The backhand I hit the guy who stabbed me with staggers him back.

I pull the knife out of my side. “Are you fucking kidding me?” My health bar is still glowing from the effects of the food bar, and the little I lost slowly returns. “I was going to leave you two alone.”

“You’re worth too much.” The other’s knife looks pitiful in his hand.

“I’m not worth anything,” I correct. “The journal is.” I throw the one I’m holding at his feet and he flinches.

“Give it to us and we’ll let you leave,” the one I hit says.

“Do either of you know magic?”

The worried look they exchange is answer enough.

“You really think that you two bookworms can keep me from leaving?”

“I’m not letting six thousand bucks slipping through my fingers,” the one who stabbed me says.

I plant my fist in his face and look at the other. “How about you? How badly do you want that money? Better yet, how much pain do you want to feel before you decide you’ve had enough?”

He looks at his associate’s blood covered lower face and raises his hands; the knife vanishing back into his inventory. I seriously consider accepting that to be enough. Then I punch him in the face too.

“I put it away,” he whines, on his ass, hand over his bleeding nose.

“And I don’t trust you not to pull it out as I’m leaving and stabbing me. Now you’re too busy to try it. And before you whine. I was the nice one here. You’re the ones who broke the agreement when your friend stabbed me in the back.”

I’m out of the room before he comes up with a reply. I have to pull on the door, so once it’s closed against I look for a way to make sure they aren’t getting out anytime soon. The corridor is only lit by candles on metal stands, so if I could break the legs on one of them, I’d be able to put that through the handle. Since I don’t have that kind of strength, I sacrifice a quiver’s worth of arrows and jam that on the handle. It might not keep them stuck forever, but it should be long enough to let me get out of this place.

And it’s ample time. The door at the end of the corridor opens onto a balcony with the bookshelves on the other side. I go around, then two floors up before I give up finding the table I sat at, and grab one in a corner and sit with my back to the wall.

The book I’d been reading is available, which means one of them put it back in inventory, and I go back to reading it.

It’s a lot harder as I keep looking over it, expecting someone to approach. I manage to get back into reading, slowly, by positioning the book so I see over the edge. Means anytime there’s movement I’m distracted, but I feel a lot more safe this way.

I fall into a rhythm that lets me read, but not learn anything useful about the Shawnee National Forest in relation to The Nox.

Then Brandon turns the corner and I’m fully distracted. His armor’s cut in places and he’s missing the lower part of the leg.

“Why did you move?” he asks, tone hard, before I can question his appearance.

“I got lost stretching my legs,” I reply, because I don’t think he’s going to take it well that I was drugged and kidnapped, even if I got myself out of it without help. “What happened to you?”

He drops in the chair opposite me. “Had a disagreement with a few people.” He smirks. “We resolved our differences. Find anything?”

“Nothing useful.”

“Raise your research skill?” He looks surprised when I shake my head.

“I don’t have it, so it’s going to take a while to get the first level.”

“Put a point in it,” he instructs me.

I bring up my skill tab to confirm it. “I don’t have any. I took your advice, and either raised or bought the skills I wanted [need to check if the rule is that even with point the skills have to be bought at a node, maybe add it can be bought from someone who has that skill high enough, or has the teaching skill].

He isn’t happy. “If you haven’t gained it by then, put a point in research when you go up in level. It’s too important a skill for an explorer.”

I don’t point out I’m not aiming to be an explorer, I just have the class. But I do intend to do that. It’s just one point, and I’d like for all this reading to get me something in the end.

He pulls a book from the library, and I go back to reading about the south of what used to be Illinois.

* * * * *

Not glaring at Silver as she enthusiastically recounts her day is hard. I’m tired from all that reading, and while I don’t have a debuff, I’m pretty sure I have a headache that eating isn’t helping. When she slows, I stand. “I’m heading to bed.”

As I place my plate and glass on the counter, the guy already there glances at me, then offers me his hand. “Georges.”

I look from it to his face, and the smile makes me bristle. “No.” I know that smile. Brandon wears it anytime he looks over a guy he wants to bed.

Georges raises both hands. “Okay.” And steps away.

Malcolm gives me a disappointed look, but before I can tell him what I think of that, he has a finger on my lips.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Hun, I can tell you’ve had a bad day. If you want to talk about it, I’m here to listen, but I will not endure the tone you used on Georgie-boy, am I clear?”

What tone? It was just a no; I wasn’t interested in having him get in my pants.

He has a glass of something alcoholic before me. “Free of charge, if you want to talk. Might help smooth your mood slightly.”

“If I do talk, it stays between us. I don’t need Brandon worrying, okay?”

He looks at me in surprise, then glances toward the table before nodding. So I tell him about my day, including the drugging and the two assholes.

“I’d agreed to let them be,” I repeat once I’m done.

“You have to realize that some people are desperate for enough money to get out of their problems,” he says.

“There’s no way they thought they could take me on once I wasn’t drugged.”

“Desperation makes people stupid sometimes.”

“So what? I should feel sorry for them?”

“Don’t you dare.” The look he gives me is severe. “You gave those two exactly what they earned. If they’re smart, there are going to leave you alone, but they’ve already demonstrated they aren’t, so if you’re going back there, don’t let your guard down. If you absolutely need to feel sorry for someone, Georges could use an apology.”

“He wants to have sex with me.”

“Dennis, I want to have sex with you. You’re a good-looking guy. Half the people in this room interested in men have looked at you the way Georges did. But all he did was introduce himself. Having a bad day doesn’t excuse you from treating others badly. And yes, within five minutes he would have offered to take you to his room, but that doesn’t make him a bad guy. Just a guy with extremely good taste in men.”

I groan and put my head on my arms, ears burning. “Can you not?”

He pats the back of my head. “It’s a compliment, Dennis. You need to loosen up. Being admired is a good thing.”

“But I—”

“Have someone back home. You told me. I’m not saying to rip everyone’s clothes off when they look you over and fuck them. I’m saying take the looks for the compliment they are.” He smiles. “And maybe stop thinking you need to keep to yourself until you get back there. Unless you think that girl of yours isn’t looking around while you’re away?”

Of course, I want to tell him there’s no way Josie’s looking at other guys. The problem with that is that I never told her I was interested in her that way. She has no reason to wait for me.

“But that doesn’t give me the freedom to…” I try to find the right way to express what it feels like.

“Be unfaithful to her? Dennis, you can’t hold yourself to a different standard than you’re holding her. Anyone I know who’s done that took the quick way to Miseryville.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t do it.”

He grins. “Never had a guy I thought of that way.”

“Not even…” I could have sworn I’d seen something when Malcolm looked at Brandon.

“Definitely not Brandon.” He laughs. “He’s a dear friend, but I’d never wait on him for something serious.”

“That dinner he missed.”

He shrugs. “It was going to be something special, but I wasn’t surprised he didn’t show up. I’m glad it wasn’t just him flaking out on me, but I wasn’t surprised. I’m the kind of guy no one should get hung up on. I’m not going to hold anyone else to a different standard.”

“Thanks for the talk and the drink.”

“Anytime,” he replies. “For the listening. The next drink you’ll have to pay for.”

I head for the door leading to the stairs. Georges is at a table with three other guys. They’re talking. He’s almost certainly forgotten about me and how I rebuked him already. I don’t need to—

So, of course, I head toward them. Brandon’s right. I have to work on that being nice thing. But he’s noticed me, so it’s too late to change direction. The other two fall silent, and the looks they give me warn of violence.

“I’m sorry for the tone I used,” I tell him. “I appreciated the compliment you intended the advance to be.” I really should leave it at that, but while I do have the willpower, I’m too tired. “But the next time you greet a stranger, you might want to keep the lust out of your expression.”

One of his friend snorts his drink out of his nose and Georges sinks in his seat slightly.

I consider it a victory and head to bed.

* * * * *

I’m reading about Bowling Green, Kentuky, because I am not reading about Illinois again when the man looks in my direction. Brandon didn’t stay. Before I’d picked a book to read, he told me he’d be back around noon and left.

I lock eyes with him, and he smiles, stepping toward me. That goes away when I equip my sword and put it on the table without breaking eye contact. I don’t know you, buddy, and I’m done giving people the benefit of the doubt in this place.

His steps slow and his expression grows concerned before he turns and walks away. It’s the kind of victory I really don’t want to have, but Detroit is definitely forcing me to rethink how people are.

At least here.

Once he’s gone, I send my sword back into my inventory and get reading again.

* * * * *

I slam the book on the table.

This is an utter waste of time. If The Nox isn’t coming up in any searches for the books, reading about stuff isn’t going to suddenly tell me what it’s referring to.

“And it’s got to mean something, right?” I grumble, considering how to formulate my next query. “There has got to be something with Nox in it, right?”

System Query: items including ‘nox’ within them

Words scroll by too fast for me to make them out. The best I can manage is to have one sort of flash into focus when I try to follow it, and all I can make out is that the letters ‘n,’ ‘o,’ and ‘x’ are between other letters that make out the words, but they’re gone too fast to read them. So it doesn’t help me.

Except that, as give up trying to make out what the system is listing, I get what it means.

I get what I’ve been doing wrong.

Now, all I have to do is wait for the scrolling to end so I can query the library for the books that will actually help.