Page 2 of Infernal Affairs

They're romantics.

CHAPTER 1

ENOCH

The mountain troll on my couch is crying again.

I reach for the tissue box on the coffee table, slide it toward him with one finger, and wait for the snuffle and sniffle and the inevitable declaration that, no, he can’t possibly go through with it.

“I can’t,” Horace admits, gulping air in wet, shuddering breaths. “I’d rather throw myself in the bay than climb Widow Peak. I’m not cut out for... heights.” He spits the word like it’s a curse.

I lean back in my chair, keeping my hands folded and my posture loose. I certainly don’t tower over Horace, though at six foot and change, broad-shouldered, and, all right, bright red, I could hold my own if I tried. The horns help. So does the reputation. But you can never outmaneuver a troll with brute force.

“You recall what we talked about last week?” I ask. My voice comes out as slow and measured as I’ve trained it to be. “The difference between fear and avoidance?”

The troll rolls his great granite head, focusing on the threadbare carpet. “I recall. Fear’s normal. Avoidance is...”

“A choice,” I finish for him. I tap my knuckles on the notebook resting on my thigh, my favorite weighted pen clipped to the cover out of habit. “Your mate, wherever she is, won’t come knocking at the base of the mountain. You have to climb. Sometimes that’s what love asks of us.”

Horace makes a face. I can’t help but mirror it, though mine comes out more as a wry twist of the mouth. I’ve never been any good at metaphors where romance is concerned. Not for lack of academic knowledge. It’s the practical application that I’ve always struggled with.

“That’s easy for you,” Horace says. “You don’t—” He stops himself, color darkening the stone of his cheeks, and dabs at his eyes with one of my embossed tissues. “Never mind. Sorry, Doc.”

“You can say it,” I assure him. “You think I can’t relate.”

He shrugs, slow and ponderous, as if even the movement might trigger vertigo. “You’re not afraid of anything,” he says. “You’re a literal devil. You live in the tallest building in town.”

Guilt is a bitter, familiar flavor on my tongue. He’s not wrong. The old lighthouse-turned-loft suits me; I like seeing the whole of Blackthorn Bay at dusk, especially when the autumn fog coils down to the shore and the last slant of sunlight burns a hole through it. But the heights, for me, are not the problem.

I finish my note—a bold underline beneath AVERSION IS A CHOICE—then close my notebook and stand. “You don’t need to do the whole trail at once. Next week, you can try for the first marker. That’s all.”

I offer a hand, which Horace takes. His fingers are rock-cold and leave my palm sandy.

He grumbles, “You’re relentless,” but there’s respect behind it. And maybe a sliver of hope.

“I prefer persistent,” I reply. “See you Tuesday.”

He ambles out the door, careful not to brush the low lintel with his forehead. The front office—my waiting room, decorated with thrifted armchairs and a dying fern—goes quiet.

I check the clock.

There’s a twenty-minute gap before my next client and just enough time to get through two emails, make tea, and wonder why the hell my own life is always so much simpler on paper than it is in practice.

I brew a cup of something black and bitter, stare out my rain-streaked windows at the shops across Ash Street, and try not to fixate on the solitary figure moving in and out of the bakery next door.

Hex & Honey is the only place in town open at this hour, and even from here, the rich, yeast-laced aroma of fresh bread seeps through my old oak door. The witch who owns it—a friend, technically, though I’ve never been particularly adept at the dynamics of friendship—has a standing appointment with me every Wednesday at three sharp.

I glance at my phone, wondering if she’ll cancel again, when there’s a brisk knock at the door.

The silhouette on the other side is not Clover Arcane.

This woman is smaller and younger, her pale winter coat dusted in flour and her arms occupied with a white bakery box and a sheaf of brown paper.

I open the door partway, out of habit, and meet a pair of wide green eyes.

She’s flushed, not from embarrassment but from the briskness of the day. Her hair is the color of caramel and looks as though she wrestled it into a braid only for it to jailbreak into a host of frizzy escapees. She smiles, and I am struck—painfully, genuinely—by how unguarded it is.

I’ve spent so long parsing microexpressions for warning signs that I’d nearly forgotten how warmth looks when it isn’t a mask.