I wiped my nose and rubbed my eyes, buying time to think of something clever to say. Honestly, I was a little embarrassed that I had fallen asleep. “The trick is letting go of things you can’t control. What the hell am I going to do now? Worrying does nothing but make me tense and cloud my judgment. So, I release what I can’t control, focus on what I can. Like sleep. Imagine fighting Hecate without any rest. That’s foolish.”
Xander glared at me from the corner of his eye and scowled. He didn’t believe a word of my bullshit.
Before he could follow up with another question I didn’t want to answer, I asked, “Are we going to make out in your car all night? Or you going to invite me up for a drink?”
Let me start by saying that Xander didn’t live quite like I did. He had no land, as he owned his condo in downtown Sacramento. The neighboring units shared a wall with him—a thick, expensive wall, might I had. When he opened the front door to his second-story housing, I hesitated before entering. I felt intimidated to step into his place, like I might break or ruin something. Which, given my track record, wasn’t an inaccurate assumption.
The extent of my knowledge about high-end furniture starts and ends with Restoration Hardware, and in all honesty, I don’t even know what that place is. I once overheard my coworkers discussing how they’d bought their dining room table from there, and how it cost so much money, but it was totally worth the price. In my tiny brain, I had thought my plastic table worked just as well as their fancy-shmancy one, at a fraction of the cost. I didn’t say that, though—I didn’t want to risk making them feel inadequate.
If I had to guess, Xander’s condo was furnished with nothing but Restoration Hardware. It looked stupid expensive. He even had those weird pillows—the prickly and annoying ones people aren’t allowed to use—adorning his couch. He even had trinkets—like decorative figurines—sitting on his mantle. No, no, no. That’s not even the craziest part. He had a fucking cow rug—like a skinned cow, black with white spots—strewn across his living room floor. A coffee table stood on it, and home improvement magazines and recipe books and one of those eighty-dollar candles sat atop that.
“You hunt that?” I asked, gesturing at the heifer. “That big game around here? A ten-thousand dollar-guided excursion, hunting the dangerous dairy cow?”
Xander glowered at me, and then he stepped through the door. “It’s a minotaur,” he said.
I chuckled at his funny. The minotaur were humans cursed by Poseidon—so, they were insanely powerful and Xander did not kill one and lay it across his floor as a rug. “How much does that fake investigator job pay you?” I asked. I poked a hand through the front door, making sure I wouldn’t burn to ash upon entering. When my arm didn’t incinerate with radiant light, I stepped into his condo and closed the door behind me. “And are they hiring?”
Over the past few years, Xander had called me many times to offer me a full-time, part-time, contractor, consultant position at the company. I had refused every offer—for good reason, too. He still dealt in the world of magic and monsters. I had retired from that life to protect Mel. Since when is a daughter’s safety less important than a shit-ton of money?
“It’s not a fake job,” he said, already in the kitchen and pouring a scotch, neat.
I didn’t even want to know the outdated vintage of that single-malt. Is that the right terminology? Vintage? Probably not. I had yet to venture into the big leagues of alcohol consumption—the kind where you don’t drink to get drunk, but to taste your money burning down your throat. I usually stuck to house tequilas and domestic lagers, drinking them fast and furiously. Anything with a price tag over twenty bucks became a stretch for my thin wallet.
“What?” I asked, still standing in the entryway. I felt like a kid going to his grandma’s house—the strict grandma that freaked out if you wore your shoes on the front porch and didn’t wash your hands before sitting on her white couch. “You work behind a secret bookshelf. How’s that not a fake job?”
He answered from the kitchen. “I investigate whatever the clients ask me to investigate,” he said. “We advertise paranormal to the people, and we contract with law enforcement on a city, state, and federal level. Only thing we hide is the prison beneath our building. Doesn’t make it a fake job.” Xander popped out his head. “You going to stand there all night?”
Glancing at my soot-covered clothes, I nodded. “I’ll get something in here dirty… or I’ll break something,” I said, speaking my deepest truth. I didn’t mind shattering someone’s fragile feelings or smashing their egos. Usually people who irked me to the point of verbally abusing them deserved it, anyway. They needed a self-check on their self-righteous attitudes. But breaking something that didn’t need breaking… well, that terrified me.
Imagine the most obstructive, careless kid possible. Now, imagine the most non-kid house in the entire world. That was me in Xander’s condo. A bowling ball thrown at glass pins.
“Suit yourself,” he said. “Want a drink while you stand there?”
I shook my head in the negative, but said, “Please.” It was a bad habit, my lips always ruling out my actions—or maybe it was vice versa. Either way, my mind never agreed with my hands. “Scotch. Shaken, please. Never stirred. Neat.”
“Do you even know what you’re saying?” Xander asked.
“Not at all.” I shuffled around the living room, mesmerized that I couldn’t find dust on any of the shelves. “Where do you find the time to clean the place?”
“At night,” he said. “When
