There was no reason she would want to help him, not after he’d been such an arse to her, but she was his only hope.
CHAPTER SIX
Esha leaned on the sill of her open window, nursing bad coffee and an even worse hangover. The bright noon sun burned cruelly into her retinas as she gazed out at the university campus.
She lived in a tower on the north side, which gave her an excellent view of the rolling green hills and the massive stone buildings of the university in the distance. The tower had once been a guard tower, but the space at the top had been modified into a flat long before she’d joined the university staff.
Last night had been such a bust. She laughed bitterly. But it was both entertaining and horrifying that she, Esha, queen of the outcasts with no court, was mooning after one of the most respected members of the university. And that she would choose to pursue her infatuation in such a spastic way.
But she was so done with that. After he’d left her, she’d gone back into the pub, picked a spot in the corner, and switched from beer to whiskey. Contrary to popular belief, the whiskey had actually cleared her head.
Warren wanted her, but he was too much of a coward or an asshole to admit it. And she was an idiot who had tried twice to convince him to give her a chance. Twice.
Embarrassing is what that was. She needed to get her act together.
The Chairman meowed, deep and low, as if he could read her thoughts and agreed.
“Oh, shut up,” she said, glaring at him.
He just watched her with knowing citrine eyes from where he lounged by the little fire.
“Be nice or I’ll extinguish your fire,” she said.
He gave her a look that said as if. But he was right. She was all talk. She’d never douse his beloved fire, and it was evidence of how screwed up Warren made her that she would even suggest it.
Esha looked back out at the emerald green of the lawn and the sapphire blue of the sky. Everything was shot through with jewel tones today, as if the earth didn’t know that she was in a shitty mood. She tried to focus on the beauty in front of her, but was instead drawn into her memory, to the time when her vague interest in her distant colleague had bloomed into stupid infatuation.
A few years ago, she’d just finished making a contracted kill in Edinburgh and had been walking back to her car through the quiet city streets. It had been a Sunday, hence the quiet lull, which had made it easy for her to spot a familiar figure ducking into the Veterans’ League.
Curiosity had tugged at her. What was Warren doing at the Veterans’ League? It was for mortals, not Mytheans, and the two rarely mixed.
Because it had been a drizzly gray morning and his head had been bowed, he hadn’t noticed her. But she’d never mistake him for anyone else. Determined to figure out what he was doing, she’d crept into the alley at the side of the building and peered through the rain-streaked window to see Warren in a makeshift workshop with a couple of other men.
The others were younger, boys almost, and one was missing a leg while another wore some type of brace on his back. From the wars in the Middle East, she assumed, since it was one of the few places that British mortal soldiers were fighting. They’d been building beautiful wooden furniture in the workshop, and Warren looked to be helping the men with their projects.
He was teaching them?
Esha had returned every Sunday for a month and peered through the same window, never making contact with him. She’d eventually confirmed that Warren was some kind of mentor to injured soldiers suffering the effects of war, and the medium he used to help them was woodworking.
But he had also benefited. His step was a little lighter, and the lines around his eyes a little less deep when he left.
She’d forced herself to stop going after she figured out what he was doing. As much as she liked watching him, stalking him was just weird.
Her phone buzzed and jerked her out of the past. Gratefully, she shook the memories away and turned from the window to find her phone.
She scowled when she saw the name attached to the text message.
Warren. Of course. And it was about work, so she couldn’t ignore it.
She sighed, disgusted and annoyed with the way her day was going, then glared at her coffee and chugged it. It was lukewarm and kind of gross, but she needed the caffeine if she was going to face him with this hangover.
An hour later, after standing in the shower and staring at the wall for twenty minutes mulling over what an idiot she’d been, Esha tromped across the rolling campus to Warren’s office. The last of autumn’s leaves crunched beneath her boots.
“Why do you think he wants to meet with us?” Esha asked the Chairman.
Though the Chairman didn’t answer, she was pretty sure she saw him shrug his little cat shoulders. She took it as a sign to continue talking as they reached a cluster of stone buildings. She might as well. He was her sounding board when her only other friend, Ana, wasn’t around.
“I wouldn’t even be doing this if it wasn’t for work.” But Warren’s parting jab about loyalty had stung. He was wrong. She stuck by her commitments, and she’d made one to the Praesidium when she’d joined.