“Your pet rat. I can get you a good price for Nicky. Trade him for a very nice starter room connected to my space. Unless you really like sleeping in the workroom? Let’s bend that request you made of no snag-and-drags of people with you. I pop in on the excuse of checking on you, then trade him in for a space of your very own. What do you owe him anyway? He told me secrets about you. Good ones. Things that only a lover would know. How do you think I got Brooke to let me out?”

I sucked my teeth to get the cheese out of them. Interesting. Twice now he’d asked me to stay, first in his rooms and now in my own. I set the crust down, and Al eyed it. “I’m asking Nick for his help, not his soul. I don’t belong here. I like the sun.”

“So do I, itchy witch, but here I am.”

He leaned back, and I fingered the crust, thinking about living your life underground.

“Be honest, dove,” he coaxed, an ankle dropping onto a raised knee. “You don’t have it in you to make your sewer rat do what you want. You’re not nearly pissed enough at the world.”

“I’m going to ask,” I countered. “Persuasively.”

“He hates you,” Al said, his tone returning to his usual pomp and extravagance.

A smile lifted the corners of my mouth as I thought of Treble. “He’ll help me. He won’t be able to resist. The guy has an ego the size of Montana.”

“Well, if you’re going to stroke his ego,” Al grumbled. “Honestly, this preoccupation you have with nasty little men is going to get you killed.”

I eyed the second, untouched sandwich on Al’s plate. “That’s why I’ve got you, Al, to keep me alive.” I licked my fingers. “Are you going to eat that?”

Motions slow, he carefully slid his plate to me, the china scraping loudly on the wood. This was kind of nice, and I looked around as I filled my stomach, enjoying the crisp bread and the cheese. I couldn’t place what kind it was, and frankly, I didn’t want to know. “Thank you,” I said, lifting the sandwich so he knew what I was talking about. “I like your library.”

Al had pushed himself into the corner of his massive chair, scowling, though I think he was secretly pleased that I liked his cooking. “Don’t become comfortable in it. I’m not granting you any private peek into my existence. The workroom is messy is all.”

I swallowed, washing it down with a gulp of that awful coffee. Memories of my dad’s fairy tales lifted through me, but the caution there had been don’t eat food with the sidhe or elves, not demons, and I’d already had breakfast with Trent. “Pierce made a mess, eh?”