by Stacey Jay
The fairy swarm descends and Grace’s skin blossoms with red. One, two, three, ten, fifty blooms, like she’s being hit with tiny paintball pellets that burst open and soak into her nightgown. She screams and it feels like the entire world will shatter, but I can’t close my eyes and I can’t take a step toward her. I’m frozen, with the shriveled old fairy fluttering near my cheek, grinning his yellow grin as Grace’s skin is stripped from her bones.
“Stop!” I try to shout, but it comes out a whisper, almost unintelligible over the screeches of the feeding fairies.
They’re ripping mouthfuls of her away, chomping and chewing and flinging scraps of nightgown from their fangs before going in for another bite and another and another. I’m going to be sick. I can feel it rising in my stomach, a heavy fist thrusting toward my mouth.
“Go.” The old fairy pokes my cheek with his hot finger. “Leave the land of the Slake or die like the girl.”
“You’re not real!”
“We are all that is real.”
“No! Stop! I want to wake up! I’m going to wake up!” I scream, loud enough that the nightmare begins to rip at the seams.
Holes tear in the night, and Grace’s bloody body smears into a red stain. The last thing I see clearly are the old fairy’s cruel button eyes narrowing to slits and then nothing but bright, mind-numbing light.
Light. Bright. Sunshine. Eyes. Argh!
I curse and jerk my head over to the cool side of my pillow. I must have left the shades open. Half the bed is bathed in redhead-scorching sunlight. Good thing I woke up when I did or I’d have a hell of a burn.
“And probably wet the damn bed,” I mumble, rubbing my arm across my sleep-puffy face, trying to banish the last of the nightmare.
“You still do that, too?” a deep voice drawls from the foot of my bed.
I bolt upright, squinty eyes getting squintier. I can’t see anyone, but that doesn’t mean much these days. “Tucker?”
“You were expecting someone else?” He materializes, going from invisible man to floating smile to six feet three or four of yummy in the course of a few seconds. He’s wearing his typical Tucker uniform—a pair of faded jeans and a white wife-beater he manages to make look like a fashion statement instead of something from the cover of Trailer Trash Monthly. His shoulder-length blond hair seems darker than usual, but those bright blue eyes are just as full of trouble and . . . sex.
Jesus. Simply making eye contact with Tucker feels vaguely dirty. In the good way. The really good way that I haven’t experienced since Cane declared a nookie time-out until I’m ready to Commit.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone.” I sound cranky. But that’s fine. Tucker should know better than to mess with me in the morning. “I was sleeping. Alone. In my house, where you are not invited to come inside anytime you please.”
“You were screaming.” His grin fades a watt or two. “Thought you might be in trouble.”
“So you were coming to the rescue?”
“What can I say? I’m a knight in shining armor.”
“You’re a creepy, mojito-stealing Peeping Tom.”
“Now, now . . . name calling just turns me on, Red.” He winks and my stomach flutters in spite of myself.
I roll my eyes, pretending to be beyond the reach of his charms. “I was having a bad dream. No big deal.”
“Some dream.” He sits on the edge of the bed, close enough for me to smell the soap-and-sunshine scent of his skin. I let him brush my hair over my shoulder, and try not to think about how almost naked I am under my blue cotton sheets. Only a T-shirt and panties that I’m sure Tucker could make disappear faster than he does. “You okay?”
“Kick-ass awesome.” I push images of Grace’s bloodied body to the back of my mind, and narrow my eyes at Tucker’s damp hair. “Did you use my shower?”
“Nope.”
“So you live close enough to shower and get to my house with your hair still wet.” I know nothing about Tucker, and for some reason even a minor discovery feels like a victory. “Interesting.”
He smiles. “I thought you gave up on the amateur detective stuff.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Libby almost killed you.”
“Aw.” I purse my lips. “You sound like you care.”
“Would have been a shame. You’re a fine piece of ass.”
“And you’re ridiculously good-looking.”
He tips his head like a cigarette cowboy and his grin takes a turn for the smug. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“No. Really. Ridiculous.” I shove his shoulder with the tips of my fingers. “Off my bed.”
His brow lifts. “Because I’m too good-looking?”
“Yes.” I give him my best deadpan stare, enjoying tormenting him more than I probably should. “The long silky hair and the eyes and the eyelashes and all . . . this.” I gesture to his perfectly sculpted body and too-tight jeans. “It’s overkill. Not my speed.”
“You’re such a liar.” He leans in, until his mouth is temptingly close, and for the first time I am truly tempted. There’s always been an undercurrent of sexual awareness between Tucker and me, but neither of us has made a move. I assumed we never would. But now, with him warming a spot on my bed, looking at me with those smiling eyes . . .
Thank god I know for a fact that I have killer morning breath, or I might give in and see if his lips are as soft as they look.
“You’re crazy.” I tap a finger to his nose and scoot away.
“Am not. I’ve seen both those boys you play with.”
“I play with no one.”
“That window says different.”
“Ew.” This time my shove is a lot less delicate. “You really are a Peeping Tom. That’s disgusting. You shouldn’t watch other people do it.”
“You shouldn’t do it with your window open.”
“You should leave so I can get dressed.” I point to the back door, but Tucker doesn’t move. He only bats his long eyelashes and shoots me a predatory look I’m lame enough to find nearly irresistible. “Really. You should go,” I say again, but I don’t sound like I mean it.
“Maybe you should forget about getting dressed.” He reaches out, resting his hand on my hip, warming my skin through the thin cotton of my shirt. He’s never touched me like this. He knows it. I know it.
The knowing thickens the air between us, introducing a possibility that’s never been there before. But now it is. It is and I can feel how easy it would be to run my hand up his arm, to slide my fingers beneath his shirt and hold tight as he pushes me back onto my sun-streaked pillow and his mouth meets mine and—
“I can’t.” I swallow. Bite my lip. Think strong thoughts.
“You could . . .”
“No, I can’t.” But maybe I can. Maybe I should. Relationship-death-by-Tucker would certainly put an end to all my angst about Cane. He won’t take me back if I’ve been with another man, and I’d have to tell him I cheated or the guilt would eat me alive.
But is it really cheating if you’re not officially together? Does an invisible man count as a man? If a penis you can’t see falls in the forest is it really a penis at all?
I close my eyes, blocking out Tucker’s hypnotic sex stare. I refuse to let him help me sabotage myself. I care about Cane. I love him, and I’m not going to wreck my last chance before I’ve had time to decide what to do with it.
“Really, I have to be somewhere.” No sooner have the words left my mouth than I realize they’re true. I whip my head around to check the clock, cuss, throw off the covers, and dive for a mostly clean pair of jeans on the floor.
I’m supposed to meet Hitch at the restaurant at nine. It’s already eight forty-five and it takes five minutes to get to Swallows on my bicycle. I guess I could take my new Harley. If I knew how to get it out of the kitchen. Or how to ride a motorcycle. Or wanted to answer a bunch of questions about why I bought a Harley when everyone in town knows I’m a rabid bicycle-with-trailer-and-room-for-m
y-blue-cooler enthusiast.
“Listen, Red,” Tucker says in a softer voice. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Go,” I order as I button my jeans and search the ground for a bra. I know I threw a not too dirty one down here last night. “And get that bike out of my kitchen.”
“I’m not your errand boy.” He sounds bristly. Good. Better bristles than possibilities.
“No, you’re a pain in my ass,” I say. “Get.”
“I’m not touching the bike. You need to put those shots someplace safe. Do I need to remind you that—”
“I know, I know. Top secret. Tell no one about the shots. Penalty of death. Blah, blah, blah,” I say, shocked to find I’m not as scared of the Invisibles as I was even last night. Maybe it’s the fact that Tucker showers like a normal person that’s given me comfort. More likely it’s that he tried to get me in the sack. He doesn’t seem like the type who’d sleep with someone he’s going to have to kill in the near future.
Tucker snort-laughs and stretches out on my bed. He props his hands behind his head, making his wife-beater crawl up, baring a tempting inch of tanned stomach. “Blah, blah, blah, yourself. Don’t forget to brush your teeth before you go. Your breath smells like the wrong end of Taco Bell.”
“I didn’t know Taco Bell had a right end.” I dig through a pile of definitely dirty clothes, though I seriously doubt my bra slipped under all that on its own.
“I didn’t know such a pretty girl could have such ugly breath.”
“I didn’t know—Oh, whatever.” I give up on the bra and throw the dirty T-shirt in my hand at Tucker’s head. “I don’t have time for banter, Bubba.”
“Aw. A nickname. I like that, Red,” Tucker calls after me as I grab a black tank top and duck into the bathroom. I brush my teeth, run damp fingers through my frizzy curls, and think about throwing on real makeup, but end up sticking with a thick coat of mascara and some freckle-concealing powder.
There’s no time to spare and I don’t want Hitch to think I tried too hard. We’re meeting to talk about tracking down a cave full of hostages out in the bayou. It’s not a social call. Even if it were, it would be a friendly social call, and Hitch knows I don’t get pretty for friends. He knows me too well, something I need to keep in mind if I want to keep the fact that I’ve still got it bad for him a secret while spending more concentrated time together than we have since we were a couple six years ago.
With a last fluff of my hair I declare myself decent-but-not-pretty and dash out of the bathroom to find Tucker still lounging on my rumpled sheets. “Go away. You’re not sleeping in my bed.”
“I’m tired.”
“Go sleep in your own bed.”
“I like yours better. The sun’s nice.”
“You should wear sunscreen. You’re going to get skin cancer.” Tightness flashes in my chest.
I sound like Marcy. She was always riding my ass about wearing sunscreen and eating healthy and taking care of myself like a full-fledged grown-up. It drove me crazy. Until the day she left town and was suddenly not there to nag me anymore. It was like losing my mother all over again. But worse. I didn’t meet Marcy until I was sixteen, when she was the social worker in charge of my floor at the group home, but she was more of a mother to me than Mama Lee ever was.
Until she wasn’t. Until the day the sweetest, most giving, hardest-loving woman I’ve ever met told me she’d killed two people, done time, and was afraid the FBI was going to find out she’d helped a father kidnap his daughter.
She skipped town later that day, went on the lam with her husband, Tyrone, and a few suitcases. I haven’t heard from her in nearly a month. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again. And that . . . hurts. Almost as bad as knowing the man I suspect is my soul mate is starting a family with another woman.
Your “soul mate” is going to kill you if you’re any later than you are already.
He won’t kill me, but he’ll look at me with those eloquently disappointed eyes and decide asking for my help was a dumb idea. I should be glad to bail on an investigation that could get me killed—or at the very least spectacularly fired—but I don’t want to let Hitch down. I want to help him find out who murdered his friend. Even more, I want to show him that I’m not a complete waste of living tissue.
“Wake me up before noon,” Tucker says, eyes sliding closed. “I have someplace to be.”
“Up. Now. Or I get my gun from under the bed.” I grab his arm, haul him up, and push him into the kitchen. After one final sigh, he squeezes past the Harley still taking up 90 percent of the space and heads for the back door, while I grab my purse and keys from the kitchen table and bend to check Gimpy’s water bowl. It’s still mostly full. As is his food bowl.
Because he’s clearly been too busy eating my bra to bother with actual food.
“Gimpy!” I grab the strap and pull it out of his mouth, but I’m too late. Half my barely-B cup is gone, scarfed down into the bottomless pit of Gimpy’s twisted digestive tract. He yowls and narrows his green eyes as I stuff what’s left of the bra in my purse.
I point a warning finger his way. “If your guts get impacted again, don’t come crying to me.”
The last time Gimpy was at the vet, the doctor had to perform emergency surgery to remove all the crap he’d swallowed from his small intestines. She found—among other usually inedible things—a heart-shaped hair tie. Grace’s hair tie. Gimpy must have eaten it the night before her body was discovered.
Despite the hot September air rushing in from the door Tucker’s holding open, I shiver. And make a solemn vow not to eat Mexican food late at night. I could do without any more dreams like the one this morning.
“Be good,” I warn Gimpy as I hurry out the door, realizing too late that I can still see Tucker just fine.
And so can everyone else, including my nosey next-door neighbor, Bernadette, the old bird single-handedly responsible for spreading tales about my private life all over town. When we step outside, Bernie’s already in her back garden picking tomatoes, and I can tell by the pucker of her mouth that she’s gotten an eyeful of Tucker.
She makes no secret about being Team Cane.
This perceived misdeed will not go unpunished.
“Why didn’t you poof?” I ask Tucker through gritted teeth.
Tucker tosses his hair over his shoulder with a cocky grin. “I don’t see any need to hide our relationship.”
“What relationship?” I hiss before forcing a smile and waving to Bernadette as we pass by. “Morning, Bernie. This isn’t what it looks like.”
Her mouth gets puckerier. Great. I drop the smile and give her the evil eye while scissoring my fingers in front of my face—the universal sign for “I’m going to steal your Sunday paper and cut out all the coupons if you don’t keep your mouth shut.” Bernie still doesn’t speak, but her puckered mouth presses into a thin line. She turns back to her tomatoes with a muffled humph, and I know we’ve understood each other.
If only all relationships were so easily managed.
Which reminds me . . .
“Who are you supposed to be? How do I know you?” I ask as I unchain my bike from the tree in the front yard.
“I’m an old family friend.”
I snort. “My family wouldn’t let their friends talk to me, and my family wouldn’t be friends with someone like you.”
“Why’s that?”
“My mom and dad own half of New Orleans. They don’t like poor people.”
“Who says I’m poor? You’re making a lot of assumptions, Red.”
“Kind of like people who assume I want them in my house or in my bed or to be seen coming out my back door with them.” I strap my purse across my chest and kick up my kickstand. “Just tell me what the cover story is. I’m going to have to tell Bernadette something. I don’t want to pull a story out of my ass and get in trouble for breaking the rules.”
“I’m an old family friend from New Orleans,” he says. “Your parents knew my parents
when we were little. If I remember correctly, we used to swim naked in the kiddie pool together.”
“My parents don’t believe in naked. They wear clothes when they shower.” I eyeball Tucker’s lightly lined faced. Could be too much sun making him look older, but I’m guessing he’s somewhere in his midthirties, while I won’t be hitting twenty-nine until May. “And I think you’ve got a few years on me, Bubba. If we swam naked together when I was a kiddie, you were a teenage sex pervert.”
He laughs. “Teenage sex pervert or not, you’ve been kind enough to offer to help your old friend get settled here in Donaldsonville.”
My forehead wrinkles. “I thought you were a top-secret spy. How can you—”
“The Big Man decided I’d be more useful to him as a member of the community.”
A sour taste fills my mouth. Could be a hint of the acid reflux Marcy always said I’d get if I kept eating so much fried food, but I know it isn’t. It’s the mention of the Big Man.
So far, these are the things I know about this guy:
1. He was running Breeze—dried fairy poop mixed with bleach, a lot like crack but ten times more addictive—out in the bayou until he got shut down by the FBI, so he has no problem profiting from the suffering of his fellow man.
2. He’s the leader of the invisible people, and rules them with a blood-spattered fist. I can tell Tucker’s afraid of him, and Tucker doesn’t seem to be afraid of much.
3. He’s in control of the shots that are keeping me from going nuts, and is comfortable with threatening to withhold them if I step out of line.
4. He enjoys violently murdering people who get on his bad side.
Even considering he was avenging a little girl’s murder when he killed James and Libby, I don’t like the idea of a drug-dealing, person-strangling psychopath messing with the people in my town. Whatever reason the Big Man has for wanting Tucker in Donaldsonville, I know it isn’t a good one, and I want no part in facilitating his plans.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a choice. Keeping the Big Man happy is necessary to maintaining access to the medication that’s keeping me sane. I have to play along, but I don’t have to play nice.
