How to Claim an Undead Soul (Beginner's Guide to Necromancy #2)(10)
“I had my first self-defense lesson.” I smiled, and it pulled on my healing lip. “Taslima is fierce.”
“Taz did this?” Amelia growled through her fingers. “I’m going to kill my brother.”
Given her reaction to my appearance, I left out the part where Linus had worked his mojo on me. She didn’t need to know how much worse I had looked before I loaned myself out as a guinea pig to test one of his new healing sigils.
“I asked Boaz for help.” I clutched her arms to hold her steady. “It’s fine. Really.”
“This is all my fault,” she groaned. “I never should have told him you left the house. He must have called her.”
“You told him—?” The little sneak had used my text against me. “That explains Taz’s miraculous timing. I figured she must have been hiding out in the garden, stalking her prey before going in for the kill.”
Amelie flushed, but she didn’t apologize. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to ask for my old job back.”
“Are you insane?” She hooked her arm through mine and dragged me into the parlor where the female Haints changed. “You could buy this place if you wanted. Why would you work here again?”
“Things are changing so fast. I’m having trouble coping.” I sank onto the spindly Victorian couch parked in the corner. “Nothing changed in Atramentous. You lived the same day over and over and over. I’m trying to catch my balance. I did for a while there, but then—”
“Volkov happened,” she supplied. “Vampy bastard.”
Tempting as it was to blame it all on him, he’d had help overloading my circuits.
“The pardon happened. The release happened. The return home happened. The scraping together of a life happened.” And then it was all blown out of the water. “I was getting a handle on things until the inauguration.” When the Grande Dame had reinstated my title as the Woolworth heir, Dame Woolworth, and shared with me the true reason for my release. I was goddess-touched. I could make true immortals. And she got dollar signs in her eyes every time she looked at me. “And then, yeah. Volkov happened.”
“When you put it like that…” Amelie perched beside me. “I get it.”
I grunted what passed for a gloomy acknowledgment.
“Get this through your thick skull.” She rapped me hard on the knee with her parasol. “You’ve got this. You made it out. You’re not going to stop until you own your power.” She fluttered her lashes. “Besides, this means more girl time for us. Pretty sure if we hit Mallow after work together it halves the calories.”
“Not exactly.” I winced. “Cricket wouldn’t let me have my old job back. She offered me Dom’s spot for the night, and I accepted. I need to keep my hands busy while my brain works out what I want to do next.”
“Far be it from me to come between a woman and her coping mechanism.” Amelie wrinkled her nose. “Also? The janitor gig might not be as long term as Cricket let you believe.”
“We’re not losing someone, are we?” A few Haints were seasonal hires, but the core group had remained the same for years. “As much as I want to move up in the world, I don’t want it to be at someone else’s expense.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.” She stood and searched each dressing room stall to make sure we were alone. “Cricket bought shares in River Street Steam. She’s cooked up a scheme with the owner to start running nightly haunted dinner cruises aboard the Cora Ann in addition to the standard packages offered now. She’ll have to bring on at least a dozen more girls, and putting you to work as a guide means no learning curve.”
“I haven’t been on one of those cruises since high school.” Talk about a walk down memory lane. “Remember how those used to be the height of romance?”
“Hey, don’t knock it. I got my first kiss onboard the Peachy Queen from Kevin Rood.”
“Kevin Rood.” I couldn’t even remember his face. “Military brat, right?”
“Yep.” She toyed with her fan. “He went to school with us for six months to the day before his mom got reassigned, and off he went.” She swooned against me. “Taking my heart with him.”
I patted her arm. “Suuure.”
She harrumphed. “Are you doubting that he broke my heart or that I have one to break?”
I thought about it. “Both?”
“Fine. So I’ve never been in love.” She sat upright and straightened her skirts. “That doesn’t mean I’m not open to the possibility, with the right person, at the right time.”
“Does love ever happen at the right time, with the right person?”
“No idea.” She twirled her parasol. “Maybe we should ask Neely. He’s the only friend we’ve got in a functional romantic relationship, let alone a marriage.”
Good point. “Do you think it’s easier for humans?”
“Maybe,” she mused. “Relationships are hard enough without adding magic into the mix.”
For me, Boaz had been a classic case of unrequited love. Wealth, status, power—none of it had mattered when all he could see when he looked at me was his kid sister’s best friend. I wasn’t sure what he saw in me these days, but he did see me. That was progress, right?