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“Because I don’t know how!” She pushed him off with a yell and a surge of her magic.
Tallak blinked and took a step back, stupefied into silence.
She stared at him, shoulders slumped, her breath coming fast, her arms hanging loosely at her side. Then something broke in her gaze as she whispered, “I’ve never had a mother. How would I know what to do with one?”
His heart still beating fast, he rasped, “And I never had a son until the night I butchered the fucking fae and found out he’s still alive. But I sure as fuck am here now, trying my best to be a father, even if it’s two fucking decades too late.” Voice gentling, he added, “There’s no manual for this. You just do your best; you give what you can. And you hope it’s enough.”
Rose held his gaze for a moment, then averted her eyes and sniffed, wiping her cheeks with jerky motions. “Enough,” she murmured, almost to herself. She looked around the room without focusing on anything. “She doesn’t want me, though. Not really. Not like this. I’m a fucking mess, aren’t I?”
The last living demon stirred, apparently not dead of blood loss yet, and Tallak nonchalantly kicked him right where his dick used to be, eliciting another wail of agony.
“Please just kill me,” the demon whimpered.
Ignoring the sorry bastard, Tallak caught Rose’s gaze. “Kid, that woman would scrape you out of the gutter with her bare hands if it meant she could have you in her life.”
Rose wiped her nose on her sleeve, her lips trembling.
“Just show up,” Tallak said. “Be there. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be. If you don’t want to talk yet, then listen. Everything else will come with time.”
Playing with the hem of her jacket sleeves, Rose stared at the floor, her face forlorn. After a moment, she nodded. When she spoke, her voice was so quiet he barely heard her. “Can you take me home?”
Tallak glanced around the bloody mess of the room, the two dead bodies and the soon-to-follow-his-friends bastard of a demon, and swallowed. Ava was going to skin him alive for this.
With a sigh, he cracked a kink in his neck and turned back to Rose. “Sure, kid. Just give me a minute.”
He pulled out his phone and dialed the number of a work buddy of his, a shifter whose ass he’d saved in a fight a few months back.
“What’s up?” Ruben said as he picked up, sounding just a little bit sleepy.
“I’m calling in my favor. I need you to come out to Nine Circles. Bring cleaning supplies. Like, lots of bleach. And maybe two”—he eyed the remaining live demon—“make that three body bags. Check the men’s restroom.”
“Dude.” Tallak had the distinct impression Ruben was rubbing his eyes.
“Yeah. Might want to hurry before anyone sees this shit.”
“Well, all right, then. Murder spree cleaning crew coming right up. But we’ll be square after this.”
“Sure will be.”
He ended the call and focused on the third demon. Stepping over one of the corpses, Tallak crouched in front of the still-living guy, grabbed his head with both hands, and unceremoniously broke his neck.
Straightening up again, he stared at his reflection in the mirror, all bloodied and shit, and washed his hands at least halfway clean.
“Okay,” he said to Rose. “We’re good to go.”
Outside the restroom, he locked the door with his set of work keys, then retrieved an OUT OF ORDER sign from storage and hung it on the restroom’s door.
He waved down Phoebe, one of the two waitresses working the floor, and waited until she’d wound her way over through the booths and tables.
“So there’s a bit of a mess in the men’s room,” he said. “Patron fight gone wrong. I’ve locked it up and called cleanup. Can you cover the rest of my shift? I need to leave early. I’ll take one of your shifts in return.”
Phoebe studied him from head to toe, then her eyes flicked to Rose behind him, who was sprayed with a good amount of blood herself. The waitress’s brows shot up, and her face took on that Don’t wanna know, don’t care expression with which she’d stifle any unwelcome advances by patrons.
“Uh-huh, yeah,” Phoebe said. “No problem. You go ahead and…do whatever. I’ll let you know which of my shifts you can take over.”
“Great, thanks.” Tallak saluted her and escorted Rose out of Nine Circles and to his car.
He grimaced at the thought of getting blood all over the seats. Eh. Couldn’t be helped. That was what otherworld-creature cleanup services were for, specializing in removing not just traces of magic and proof of supernatural existence but also blood and gore.
