Page 63 of Last Flame
“Not salvageable. There’ll be a new one on it by morning.” He runs his hand through his hair. “It’s also upstairs.”
“The Vestry expects word tonight.”
“How’s the report coming along?”
It’s in six drafts, none of which survived, because the sentence afteridentified the disturbancedoesn’t exist. Every version reads like somebody else wrote it.
“In progress.”
“Mm.” He tips his head at the building. “Erik owes you three years. That conversation’s ready whenever you are. He’s also upstairs.”
“I’m aware of where Erik is.”
“You’re at twelve, by the way.”
“What?”
“Circuits.”
I had eleven.
I don’t answer that. I have kept accurate counts through two collapsing buildings and an actual war, and somewhere tonight I dropped one.
I know exactly where, too. Fourth circuit, north corner. Her light came on.
“So,” he says. “The door’s upstairs. Erik’s upstairs. The report needs one sentence and the sentence is upstairs. You’ve spent an hour holding the only ground in the city with nothing on it.”
“I’m running the perimeter.”
“Thoroughly,” he agrees.
He’s not wrong. He’s rarely wrong. It’s his worst quality.
“She made us coffee,” he says.
I don’t ask.
“The men who broke her door.” He pauses like I need time to digest it. “She was a mug short, so she used a measuring cup.”
I don’t want to smile at that, and I don’t. But my mouth tips up as I consider the fact that she’s prepared even when everything is chaos around her.
“Rayner’s got it. Took it with both hands.” He laughs. “You should have seen it.”
I’m picturing it before I agree to. Rayner — all six and a half feet of him, inked to the knuckles — holding a measuring cup with the care of a man who’s been handed something breakable. And her watching to make sure he’s comfortable with it.
I’d like to stop picturing it.
“She apologized for it,” Brock says. “Twice.”
I’m not going to stop picturing it.
“She gave us names. I’m a trap, apparently. Gunnar’s trouble.” The tilt widens. “Rayner’s a problem.”
Trap. Trouble. Problem. She nailed every single one of them, immediately.
I don’t want to be impressed.
I also don’t want to know if she’d have given me a name too.
