Chapter 2: The Storm Behind Her Eyes

Nadia was lying. She wasn’t all right. Riordan was certain of it.

There was a look she got when the evil mood came on her, when something reminded her of the Eternity Crucible a little too much. Nadia had distinctive gray eyes, and back when Riordan hadn’t known her real name, and the Firstborn had ordered Riordan to find her, they had referred to her as the “gray-eyed thief.” He had looked into her eyes when they had been warm with happiness, hurt with sadness, cold and flat with rage.

Now they looked a little…crazed.

Like there was a storm inside her head, and it was about to burst out.

Riordan wished that he hadn’t brought her along on this job. She had asked to come, and if he had refused, she probably would have argued and cajoled until he changed his mind. The hard truth was that it had been logical to bring her. She was extraordinarily good at this kind of covert work, and she was one of the most powerful human wizards on Earth. They had taken down Ricci and his little coven in a single night with no casualties, and that had only been possible with Nadia’s skills.

Riordan didn’t regret asking for her help. But he still worried about the cost it might have for her.

He had been married once before, a long time ago, and it hadn’t ended well. Back then he had first been a man-at-arms in service to Duke Tarmegon of Houston, and then he had been recruited into the Wizard’s Legion. During his absences, his wife Miranda had joined a Rebel cell and decided to prove her commitment to the Rebel cause by murdering an officer of the Wizard’s Legion when he came home on leave.

Specifically, her husband.

Riordan had survived. Miranda hadn’t.

A few years after that, he had joined the Shadow Hunters, and he had met Sasha. She had looked a lot like Nadia, pale with dark hair and a cutting smile. Riordan had fallen for her, hard. But Sasha had been a new-made Shadow Hunter, and she hadn’t been able to handle the Shadowmorph’s dark impulses. She had become a serial killer, and Riordan had stopped her.

That still haunted him. Riordan also wondered if affection had blinded him, if he would have been able to save some of her victims if he had seen the truth earlier.

After that, he decided to remain alone. Given how disastrously his marriage and his relationship with Sasha had ended, that was the better choice.

Then he had met Nadia, and she had given him her phone number and said that she would really like him to call her.

As it turned out, he had really liked that, too.

And he had almost lost her twice. Once to the Eternity Crucible, and once to the Sky Hammer. Riordan had failed so many times in his life, and he didn’t want to fail Nadia.

She looked calm as they stood in the warehouse yard, waiting for Nora to bring the van around. Yet he saw the way she kept twitching, the way she looked around as if expecting anthrophages or wraithwolves to leap from the shadows. He knew the fight would have reminded her of the century and a half she spent in the Eternity Crucible, that it would have dragged those memories to the forefront of her thoughts.

He suspected she was going to have a nightmare tonight, a bad one.

Riordan wanted to ask if she was all right, but he knew that she wasn’t, and anyway he had already asked. If he kept probing, she would just get irritated.

“I wonder where Ricci found that copy of the Summoning Codex,” he said instead. Partly to distract her, and partly because he wondered that himself.

Nadia shrugged and tugged her coat tighter around herself. “Hell if I know. Maybe he thought it was an antique cookbook or something.” But she frowned as she considered the problem. “I’d bet he found it in somebody’s attic or something. The book looked old.”

“It is old.” Riordan held it up. He would take it back with him to the Sanctuary of the Shadow Hunters to be analyzed and then destroyed. “It’s not like they put publication dates on these things…”

Nadia snorted. “On account of it being illegal and all.”

“But this book is at least a hundred years old.” He flipped through the pages. “The paper is yellowing, and it smells like mothballs. It probably was in someone’s attic until Ricci found it.”

“I wonder why anyone bothers printing copies of the Summoning Codex,” said Nadia. “Just save the damn thing as a text file.”

“People do,” said Riordan. “But a paper book can’t be deleted or hacked. It’s easier to break into electronic storage than a physical vault. Some secrets are safer on paper than on a server hard drive.” He tapped the book against his leg. “It’s also harder to corrupt a printed text.”

“Corrupt?” said Nadia, frowning.

“Make deliberate changes to render it useless,” said Riordan. He heard the scrape of the van’s tires against the street. “The Inquisition will sometimes do that with copies of the Summoning Codex and other forbidden books. They’ll release deliberately altered copies on dark web sites and see if anyone tries to pick it up.”

“Wonder if that copy was tampered with,” said Nadia. She gave an indifferent shrug. Riordan knew Ricci’s death would not trouble her in the slightest. “Doesn’t matter. Ricci shouldn’t have tried to summon a maelogaunt.”

“No,” agreed Riordan.

The van pulled into the yard, and Riordan saw Nora behind the wheel, Alex sitting in the front passenger seat. Riordan pulled open the side door and held it open for Nadia. She scrambled inside, and Riordan followed her and pulled the door shut behind him.

“Back to the Sanctuary, boss?” said Nora.

“Yeah,” said Riordan. Nora put the van into reverse, backed into the street, and drove away. Riordan reached into the back of the van, drew out a burner phone, and composed a text message to Homeland Security’s emergency services number, alerting them of suspicious activity at Ricci’s warehouse. Homeland Security would investigate the warehouse, find the corpses and the writ of execution, and that would be that.

“Important question,” said Alex, glancing back. “When do we get paid?” He smirked. “Bet you’d like to take the missus out to a nice dinner after she blew up that maelogaunt for us.”

Nadia didn’t say anything, which was unlike her. Instead, she was staring out the window, her expression tight. Riordan thought for a moment she had spotted more anthrophages, but she hadn’t summoned any magic or said a warning. No, she saw memories inside of her head.

“Tomorrow,” said Riordan. “I have a meeting with the Firstborn. I’ll arrange everything then. It will be a five-way split.”

Alex frowned. “Five-way?”

“You, me, Nadia, Nora, and the Family,” said Riordan. “That’s how it works.”

Alex’s frowned sharpened. “You’re married to her, so maybe the two of you should get a single share. And she’s not part of the Family, Riordan. She’s not a Shadow Hunter. Why should I have to split my money with…”

“Without her help,” said Nora, “we’d have spent another week looking for Ricci’s base. Don’t whine, ace. It’s very unbecoming.”

Alex’s scowl turned in her direction. “I’m just saying…”

“We use consultants a great deal,” said Riordan. “If we get a reputation for not paying our consultants a fair rate, it’s going to be a lot harder to find qualified ones. That’s been the policy of the Family since before either of us were born. If you don’t like it, you can take it up with the Firstborn and the Elders.”

“Hey, Alex?” said Nadia, still staring out the window.

His scowl turned to a smirk. “Yeah?”

“Tell you what,” said Nadia. “Next time we do this kind of thing, I’ll hang back and let you do all the work. Then when the maelogaunt or the cowlspawn or whatever rips off your head and lays eggs down your throat, I’ll vaporize it, and then I won’t have to share the money with you. That sound fair?”

Nora guffawed. “The tigress has got you there, ace.”

“Whatever,” said Alex, but he shut up.

Nadia kept staring out the window. The tension radiating from her was palpable. Riordan realized that she couldn’t relax, couldn’t lower her guard. At least not yet, anyway. He wished he could have done something to ease her tension, to drain the black memories from inside of her head.

But he could not.

An hour’s drive brought them back to Manhattan and its concrete and glass canyons. It was about 11 PM by then, and the city’s lights shone stark in the darkness. The Family of the Shadow Hunters had been based out of Manhattan ever since the High Queen had chartered the organization soon after the Conquest, and the Sanctuary currently occupied the top several floors of a tall building on the Upper East Side, not all that far from where Riordan owned a condo at the intersection of 6th Avenue and 43rd Street.

Nora pulled into the building’s subterranean parking garage and drove to the lowest level of the ramp. The Family owned the entire third sublevel of the garage, using it to store their vehicles and equipment, and had also paid (too much in Riordan’s opinion) to have an express elevator installed that led directly to the top of the building. Nora parked the van, and they got out.

“You coming up with us, boss?” said Nora, pausing with Alex by the elevator door. Her voice echoed off the concrete floor and walls.

“No, we’ll go home tonight,” said Riordan. There had been a time when he would join the other Shadow Hunters after a job and drink and talk with them. That had been before he had gotten married. He glanced at Nadia, and her face seemed pale and washed out in the harsh lights of the garage. “I’ll be back tomorrow to report to the Firstborn. He doesn’t like to be awakened after 10 PM for anything less than an emergency anyway.”

“Roger that,” said Nora.

“I’m going to go get drunk,” said Alex. “Maybe find a woman. Or two.” He started to smirk at Nadia, saw Riordan looking at him, and then promptly changed his mind. “We have a successful writ to celebrate.”

Nora snorted and hit the elevator button. “That’s what you’d do anyway.” The elevator pinged, and the doors hissed open. “See you tomorrow, boss.”

She and Alex got into the elevator, the door sliding closed behind them.

Nadia snorted. “I definitely married the nicest of the Shadow Hunters, didn’t I?”

“I’m glad you think so,” said Riordan. “Want to go home?”

“God, yes.” They walked to where Riordan had left his black SUV parked by a support column. Shortly after they had gotten married, Nadia had pointed out that the SUV was proof that Riordan had a lot of money. Not the fact that he owned the vehicle, but that he could afford to park it in Manhattan. A small car would have been more efficient, but Riordan sometimes needed to transport large quantities of weapons and equipment for the Shadow Hunters. Though he would have preferred a pickup truck.

An old, old memory flashed through his mind. He had been home on leave, a man-at-arms only nineteen years old, and he had used some of his earnings to make a down payment on his first pickup truck. He had always wanted one, but Miranda had laughed scornfully at him, asking if he intended to become a goddamn hog farmer once he finished his service in Duke Tarmegon’s forces, and if he did, she wasn’t lifting a finger to help in the work.

In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t all that surprising his first marriage had ended with his wife trying to kill him to gain full membership in a terrorist cell.

“What do you think of pickup trucks?” said Riordan as he unlocked the door, mostly to distract Nadia, but partly to shake off the black memory of Miranda trying to kill him.

She blinked in surprise, startled out of her black mood. “Well, they’re expensive, but what if you need to move a couch?” She made a vague gesture. “Or, like, a room full of books or something. You have a lot of books.”

Riordan laughed, and she smiled. That was his wife. Practical to a fault.

“Also,” said Nadia, “it’s nice to sit that high off the road.” She scowled. “Not that I get to experience the sensation of height all that often.”

He hid his smile at that. Practical to a fault – and not so much insecure about her height as she was annoyed at it.

They got into the SUV, and Riordan left the parking garage. Traffic was as light as it ever was in Manhattan, given the late hour, and Riordan made good time towards his condo.

“Besides,” said Nadia. “When we go back to Wisconsin, you’ll have plenty of room for your truck.”

He glanced to where she sat staring out the window. “You’re looking forward to it?”

“Yeah,” said Nadia. “New York is nice and all, but it so damn expensive. And Russell’s back in Milwaukee, and the Marneys. Plus, I can help Russell with his business.”

“Technically, it’s half your business,” said Riordan.

“He does most of the work,” said Nadia. “I just help out.” She settled back in the passenger seat and closed her eyes, though she kept talking. “He’s working towards this test. Apparently, there’s a legal provision that you can test out of high school early with a diploma, and he wants do that so he can work full-time on the business.”

“He’s either going to be a millionaire by the time he’s twenty,” said Riordan, “or he’ll be bankrupt.”

“Technically, he already was a millionaire,” said Nadia. “He just put all the money into Moran Imports. Veterans get a lot of advantages, and he’ll never be one. So, he’ll have to make his own way in the world.”

“Like you,” said Riordan.

Nadia snorted. “God, I hope not.”

They talked of trivial things as they drove to the condo building. Riordan parked in the subterranean parking garage, and they took the elevator to the top floor, where Riordan had owned a condo for years. One of the side effects of living for a century and investing wisely was a surplus of money. Since he spent a lot of time in New York for the Shadow Hunters, he had decided to use some of that money to buy an actual place to live in New York, rather than staying at the Sanctuary every time he was in the city.

His condo was on the top floor, and the windows in the living room and dining room had a fine view of the Manhattan skyline. Books lined shelves in the living room since Riordan had liked to read ever since he had been a child, even though his father and Miranda had mocked him for it. He had converted one of the bedrooms into a gym, another into an armory and a workshop, and the condo was a comfortable place to live, though it had always felt empty.

It felt much less empty with Nadia here.

“I think,” said Nadia, taking off her coat, “that I’m going to exercise. Don’t think I’ll be able to sleep otherwise.”

“Do you want me to spot you?” said Riordan.

She shook her head and managed a smile. “No. I’m fine.” He didn’t believe her. “I just…need to burn some things off. Long day.”

“Shout if you change your mind,” said Riordan.

She did smile at that. “I’ll scream my damn head off.”

Riordan laughed, and Nadia disappeared into the bedroom. He retrieved his laptop from the workroom and set up at the dining room table, sorting through his email. His work for the Family occupied much of his time, but not all of it. There had been some years where he had only two or three writs from the Family, and so he needed something else to fill the time. He had written historical adventure novels for years under the name Malcolm Lock, and they were published in all editions through a company he owned. (His first few experiences with writing, soon after he had joined the Shadow Hunters, had convinced him that nearly all publishers were lying thieves, so he had better start his own company.) He also had shares in numerous businesses in New York and near his house in Texas.

One of these days he would have to sit Nadia down and make sure she knew where all his (and now theirs) assets were. He suspected she would be vaguely horrified to find out just how much money they had. She had a deep-seated suspicion of rich people, notwithstanding the fact she was wealthy now.

Once he finished answering business-related emails, he worked on his latest book. Riordan could write anywhere, under practically any conditions, a skill he had picked up when he had been a man-at-arms in Duke Tarmegon’s service all those years ago, and he had kept at it since. After a moment he heard the faint thump of Nadia’s shoes on the treadmill. He hadn’t realized he could hear the treadmill in the dining room. But, then, he had spent most of his time here alone before Nadia.

He finished a chapter as the sound of the treadmill halted, and the shower started. About ten minutes later Nadia emerged, her hair wet. She was wearing one of his black T-shirts that she had appropriated as a nightshirt, and she was short enough that it fell to mid-thigh.

He thought about kissing her, about pulling the T-shirt over her head to see if she was wearing anything beneath it. But he was bone-tired, and to judge from her pallor and the dark circles under her eyes, so was Nadia. Riordan knew that she had only exercised to burn off some of the dark memories the fight had inspired, and he hoped she was tired enough that she would sleep well.

“I think I’m going to go to bed now,” she said.

Riordan nodded and closed his laptop. “That’s a good idea.”

“You don’t have to go to bed if you don’t want,” Nadia said.

“I had a long day too, you know,” said Riordan, and she smiled. “What do you say we sleep in late tomorrow?”

Her smile turned to a frown. “Don’t you have to meet the Firstborn?”

“The Firstborn isn’t going to want to talk to me at six in the morning. We can sleep until we wake up.”

Her smile returned. “You know how to tell a girl just what she wants to hear.”

They went to bed. Nadia had fallen asleep by the time Riordan finished brushing his teeth. He gazed at her face. The hard edge had vanished from her features, and she looked relaxed. Perhaps she would have a solid night’s sleep.

Riordan kissed her forehead, lay down next to her, and was soon asleep himself.

He awoke at about two in the morning when Nadia’s fist slammed into his ribs.

Riordan sat up at once, years of experience and combat reflexes taking over. He called his magic, preparing to cast a spell, and his Shadowmorph seethed and stirred inside of him. His hand curled around the pistol he kept hidden between the nightstand and his side of the bed, and his eyes scanned the room. One of the gifts of the Shadowmorph was enhanced senses, and his eyes scanned the gloom. The bedroom door was still closed, and he didn’t hear the security alarm or anything moving in the condo…

Nadia moaned, and his gaze shifted to her.

Her hands were clenched into fists, and she was thrashing in her sleep, the cords on her neck standing out. Her eyes darted back and forth behind closed lids, and her teeth were bared in a snarl, her jaw clenched. The fight at Ricci’s warehouse had reminded her too much of the Eternity Crucible. She had spent a hundred and fifty-eight years getting killed every single day, and she was reliving one of those days inside her head.

“Nadia,” said Riordan. He grasped her arms and pulled her to a sitting position. It was harder than he thought. She was stronger than her size suggested, and her muscles were clenched in the struggle of the nightmare. “Nadia. Nadia!”

Her eyes popped open, wide and gray and crazed and terrified. She looked around, trying to find the anthrophages and other creatures that had haunted her dream, and she raised one hand in the beginning of a spell.

Riordan caught her wrist. “It’s just a dream. You’re not in the Eternity Crucible. You’re not in the Eternity Crucible.” He felt her pulse against his fingers, and his mind automatically counted it even through his fear for her. A hundred and seventy beats a minute, maybe a hundred and eighty. “You’re in the condo, with me. You’re not in the Eternity Crucible.”

She stared at him, quivering, and something like lucidity came into her eyes. “I…okay. The condo. Not the Eternity Crucible. There weren’t any condos in there. God. I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“No,” said Riordan. Well, his side ached a little, but that was trivial. That was one of Nadia’s great fears, that she would wake up from one of her nightmares and hurt someone. She had almost killed her brother after a nightmare of the Crucible, and the experience had driven her to cutoff all contact with Russell and Riordan for a year for fear that she might hurt them.

“Oh, good,” said Nadia, her voice shaking. “Oh, good. Okay. I’m going to lie down.” She slumped against the bed, and Riordan pulled her into his arms. She was shaking as if she had just run ten miles. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“No,” murmured Riordan. “You didn’t do anything. It’s not your fault.”

Nadia said nothing but buried her face in his shoulder. They lay like that for a while, and her shaking subsided. She tended to react in one of three ways to these nightmares. Sometimes they exhausted her, and she fell asleep at once. Or she rose and exercised to tire herself out, but she had already done that.

Her hand slid across his stomach and slipped into the waistband of his shorts.

Or she wanted a different form of distraction.

The Shadowmorph shivered with sudden hunger inside his head, and for once Riordan and the symbiont were in complete agreement. He spent his life living within rigid self-control. The Shadowmorph gave him tremendous abilities, but it also inspired dark appetites that had to be kept under control. Younger Shadow Hunters like Alex indulged themselves more than Riordan thought proper, but they didn’t cross the line. If they did, they would be warped into monsters like Sasha and other Shadow Hunters who had given into their Shadowmorph’s impulses.

But here, with Nadia, Riordan could relax his self-control a little.

He kissed her hard, and she let out a little moan and kissed him back. Her hands kept moving over him, trying to tug away his T-shirt and shorts. Riordan paused long enough to help her, then grabbed her shirt and pulled it over her head.

As he had expected earlier, she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. His blood stirred at the sight. She wasn’t buxom by any stretch of the imagination, but she was lean, toned, and very well proportioned, and looking at her without any clothing turned the hunger in his blood into a fire.

She was staring at him, breathing hard, and the full intensity of her gray eyes focused on him like there was nothing else in the world. It was an intoxicating sensation, and then all rational thought washed away in a tide of physical need as Riordan pulled her against him.

Later, once they had finished, Riordan lay on his back, Nadia’s head on his shoulder, her arm flung across his chest.

“Okay,” said Nadia. She let out a shaky laugh. “Okay. You are…really rather exceptional at that, you know?”

Riordan grunted in answer.

“It’s not weird, is it?” said Nadia, her voice hesitant.

“A husband and wife making love at two in the morning?” Though it was actually past three now, come to think of it. “It’s normal. Even healthy.”

“I mean…that I jump you to come down when I have a bad dream,” said Nadia. “The Eternity Crucible ruined a lot of things for me, but not this. It…well, it calms me down. That doesn’t bother you? It’s not weird?”

“Why should it bother me?” said Riordan. “You were upset. I was glad I could help.”

She levered up on one elbow and grinned at him. “Admit it. You enjoyed that too.”

“Was there any doubt?” said Riordan.

“Not really,” said Nadia, and she lay back down. “You were very enthusiastic.” She hesitated. “I love you. You know that, right? Even when I’m…um, not entirely in my right mind.”

“I know,” said Riordan. “And I love you, too.”

He drifted back to sleep.

Riordan woke at about seven. He sat up and looked at Nadia. She was still naked and asleep on her stomach, her head turned to the side, a small puddle of drool soaking into the sheets near her open mouth. That was good. She had needed a deep sleep.

He gazed at her for a moment, admiring the way the dim gray light of morning touched the contours of her body and shaded her legs and back. She was a beautiful woman, but more than that, beneath her prickly manner she was as brave and as loyal as anyone he had ever met. A deep wave of affection rolled through Riordan, shocking in its strength. After his bitter experiences with Miranda and Sasha, Riordan hadn’t thought he could love a woman as much as he loved Nadia.

Well, Nadia was good at proving people wrong.

Riordan got to his feet in silence and pulled the blanket to Nadia’s neck so she wouldn’t be cold when she woke up. He dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, slipped out of the bedroom, and walked down the hall to his gym. Soon after he had bought the condo, he had converted one of the bedrooms to a gym, with a pair of treadmills and a variety of free weights. He had gotten two sets of everything since he had been with Sasha at the time and she liked to exercise in the morning. Sasha had almost always left the gym a mess when she had finished. Nadia had used the gym last night, but even in her black mood, she had still racked her weights and wiped down everything.

That wave of affection went through Riordan again. Love, he had come to realize, wasn’t built on grand gestures. Rather it came from a thousand little acts of kindness and respect repeated over time.

Then again, he had proposed to Nadia a few weeks after he had dragged her through a rift way about four seconds before a nuclear bomb exploded in her face, so maybe there was room for a grand gesture every now and then.

Though hopefully, he wouldn’t have to repeat that particular gesture anytime soon.

Riordan laughed at himself. Nadia’s somewhat cracked sense of humor was wearing off on him.

He spent the next forty minutes lifting weights, relying on his own strength and not the augmentations the Shadowmorph could give him. In combat, Riordan had found, it was best never to rely too much on any one thing – whether his Shadowmorph, or his magic, or his equipment. Best always to be prepared for something to go wrong.

After Riordan finished, he went back to the bedroom. The bed was empty, and Riordan showered off in the bathroom. He dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a sweater, and went to the kitchen to find some food.

To his mild surprise, he found that Nadia was making breakfast.

The kitchen opened off the dining room, with counters wrapping around all three walls. Nadia was wearing his T-shirt again, her hair tied in a messy bun, and she was scrambling eggs on the stove. Another skillet held frying bacon, and the smell of it reminded Riordan that he was hungry. Riordan had a small TV set into the wall over the sink, and Nadia had turned it to the local news. The big story of the day was the murder of some art dealer or another. Riordan would have to check the news sites to see if any report of Ricci’s death had emerged, but with the writ of execution, Homeland Security would suppress any mention of it.

“Hey,” said Nadia, stirring the eggs. She seemed in good spirits. “We’ve been married two months, and I’m already barefoot and in the kitchen.”

Riordan laughed. “Thank you for making breakfast.”

“Mmm.” She stirred the eggs some more, the spoon scraping against the pan. “We both worked pretty hard last night. Got to keep our strength up, you know?”

In short order, she had the eggs and bacon on plates and cups of coffee poured. Riordan joined her at the dining room table, the windows around them overlooking Manhattan. He put some salt and pepper on his eggs. Nadia produced a bottle of hot sauce and put a liberal quantity on hers.

“Hot sauce?” he said. “On eggs?”

“Yeah,” she said, eating a big spoonful. “It’s the only way to have eggs. Clears out the sinuses, too.”

He knew the real reason why she put hot sauce on eggs, and most other foods. She had told him once that in the Eternity Crucible she had been torn apart so often that sometimes bits and pieces of her flesh landed in her mouth as she shrieked. Any food that reminded her of that taste and texture caused her to become violently sick.

Fortunately, nothing from the human body tasted like hot sauce.

“Does it?” said Riordan.

“Oh, yeah,” said Nadia. She swallowed another bite of eggs. “It works really well. It…”

She blinked several times, looked away, and sneezed quite forcefully.

“As I was saying,” said Nadia.

“You’ve convinced me,” said Riordan. “These are quite good.”

“Thanks. I learned how to do eggs really well when I was a short-order cook,” said Nadia.

Riordan blinked. “What?”

“Didn’t I tell you that?” said Nadia.

“You did not.”

“Oh. Well. It was the year before I met you,” said Nadia, gesturing with her fork for emphasis. “Morvilind wanted me to rob some safe-deposit boxes in this high-security bank in Cincinnati. I needed to make a copy of the vault database, and the bank’s overnight security director took the backup drives home with him in the morning.”

“Sloppy,” said Riordan.

“Yeah, that bank really overcharged,” said Nadia. “Anyway, he’d always stop for breakfast at this diner on the way home, order the same thing. I was seventeen at the time, so I lied about my age, said I was twenty-three, and got a job as a short-order cook.”

“Surprised they didn’t make you a waitress,” said Riordan.

“Manager said I didn’t have the personality for it,” said Nadia. He stifled a laugh, and she pointed her fork at his chest. “Don’t laugh. I watched that security director every morning for two weeks, and I bought some external hard drives identical to the ones in his bags. I swapped out the drives, robbed the deposit boxes, and got out of Cincinnati on the same day.” She took a big swallow of coffee and grinned. “See, and since we got that royal pardon for everything back in July, I can tell you all about it now.”

“Well,” said Riordan, “you make a fine plate of scrambled eggs. Even if you’re putting hot sauce on them.”

Deliberately she picked up the bottle of hot sauce and dumped some more on her eggs, and Riordan laughed.

“You’re going to the Sanctuary today?” said Nadia.

Riordan nodded. “I need to talk to the Firstborn about Ricci.”

“God knows Alex won’t shut up until he’s paid,” muttered Nadia.

“I’ve known him longer. Nothing ever shuts him up,” said Riordan, and Nadia laughed. “Then I think I’ll come back and write for the afternoon.”

Nadia nodded, took a bite of eggs, and hesitated, her expression thoughtful. Riordan thought she had put too much hot sauce on the eggs, but instead, she picked up the bottle and added more. She was definitely going to have clear sinuses after this. “I’m going to do some paperwork for Moran Imports. The first harvest of fruit from Kalvarion is supposed to come through the Great Gate in November, and Russell’s got contracts lined up with all the grocery chains in Milwaukee. If it goes well, we want to expand to some of the other urban areas in the Midwest.”

“I’m surprised Russell has time for all this,” said Riordan. Nadia’s brother had an astonishing amount of energy, especially after his frostfever had been cured.

“If he passes that proficiency test, he’ll be done with high school, and then all his time will go into the company,” said Nadia. She finished off her bacon. “I doubt he’ll miss it. Not that I would know since I never went to high school.”

“You didn’t miss much,” said Riordan. His own high school years hadn’t been enjoyable. The one bright spot had been meeting Miranda, and that had later turned sour.

“But after we get our work done for today,” said Nadia, “we should do…you know, a thing.”

Riordan blinked. “A thing?”

“Like a married couple thing.”

“We did that this morning.” Riordan felt himself smile. “But I’m sure I would be up for another round later.”

She smirked. “You usually don’t need much encouragement. But I haven’t had enough coffee to express myself coherently yet.” To solve that problem, she took another long drink. “I mean, we should go out and do something fun. You know, like a date, except we’re married now, so it’s not a date.”

“We could go to a museum,” said Riordan, half-seriously, but partly to see the flicker of alarm that went through Nadia’s eyes. She was very intelligent, but she had absolutely no use for anything abstract and a profound suspicion of anything intellectual, a dislike that had only hardened after her experiences with Nicholas Connor and his band of ideologically-driven Rebels. “Or we could go to a shooting range?”

The alarm turned to pleased surprise. She did like guns. “Really? God, I haven’t been to a shooting range in…in…well, longer than you’ve been alive.”

“We should rectify that,” said Riordan. “Dinner, and a trip to the shooting range. I know a veterans’ club in Queens that has a good range. It’s not too stuffy, and it’s not too expensive, either. Once we finish up for the day, we’ll head out there for a late supper and burn through a few hundred rounds of ammunition.”

“That sounds fun,” said Nadia. “It’ll be just like the old days.” She snorted. “Course, in the old days, I was scared to death of Morvilind and scared of Homeland Security or the Inquisition catching up to me. Hard to get nostalgic about those days. Except when I think about you.”

“And now you work for the High Queen,” said Riordan.

Nadia nodded. A distant look went over her face, and she rubbed the fingers of her right hand with her left, as she often did when the topic turned to the High Queen. “I’m scared to death of her, too. But she’s not like Morvilind. She’s…” Her voice trailed off.

“She understands loyalty,” said Riordan. “In a way that someone like Morvilind never did. He used people up and threw them aside when he was done with them. Whatever else can be said about the High Queen, she doesn’t do that.” His thoughts turned to his brother Aidan. Like Nadia, he had been Morvilind’s shadow agent. Unlike Nadia, he hadn’t survived the experience. To find a way to save his brother, Riordan had joined the Wizard’s Legion and then the Shadow Hunters, trying to find a patron with enough power to force Morvilind to release Aidan.

It hadn’t worked. Aidan had been dead for decades, but Riordan was still a Shadow Hunter.

“Ah, shit,” said Nadia. She reached over the table and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up. Here we’re having a nice breakfast, and I have to ruin it.”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” said Riordan. “It is possible to be both happy and sad at the same time, on occasion.”

“That’s true.” She squeezed his hand again. “You’re okay?”

“Yes.”

“Can I let go of your hand and finish my eggs? I’m really hungry.”

Riordan laughed. “By all means.”

They finished breakfast, and Riordan went to the bedroom and changed to a suit and a tie. Meeting with the Firstborn had certain proprieties. He returned to the dining room and saw that Nadia had already set up her laptop and the stacks of paperwork related to her brother’s new company, though she had carried the dishes to the kitchen and was washing up.

Nadia glanced up from the sink and smiled. “Well, don’t you clean up nicely.”

“Thanks,” said Riordan. “I suppose I could meet with the Firstborn wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, but probably best not to do that.”

Nadia laughed. “Tell the old spook hi from me.”

“I will,” said Riordan. The Firstborn and Nadia had charmed each other the few times they had met, which was something of a relief. “I’ll text if anything comes up, but I should be home by noon.”

“Okay. I’ll be right here glaring at paperwork.” Nadia dried off her hands, rose up on her tiptoes, and kissed him. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” said Riordan, and he hugged her, kissed her again, and left.

He thought about what he had told Nadia as he took the elevator down to the parking garage. Perhaps tonight they would be able to go out and enjoy themselves.

But he worked for the Firstborn of the Family, and Nadia was a shadow agent of the High Queen of the Elves.

Both the High Queen and the Shadow Hunters tended to give assignments at odd hours.

Riordan wasn’t sure if his unease was simply paranoia or the premonition of coming trouble, but he resolved to be ready either way.

***