Miss You When You're Gone (On Behalf of Death Book 7) Page 2

  “Rock trolls are not cave trolls,” Yolanda started. “We have similar genetic structures, but they have a ruling system based on trial by combat. Rock trolls have a hairy…herey…hairadairy system.”

  I blinked. “Do you mean hereditary?”

  Yolanda nodded.

  Her English had improved by leaps and bounds since I started working with her, but correspondence courses only taught so much. She still had some of the strangest gaps in her vocabulary.

  “How do you know genetic structures but not hereditary?” Agravane asked. I threw a pillow at him.

  “My bloodline had been the ruling line of my tribe for generations,” Yolanda continued as if Agravane hadn’t spoken. “My father is—was—the current leader and as his only full-blood offspring, I was to assume power after his death. From a young age, I was taught the ways of our people on the understanding that I would rule. Only…” She trailed off and blushed, the skin around her nose and cheeks turning a burnt orange.

  “Only?” I prompted.

  “Only I…” Yolanda buried her face in her massive hands and mumbled out some words that I barely understood, let alone comprehended.

  Agravane dropped his phone to the floor with a clatter, jaw dropping. “Wait, what?”

  “What?” I asked. “What?!”

  “She just said that she and a mountain nymph fell in love and declared themselves mates!” Agravane spluttered.

  I blinked. Waited. Tried to sip at my still cold coffee in the hopes that it would somehow have got warmer in the last minute. Looked up. “Yeah, no, I don’t understand what that means.”

  Yolanda chuckled, wiping her eyes from tears that were definitely not from laughing. “You are a good person, Cal,” she said.

  I bobbed my head in a nod. “If you say so. But I still don’t get it.”

  “Mountain nymphs are an offshoot of forest nymphs that split from the main line aeons ago,” Agravane explained as if he were giving me a history lesson that everyone knew. “They’re as beautiful and graceful as their forest cousins, only with an affinity for mountains. For a nymph to fall in love with a rock troll is like, well—“

  “Like what?” I narrowed my eyes at Agravane and even Sebastian sat up to take notice. Was the aurai suggesting that Yolanda and this nymph couldn’t be mates because the nymph was beautiful and Yolanda had massive muscles, stout figure and grey-green skin? I knew that the people of Elsewhere had some strange notions compared to the mortal world, but that seemed a little much, even for me.

  “Like a unicorn and a dragon trying to produce offspring!” Agravane said, throwing his hands up. “It’s physically impossible!”

  Yolanda’s shoulders were up by her ears and her fingers were digging into the arms of my chair as though it were the only thing holding her up. She was blushing furiously and her eyes were downcast.

  I frowned, Sebastian doing the same from deep within me. Both of us focused our annoyance at Agravane until the air elemental shrank back.

  “What?” he said. “Their species are genetically incompatible, that’s just a fact. If she wanted to continue her family’s bloodline, then that would have been a problem. Royal families always want to continue the bloodline. That’s Elsewhere 101, Cal.”

  I wasn’t going to argue genetics with the aurai. I just grabbed the invitation off the coffee table and waved it in front of Yolanda. “I have an idea.”

  “What?” she asked, misery lacing that simple word until it threatened to actually rain right in my living room.

  “We’re both going to that coronation party,” I said firmly. “And we’re going to parade in front of your people, showing them how freaking awesome you are until they either fall on their faces in apology or they admit defeat and are banished to a far off land.”

  I didn’t know if I could annoy an entire tribe enough for them to consider banishment, but I would certainly try if it made Yolanda feel better. She blinked back some more tears.

  “You don’t have to do that, Cal,” she murmured.

  “Yes, I do. You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had and I don’t think I could ever function properly without you. Also, I need your help to pronounce your people’s names right.”

  “At least it’s not dwarfish,” Agravane muttered. I jabbed my finger in his direction.

  “Shut up, I’m still mad at you.”

  “Don’t be mad at him, Cal,” Yolanda said. “He was just stating a fact. We could never have properly had children, a lineage, Boulder and I. It’s just…we didn’t care. We thought our feelings were more important than some familial duty.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Agravane said, sounding at least sincere in his apology. “It was just startling is all. I of all people know about walking away from familial duty.”

  He had a point; I had helped rescue him from the Order of Silence, a group of assassins made up primarily of aurai. It was supposedly some great honour to one’s family to join, but training also involved literally walking the line between Life and Death and was pretty much torture. No wonder he’d left.

  “So, are we going to do this?” I asked, waving the invitation around again. “Because I have to go anyways, per my agreement with Life, and I’d really rather make this interesting.”

  Yolanda stared at the piece of paper like it could either save her or kill her, yellow eyes wide. She swallowed once, closed her eyes, then nodded. “Okay,” she said.

  I grinned, a fierce feeling flooding through me. I think Sebastian rubbed its hands together in anticipation, though to be honest I wasn’t actually sure if the eldritch creature coiled inside me had hands. Agravane nodded firmly.

  “Right, well, let’s go get ready to stir up chaos.”

  CHAPTER 2

  As it turns out, attending a rock troll coronation party isn’t as simple as it seems. It’s something like a mortal wedding and a coming of age ceremony all rolled into one. Guests are required to bring gifts, and will also be receiving gifts, and then there was the matter of food, attire, transportation and dealing with Agravane being forced to stay behind.

  “The invitation says ‘plus one’, which means you can’t come,” I said, for about the third time, waving the piece of paper before Agravane. He snatched it from my fingers, read the thing over, snarled, and stalked back to his desk.

  “Cal, are you allergic to arugula?” Yolanda asked, sitting at her own desk, hunched over a stack of papers. Supposedly, it was the survey to maximise guest enjoyment, but really it was just answering questions about food allergies, preferences for meat cooking and a whole concoction of questions regarding seating arrangement. I had looked at the document, which had arrived after I returned the invitation with my RSVP, and promptly handed it off to Yolanda.

  “No,” I said, laying my forehead on my desk. It had been less than twenty-four hours since Life had killed and cured me, and I was already certain my cold was trying to come back. Either that, or being soulless now manifested in the form of a massive headache. “My only allergies are to shellfish and a general dislike of anything to do with Worcestershire sauce. Oh, and anything cooked by vampires.”

  “No…food…from…vampires,” Yolanda said while writing out the words. She went back to filling out paperwork and I attempted to get my own work done. My social media, despite reports from my assistant, had gone largely unmanaged. I tweaked my advert for the coffee I represented, altering the colours on the picture just a touch, then posted that and started a new campaign for Death.

  “Cal,” Yolanda said.

  “No other allergies!”

  “What about the gift?” she asked. I turned in my chair to frown at her. She fidgeted with the paperwork, snapping the pen she was using between her fingers when she squeezed it too tightly. Her cheeks tinged orange and she refused to meet my gaze.

  “I mean…I’ve never attended a coronation before,” I said, trying to be as tactful as possible. “What sort of gift should we bring?”

  “Not popcorn,” Yola
nda blurted too loudly.

  Rock trolls, given their affinity to rocks of all sorts, had a passionate love for salt. Unfortunately, salt was not really mined in Elsewhere, and I had to source all mine from the mortal realms. The first time I had taken Yolanda to the mortal realms, she had devoured a bucketful of eggs bathed in salt at our hotel buffet. Her absolute favourite was popcorn, the microwaveable kind that was overloaded with salt. I had started purchasing it in bulk to keep office drama down whenever Yolanda and Agravane wanted to watch one of their soap operas.

  “Well,” I said, “surely we can take some popcorn for us, right?”

  Yolanda considered this suggestion gravely. She nodded once. “Yes, that would be good.”

  “Great, but we still need to get a gift?” I pulled up a web browser and started looking for information on gifts for rock trolls.

  “How about a salt lamp?” Agravane asked, giving up all pretence of working and spinning around to face us. “It’s still salt, but not edible.”

  Yolanda made a face. “Giving inedible salt…”

  “You could always pretend that Cal didn’t know how rude that would be, blame it on him.” Agravane produced a fierce grin and his eyes gleamed.

  I wondered, briefly, if I should protest being put up as a scapegoat. It seemed wiser to hold my tongue and keep looking at gifts online.

  “That would be fun,” Yolanda said, nodding. “But probably not a good idea since he is meant to be representing Life.”

  Agravane shrugged. “If you insist.”

  “How about we steer away from food? What about shiny things? Gemstones, jewellery, that sort of thing?” I turned my screen around so they could see the fancy jewellery website I had found for a place not too far from Death’s lands.

  Yolanda rolled her eyes. “Rock trolls, Cal. Gemstones are common as dirt to us.”

  “And don’t the dwarves hate you for it,” Agravane muttered. I had given him sole control over the marketing account for one of several dwarf nations. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I couldn’t spell any of their names, let alone pronounce them. No, I just thought Agravane was the best candidate for this sort of thing. Truly.

  “Okay, fine, how about a giant fluffy blanket?” I asked, half kidding. It hardly seemed like the sort of thing one would give to someone for a coronation. Yolanda, though, widened her eyes and leaned closer to my computer screen. She stared at the king sized plush blanket I had found for a decent price and I swear I could see actual glitter in her eyes.

  “That would work,” she said, her words breathless and weak, like I had just offered to give her a salt mine.

  “I mean, are you certain?” I looked at the picture. It seemed like a nice blanket, but it was just a blanket. There were hundreds of them out there, nothing particularly special about this one except that it looked very comfortable. “It’s just a blanket.”

  “It’s a soft blanket,” Yolanda retorted, as if that explained everything. Obviously, I didn’t understand rock troll culture very well.

  “If you say so.” I had Yolanda pick out an appropriate colour—grey—and pretended not to notice when I saw she had added two to the cart instead of one. I ordered the swiftest delivery—which in Elsewhere was quite impressive—and left to go pack so I wouldn’t be there when the item arrived and Yolanda had to explain the second blanket.

  A few minutes later, Agravane poked his head into my flat. “Post’s here,” he said. “You want I should tip the pixie extra?”

  “No, let Yolanda do it. Wouldn’t want to ruin her fun.” I considered two suit jackets, trying to decide which cut and colour would work best for this sort of thing. I sincerely hoped that my clothes wouldn’t be ruined like they almost always were when I did special tasks for Life and Death.

  “Black,” Agravane said. “With the pinstripes. If you take grey, you’ll be too rock coloured. We want you to stand out, not get swallowed by the crowd. And the red silk pocket square and tie set.”

  I finished packing while waiting for the delighted squeals from downstairs to die down. Agravane leaned on my door frame. Being tall, powerful and rather dangerous, his leaning was usually very intimidating. Now, it just seemed curious.

  “You’re staring,” I stated, voice emotionless.

  “You’re being awfully nice. Any particular reason, or is this another side effect of your condition?”

  I blinked, startled. Was I being nice? I didn’t know. I thought I was being normal—at least, as normal as you can get in my condition, as Agravane put it—but it was difficult to tell. I had to rely on other people to gauge my emotional state, and often my assumptions were way off.

  “I hadn’t noticed,” I admitted. “I thought I was just making Yolanda happy after having been dealt the blow that someone else is taking her place now that her father’s dead. Oh. Right. Her father’s dead. How did I forget that?”

  “I gather they didn’t particularly get along,” Agravane murmured. He hadn’t talked to his own family since I’d hired him, at least not anywhere near me or Yolanda. At least I now had family to talk to again, even if my mother did scare both Life and Death.

  “Well, I’m all packed,” I announced uselessly. Agravane snorted.

  We went back down to the office to find Yolanda stuffing something suspiciously blanket shaped under her desk. She fiddled with her keyboard, a bright smile on her face.

  “All set!” she said, the sound far too cheerful for any time of day, no matter if you had just got a blanket. “Now, we’ll have to walk a bit to get to the transfer point, but it’s not far and we should get to the Great Northern Ridge by evening.”

  “Transfer point.” I rolled the words over my tongue. “We’re not taking a wyvern?”

  “Restricted airspace,” Agravane said. “The Ridge is griffin territory and they hate intruders. They hunt in packs, too.”

  I winced. Maybe it was better I didn’t ask questions anymore. Despite not being able to die, I really, really hated being killed, and being torn apart by giant birds with cat claws sounded like a terrible idea. Not to mention it would ruin my suit.

  Agravane waved a slightly dejected goodbye as Yolanda and I left. I had a feeling the social media account was going to be flooded with pictures of Agravane playing games in the office when I got back. Still, I was more intent on Yolanda. She led the way through Death’s lands with relative cheer, carrying her bag and the wrapped blanket with one arm while gesticulating wildly with the other. Her conversation was inane, flowing from popcorn production to the food allergy intake form, the trees and flowers growing at this time of year. The chatter increased the closer we got to the border and her expression became more animated, more intense.

  Finally, we stopped at a large boulder that bordered the drive entering Death’s lands. It was about twice my height and several times as wide, and I had always thought it a bit out of place with the natural landscape and well-cultivated estate. Yolanda fell silent, her movements stilled, and she stared at the boulder.

  “So, we just sort of…” she stopped and took a deep breath. Her grey-green skin paled to become almost corpse-like and she tugged at the hem of her shirt.

  “Hey, you okay?” I asked. Yolanda shrugged.

  “When you went back home a while back, your family reacted well, right?” Her voice was barely audible.

  “I suppose. Baz was certainly enthusiastic.” I recalled the breath-stealing hug he had given me. My mother had been as phlegmatic as always, but I suppose she had been pleased, also, or she wouldn’t have gone to such trouble to make me visit more frequently.

  “Don’t expect it to be like that for me.” My assistant stared at the rock, her mouth pressed into a thin line. I patted her arm.

  “If you want to leave, we’ll leave,” I said. “But we’re going to show everyone what they’ve been missing. Just remember, Yolanda, you have family here. And those idiots? They can’t hurt you anymore. They’ll have to face me if they do.”

  Yolanda gave m
e a lopsided grin, tears welling in her eyes. “You’re a good friend, Cal.”

  “Right, now, how do we actually get where we’re going?” I stared intently at the boulder, trying to devise a door or portal or anything. Yolanda chuckled.

  “Just hold your breath.”

  Then, without warning, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me forwards, striding straight into the boulder as if it wasn’t a solid object and liable to squish me. I yelped, panicked, didn’t manage to take in a proper breath before being pulled into solid rock, and nearly screamed into the oblivion.

  Travelling through solid rock? Would not recommend unless you are a rock troll. It felt compressed, as if I was being squeezed from all sides. The pressure around me increased and the heat rose, as if I were travelling through the core of the planet surrounded by a bubble. My lungs were bursting, I couldn’t see worth beans and I’m fairly certain I got grit everywhere.

  No doubt about it, my clothes were ruined.

  After what felt like aeons of being ground into dust, we emerged into light. I didn’t even look around before falling to my knees and gasping for breath. Yolanda patted my back, which caused an explosion of dust from my suit. Finally, I could focus on something other than my lungs and saw only smudges.

  “Glasses,” Yolanda said. I pulled off the offending lenses and scrubbed them clean then slipped them back on my nose. The smudges resolved themselves into a whole pile of rocks. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised; we were going to a rock troll party, after all. This particular pile of rocks was at the base of a narrow mountain trail leading up to a cave. There were tiny, scrubby trees dotting the landscape and a few patches of grass, but most of the greenery came in the form of moss and lichens. The rest of the surrounding scenery was much the same, with a massive mountain ridge stretching throughout the horizon as far as I could see. There were a few valleys between the peaks, populated with the larger versions of the trees, but mostly it was mountains.