“When she’s in her manic phase, she’s a little like trying crack for the first time,” Rune said. He blinked at them, his face bland. “Not that I would know what that feels like.”
“Right,” Dragos said in a brisk voice. “I have things to do, Tiago to talk to, a beheading to plan.” He looked at her. “You good?”
She smiled at him again with more surety. “Yes.”
“Good.” He paused. “Thank you for what you did in the teleconference.”
“You’re welcome.”
He looked at Rune and Graydon. “She gets to do what she wants. Got it?”
Graydon looked at his feet with a long-suffering expression and rubbed the back of his neck. Rune pursed his lips and said, “Dragos, that might call for . . . a lot of tactical consideration. Don’t you think it would be wiser to restrict her movements?”
“Why are they talking about her in the third person while she’s standing right here in the room?” she said in a resentful mutter. Hot gold eyes met hers. Was it her imagination or did his lips tighten with some kind of suppressed emotion? Then he turned to give Rune a machete smile.
“Fuck you,” Dragos told him. “I’m not the boss of her.”
He strode out. The conference room seemed to darken and expand at the absence of his nuclear presence. Then Pia stood, looking up at her two huge, stony-faced guards. Oh boy.
“Ms. Giovanni,” Rune said in a smooth voice, as he stared at a point beyond her left shoulder. “For your convenience and pleasure Dragos has sent for a personal shopper to attend to you today. The shopper should be arriving any minute now.”
Pia stared at the gryphon. She turned away, pulled out the chair at the end of the conference table and sank into it. She flattened her hands across the polished surface. Clothing rustled as someone shifted behind her.
Okay. She nodded. Okay.
“Would you both please have a seat?” she asked.
After a moment, Rune took the seat at her right and sprawled long limbs out. Graydon took the seat at her left. The two men exchanged a look. She bet they were wondering what she was going to do next. She was kind of wondering that herself.
Her fingernails had gotten ragged. She rubbed at the uneven edge of her right index finger. Never enough time in a day.
“So,” she said in a quiet voice as she looked at her hands, “is this passive-aggressive smarmy attitude working for you, slick? Because I’ve got to tell you, it’s not working for me. In the last week and a half or so, I’ve been blackmailed, chased, threatened, in a car wreck that would have turned me into hamburger if it hadn’t been for your boss, kidnapped, beaten up and chased again. I was in a showdown with a Goblin army and the Fae King and forty or fifty of his favorite guys, and what life I had has been destroyed.”
She heard Rune suck in a breath. She said, “I’m not finished yet. I’m also stuffed to the eyeballs with autocratic macho behavior since Dragos is all over that one. Just so you understand when I say I’m running low on patience right now. I get you guys don’t want to be babysitting me. You’ve made it loud and clear. I don’t want it either, but it is what it is. So can we do this easy, or do we have to do it hard? I’m trying to be nice, but I don’t have any problem at all with doing it hard if that’s really what you want.”
She looked up at the two men. Graydon had put his elbows on the table. He was watching her. For the first time she noticed he had nice slate gray eyes. She didn’t see acceptance in his craggy face but at least it was no longer outright rejection.
Rune had folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his gaze on her.
“Slick,” Graydon said. “She got you with that one, my man.”
“Fuck you,” Rune said.
“Believe it or not,” Graydon told her, “he’s the diplomatic one of the bunch. Dragos sends him out to do all sorts of smarmy passive-aggressive shit.”
Rune leaned forward and planted his elbows on the table. “Shut up, asshole.”
She bit her lip and refused to smile.
Rune looked at her. “Okay, Ms. Giovanni, let’s try a do-over. See how it goes.”
“Call me Pia.”
He nodded. “Just so you know, though, you do anything to betray Dragos and I’ll disembowel you myself.”
She rounded her eyes. “Wow, slick, that makes us practically BFFs, huh?”
Graydon exploded. After a moment, Rune grinned too. “All right, Pia,” he said. “What would you like to do today?”
She considered him. “We already know I’m meeting Tricks for lunch. What do you think I should do?”