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A dangerous game. One she might not win, but as she stared into her empty glass, hoping it morphed into a crystal ball and gave her clarity, she wondered how best to proceed. Forcing answers out of him wouldn’t work. Westvane wouldn’t tell her until he decided to, which left her drifting on a strange current without the equipment required to steer back on course.
She must learn to read between the lines. Find an avenue of understanding, then she’d be able to… to…
Truly blinked, a slow up and down, as she lost her train of thought. She tried to recapture the thread, but her mind kept drifting. Now, she had nothing but blank. Which was odd. She’d been full of clever ideas earlier.
Tipping the glass up, she rotated it in her hand. Light refracted through the bottom. Her vision blurred, then came back into focus. Something was wrong with her eyes. She wasn’t seeing straight. Might be the strange, prickling rush in her veins. Could be the odd heat circling the center of her palms. Or —
She squinted harder at the bottom of her glass.
Could be the Glenfiddich.
A good guess given the tip of her nose had gone numb five minutes ago. A sure sign the effects of the Scotch were about to hit hard. Not surprising (though incredibly foolish), given Westvane hadn’t slowed down while she tried to keep up.
Westvane poured more into her glass, then refilled his own. Struggling to sit straight in her chair, she watched Scotch sloshed against cut crystal. He set the bottle down and continued talking, his deep voice weaving a spell around her and…
She had no idea what he was explaining.
Truly heard the cadence of his words, was tracking the rise and fall of syllables. Knew he spoke in full sentences that flowed into cohesive paragraphs, and she was missing all of it.
She ought to be filing the information away.
Instead, she struggled to grasp the basics.
Raking her hair out of her face, she shoved long bangs behind one of her ears. All right. Okay. She could do this — follow along, identify the holes in his story and piece together the rest. All she needed to do was concentrate.
“And that’s how it works,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
“Hang on a second.” Holding her hands up in self-defense, she shook her head. He was going too fast, not giving her a chance to ask questions. No doubt his plan, but that didn’t work for her. “Back up.”
“To where?”
“The beginning.”
Shifting in his seat, he stretched out his legs. “What for?”
“I need to process.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t read. After a moment, she realized it was extreme irritation.
She set her glass down with a thump.
“How drunk are you?”
“I can’t feel my nose, so… sliding towards blotto.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s your fault!”
“How?”
“You kept drinking. I felt I had to keep up.”
“I have a hundred and fifty pounds on you.”
“At least.”
“Truly,” he growled, irritation tipping into exasperation.
