He stared at me. “The guy with the face in his stomach?”
“Oh. Jonathan.”
“No,” he told me emphatically.
“No, what?”
“No, you do not get to be blasé about the crazy mage. You absolutely do not!”
“I’m not blasé about anything—”
“Good. Cause you know what he’s got planned for you, right?”
“Can you not?” I said, a little irritably. “I’d just managed to forget about that.”
“You don’t need to forget about it. You need to kill him. Like now!”
I stared at him, a little taken aback, because Billy wasn’t usually so vicious. “What’s gotten into you?”
“What’s gotten into me? The guy plans to skin you and plaster the remains to his scrawny hide, and you ask what’s gotten into me?”
I started looking for the mini fridge, assuming this place had one, because I was thirsty. “He’s locked up and drugged out of his mind. He can’t do anything.”
“And if he gets loose? I can’t believe they’re letting that . . . that thing . . . just sit in a cell, waiting for someone to rescue him—”
“Billy.” I looked up from checking out a large drawer, which had a room service menu but no fridge. “This is HQ.”
“And?”
“And nothing’s getting in here, okay?”
“No. It is not okay! Somebody got in here a month ago—a lot of somebodies—”
“That was before the invasion force started to assemble. You can’t swing a dead cat in here anymore without hitting some of the most overpowered magic users on the planet.”
“—not to mention a fey assassin and the goddamned crazy mage!”
“Crazy mage shifted in. Nobody’s going to be doing that anymore, either.”
The room service menu hours cut out fifty minutes ago, I noticed. Typical. I threw it on a table and went back to the search.
“I can’t believe you’re acting like this!” Billy said. “He’s planning to kill you!
“People have been trying to kill me ever since I got this job—since before I got this job,” I reminded him, finally spotting a likely suspect in one of the built-in cabinets. “If I freaked out over every one of them—”
“Cass.” Billy got between me and the fridge, and crossed his arms, looking as serious as I’d ever seen him. “I need you to listen to me.”
I got a good look at his expression and paused. Billy didn’t get serious very often, but when he did, it was usually a good idea to listen to him. And not only because he occasionally had some good advice, but because he’d make your life hell if you didn’t.
“Okay,” I agreed. “Outside.”
I liberated a soda from the fridge and we went out to the balcony, which was seriously cold but also seriously pretty. The wrought iron was covered with a dusting of snow, but I wiped a chair clean with the hem of my robe and sat down.
Billy perched one hip on the railing, and managed to do it fairly convincingly. You had to look closely to notice that he was really just hovering there. I kind of wished he wouldn’t, because the snow fall behind him was visible through his body, making it hard to concentrate. But that expression let me know that I’d better make the effort.
“I’m sorry you had to see that today,” I told him. “I didn’t think it would affect you like this.”
“Not affect me?” he stared. And then abruptly pulled cigarette stuff from a pocket in his jeans and started rolling himself one.