“Still. You know all about my family.”
“I’m a bodyguard. It’s part of my job.”
“Yes, but you’re more than a bodyguard now. You’re my… err…” I tried to think of the appropriate term. Fortunately his fingers were away from my scalp now, plaiting the hair, and coherent thought had gotten a bit easier. “Partner in crime?”
He grunted again.
“Co-conspirator?” Grunt. “Fellow victim of circumstance?”
Javier sighed, patted my shoulder as if I were a horse whose mane he’d braided, and stepped back. “That ought to hold for a bit.”
“Thank you.” I ran my hand down it. It was much better than my attempts had been, and all it had cost me was a deeply inconvenient and misplaced arousal. I made another attempt to distract myself. “So we’ve both got younger sisters, then.”
“Seems that way.” I thought for a moment that he was done, but then he added, “And a younger brother. I was the oldest.”
“Me too. Though I never braided my sisters’ hair. Our mother did Isobel’s, and Catherine used to shriek when anyone waved a hairbrush in her general direction.”
“My mother died when I was seven.”
“This is why I don’t make small talk,” I muttered, half to myself. Javier snorted. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s fine. That was a very long time ago. But that’s why I learned to braid hair.”
I wondered if it was also why he’d joined the military, to send money back home. I did not think this was a good time to ask. “Thank you,” I said, touching the tight weave of my hair.
Javier frowned. “Do you think you’ll be okay?”
“I’m fine. I feel like hell, but I’m fine.” (Also, there still wasn’t a damn thing he could do if I wasn’t, but that would probably only lead to more discussion.) I got to my feet.
Javier gave me a brooding look. An actual brooding look, not the dramatic reflecting-on-personal-woe-to-be-interesting kind. That one only looks good on poets. This one made him look thoughtful and a little stern and altogether too handsome for a man in my bedroom whom I couldn’t do a damn thing about. “I’ll check on you tomorrow,” he said, as I opened the door to let him out.
“I’ll try not to be dead,” I promised him, and closed the door.
CHAPTER 19
In the morning, I was not dead. In fact, I woke up at dawn, probably because I’d slept for half the day yesterday. There was a furry weight against my back. “Grayling?” I asked.
“No, it’s one of the other cats.”
“I haven’tseenany other cats.”
“They’re down in the stables, catching mice.” He sat up and yawned. “Why are you awake at this hour? I thought you were a sensible sort of human.”
I told him about my experiment trying to bring the bird through the mirror. He was unimpressed. “What did you expect would happen? Living things are hard.”
“Potatoes are alive.”
There are few things in life more disdainful than a one-eyed cat. I could actually feel my hair withering under the force of his stare. “Potatoes,” he said at last, “do not makegods.”
I was not expecting this argument and so responded with an articulate “huh?”
Grayling leaped off the bed and stalked into the mirror, tail twitching. Since very few cats enjoy being chased, I went to the privy instead.
Potatoes don’t make gods. Hmm.That implied that the living things that didn’t pass throughdidmake gods. Which meant that the ability to make a god was somehow essential to whether an object could pass through a mirror, which meant… I had no idea what that meant.
We don’t actually have gods in my country, as you may have noticed, just saints. The story goes that our gods were pitiless and cruel, and in despair, humanity began to pray instead to the beastsof heaven, to Rabbit and Bird, Adder and Toad, and all the rest. The beasts of heaven rose up in their numbers and slew the pitiless gods, and since those days, we have called only upon the saints.
In fairness to Grayling, there was not a Saint Potato. If you wanted a good crop, you called upon the Saint of Bees. (Not Saint Bee, because this saint is not singular the way the others are.) Did this mean that bees were capable of making gods? What kind of god would a bee make? I pictured tiny evangelists standing outside a hive, preaching the gospel of bees.Hmm, maybe Grayling has a point. How would a potato preach to the other potatoes? You just don’t get that many missionaries among root vegetables.
