by Cate Lawley
Wrapping a hand around the back of my neck, he leaned close and whispered, “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“Hmm.” I trusted him mostly, but we were in some weird, far-off land that might not even be a far-off land but another dimension or a parallel universe for all I knew. There was trust and there was trust.
“Amarillis.” The evil beauty queen cleared her throat. “My name is Amarillis.”
“Nice to meet you, Amarillis.” It was the polite thing to say. She had offered her name, after all, if somewhat belatedly.
“Would you be so kind as to tell me what has brought you and your beau to Faery? More specifically to my lands?” Her tone mocked, but she said the words. She even added a sickly-sweet smile and tacked a “please” on the end.
“I would love to. I bent his curse.” I hitched a thumb at Don. “And I don’t know how. I need you to help me figure out what kind of magic I have.”
Amarillis ran her eyes intimately up Don’s form and back down again. I was feeling a little like a dog whose bone was being encroached upon. Unflattering, but true. It seemed my feet were very unhappy about this and started to move assertively in Amarillis’s direction.
Since my feet were attached to the rest of me, I might have been in trouble had Don not snagged the belt loop in my jeans and used all his manly muscles to make sure I didn’t go anywhere. I needed to get over my obsession with this guy’s muscles. And his hands. And his...well, his everything.
“You want to know about your magic so you can fix a broken demon?” Amarillis’s nostrils were pinched. She looked like Cricket after she’d taken an accidental bite of fish. Cricket hated fish.
Don wasn’t fish.
He was filet mignon. I wrinkled my nose. Actually, I didn’t adore filet mignon. Sometimes it was a bit rich for my taste. No, he was more like a really warm, tasty stew. Complex flavors, filling, better the next day, and even better the day after. Hm. Maybe I’d keep that thought to myself, because stew didn’t have a romantic ring. But dammit, he wasn’t fish.
Don released the loop of my jeans and wrapped his arm around me, anchoring me to his side. Good thing, because I (just a little bit) wanted to beat up my grandmother.
“Feisty for a mostly mortal girl, aren’t you?” Amarillis tapped the hilt of her sword, then seemed to reach some conclusion and grinned. “I’ll help you, but you have to do me a favor.”
I opened my mouth to agree and encountered Don’s palm. That man had wicked reflexes. It made me wonder how his athleticism might affect other areas of his life. I almost licked his palm, just to see what he would do, but he was bending down and whispering in my ear, so I refrained.
“That particular detail is true. Bargaining with faeries can be problematic.” He caught my eye, and only removed his hand from my mouth when I nodded my understanding.
“She’s my blood, demon. I’m not going to trap her soul in a slug or sentence her to a life in hell dimension. Oh, oops. That second one would be more your style, wouldn’t it?” She narrowed her eyes. There was a nasty glint in their depths.
Don had relaxed next to me, no longer feeling it necessary to physically restrain me from pounding some nice into my grandmother. His hand currently rested on my lower back and was making small soothing circles, so I was inclined to chill and let them duke it out.
It was interesting to see the dynamics of the situation unfold.
My grandmother—who’d only met me about seven minutes prior—was feeling protective of me. Mkay.
And my new friend, maybe more, maybe not...well, he didn’t seem at all perturbed by the assumptions Grandmother Amarillis was making about us.
In fact, he was defending his suitability as my—what had she called him? My beau?—right this very second. Oh, while he was giving me a mini back rub. Yep.
“I don’t live in hell,” he told my wicked faery grandmother. “I live topside, and only conduct business there.”
News to me. I didn’t have a clue where Don lived, only that geography wasn’t a big deal to demons, based on his excitement over my pie. I hadn’t missed the double meaning earlier. I’d just failed to make a big fuss over it.
“But what about all those naughty minions?” I asked. “Don’t you have to keep an eye on them?”
He turned his attention—all of his smoking-hot attention—to me, and his lips quirked up. “When I’m not decorating town squares, I go to work every day—like most people with a job.”
“Whatever. Most people don’t work every day. Four, five days a week, depending on scheduling, but not seven.”
“I take the occasional day off, promise. And I’m sure I can work out a more flexible schedule, if I had the right motivation.” His steamy glance left no doubt that he considered me great motivation to shorten his work week.
Man did I love how completely transparent he was. I usually was consumed with doubt and busy guessing when it came to men and their intentions. Actually, that hadn’t been true in a long time. Mostly, I completely ignored men, assuming they weren’t worth the trouble.
Don exceeded my expectations for his gender—by far. Don was worth the trouble. Unequivocally.
“If you two are done flirting?” Amarillis asked. “We have a deal to strike.”
CHAPTER TEN
Don and I struck a deal with my evil faery grandmother.
To be fair, maybe she wasn’t exactly evil. More like our cultures didn’t mesh in the best of ways. I’d been raised Idaho nice and had a healthy dose of Kayla-specific snark.
My grandmother seemed to have all the snark, all the spiky, and her people didn’t have Idaho nice going for them. Prickly, that was the best description I could come up with. My grandmother was a powerful, prickly person with hidden motivations but—I was pretty sure—some familial affection for me.
Don and I banked on that supposed familial affection when we made the deal. Risky, but we had our reasons.
Actually, we had one reason: Cricket.
Amarillis wanted to meet her other granddaughter. If we didn’t do this favor, Amarillis threatened a trip to Austin, wherein she would introduce herself to her grandchild. She seemed unconcerned that Cricket neither knew about magic nor that Grandmama wasn’t her biological grandmother.
If anyone was telling Cricket about the messed-up weird that was our family history, it was definitely going to be someone who loved her and not a stranger.
Also, the favor Amarillis wanted to trade? It was a package. Contents unknown, delivered to my sister. Not suspicious at all.
Now that I’d met dear Grandmother Amarillis, I knew that package would land in Cricket’s hands one way or another. I’d rather have some control over the how and the when. And assurances. I wanted lots of assurances.
Fifteen minutes later, we had the package and several assurances, courtesy of Don. No, the package was not going to detonate, contaminate, or injure in any of the various ways that Don hypothesized when negotiating our deal. No, there was no written or recorded message to Cricket contained within the package. No, the contents were not intended to harm Cricket in any way.
Amarillis wouldn’t budge on revealing the contents, other than to say it was a trinket and she thought Cricket would enjoy it. Not a magical trinket, just a trinket. Not a cursed trinket, just a trinket. And so the discussion went.
At the point at which I was willing to give in just to be done with all the talking, Don turned to me and said, “No guarantees, but that’s the best I can do without dragging in an underworld attorney.”
“Ha!” Amarillis’s exclamation made me jump. The sword had disappeared sometime during the negotiation, but she still freaked me out. “Good luck getting one of those bloodsuckers to consult any time in the next decade.”
Don’s expression implied she wasn’t wrong.
“Fine. I’ll deliver the dang package, but if anything happens to my sister as a result of this stupid mystery package, I will hunt. You. Down.” Then I gave her the death glare.
“Well? Spill, evil faery grandmother.” Yep, totally said that out loud.
With a glint of amusement shining in her eerie, over-bright eyes, she said, “I’m adept at curses. It’s a knack of mine.” Amarillis took a moment to bask in the glow of her stated accomplishment. Apparently, she was quite proud of that particular skill.
I racked my brain, but I didn’t see how genetically inheriting the ability to curse someone would give me the ability to bend curses. “Yep, that’s not helping me.”
She shook her head and waved a hand. She looked like she was swatting an annoying fly, but it was probably a vexing idea. “Add a dash of contrary human DNA, and you get the flipside of the cursing coin.”
Nifty. I’d been the idea she’d try to flick away with a hand wave. Me and my contrary human DNA. Humans might be a tolerated necessity—that pesky faery infertility problem—but we didn’t appear to be beloved by the faery folk.
Don wrapped his arm around me. Sweet, but I wasn’t offended and didn’t need to be comforted. I didn’t know this woman, and I already had a pretty great family, two grandmothers included.
“To be clear,” Don said, “what exactly is the ‘flip side’ of cursing?”
Amarillis pointed a finger at me. “Your strongest magical talent—perhaps your only talent—is curse breaking.”
Ta-da.
Can you say anticlimactic?
I already knew I’d been the one to bend Don’s curse, so it wasn’t exactly a Big Reveal that my magic meant I could break curses.
This was what we’d come to Faery to find out? I had to meet my long-lost evil faery grandmother, hit up a guy I barely knew (and had a monster crush on) for a huge favor, was coerced into the future delivery of a mysterious package to my darling sister (who was undeserving of the magical drama I was pretty sure was about to descend on her life), and I hadn’t asked for any of it.
Except the crush. That was pretty okay. But I didn’t let a lust-crush bonus put a dent in my mad.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat, a lump that was one part angry, one part very angry, and two parts I-might-throttle-you, you-evil-faery. “How do I make this magic trick of mine work?”
“I don’t know. How should I know how your magic functions? And even if I did, that wasn’t our agreement. I agreed to share the nature of your magic.” Amarillis’s eyes narrowed. “And you agreed to deliver my gift to your sister.”
“Yeah, yeah.” This time it was me waving away the annoying gnat. “Come on, Don. Let’s ditch this joint.” Then a disturbing thought occurred. Leaning close, I whispered, “You can get us home, right?”
Faeries had great hearing, because that cracked up Amarillis. I couldn’t help noticing she vanished into thin air before Don replied.
Evil. Faery. Grandmother.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Don had skills.
Not only could he kiss like a champ in a broom closet, he could get us both out of Faery and back home.
Before working his magic mojo to create a portal between the two worlds, he snagged my hand—would I ever get over his hands?—and pulled me close. I tipped my head back and looked into his eyes. But then his lips drew my gaze. His kissable lips. His really-good-at-kissing lips.
His eyes crinkled. “Just making sure we both fit. Your cabin closet is tiny.”
“Oh! Yeah, of course. Sorry I don’t...um, you know, have a bigger closet.” Awkward moment.
Unless it didn’t have to be. I would take that awkward and stomp it beneath my cute platform shoes. Gathering up a little of the bravery that lurked somewhere inside me, I reached up to run my fingers through the short hair at the back of his neck, then I tugged.
First, he grinned, and then he met me halfway. I really liked this guy.
Once again, the move from Faery to the human world happened amidst some truly fantastic groping and kissing. If we kept this up, I might turn into one of those Pavlovian dogs and start getting all sorts of excited about going to Faery—and I didn’t even like the place.
Yeah, that was how good the kisses were.
Don ended our lip lock and said, “We’re home.”
“Hm. I might have realized that, you know, when I banged my elbow on the doorframe.” Being wrapped in Don’s arms was so heavenly that I’d ignored the sharp pain.
“Do you want to leave the closet?” He held me close when I would have stepped away. “Not that I’m in a hurry to stop what we’re doing, but there’s more room outside.”
A rattling noise drew my gaze downward, and I had to stifle a laugh. Don had one foot planted in the mop bucket. It hadn’t dimmed his enthusiasm for our...activities.
“Riiight. We could keep...you know. But we should probably be focusing on how to activate and up the ante on my curse-breaking magic.” Also, while I didn’t want to stop cuddling and kissing, it was strange to do that when we weren’t exactly a couple. Or a couple at all. We were just two people tackling a problem together.
“All right.”
Did he agree to that too quickly? Stop. Don’t overanalyze. Don’t be a weirdo. Step out of the closet. Deal with the “what are we to each other?” questions later.
Once I’d backed out of the closet, Don extricated his foot from the bucket and joined me in the living room.
“Before we start fiddling with your magic, can I ask you a question?”
This was it. This was when he asked what we were doing with all the kissing and canoodling. I nodded. But not too eagerly. Just a casual tip of my chin. Who knew nods had so many levels of meaning? And could I be weirder?
“Why did you run?”
“Huh?” Not the question I’d anticipated...obviously.
“In Bandera, on the square.” He cocked an eyebrow. “After you—”
“Yep, I gotcha now. But seriously—why did I run? You blinked.” He gave me a curious look. “You were a statue? And you blinked?”
“I winked.”
“Wink, blink, either way, you were a bronze—and, so far as I knew, inanimate—statue, and you moved.”
“And that’s the only reason? The blinking, walking, and talking. The magic.”
I reviewed that moment, as much as I could remember, and didn’t see where he was going with this. “Yes. Did I need more of a reason? You should have had a ticket to the freak show that was my head. I thought I’d breathed you into life and that cosmic consequences were in the offing. I wasn’t in a great mental space.”
“You weren’t quaking in your shoes, expecting me to tear you limb from limb?” He grinned, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Something was up. I linked my hand with Don’s. Not because he couldn’t follow me to the couch all by his grown-up self, but because I wanted to hold his hand. I tugged him down next to me and didn’t let go.
“No, to answer your question. Never once did I think you might hurt me. Not only that, but I really think your evil and menacing act kinda sucks. I’m not sure how you get people to buy that garbage.”
He raised his eyebrows. “That garbage has paid my room and board with extras for the last several years. A lot of people—demons, minions, leprechauns—buy it.” Then he lifted my hand and brushed his lips across my knuckles. “But thank you.”
This would be where I swooned. Metaphorically, but even so. I’d never had someone kiss my hand. You’d think it would be incredibly cheesy. Over the top. Silly.
Not even a little bit.
We sat on my sofa for a few minutes, my heart beating at a cheerily lustful and adoring rate, our fingers twined together.
The moment hung in time, no expectations or worries pulling at us. None that I could discern. It was peaceful, and it was difficult for me to believe I shared this quietly impactful moment with a man I’d only met today.
I hated to break the silence, but curiosity once stirred started to percolate. �
�Why did you tell me the real story about your title and your job? You didn’t even tell the woman you were going to marry, and you told me.”
He rubbed his thumb absent-mindedly across my knuckles. “I’m not so certain I would have married Annabeth.”
“I should thump you. You don’t ask a woman to marry you if you don’t mean it.” He tilted his head, and I could tell he was about to give me an excuse, so I pre-empted him. “Nope. Even if it’s an arrangement for political purposes. You make darn sure you want to marry the girl before you pop the question.”
“At the time I asked, I thought I could. But it’s clear to me now that neither one of us was ever going to let that ceremony take place.”
“Okay, but that still doesn’t answer my question. That explains why you might not tell her, but not why you told me.”
He bumped my shoulder. “You already knew the most important part. You already knew I wasn’t that guy, the guy who went around terrorizing innocent minions.”
That made me chuckle, because his minions sounded anything but innocent. I was dying to know what they looked like. Did they look like humans, but the kind that exploded and could regenerate? Somehow, I doubted it. “I don’t suppose you have a picture of a minion?”
He retrieved his phone from his pocket and flipped through his photo album.
When he turned the screen around, the picture startled a laugh out of me. “You’re kidding!”
They were unexpectedly, shockingly, cute. Like stuffed teddy bears with fangs, and in a variety of colors: black, tawny, reddish, ivory. The picture he showed me had a group of them wrestling. Sure, there was a little blood, but it looked like they were having a fabulous time.
I handed his phone back. “Wow. Just wow. Thanks for sharing.”
He nodded. “I don’t know if you remember, but I told you when I made the deal with Tobias that I made sure there were a few exceptions included.”
“People you could tell the truth. I do remember you said that.” I could feel myself smiling like a loon. “I’m one of your exceptions.”
