Free Chaos Broken by Rebekah Turner Page B

aren’t you?’
    â€˜What? Fuck off.’
    â€˜Ooohh. Is it someone I know?’
    â€˜It’s no one, I tell you.’
    â€˜One of the Runners?’ I pressed.
    Cloete’s face flamed bright red and I snapped my fingers. ‘Ah ha! You are totally busted. Which one? Is it that guy with one leg? I’ve seen the way he looks at you.’
    She gave a muted scream and whirled, almost running for the front door. I chuckled. I had quite the talent for getting under people’s skin and I wondered if that made me a bad boss, or the best one ever.

Chapter 9
    I hadn’t been to my usual hangout, Growlers, for some weeks. It was almost as if since Gideon and Orella left, the lure of a dice game over tankards of frosty ale had lost its sparkle. And after the City Watch raided the saloon twice in one week, the risk of being incarcerated outweighed any fun I might have been struggling to have.
    Rain had come with the night and while any day involving a dead body usually called for a drink or three, the idea didn’t appeal. Instead, I locked up Blackgoat and stopped at a little coffee house at one end of Abraham’s Alley. At the risk of my waistline expanding, I found myself there more and more, seeking comfort in endless cups of chocolate espresso and ginger cakes. After the day I’d had, I was wallowing in a slice of sour-cherry cheesecake, my mind replaying the altercation at the school with Kalin. While Poulter’s death wasn’t an actual paying case, it had happened on my watch and I felt a measure of responsibility. There had been something mean and hard about Kalin that had struck me as familiar. Not to mention his strange, cold yellow eyes. I figured the kid wasn’t entirely human, but he had no obvious otherkin trait I could pinpoint.
    â€˜I do hope that is not your dinner, Lady Blackgoat.’
    A glance up found Grigori Fowler beside my table. A devoted priest of the Order, he normally wore thick black robes, but today he had on a damp greatcoat and his hooked nose was red from the chill in the air. Grigori always travelled with a Regulator bodyguard and, sure enough, one stood by the door, his grey cloak pushed back to reveal heavy leather armour, daggers crossed at his chest and a sword sheathed down his spine.
    I realised some of the patrons in the shop had discreetly left, not anxious to be in the vicinity of a Grigori priest. The owner behind the counter shot dark looks my way and I knew I wouldn’t be welcome back. Probably a good thing, as I’d had to loosen my work-belt a notch since I started coming.
    â€˜Grigori Fowler.’ I forked in another mouthful of cherry goodness. Cake guilt could just get in line with everything else I had to worry about. ‘What brings you to the depths of Applecross this night? Looking for some chocolate debauchery?’
    â€˜I was hoping to have an informal chat with you, Lady Blackgoat, if you would permit.’
    â€˜I told you before, call me Lora.’ I gestured to the empty chair opposite. As if the Pit itself had frozen over, I’d found myself warming to Fowler in the past year. He’d been the one who had stuck up for me countless times when I was doing my stint with the Order, even when I clearly didn’t deserve it.
    Keeping his coat on, Fowler sat down and rubbed his gloved hands. The symbol of the Order of Guides was stitched on the back: a winding path curled around a winged sword. He gave me a sharp smile. ‘How are you?’
    â€˜Doing well,’ I replied cautiously. Fowler and I hadn’t exactly started as friends, but after realising we had similar goals, we’d endured each other’s company a little easier. However, there was still the matter of the smoking wreck I’d left behind at the Order.
    â€˜I heard that you are in charge of Blackgoat Watch now,’ he said.
    â€˜Gideon and Orella are taking a holiday.’ I omitted to say that Orella needed the