Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [99]
No, put that aside for now. She was distracted enough; they both had way too much on their plate right now. No need to add something more in when it might not even be anything at all.
Wren had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t making the brightest of decisions, but…it wouldn’t be the first or last time she’d done that. And…there was just the tiniest, sneakingest uncertainty in her brain. How much of what he had learned had he told this Silence? How much of what she had told him had he passed along? There were loyalties here, and they were all tangled up, and she needed time to sort them out.
“Anyway.” What had they been talking about? Oh, right, P.B. “Made me need to take a long walk afterward.”
“Across town? Must have been quite some talk.” But he didn’t push the question further, as she’d known he wouldn’t. Especially not tonight. This morning. Whatever.
“Yeah. But I got tired and realized I’d gone out without my wallet, and…”
“And then you realized that you could just drop in and borrow subway fare?”
“Well…I was sort of hoping for cab fare, actually…” She tried for kittenish; yawned instead and felt the exhaustion drag at her. Internal and external. She checked, an automatic reflex, and the pool of current barely stirred inside. Bad. Very bad. She could call on external sources if she needed to do anything flashy, of course, but it was like…it was like trying to go on no sleep for a week, was the closest she could have described it. Being able to do something didn’t mean it was a good idea. She was going to need to recharge, and soon. Being caught in an emergency and draining someone’s building was really bad manners.
He slid the omelette out of the pan and onto a plate, then sliced it neatly in half and transferred one section to another plate. On cue, the toaster popped, and the scent of warm bread almost overwhelmed the eggs. Her stomach rumbled, and he laughed at her.
“Eat first. Cab later.”
He sat down next to her, their legs bumping under the counter, and picked up his own fork. Wren followed suit. Neither of them were anything more than okay cooks, but she was starving.
By the time they had cleared the dishes and put everything away, it was almost eight. Sergei went to take a shower, muttering something about an appointment later that afternoon.
Wren could have used one herself, but she had no spare clothes stashed here and the thought of getting clean and then climbing back into her dirty clothing was, well, disgusting. She could live in the same pair of jeans for a week, if need be, but once she was clean she wanted to be clean all over.
She was, however, willing to steal a fresh pair of socks. And it had nothing…well, maybe a little to do with checking out Sergei’s bedroom.
After putting on another pot of coffee, she climbed the wooden steps up to the loft, and looked around. It was interesting, in a sparse, sort of Japanese way. A low bed covered by a dark red comforter and two feather pillows. The bed was weirdly squared off; full, not king-sized like she’d expected. Then again, it wasn’t like there was a huge amount of room in the loft to fit a larger bed in. An armoire and a low dresser, both of the same honey-blond finish as the bed frame, were up against the wall, and a laptop desk on rollers stood by the bed, lacking a laptop but piled with papers and a blue and white cup and saucer that looked too expensive to be left there. And that was it.
Wren would have investigated—all right, she admitted, call it was it was, snooping—further, but just then she heard the water from the shower shut off. She took a guess at which drawer her partner kept his socks in, grabbed the first black pair that came to hand, and skedaddled down the steps. She grabbed her boots from where she’d left them by the sofa, and grabbed her jacket off the banister she’d used as a coat rack, and then went back into the kitchen. Sergei was already there, pouring himself a mug of the freshly-brewed coffee. He was wearing dress slacks and a crisp white button-down