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The next day, I didn't have any minor evil-doers to hunt down so I deposited my latest bounty, then tried to get to work on pretending I ran an actual business.
Oisin owned the building, and he insisted we turn it into a proper office and business space. I might grumble to him out loud, but secretly, I understood his motivations only too well. We were both outcasts from our respective clans. And we both had good reason to keep it that way. My clan was a bunch of manipulative, callous assholes still stuck somewhere around the fifteen-hundreds in terms of enlightenment. And apparently, Oisin's clan wanted him back so they could inflict some sort of torture on him. I wasn't sure of the details, but still, I sympathized with the deep hurt I saw in his eyes every time he pointedly avoided telling me the whole story.
The bookstore and my bounty hunting were tangible ways we could make a living, make a place for ourselves here among the humans. We both clung to that like a life preserver.
But that didn't make me any fonder of words like organization or filing.
I stuffed a stack of papers—mostly useless notes made in my nearly unreadable chicken scratch—into a file folder and opened the desk drawer to hide it so it would look like I had cleaned off the surface of my desk. A pointed throat clearing made me nearly fall off my chair. I glared up at Oisin, sneaky fae bastard. He was wearing a t-shirt. That never happened. And... oh Gods and Goddesses, were those... "are you wearing sweatpants?"
He snorted at me and tossed his head like the grand creature he was. "Sometimes it is necessary to lower one's standards to fit the task."
I arched an eyebrow. "So... you’ve been cleaning?"
He scooped up a pile of notebooks and loose papers and set them aside so he could perch on the edge of my desk. My big, beautiful, new desk. He'd used it to lure me into staying here and agreeing to let him work with me. And now look where I was, stuck filing. The trickster.
"Please find another case so we can hire a maid," he pleaded. "The dust is killing me."
I rolled my eyes. But his skin did look a bit less...luminous...than usual, and the whites of his eyes were tinged pink. "Are you fucking kidding me right now? Cleaning is making you physically ill, you little princess."
He heaved a sigh. "I'm just not cut out for manual labor."
I shook my head and stuffed another folder into the drawer. "Because you are so weak and fragile." Bullshit. The little fae was every bit as strong as I was, and I had a good fifty pounds or more on him.
He pulled his ponytail out and re-braided his hair, twisting it into some sort of bun thing that put girly-girls everywhere to shame. "Seriously. I'm allergic to something out there. I can't figure out what the fuck it is."
He peered into the drawer I had stuffed full of not-at-all organized things. "What in the realms are you doing?"
I grinned. "Cleaning off the desk."
He rolled his emerald green eyes and slipped off the desk to come poke around in the drawer, muttering to himself. Eventually, he pushed me out of my chair and took over my space. "Jesus, Buddha and Odin. This is completely unacceptable. Con can't be expected to work in these conditions."
I shrugged. "I don't need any of that crap anyway. It's all just old stuff I've already finished. Maybe I should just pitch it."
He raised one elegant red brow at me. "Nothing is ever over, my dear gryphon. Not really."
Well, that sounded...foreboding.
"They're just old bounty notes, Oisin. What the fuck would I need them for. The creeps are off serving time or getting on with their lives."
All that got me was an imperious hand wave as he started pulling everything out of the drawer and cleaning a space to work on the desk. He rummaged around for a pen and scrawled a label on the top folder in this flowing, perfect script that would make calligraphers weep. "Just don't touch anything," he muttered at me. "And bring me some scotch."
I rolled my eyes. Bring him some scotch. What did he take me for? I reached over and pulled open the drawer on the opposite side of the one he was cleaning out, reaching inside to extract a half-empty bottle of Glenfiddich. I plopped it on the desk in front of him, earning myself one of those dangerous smirks of his.
"You are just full of wonder and surprises, my beautiful beast." He opened the bottle and took a swig, giving me a leer worthy a pirate. "It's no mead, but still...I'll trade you the office for the bookstore."
I sighed like it was a horrible bargain. "I don't know..." I said slowly. "That hardly seems fair. I mean, you get the booze and all this peace and quiet. And I get, what? Some dusty old books and a few spiders?" As if I wouldn't rather clean dirty toilets than sit in that chair and sort paperwork.
He gave me leer. "I'll find a way to repay you later. I promise."
The way he said that made me reconsider for real. Nothing was ever what you expected with the fae.
"I'd say you have a deal, but I know better." A smart person did not bargain with fae. Ever.
Oisin laughed, and I swear a bit of his color was coming back. "I'll get to you one of these days, lass," he said as he turned back to the piles of notes.
"Oisin," I said, the laughter fizzing away. "What could be out there that would make you sick?" He had never really said so, but I got the impression my fae wasn't your usual, run of the mill nymph. He might look delicate, but that magic inside him was anything but.
He lifted a shoulder in a lop-sided shrug, as if he could care less. "If I knew, I wouldn't be hiding in here, now would I?"
That didn't make me feel any better.
Sighing, I headed out to the bookstore to do some cleaning. And find out what was making an unusually strong magical creature physically ill. Because, yeah, like I wanted to get sick.
And the bastard still had my whiskey.