Free Lost City (An Eoin Miller Mystery Book 3) by Jay Stringer

almost nice to be reminded that not everybody in town was scared of me. Some just flat out hated me. In Chris’s case, even though I’d been the one who talked his parents into leaving him alone, he only ever saw me as the rat who’d told them where he was in the first place. And the fact that I’d gotten him this job only made things worse. Pride can burn a lot of bridges.
    Play it nice.
    “Hiya. I’m looking for Jellyfish.”
    “Fuck off.”
    His eyes were sullen. Just a couple of years ago they’d been bright and hopeful, but real life has a way of taking that edge off. His hair was darker now, and his nose looked different, too. I wondered how much that had cost him. Too much for a librarian, surely.
    Play it nice.
    “New nose, huh?”
    That took his edge off. Hit a person where they’re least confident and they soon take a step back. He smiled, his way of showing that he wanted to play it nice after all. He looked back at the blond guy, then over at his desk, where a cup of coffee was slowly going cold.
    “Honestly? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
    “Sorry to hear that.” I almost sounded like I meant it. “Falling out?”
    “You could say that. Or pulling out, more like it. I got the sense he wasn’t fucking me so much as trying to fuck my dad.”
    “You don’t mean—”
    He laughed. The sound bounced around the room. I waited for the ghost from Ghostbusters to come and shush us, but it didn’t happen. “No,” he said. “You’ve got a filthy mind, you know that?”
    “Comes with the job.”
    “I’m sure. No. I just mean that he started showing a lot of interest in my dad, in his career. I figured he was only staying with me as a way of getting dirt on the old man. You know how he liked to hold information on people.”
    “I may have heard that, in passing.”
    “Uh huh. He got weird, basically. Like, we were together for a year and he was all sweet and nice and totally wanted to go at my pace. I didn’t ask who else’s pace he was keeping up with, didn’t care, I was okay as long as we were having fun. But then my dad wins the elections and all of a sudden it’s all, ‘oh, we should film ourselves having sex, that would be fun,’ and, ‘hey, we should invite your dad and his partner round for dinner, get to know them better.’ It wasn’t long before I wised up.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.” This time I did mean it. “I really thought he was on the level with you.”
    “Yeah, well, I thought so too. Not all bad though, he helped me come out, get over all that angsty stuff. I guess you helped, too. Forced me into talking to my parents about it, that was the hardest part.” He almost offered me a smile. “You’re still a wanker, though.”
    “Totally. How are things with your parents, by the way? Your dad?”
    His eyes tightened slightly at the sides. I could feel his defenses go up. There was no way to pretend the question was purely innocent. It never was. In so many ways me and Jellyfish were wired the same way. We’d just been swimming in different circles for the past couple of years. I’d graduated to the big pool, swam with the sharks. Jelly had tried that and been eaten.
    Had he always been using Chris to get to his dad? Michael Perry hadn’t been the Commissioner when the relationship had started. He’d been just another high ranking cop, someone with potential. Maybe Jelly had started out with his heart in the right place. Maybe plotting to use Chris was just another compromise that had been made on the fly along the way.
    I left the library with the same unanswered questions I’d arrived with, but it had forced me to ask some new ones. Michael Perry had accepted that his son was gay. He’d had to, because Chris took after his father in that regard. But Perry was a politician, and whether or not he had accepted his son for who he was, the rules changed when politics was involved. It didn’t matter how out Chris was, he could still be used to create a