Written in the Stars

Chapter Eight

Here they were. It had been three weeks since the bomb had gone off at the cavern and Celeste had missed her all important, possibly life changing meeting with that witch. It had been three weeks of covert meetings with Izabela trying to convince her she was just about to move out and would be moving into her home asap. Of course Celeste was attempting to put off the inevitable for as long as possible and was in the process spending a weirdly large amount of time with Jean. She almost never left his side now and when she did it was to betray him. She didn't feel very good about herself.

Celeste tried to not let her mind wander towards her traitorous acts and instead pressed herself closer to Jean, gripping his hand harder than she had before. He glanced down, not entirely in surprise, but to smile at her and kiss the top of her head which was at his shoulder height. He was not a tall man, but Celeste had the height of someone born in the 1100's, and so was not very tall at all.

The man who stood in front of them had a stocky build and was the best in his profession. He most likely had some troll ancestry which gave him an advantage over others. He was the owner of the contractor firm they had hired to repair the cavern. Around them was his crew who were steadily working away, measuring and seeing the extent of the damage. He was telling them the conclusion of a brief overview done earlier in the week: the extent of the damage was large and would not be easy to repair. But they had all sort of known that and had already resigned themselves to the large sums of money it would cost them to complete the repair work to the necessary standard. Thankfully the contractors they hired knew who their employers were an that they would take no shit. In fact they would take less than no shit and were not afraid to kill them if necessary. Well at least one of them was. Another was undecided and the third definitely would use it as a last resort.

Celeste could see a lot of faeries at work which was interesting. She had not thought they were finding a lot of work these days but then again, needs must and they had high places to reach during this renovation. She knew this information would be useful at a later point as it had taken perhaps 50 years for the other communities to start trusting the fey again let alone hire them. She had not seen any of them employed by another species in perhaps a century.

The part troll contractor in front of them had been talking for a while when Celeste realised she had tuned out most of what he had been saying - and that included the amount he was charging them for the work. She knew that Astrid and Jean would be paying attention and so it wasn't such a huge deal, but she did like to hear first hand how much lighter her purses - or bank account now she supposed - would be getting. Hopefully it wasn't too much. She was planning on taking a decent sized chunk with her when she fully left to live with Izabela. And of course right now she was spending a lot on wining and dining both of her paramours. It was expensive being in the double cross game. No one had warned her of this. At least she didn't have to worry about who's money she was using. Most of the money that had was hers. It's amazing how much the first pounds ever made were worth in 2018.

Suddenly Jean gave her hand a light squeeze and she realised that the meeting was over. She had not paid attention to a word that was said beyond their contractor introducing himself and she had already forgotten his name. She felt Astrid's eyes on her as they left the cavern and knew that she would have some questions for her. Mostly about why she had been so quiet during the meeting and not her usual vocal, complaining self. She knew she had to avoid this and so she ensured that she and Jean made it into their town car quickly enough that Astrid was left behind. She was going to take them on an impromptu date. Another one. Possibly the fifth this week - and it was only Wednesday.