Five

Marie

"That's everything I can think of at the moment," Marie said, wrapping up her debrief.

Punch, Bennett, Thomas, Asamoah, Ashke, and Duncan all looked back at her from the screen of her phone with various expressions of thoughtfulness.

It was Punch who spoke first. "Okay, since it seems like everyone's going to need to digest the information Marie just gave us, I suggest the rest of you drop off the call and get back to whatever it was you were doing. This situation can percolate in the back of your minds in the meantime, and you can bring any questions you have to Marie—either as a group text or the next time we call in for another videoconference. I'm going to stay on the call with Marie because I have some follow-up questions."

"I have—" Bennett cut himself off as Punch glared through the video call, theoretically at him and anyone else who intended to keep talking. Punch and Bennett were in the same physical location, so she might have given him a nudge off-screen, too. "…no urgent questions at this time. Just be careful, Marie."

A giggle bubbled up from Marie's belly and tickled her throat. Bennett was changing, his general mood less broody when Punch was involved. It was really nice to witness her friends enjoying some well-deserved happiness.

Thomas's eyes were narrowed but he just grunted what sounded like an agreement with Bennett and dropped off the video call. Asamoah grinned broadly and nodded to everyone in general before dropping off the call.

Ashke laughed outright. "I sense an interrogation coming, and I want in."

Marie shook her head. "Maybe another time, Ashke."

Ashke shrugged, the tiny winged fae doing a little flip in front of the camera. "Hey! I'll remember that. I want all the juicy info and I'm not above heading downtown to find out for myself."

She didn't tell him not to. That'd just guarantee he'd be there even faster.

Duncan interjected before Ashke could press her further, wearing his perfectly professional blank expression. "If you need support from another Consortium member, remember you only need to call and I can be there in a matter of hours."

Marie nodded, biting back the urge to thank him. Duncan was sidhe, a powerful type of fae. When working with the fae, even if you were friends, it was best not to thank them. The reasons were complicated, but the simplest was that any gratitude could be interpreted as owing far more than whatever the original favor cost the other party.

Duncan might never intend to take advantage of Marie, but he had lived a long, long time, and being fae was more a part of his nature than blending in with the much younger human species. It was a lot easier to trust the people around you if you avoided leaving yourself too open to unfortunate circumstances.

Once only Punch and Marie were left in the video call, Punch leaned forward eagerly toward her camera so her eyes filled the screen. "Give it up, Marie. It's just you and me now. You were invited for a boba tea by two exceedingly attractive men, then lunch, and you have nothing to say about what happened?"

Punch knew about Marie's encounter with Kuro and Joe months ago. The entire team working for the Darke Consortium did. But it had been Punch who had picked up on how flustered the encounter had left Marie.

"Well, it got complicated so fast," Marie protested.

"Yes, yes. Dead person walking." Punch waved that away. "These aren't just any two hotties, my friend. These two literally pulled you out of a tight situation not too long ago and cuddled with you until the danger passed."

Marie laughed. It had been years since she'd indulged in the light chatter that a friend could provide. That was what happened when you decided to purge your life of all the toxic influences that only ever caused you misery and focus instead on setting up personal boundaries. Maybe she'd been a little aggressive about maintaining those personal boundaries, but hey, she was a work in progress.

Meeting Punch had broken her out of the sort of stasis she'd been in when it came to her life. Now Marie was exploring what it took to have this kind of friendship again.

"I wouldn't call it cuddling ," Marie said finally. "We were in close proximity by necessity. The three of us were perched up in the branches of a tree. And I'd have figured out a way to handle those security guards if I had to. I do have a few talents of my own."

"Mmm." Punch nodded in acknowledgment. "But they saved you the trouble, and they redeemed themselves in the process."

Marie lifted her eyebrows and pressed her lips together. "Their involvement in your kidnapping still ought to count against them."

"It would, if they knew what they were involving themselves in," Punch countered. "You said they didn't."

" They said they didn't."

"You believe them."

Marie sighed. "I do."

Punch clapped her hands together. "And there was chemistry. Serious chemistry. Which one gets your heart rate going, hmm? I have my theory, but I want to hear it from you."

Joe's bright grin was sexier than any cheerful expression had a right to be, and Marie could fall forever into Kuro's stare.

Marie scowled at her friend. "You know it's not one or the other."

Punch bit her lip, but it didn't hide her delighted smile. "Both! Excellent. And they found you together."

"I didn't have lunch with them," Marie admitted. "I came straight back to my place to connect with all of you. That was a clear priority."

Punch drew back from the camera, so Marie could see her entire face, and rolled her eyes hard. "Please tell me you established some way to contact these two guys. Phone numbers? Do they use KakaoTalk? Line? WhatsApp? I'd ask about social media, but you avoid that like the plague."

It had been Marie and Punch establishing an ongoing chat in their messaging app of choice that had prompted the rest of the Darke Consortium members to create their own profiles in the same app. It was one used fairly widely in Japan and Southeast Asia. Apparently, most of Punch's family living in Thailand and the United States were already on it.

Thomas and Ashke had worked together to establish some kind of magical influence on the profiles of the members of the Darke Consortium. Their chats had an added layer of magical security so they could all speak freely about Consortium matters. It was a convenient way to keep in touch, especially with Punch and Bennett currently on a trip to Thailand to deliver a recently acquired magical object, the Noose of the Phayanak, into the safekeeping of the regional consortium.

"Same as ours, so I friended them," admitted Marie. "Actually, it was Joe who asked me if I had a profile."

Punch made a high-pitched sound that might have been a squeal but was muted because she clapped a hand over her mouth. A moment later she dropped her hand and asked, "So have they messaged you yet?"

Marie's face warmed, both because this line of questioning was a little embarrassing and because she was pleased to see notifications saying that there were messages waiting for her in a different chat. "Yes, and before you ask, no, I haven't had a chance to read them yet because I've been talking to you."

"But you intend to talk to them again, yes?" Punch asked pointedly.

Marie pressed her lips together. "It makes sense to talk to them again given the situation we encountered today, and to work out what their intentions are regarding Socrates Industries and the magical artifact there. But other than that, it seems like conflict of interest."

"Marie." Punch must have been looking straight into the camera lens of her phone rather than Marie's image on the screen in order to really project the impression of eye contact. "You don't interact with colleagues from other consortiums in anything approaching a dating scenario. You also never accept dates from any of your day job clients. Good practices. I support this. These two are neither colleagues nor clients. Why not them?"

Marie sighed. "It's a bad idea to mix the professional and personal. It's asking for trouble. And when it comes to my day job clients, they're almost always human with not a clue about the supernatural, paranormal, or even the peculiar that exists in the world. Kind of hard to develop a meaningful relationship when I'm holding back that much about my life."

Punch nodded. "These guys are also very clearly supernatural."

"Still a conflict of interest," Marie pointed out. "They're literally competitors for the same artifacts our consortium is trying to take out of human hands. Also, they have questionable ethics, even if you seem to have forgiven them for the part they played in your kidnapping just a couple of months ago."

Punch held one hand up as if she were weighing something in it. "Let's say they're flexible. They still seem to go by their own moral code and that led them to helping you, which goes a long way toward me making my peace with their involvement in the situation. The glowing look you have on your face talking to me about them helps me warm up to them, too."

Marie looked from Punch's image to the image of herself in the chat screen. "What? No."

"Yes. I told you talking about them makes you blush. I mean seriously blush. I can tell you like thinking about them."

"I'm pretty sure they're significantly younger than me." As soon as she said it, Marie realized the futility of that particular comment.

Punch laughed. "Centuries. Bennett is older than me by centuries ."

"Fair." Marie nodded. "The two of you have been working to connect on various viewpoints."

Punch and Bennett had met under stressful circumstances, what with Punch being cursed and Bennett bringing Punch to the Darke Consortium to break the curse before it killed her. They'd fallen hard and fast for each other but there'd been a fair amount of denial, especially on Bennett's part. It meant they'd spent a large portion of the time since unpacking what it all meant to them.

"One thing I've really enjoyed is figuring out how to communicate with each other," Punch admitted. "I mean, we each have our ways of trying to get our points across. It's been an adventure learning to understand what each of us has to say, whether we're using words or not."

"You're figuring it out, though, both of you," Marie said quietly. She was so happy for them.

"Yeah." Punch's expression had a soft glow to it. "It helps that he's so supportive about me exploring my abilities as a kinnaree. It's a lot less scary when you have someone around to spot you as you literally step off a ledge to see if you can summon wings in midair."

"I get it." Marie smiled.

She and Punch had both done their share of figuring out their identities as supernaturals. Neither of them had generational knowledge, having been born to human families and disconnected from any magical mentors. Everything Marie had learned about her nature as a witch had come from trial and error, pulling together snippets of research and experimenting to figure out the rest. Punch was doing the same to learn more about what it was to be a kinnaree.

"Anyway," Punch said, bringing their conversation back on topic. "Age gap is not the biggest challenge to overcome for people like us. Besides, you make a hot cougar."

Nope. Done now. "I'm ending the call, 'kay? Thanks. Bye."

Her face might be burning up.

"Wait, wait, wait," Punch called. "Before you hang up, I need to know. Were you wearing pants or a skirt today?"

Marie was absolutely certain she was going to regret giving Punch the answer to this. "I was wearing a dress suit. It was the first time meeting a client. You know I like to make a sharp impression."

Punch looked incredibly pleased. She might have been smirking, even. "Excellent. I'm sure you absolutely did make a stunning impression."

Marie glared at Punch's image on her phone. "Goodbye, my friend. Go do mischievous things that would scandalize your ancestors."

"Only if you do the same!"

Marie ended the video call and tossed the phone on her bed, deliberately not checking her other chat to find out what Joe or Kuro had sent her. She wasn't ready to let the fluttering feeling loose from where she'd shoved it deep inside herself.

She was half tempted to let herself flop down next to her phone. Curling up and making a nest out of her down comforter and pillows felt like a wonderful idea, but her stomach growled, and she stayed on her feet, if only because the thought of filling herself with tasty food first was an even better idea.

Her apartment in downtown Seattle was in a brand-new high-rise and was a sort of hybrid between a one-bedroom apartment and a studio, in that it was mostly an open-plan layout, but there was a sliding door separating the sleeping area from the rest of the living space. She had filled the main living area with potted plants arranged on various stands at multiple heights to take the best advantage of the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows comprising most of one wall. There was a single long counter that provided her with her cooking area next to a sink, a very compact dishwasher, and a space-saving refrigerator and freezer.

Still, it was more than enough space for her to cook for herself. If she was ever in the mood to cook for a bigger group, she could always take over the kitchen at the consortium manor and cook for the members of the Darke Consortium. They gathered and had a big meal at the long dining room table at the manor fairly frequently.

Her rice cooker was already keeping rice warm for her, so she only had to make something to go with it. Opening the refrigerator, she took stock of what she had and started pulling out ingredients to make her take on soondubu jjigae. It was autumn, and despite it being warm enough to have worn a dress today, the hot Korean stew was still appealing now that the sun had gone down. Twenty minutes later, her soondubu jjigae was simmering and she was just finishing pan-frying a fillet of sablefish to go with it.

She decided to plate it all separately with her rice in one small bowl and her soondubu jjigae in another bowl, with her fried fish on a plate beside it. She carried it over on a tray to rest on the small side table next to her chaise longue, so she could eat her dinner looking out over the city.

She ate most of her meals alone, but she still liked to plate her meals in ways that appealed to her. Her father had been a chef, and she remembered being allowed to watch from the counter right next to the kitchen as he checked the finishing touches on plates before they were whisked away to be served to his customers. There was a reason why people said you eat with your eyes first. Her father always made sure a meal was tantalizing to both sight and smell before a customer ever got a mouthful to taste.

Using her long-handled spoon, she took up a bit of rice and dipped it into the gorgeous red tinted broth of her soondubu jjigae, getting a little bit of the silken tofu and a piece of kimchi as well as one of the tiny clams she had added to make the dish a seafood stew. When she took that carefully assembled bite, flavor exploded across her senses.

She liked her soondubu jjigae to have an umami flavor layered throughout her dish, starting with the fermented sharp tang of kimchi and the salty umami of fish sauce, rounded out by the savory spice of the gochujang and sharper spiciness of the gochugaro red pepper flakes. The tofu was almost custardy-soft and carried the flavors of the broth. She had added the clams just to spoil herself. She'd finished it with a drizzle of rich sesame oil and the freshness of thinly sliced scallions to give added dimension to the meal.

This dinner was one of her favorites, but it would have been interesting to find out where Kuro and Joe would have suggested they go for a meal. Seattle was a good foodie town, and you could learn a lot about a person by the kind of food they liked to eat. All she knew about their tastes so far was that both of them were reasonably interested in boba tea. That didn't tell her much of anything, considering how popular the drink was. There was a boba shop within a few minutes' walk of just about anywhere in Seattle.

Her next bite was rice and the crispy pan-fried sablefish to calm the spice in her mouth. The meal was pretty much the epitome of comfort food for her. The only thing she didn't do this time, because she didn't have any, was crack a raw egg into her piping hot soondubu jjigae and let the heat of the stew lightly poach it. Well, there was always next time.

Would there be a next time with Kuro and Joe? She shouldn't care, should she? Really, she should be more focused on heading back to Socrates Industries to investigate their walking dead person. Her walking dead person. Well, the walking dead person. There was that amulet he had been wearing and also those plants that really shouldn't have been among the cuttings intended for use in the gardens she'd been hired to create for the building.

She turned away from her dinner and pulled her tablet from her shoulder bag. Pulling up a web browser, she started a general search on various amulets and chest plates from Egypt. She was relatively certain she had seen something like it before, but Egyptian art and history were not her forte.

It took another half hour or so of internet research in between bites of her dinner to find the amulet. Once she found it, there were very few articles available that told her anything but the same few repeated facts. It was a curiosity for most of human academia, with more import assigned to where it had been found than anything else. The amulet wasn't at the center of some folktale or legend. Who had made it, why it had been made, and what its purpose was weren't easily discoverable. But what she found was a good starting point.

When it came to one of the plants she had seen in the storeroom, there was actually a whole documentary available online. The veracity of the content within said documentary remained unknown until she had a chance to watch it and take notes so she could follow up on any facts presented, but watching it sounded like a good way to close out her evening.

Super exciting night. That was just the way she did things. So wild, much zing.