Chapter 6

6

I wake up late for something, I’m sure of it. I’ve missed a meeting or deadline or—no wait. I’m home—well, my apartment, anyway. I just got back. I flew from Italy to New Mexico where my parents live, visited them for a few days, and now I—oh shit! I have to sign up for classes today!

I scramble upright, grabbing my phone to check the time.

Oh good. It’s barely eight. Hopefully not all my classes will have filled up.

I grab the crutches I keep on the floor under my couch and leverage myself up. After a trip to the bathroom, I pull a throw off my couch and I skip over to the kitchen table where I left my laptop. My leg feels better today, but I’m going to leave my prosthetic off until I absolutely need it, and since it’s cool in the apartment, I tuck the throw around my bottom half to keep warm.

I sit and unpack my lappy, and as soon as it boots, I open the portal on the college website and start typing in the numbers on the sticky note that I put over my touchpad (I use a real mouse, because touchpads are shit when you’re typing on a laptop). I search by class number and manage to sign up for all of them— whew!

I got into all the ones I needed and the two I wanted to take this semester. It’s my last year before I have to start with my certifications or post graduate training/work; I do not want to miss any of my classes and end up putting off graduation.

As I look through all the assigned course material, my door opens and Darcy walks through it (like he didn’t lock it before he left yesterday) with a handyman in tow. A very handsome handyman, if I’m being honest. The fact that he has floppy dog ears and a tail wagging behind him doesn’t detract at all from his hotness, because he’s wearing coveralls and no shirt, and his arms are huge. I love a good strong arm. Who doesn’t?

Darcy grins at me—he sees me appreciating the view—and reaches up to pat the bulging muscles on the guy. “Chet here is going to fix your lock. He’s a minion of evil.”

I study the dog man, trying to decide how one becomes a minion of evil handyman—do you just need big arms and a pretty face or…?

Ok, that’s not being my best self, is it? He probably qualifies because of his skills, not because he’s pretty— way to objectify the guy fixing your lock, Elijah .

“Thanks for coming, Chet. You happy being a minion of evil?” I ask—I don’t know if people like being minions, but hey, if children’s book author doesn’t work out for me, it’s nice to know my options.

“Oh yes, I love being Edovard’s minion. He’s the best. He’s been helping me with my gains, and I’ve already put on two pounds of muscle!” He talks like a golden retriever, and considering the blond ears and tail, I don't think I’m that far off the mark.

“I don’t know who Edovard is, but I’m really glad for you. Congratulations.”

Chet smiles like the happiest man on Earth. “Thank you! He’s Santanos’s mate. He’s taken over the minions for a while. We love him.”

I don’t know who Santanos is, but with the way Darcy scowls at the name, I’m guessing he’s the big boss or something. I can’t imagine Darcy having that much of an opinion about anyone who isn’t at least as powerful as him. I mean, why bother hating ants if you’re an anteater, right? Darcy’s the anteater, in this metaphor. And I guess minions are the ants…

Huh, I think I might not be doing my very best today. “I need coffee,” I decide, looking at Darcy.

He looks back at me like he can’t take a hint, then narrows his eyes like he can. “I’m not your sugar daddy.”

I give him a bright smile. “You could be my coffee daddy, and then I’d be grateful enough to suck your lollipop.”

“Leveraging sex for coffee is…” Darcy trails off, and I give him my warmest smile.

“I don’t think I’m my best self today,” I confess. “Coffee would help.”

Darcy’s kohl lined eyes narrow at me. “What kind of coffee?”

I think about that before deciding the best thing is to leave it up to him. “Sweet and strong. I prefer hot in the winter and cold in the summer. Today feels like a hot day.” It’s not exactly cold, but it is cool enough that something warm would feel nice in my hands.

Darcy shakes his head at himself, sighing like I’m putting him out, but then there’s a tiny little smile on his lips. “I’ll be back soon. I think it takes Romily about fifteen minutes to make coffee.” He says that last part as an aside to himself, but it’s interesting that he’s going to get coffee from the guy who house sat my apartment this summer. Squatted, I suppose, but that seems awfully cruel to say about someone who kept my plants alive and left me food.

“Is it really squatting if he left it in better condition than he found it?” I question, because I still don’t know how I feel about that.

Darcy scoffs. “He was squatting. He admitted that himself.”

At least he’s self-aware, that’s cool; I like a person who knows who they are and what they’re about. “I think I should thank him.”

Darcy shoots me a dubious look, but he shakes his head and turns his attention to Chet, who’s already working. “I’ll kill you if he’s not in one piece when I return. No harm, Chet. Just do the job you’re hired to do.”

Chet nods amicably. “I already hit my evil quota for the month, so I’m good for whatever.”

Darcy grunts his acknowledgement and walks out the door. So maybe he is into the whole car thing and doesn’t only travel via blood array. I mean, it feels like traveling via magic would severely limit the places he can go. Humans would freak out if he just appeared in the grocery store, probably. Not a lot of people would be peaceful about that kind of thing, I think. Not with the world the way it is.

Once he’s gone, I grab my crutches from the chair beside me and get up from the table. “Excuse me, Chet. I gotta get some pants on.”

Chet glances up from where he’s fixing the holes in my wall, executing a comical double-take when he notices the missing foot. “What the fuck happened to your foot!” he demands, immediately dropping his tools and coming to me, waving his arms around me like he’s half convinced I need to be carried to my bedroom.

I raise my leg, pulling up my pant leg so I can show him the very old amputation with the bolt sticking out of it. “There was an accident when I was a baby. I lost my foot, but I’m fine now. I’ve had a prosthetic since I was three.”

“You’re supposed to be whole when Darcy gets back. He’s going to kill me for cutting off your foot before he realizes I didn’t do it! What am I supposed to do? I’m going to die!”

I reach over, patting his shoulder to ease his panic. “How about if I just put some pants on and my foot, and then he won’t even notice anything is missing?” I suggest, pointing to the foot sitting on the floor under my coffee table. “Grab that for me and Darcy won’t know any different. How’s that?”

Chet breathes a sigh of relief, nodding as he strides over to the prosthesis and gently picks it up, shoe and all. “Promise me you won’t tell him before I leave. I don’t want to be blamed for this.”

I really want to pet him, but I keep my hands to myself and crutch-hop toward my bedroom. “I promise he’ll never know.”

Well, I can’t really promise that, but Chet’s evil, so I doubt a little lie like that is going to phase him.

Chet follows me to my bedroom and sets my foot on the bed before retreating to go finish his work. He tells me he wants to get done before Darcy returns, and I don’t blame him. I need to bathe, so I gather up all my clothes into a cloth basket I made for myself in a sewing class I took back in high school. It holds everything I need like a shower caddy plus all my clothes and my foot. I made it so that the trip to the dorm bathroom wouldn’t be awful all the time, and it’s going to work for me again since I’ll be getting dressed in the bathroom today.

Yuck, btw. I hate getting dressed in the bathroom. You can’t get dry because it’s humid after a shower, so you’re just putting steam-dampened clothes onto your shower-dampened body. It’s fine but still not my preference.

I hang my basket on a hook I installed in the bathroom for my towel, and then I start the shower. As the water warms up, I check my skin in the mirror. I’ve got freckles like I haven’t put on sunscreen every day of my life since I was a baby, and they cover up a lot of the random acne that happens when you’re a human person living in the world we live in, but I still gotta check. My greenish gray eyes are popping today! Nice. Probably because of the extra red blood vessels that got irritated in Hell, but hey, a win is a win. My ginger hair’s a mess, and I look like I’ve had a bird nesting in it, but a shower and comb will help with that. All in all, not bad for a guy getting laid later, but definitely not something I would have shown the guy I’m planning to fuck if I’d had the choice.

The grab bar helps me stay steady on one leg, though I have pretty good balance for an amputee. Practice, ya know? I took baths until I was ten, but I finally got fed up with stewing in my own dirt and forced my mom to let me shower. My first grab bar was one of those that suckers to the tiles. I was sixty pounds so it worked for me. I had this one professionally installed because there’s no way I would trust my adult weight to a sucker grab bar. The suckers might not fail, but the tile might, and that would be disastrous for a one legged guy.

I have a fold out shower chair that I use if my balance is really fucked, but most days I can shower on one leg with the grab bar to help.

I shower yesterday’s adventure off, and about the time I’m rinsing the shampoo out of my hair, the bathroom door opens with a loud squeak. “Hey, I’m done, so I’m heading out,” Chet announces.

I steady myself on the grab bar and peek out at him from the curtain. “Thanks, Chet. Leave your card on the table for the next time I need a handyman, will you?”

Chet smiles proudly, puffing up his chest. “Sure! I’d be happy to come work for you again—” He cuts himself off with a wary look on his face. “Just maybe don’t call me if Darcy’s going to be here, that way he doesn’t ever blame me for your missing foot.”

It’s adorable he thinks Darcy would do that, but I nod to affirm his caution. “I will only call you for help if Darcy isn’t here, but I promise I’m not planning on keeping him around. He’s made it clear he wants to dine and dash.”

He looks confused for a moment, but nods. “Ok, well good luck. Nice to meet you.”

“You too, Chet.”

He closes my bathroom door, and I resume my shower, finishing up fairly quickly. I take another half hour to get dressed—I take care of myself, lathering up with lotion and making sure the skin around my implant isn’t infected. I use preventative maintenance on the implant site to avoid infections, but you never know. Bacteria can sneak in and cause complications no one needs.

After I finish dressing, I leave the bathroom, taking my crutches back to the couch where I usually end up taking off my foot at the end of the day. Darcy is back, sitting on the table and sipping from a real mug, and there’s a travel mug next to him that I don’t think I bought.

“Romily has nice travel cups,” I say, walking over to get my coffee and sitting in the chair next to the one Darcy’s feet are resting on.

He turns to face me, crossing his legs and looking down at me. “Chet finished quickly. What did he mean by ‘Remember your promise?’” he asks, handing me a handwritten note with Chet’s number and the inscription.

“I told him that I wouldn’t call him for the next job unless you weren’t here,” I explain, folding the note.

I take a sip of the coffee. It’s maple flavored. I’m fairly certain someone put actual maple syrup in this coffee, the good kind. The kind you get when you go to a fancy restaurant at Niagara Falls and they assure you that the maple syrup mafia isn’t real and they certainly wouldn’t pay organized crime for syrup even if it was.

(It’s totally real, btw.)

“Romily can make me coffee every day,” I declare, happily sipping the sweet potion of clarity.

Darcy clicks his teeth. “I made the coffee. The Foxilys weren't home.”

“You broke into their house?” I ask, confused.

He smiles that mean smile again. “I’m a welcome member of their family, but they couldn’t stop me entering even if I wasn’t. Their wards can’t keep me out, and it’s probably worth mentioning that they don’t lock their front door, so anyone who doesn’t violate the parameters of their magical protections can waltz in unimpeded by anything except the tables that Fox collects.”

“I don’t know what wards are, but that’s cool, I guess. You break into a lot of homes that aren’t yours?” I mean, he’s gotten into mine and theirs in the last twenty four hours, so I’m guessing this isn’t uncommon for him.

“I go where I want, and I do what I want. I don’t follow anyone’s rules but my own—”

He cuts himself off, sitting up straight for a second. I wonder what he’s doing when a flash of something bright—honestly, I don’t think it’s light or lightning, it’s just really bright—hits him in the head and then soaks him like it’s water, except it’s not water, and it’s not light, but it’s bright. I don’t know what to tell you, I’m not great at descriptions and this is so weird, I don’t even have words for it.

Darcy is soaked in brightness that’s not light and not water.

He tenses with a look of horror on his face before he drops his cup. (It spills all over my clean pants, but the mug doesn’t break, so at least I don’t have to clean up broken ceramic.) Then he sort of absorbs the light, like it goes into his skin—I don’t know how to describe it; it’s strange.

The not light brightness disappears into Darcy and he collapses onto the table, unconscious like he just got hit in the head. At least I’m not the only one of us covered in coffee.

I’m really not doing my best today, dammit.