Gabriel shook his head. “I thought
Irial didn’t answer. There wasn’t anything to say. His feelings for Niall and his feelings for Leslie were tangled together. He wanted Leslie to live surrounded by the protection of the Dark Court, indulged and cosseted while she lived out her mortal life. He wanted Niall to woo her and bring her home. He couldn’t truly have a relationship with either of them, but he’d done what he could to make them safe to have one with each other. If they were together, he’d have both of his beloveds in one house. It was the closest to a relationship with them that he thought possible. It was also what would make them happiest. They were just too damn difficult to take the obvious path.
Leslie let herself into the building, wishing for a moment that Irial had walked her home or followed her. She knew she was safe, knew that her building was secure, knew the logical things that should make her feel okay. She still had panic attacks, though. Her therapist assured her that she was making great progress, but the hypervigilance was worse at night.
Now that she felt her own emotions, she wished she could give him the ones that left her shaking in cold sweats from nightmares she barely remembered. She wished she could give him the edge of the bad emotions—to nourish him and to let her sleep.
It didn’t work like that, though. Since she’d severed her connection to Irial, she was left with mere mortal solutions. She went into her apartment, turned the door lock, but not the bolt.
Her pepper spray stayed within reach, though.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered. “But it’s okay to be afraid. It’s normal. I’m normal.”
Silently she fixed a salad and took it into the living room. She slipped a DVD into the machine, so the silence wasn’t as weighty. The opening of
The phone rang. She picked it up. No one was there. She laid it down. It rang again.
“Hello?”
Again, no one was there.
Twice more it rang.
Resolutely, she ignored the next few calls. Her door buzzer went off twice. She paced as the calls continued for almost thirty more minutes.
So when the phone rang again after ten minutes of silence, she was frazzled. “What? Who do you think you are?”
“Leslie? Are you okay?” Niall was on the other end of the line. “I don’t … are you all right?”
“I’m sorry.” She put her hand over her mouth, trying not to let her hysterical burst of laughter out, and walked to the door again. It was secure. She was safe in her apartment.
“What’s going on?”
For a moment, she didn’t want to tell him. Whoever was harassing her wasn’t a faery. Very few of them even used phones, and none of them would have her number.
“Talk to me?” he asked. “Please?”
So she did.
When she was done, Niall was silent for so long that she wondered if they’d been disconnected. Her heart beat too loudly as she clutched her phone. “Niall?”
“Let me come stay there or send someone. Just until we—”
“I can’t. We’ve talked about this.” Leslie sank down onto her sofa. “If there were a faery threat, it would be different.”
“
“No.” She closed her eyes. “I’ll change the number. It’s probably just some drunk misdialing.”
“And if it’s not?”
“I’ll go to the police.” She pulled a blanket over her as if it would stop the shivering that had started. “It’s not a Dark Court concern.”
“
“If doing so negates my happiness, will you still interfere, Niall?”
Niall was silent for several moments. Only his measured breathing made clear that he was still listening. Finally he said, “You are a difficult person to reason with sometimes.”
“I know.” Her grip on the phone loosened a little. For all of the passions that drove him, Niall would do his best to let her have her distance. On that, he and Irial seemed to agree. Of course, if she so much as hinted that she wanted them to intervene, people could die at a word. The reality of that power wasn’t something she liked to ponder overmuch. Instead, she asked, “Talk to me about something else?”
Niall, however, wasn’t eager to let the topic drop, not entirely. “You know I want to respect your need to be away from us, but Gabe is in the area. He had to see someone. If you needed anyone…”
“What I need is a friend who talks to me so I can think about something good.” Leslie stretched out on the sofa, pepper spray in reach on the coffee table, Buffy staking monsters on the television, and Niall’s voice in her ear. “Be my friend? Please? Talk to me?”
He sighed. “There was a new exhibit at the gallery I was telling you about last month.”
Niall wouldn’t ignore the issue, but he would cooperate to a degree. And knowing he was out there protecting her made Leslie feel a little safer too.
For a breath she hoped that whoever called, if they were trying to upset her, was a faery. If it was a faery, Irial or Niall would find out. They would fix it.
The reality of how easily she could sanction violence made her pause.
“Did you buy anything this time?” she asked.
“What? You think I can’t go to a gallery without buying something?” His voice was teasing, sweet, calming.
“I do.”
“Three prints,” he said.