Page 78 of From the Edge

“Fine. How about you run a tab, and anytime you do anything for the house, you deduct fifty dollars an hour.”

“Why?”

“Because I have eighteen empty rooms, people are looking at me speculatively, and I need someone to make dinners during weeknights and a grill night every two weekends.”

“So, you want a cook.” Hope was smiling. “I could probably manage that. They are going to do their own dishes, though.”

“And I will help when I am not working, but yeah, do you want to be the cook-housekeeper?”

“Sure. Write me up an offer letter.”

“Are you worried about the guys?”

“Nope. My wings freak them out. Most pixies who manifest are guys. Ninety-nine percent of them. There are four of them in town now, and one of them, who is mated to a fire mage, just welcomed their baby into the world. They are the ones over there who still haven’t shut their mouths.”

She smiled at Rowan, and Rowan said, “So nothing horrible happened to you?”

“No. Just had to start over with no legal identity. If you are homeless with no record of the foster homes you were in, it’s fucking tricky.”

She flipped again, and only one out of the twenty oozed cheese. “I’ll take that one.”

Rowan hugged her from behind. “You can have them all.”

She started the steaks while the burgers finished, and she moved through them precisely.

Rowan was happy. Bright and shining and happy. She looked and saw Aspen talking to a red djinn lady who had a little girl holding her hand. Mell and Norec were talking to other couples with babies; her grandparents were talking to Avor and other dark elves. And Hope was back where she was supposed to be: visible and smiling and where Rowan could find her.

Chapter Eleven

Hope looked down at her driver’s license and smiled. “I am legal again.” She smiled at Ark. “Thank you.”

“We found your birth certificate, and it took some looking. But they couldn’t make the print copy disappear, so we got it from child services.”

She sat in his office in another one of Pandora’s outfits, but this one had a closed back, and she now had shoes. Rowan was waiting to go home with her.

“So we have your license, a passport, and an apology from the police department for threatening you with arrest for trying to explain your situation.”

“Delightful. I just have to get my feet under me, and then I can try to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

Ark leaned back. “You don’t like being a cook and housekeeper?”

“It’s fun, but the repetition is difficult. It took me six days to get my wings in. It made working in there a lot easier. Now I can sleep on my side.”

He chuckled. “Are you sleeping alone?”

“Well, seeing as how your guys shit themselves every time the wings vibrate, yeah, definitely.”

“Are you a beta or omega?”

She waved one of her hands. “One of those. I haven’t had it investigated.”

He blinked. “Why not?”

“Because unless I find a guy who doesn’t mind the wings, I am un-fuckable.”

“I... don’t think that’s true.”

She let the phantom projection of her wings appear, and she made them hum. Ark leaned back in his chair. She dismissed it and clutched her identity papers. “See?”