile of clothes, go to another room, and put them on. Still, I let him pull me to my feet.
He waved a hand toward my small bathroom on the other side of my kitchenette. “After you,” he said with another smile.
I frowned at him but headed in that direction, Falin on my heels.
Briar rolled her eyes. “I’m regretting this already. Hurry up, I don’t have all morning.”
Before the bathroom door fully closed behind us, I channeled raw magic from my ring into a small privacy charm on my bracelet. A soundproof privacy bubble sprang up around me. I’d crafted the charm myself, so the bubble of privacy was small. Really small. As in for both Falin and me to be fully covered by it, we had to be close enough that if I took too large a breath, our chests would touch, but the spell itself inside that small area was solid.
“What are you thinking?” I whispered in a hiss of breath. Whispering wasn’t necessary inside the spell, but it seemed prudent.