Dyson tried to rub the sleep away from his brain but it wasn’t working. He’d been up late the night before pacing and growling in frustration only to be woken up just before dawn by a furious Bo at his door. He could tell by the knock that she wasn’t leaving, no matter how long he ignored her, so he let her in and let her rant while he tried to give the coffee time to jump start his brain so he could enter the conversation as a contender, but she wasn’t making much sense at all.
“I can’t believe she would leave me without even trying to work things out.” Had Lauren left her? Was she coming to him for sympathy? Or more likely a pick me up roll in the sheets he just didn’t have the energy for at the moment. Or if he was being honest the interest for.
“I’m sorry she left, but why are you here talking to me about it at four in the morning?” Couldn’t this conversation, even as one sided as it was, have waited for a more civilized hour?
“Because you’ve been as worried about her as I have.” Wait, what? Kenzi? Kenzi had left Bo?
“Kenzi left you?” Did she just leave or did she revoke her claim? Could they fix this? If she just walked out they could fix this before anyone tried to take advantage of the situation but if she renounced her claim and word got out about it there would be a feeding frenzy with Kenzi at the center. Too many Fae knew about her for it to ever be safe for her without a claim. At least not in Toronto, where most of them could pick her out of a crowd by sight even with her sundry of disguises.
“That’s what I’ve been saying haven’t you been listening?”
“I thought you meant Lauren!” Who would ever guess that Kenzi would leave Bo. It was Kenzi.
“Lauren? Lauren was the one who told me.”
“Told you what?” If she was getting information from Lauren, who while heavily immersed in Fae culture herself was still so very human, there was a chance that things were being unintentionally twisted. Or knowing Lauren maybe even intentionally twisted, there had always been something not quite on the level about the good doctor.
“About Kenzi lying to us. All this time we thought she was spending her days with Trick, she’s been at the Light Fae compound doing God knows what with someone we’ve never even met.” Kenzi was at the compound? That didn’t make any sense, she hated the compound ever since she had been confined there during the illness caused by the basilisk venom. When she said she’d rather die in a ditch then go back there she had meant it, fiercely. For Kenzi to be in the compound there had to be more to the story than what he, or even Bo, was being told.
“Okay, hold on this isn’t making any sense. What exactly did Lauren tell you?” Maybe Bo had misunderstood. It had happened before, for all that Bo was a Fae and had embraced her nature more and more the longer she had been with them she was still very much human in her mindset. She thought like a human and she judged like one to.
“She’s been seeing Kenzi around the compound for days now. She said that at first she thought she was there with me on some business for the Ash, but when she figured out I had no idea about any of it she went looking to see who Kenzi was there with and came up dry. She said that the only reason for Kenzi to be in the compound would be if she was pulling away from my protection and being pulled under someone else’s. Kenzi is leaving me! And she doesn’t even have the guts to tell me about it; she’s just trying to phase herself out by being gone most of the time.” While there was some truth to that, for any other human he would believe it in a heartbeat, but this is Kenzi. She was too loyal and straight-forward with her friends to simply bail on them without at least a token conversation and earnest attempt to fix the problem whatever it was.
“Hold on a minute Trick could be taking her to the compound. While he does have a lot of books in his own personal library he does on occasion go to the compound to look some things up in their collection. Especially if he needs a reference checked. If he needed to do that he would take Kenzi with him rather than leave her alone in the Dal where she could and would get into all kinds of trouble on her own.” The girl found enough trouble with supervision, he shuddered to think what she could find without it.
“Lauren would have told me if she had seen Trick with Kenzi.” Bo’s pacing was becoming more animated as she worked herself up to greater and greater heights of hurt and anger.
“That doesn’t mean he wasn’t there, we both know how Kenzi likes to wander off when she gets bored, that’s how she ended up eating the soup with the basilisk venom in it isn’t it. I think you’re jumping to conclusions here, let’s just go ask Trick about what he’s been doing with Kenzi lately. We can play it off as us just checking in with him about how she’s doing, if he’s been taking her to the compound he’ll definitely mention it.” He tried to placate her, but he knew her well enough to know that this wasn’t a ledge he could talk her down from. Ironically the only person who might have been able to talk her down would have been Kenzi.
“No, I’ve had enough of the run around and intermediaries if Kenzi is leaving me she’ll damn well tell me to my face.” With that he watched her storm out probably to do something she’d regret later. She always did when she got this worked up about something.
Dyson knew where he needed to go for answers. Trick would know what was happening, but at the same time he didn’t want to leave Kenzi to face an irate Bo on her own. He knew Bo well enough to know that Lauren would already be in the mix for this conversation, giving her version of the story and adding fuel to the fire in the oncoming fight, and he didn’t want Kenzi to feel like they were ganging up on her. If she wasn’t running from them now she sure as hell would be if they did that. Mind made up, he slammed the door behind him as he left his loft, his frustration not even slightly alleviated by the action.
Kenzi had crept out of the house early this morning long before Bo or doctor hot pants had stirred. She and Trick were so close she could almost taste it. They had it narrowed down to three different types of Fae gunk another day or two and hopefully she’d be good as new. Scratching absently at her chest she sent a silent prayer of thanks to whoever was looking out for her, this news could not have come at a better time. From the way the infection was spreading she had about a week before it reached her heart, if that happened it would be less research and more wait and see the show.
She wanted to tell BoBo and D-man, hell she wanted to tell Hale too even if she hadn’t been lying to him nearly as much as the others though that was mostly his fault since he wasn’t as worried about her as the others and had steered clear of them all since the fight. Her almost dying had seriously wigged him out, not to mention his major whistling that had saved her so she’d give him a pass on the disinterest for now she wasn’t the only one with problems after all. She’d brought the idea up to Trick when he laid down the progress for her but he’d vetoed the whole thing saying that while he trusted Dyson to act right around the Ash he wasn’t so keen on telling Bo while they still needed Lachlan’s help. If she got it into her head to help and stepped to the head Fae in his own compound not only would she get tossed but the rest of them would as well. Like it or not what Bo did reflected on her and if she wanted to get her answers she would have to suck it up and keep quiet for a little while longer.
Her feet were dragging by the time she finally reached her door. She hadn’t wanted to stop but Lachlan had insisted saying that if she let herself get weak from exhaustion they might as well stop researching now cause she would be too weak to last the little time she had left. Strangely the once dubbed Ash-hole had come down personally each day to check their progress and offer surprisingly helpful hints wrapped heavily in insults about their lack of collective brain power. The first day she’d been so insulted she hadn’t picked up on the subtext until Trick finally explained it to her. Why he wouldn’t just come right out and say what he meant was the mystery of the week to her. Maybe it was just no fun without the word games? She supposed being so high up the Fae-chain left him with little in the way of personal jollies. Seeing Bo and Doc Hottie on the couch wasn’t a surprise but Bo’s tone was.
“Kenzi we need to talk.” Great, now she understood why guys all over the world dreaded that sentence. Personally she could have done without the knowledge.
Dyson stormed into the Dal looking for answers, something he seemed to be doing more and more of late and always in regards to the same annoying little human.
“Trick.” The Blood King looked wiped out, whatever he and Kenzi had been doing with his books seemed to be sapping the strength out of both of them and he didn’t like it one bit.
“What do you want Dyson?” What did he want? What he always wanted, to help. If there was trouble he wanted to be in the middle of it, claws out, protecting his people not shut out begging for answers.
“Answers.” That was it, no demands or arguments just a request. His attempt at civility seemed to break the older mans resolve and he slumped over in exhaustion.
“Alright my friend, sit down and I’ll tell you what’s happening. I could use your advice.” Finally he could help.
When Lauren had first told her about what Kenzi was doing Bo hadn’t wanted to believe her. She’d yelled that she had to be wrong that she couldn’t know what she was talking about. But the more Lauren had just looked at her calmly and the longer Kenzi stayed out the more her mind started to take it all in. The late nights, the secrecy, Kenzi locking her bedroom door and not wanting to go to the Dal. While her mind continued to rage against it crying out that Kenzi would never betray her, her instinct insisted she was hiding something. Now that her best friend, her soul sister, was sitting across from her she just wanted to say forget it and bury her head in the sand. Glancing over at a stern looking Lauren she knew she couldn’t.
“Kenzi, I need you to tell me why you’ve been at the Light Fae compound lately.” Kenzi’s look of anger aimed at Lauren did nothing to put Bo’s mind at ease.
“I wanted to look up some Fae stuff so Trick took me there so I could use the library.” That was it, that lie was the one too many. It was one thing to just not tell her something but to lie straight to her face. That was just too much, it brought all of Lauren’s theories of betrayal crashing down on her.
“That is the last straw Kenzi. How dare you lie to my face! I thought we were sisters!?”
“BO!”
“No,” she couldn’t stand to hear any excuses not from her, “just get out!” Rising fighting back the tears she began to walk away turning back for one last look at her sister she sneered “I hope BK is worth it whoever they are.”
Kasey1939 