The winter though it darkens me (Miles, Lily, Josie, Astrid)
The knock on the door came late one evening. The time on Miles’s laptop said it was ten after ten.
His study was on the ground floor, at the back of the house. The windows looked out over the small garden and the fence that separated his house from Astrid’s. The door to the study looked down the hall, where the front door loomed menacingly. It wasn’t Astrid at the door, because Astrid was upstairs in her terribly wallpapered room. It wasn’t Josie at the door, because why the fuck would Josie knock? Miles frowned in the direction of the front door, and ignored it.
He was trying to study. Books were piled neatly on his heavy wooden desk and he had more tabs open than he could count. But someone knocked again, in a firm, unignorable way, and Miles swore to himself, minimised his work and opened the webcam over the door.
“Josie!” he commanded, bursting into her room a moment later. “Get Astrid out of the house. Now. And not through the front.” He gave her no time for arguing, turning back toward the door, closing, very firmly, the door that shut off this part of the house from the front.
He took a deep breath and thought Kempfy thoughts, and then smiled as he unbolted and opened the door. “Lily,” he said. “A charming surprise, as ever.”
His cousin’s wife smiled back as if she was in fact a charming surprise. At her left shoulder stood a woman who could only be a bodyguard. She was a shade taller than Lily but built from a different mold entirely. There was no question this woman could break his arm without breaking a sweat. A message to Miles too, bringing a woman.
“It’s a pleasure on my part as well,” Lily said, stepping forward and offering her cheek for a kiss. Miles balked for (he hoped) the briefest of unnoticeable moments before breeding took over and he stepped forward to greet her.
“Come in, ladies,” he said, stepping back to allow them into his home. Lily stepped over the threshold, seeming to pay no attention to the hall, although the bodyguard was not so subtle. Miles was watching her as he held the door open, he saw her clock the camera. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Spring water,” Lily instructed, and he led them through into the kitchen, where he had installed bar seating, because to Miles the three furniture essentials of a proper home were an excellent bed, well stocked bookshelves, and bar seating. Lily took a seat in the centre. Her bodyguard did not.
Spring water? Luckily, Miles had some bottled in the fridge, because like hell he was going to risk ruining one of his cocktails with tap. He poured her some into a crystal glass, and poured himself some whiskey. It was far too cold out for drinking water.
“To what,” he asked, taking a sip and watching her carefully as she did the same, “do I owe the pleasure?”
“Are you in good health, Miles?” Lily asked.
What? Miles was glad she wasn’t an empath, because he hated being confused, and right now he most definitely was. He looked down at his drink. “Healthier than my habits,” he said, with a kink in his eyebrow.
“That’s excellent to hear,” Lily smiled a smile pure as the spring water. He let his mental walls down, trying to figure her angle through her emotions. She was nervous, that made him feel a little better. Her determination was also illimitable. This did not.
Lily turned to her bodyguard for a moment and the woman stepped toward him, passing him a card.
It was thick creamy paper, with an address handwritten on the back, no name, otherwise unmarked entirely. “Meet me there tomorrow at noon,” she said. “Alone.”
“I have class.”
“Do you?” Lily looked at him. It was a stare without being a stare. There was no threat on her face itself but Miles could feel it rolling off her. He was saved from giving an immediate response as the kitchen door behind Lily flung open and Josie stepped back into the room, in heels, designer jeans.
Miles figured Lily was well schooled in the art of controlling her expression but the shimmer of change in the corner of her mouth, backed up with the emotion coming off her, told him she was confident, even smug, because of the way Josie looked. She read no threat from Josie. The other woman had height, but most of it was in her heels, and she was even thinner than Lily herself. She was not carrying a weapon and had no obvious strength to her.
Lily took another drink of water and left the half empty class on the bar as she gracefully stepped back onto the floor.
“I’ll meet you there,” Miles offered. “At two.” He stepped toward Lily, one arm resting on the bar, in a tone and a posture not to be messed with. However, Lily wasn’t one to be messed with either, and since she could quite rightly read Miles looming over her as a threat, she felt no remorse whatsoever when her bodyguard shot forward and grabbed Miles, twisting his arms behind his back and crushing him up against his bar.
He grunted in pain. "Josie," he said through the side of his mouth. He shot her an evil furious look that he hoped conveyed the fact that he was not going to ask for help and she wasn't getting paid if she made him, as the look on her face suggested she clearly wanted to do.
Josie sighed and grabbed the woman, prying her off Miles and keeping her head tilted back to avoid a headbutt. There were a few sounds of angry exertion from the bodyguard but she was doing her best to fight silently, and failing.
Miles rubbed his wrists like he was fiddling with cufflinks. "What do you want, Lily?"
Lily was watching Josie, furious surprise and a jolt of fear coming off her. "Josie," she said, nostrils flared into perfect circles. "Josie who?"
"Fuck off," Josie said cheerfully, which turned all Lily's previous emotions up a notch. No one should be able to look that cheerful and that unaffected as Nadezhda struggled pointlessly in her grip. How?
She was definitely good at her face though, apart from the nostrils, it gave nothing away. Lily gazed at her a moment longer, then turned back to Miles, smiled, and closed the distance between them to kiss his cheek.
"Now this is a proper Kempf family reunion," she said, sounding amused but feeling anything but.
"Kempf?!" Josie exclaimed, unable to contain herself. "Oh, fuck this!" She was here to make sure Astrid was protected from auctioneer shit – family dramas were way above what Miles was paying her. She let the bodyguard go, who stepped back furious, caught Lily's eye and the command there, and stood down. Miles tried the same kind of look on Josie but she just pulled a face at him and pulled out her phone.
"If this is a reunion, I need another drink,” Miles said, feeling pleased at the furious look on Lily’s bodyguards face, and the slight hint of terror from Lily herself. He beamed as he topped up her water, then poured drinks for the other women as well. Lily’s woman did not accept: she only glared. Josie took hers without looking at him and continued texting with one hand.
Lily did not touch her water. “Tomorrow,” she said, bringing the evening back into her control. “At noon.”
“I said I’ll meet you after my lecture, at two,” Miles countered, testing these waters and feeling much more confident now that Josie was here.
He felt her annoyance, he felt her feel challenged. “The meeting,” Lily reiterated, her previously restrained voice turning into something of a growl . “Is at noon.”
The terror was gone, her firm determination had steamrollered it. She would not be spoken to in this way. She was the queen of Little Moscow and the ice-cold warning in her eyes brought him right back to the bunker her cronies had taken him, the dying man bound in the chair in front of him. His stomach clenched tight against the memory.
No, Miles thought, feeling a powerful need for sudden self-preservation. It was a bad idea, he thought, to forget what Lily could do. He did not feel it would be worth it to win this particular fight. “Noon, then,” he said, disguising the tightness in his throat with a large drink.
Lily smiled a thin smile, nodded her head at Miles, and left with her bodyguard.
“What the fuck?” Josie asked Miles, as the front door closed behind them. “’The meeting is at noon’?” she echoed in a mockery of Lily’s tone. “I am not getting up early to go with you.”
“No,” said Miles firmly. “You’re not.”
“Good,” said Josie.
“Good,” said Miles. “Go and tell Astrid it’s not-” safe? “-wise to return tonight. I’m going to bed. I’ll see her for dinner tomorrow.” He hoped.
Fuck fuck fuck.
“Tell her yourself,” Josie flipped him off.
“Did you treat Jude with as much fucking lip?” Miles snapped at her, making Josie laugh like it was the best joke she’d heard all evening.
Miles left, muttering about the help, and slammed every door between here and his bedroom.
Josie huffed, and finished off the bodyguards drink as well. No point letting good liquor go to waste.