by Lexi George
“I do not—” Taryn began.
Viola chuckled. “Zombie apocalypse? Lord a-mercy, you a card.” She saluted them with the tea pitcher. “Well, nice to meet y’all. Hope to see you again. We’re open Monday through Saturday for breakfast and lunch, Friday and Saturday for dinner. Closed on Sundays.” She glanced down at the plate of fried green tomatoes in front of Sassy. “You like shrimp, come back Friday night. Special’s Shrimp Viola—sautéed shrimp in white sauce with mushrooms and sweet red peppers. Best come early, though. We sell out jackrabbit quick.”
Miss Vi bustled into the kitchen. Across the room, the silver-haired beauty leaned over and kissed the man in the booth good-bye. Rising, she strolled out of the café.
The grumpy waitress twirled up to them, a rawboned ballerina with a tight bun and orthopedic shoes. Somewhere between middle age and death, Pauline’s thin features were scrunched in a permanent pucker, like she’d been whelped on a vinegar teat.
She bused their table and balanced the loaded tray on one skinny hip. “We got lemon pie, buttermilk pie, coconut pie, chocolate pie, strawberry cake, fudge cake, and ’nanner puddin’ for dessert,” she announced. “Whatchoo want?”
Sassy’s mouth watered in anticipation. She wanted it all. She needed it.
She opened her mouth to place her order but Taryn beat her to the punch.
“What is a nanner, serving wench?” the huntress asked.
Pauline’s piggy eyes narrowed in irritation. “Who you calling wench, wench? You trying to piss me off?”
“No. You are a man, then?”
“’Course I ain’t no man. I’ve had three husbands. And for yo’ information, a buh-nah-ner is a fruit, limp biscuit.” Pauline glared. “You want puddin’ or not?”
Taryn inclined her proud head. “I will sample it.”
“Yay.” Pauline turned her wrathful gaze on Sassy. “You got any stupid questions or you want dessert?”
“Yes, I—”
Evan cut her off. “Sassy can’t have sugar, darling.”
“Huh.” Pauline gave Sassy the once-over. “What’s wrong, you got the dia-beat-us?”
“No. I want one of everything.”
“You mean, like a sampler platter?”
“Not a good idea.” Evan put his hand to his mouth. “Sugar makes her hyper.”
“Oh, I gitcha. She’s got the ADD.”
Sassy sat up straight. “Do not.”
Pauline cackled like a hen. “Look at ’er face. She’s grumpier than a cat with a shaved ass. She got the ADD, all right. I know the signs. My daddy was slap ate up with it. Good thing I got my mama’s sweet disposition.” She gave Evan the once-over. “What about you, badness? You got the ADD?”
“Nope. I got the B-I-G, if you know what I mean.”
“Hoo. Listen to the cock crow.” Pauline’s thin mouth widened in a grin. “If I was five years younger, I’d make you prove it.”
Evan grinned back. “Ready, willing, and able.”
“Go on with your bad self.” Pauline gave him a friendly swat. “You a flirt like my third ex. He had them same come-hither eyes. Uglier’n homemade sin, but that man could get me outta my drawers in a heartbeat.”
Ew. With a double ick on top. There was a picture that made Sassy want to stab her mental eye out.
“I’ll take a slice of the buttermilk pie,” Evan said. “Heated, with extra topping.”
“Warm it under my armpit just for you.” Pauline winked at him before turning her attention to Grim. “How ’bout a piece of chocolate pie for you, sweetie? It’s g-o-o-d. Make you want to take it home and sit on it.”
Grim shuddered. “No, thank you. I will sample the strawberry cake instead.”
“Fine. Don’t listen to me. I just work here.”
Pauline flounced over to the dessert case. Without. Taking. Sassy’s. Order.
Something dark and angry blossomed in her belly. What was she, invisible? She wanted dessert, and she wanted it NOW.
Pauline spun back to their table and plunked a slice of frosted pink cake in front of Grim. The tantalizing scents of strawberries and sugar shot up Sassy’s nose and sandblasted her brain.
Grim thanked the waitress and fell upon the cake. Sassy eyeballed Grim’s dessert. The slab of cake was the size of an atlas. He wouldn’t mind if she had a teensy little taste. She reached across the table to snag a bit of the luscious icing with her pinkie.
Evan caught her in the act and slapped her hand away. “No, ma’am.”
Sassy flushed and sat back, mortified by her lack of manners. Sticking her fingers in another person’s food. What was the matter with her?
She forgot her embarrassment when Pauline set a bowl of banana pudding at Taryn’s place, enveloping Sassy in a cloud of deliciousness. The smell of the warm fruit, crumbly vanilla wafers, and toasted meringue teased her senses.
Taryn picked up her spoon and began to eat in small, precise bites.
Pauline slid a piece of buttermilk pie in front of Evan with a flourish. “Hotted it up special for you.”
The sugar crystals on top of the pie had caramelized to a lovely shade of brown. Bits of melted cream puddled on the saucer.
Evan sampled the thick, golden custard and moaned. “Man, that’s good.”
Sassy clenched her hands in her lap to keep from slapping the stew out of him. Well, of course it was good. It was pie.
Grim waved his fork at the good-looking older man in the booth. “Who is that man over there? He keeps nodding and smiling at us.”
Pauline glanced over her shoulder and made a face. “Amasa Collier. Got more money than sense. Runs around town waving a coat hanger. Calls it his ‘demon diviner.’ Man’s a fruitcake. That was his wife that left just now. Edmuntina Fairfax—Collier, now. Everybody calls her Muddy.” She tucked a stray hair into her bun. “Gotta see to my other customers. Can I get y’all anything else?”
Pauline looked around the table at everyone but Sassy.
It was so unfair. Taryn got pudding. Evan got pie. The macho demon hunter with the shoulders wider than a Cadillac got cake. Wonderful, gooey, deliciously pink strawberry cake.
Sassy the Disregarded got nada. She was Sassy the Sugarless, Sassy Sans Dessert.
The toad of resentment swelled and burst, and a rush of energy blasted through her. Something dark and scary, powerful and hungry sprang to life.
Sassy leaped out of her chair and onto the table, scattering dishes and glasses onto the floor. She rolled her shoulders. The garment she wore cramped her wings. She ripped it off. Ah, much better. Clothing was a nuisance, a human contrivance, but she wasn’t human. She was fae, a living spirit of the sentient earth. She need not cover her nakedness in shame.
Spreading her wings, Sassy took flight.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sassy sprang off the table and into the air. Pauline screamed and dropped her tray. Chaos erupted in the eatery. Customers sprang to their feet, knocking over tables, smashing dishes, and scattering cutlery in their haste to escape.
The kitchen door slammed against the wall, and Miss Vi thundered into the dining room.
“Did the mayor’s possum get loose again?” she asked, looking around wild-eyed. “I told him not to bring that varmint in here. It ain’t hygienic.”
She saw Sassy circling the ceiling like a giant bird of prey, and her jaw sagged.
“Lord a-mercy,” she said, slumping to the floor, unconscious.
Taryn got to her feet, her gaze on her upended bowl. “Sassy spilled my ’nanner pudding. I like ’nanner pudding.”
She lifted her hand and time stopped. Terrified humans halted in mid-scramble, arms and legs akimbo. Pauline checked in backward flight, her arms flung wide and one skinny leg bent and cocked. An upended table balanced beside her, unmoving, on two legs. Dinnerware and eating utensils hung suspended in flight. Geysers of frozen broken glass sprouted from the checkered floor.
Evan nudged a petrified man, and the human teetered.
Tar
yn reached out, steadying the calcified form. “Stop that. Humans break.”
“Cool trick, Red,” Evan said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“The paucity of your knowledge does not surprise me.”
“You’re hilarious.” Evan jerked his chin at a weaselly man and woman slinking out the front door. “If those two slimeballs aren’t Skinners, I’ll eat my hat.”
“You are not wearing a hat,” said Taryn.
“It’s an expression, Lucy Literal. My point is, your super power doesn’t work on demonoids.”
“This much I gleaned when you did not cease your prattling.”
Grim listened to their bickering with half an ear, his attention on Sassy. She circled the room and landed on the dessert case. Reaching inside, she snagged an uncut strawberry cake and crammed a fistful into her mouth.
The change in her was astonishing. Gone was the lively, vivacious damsel of the past two days. Her fair skin was dusky purple, and so were her rioting tresses. The thin leather straps of her shoes coiled around her slender ankles, up her toned calves to her thighs, like searching ivy. Glossy black claws sprouted from her toes and fingertips, and her once-blue eyes were shimmering pools of ebony.
She was not naked, but damn near it. A strip of fabric covered her sex. Some sort of flimsy undergarment lifted her plump breasts in a most enticing fashion, leaving nothing to the imagination.
She was wild and dangerous, and absolutely magnificent, Grim’s beautiful wild elemental.
Some predatory instinct made him glance to his right.
Evan was staring at Sassy, too.
A low, possessive growl rumbled from Grim’s chest before he could stop it.
His snarl startled Sassy, and she flapped her wings in alarm and shrieked. Farm implements fell off the walls at the piercing sound, and the window at the front of the store shattered. The miniature gale stirred by her wings blew the skinny waitress across the room like a discarded piece from a game of merels.
Evan thumped Grim on the arm. “For God’s sake, reel in your dick, man. Scary Sassy ain’t playing.”
“I do not fear her.”
“Then you’re a dumbass. She’s the freaking dark angel of death.”
“Sassy did not turn from your monster. Would you abandon her now?”
“I’m not abandoning shit. I’m saying be careful. Those claws look frigging sharp.”
Satisfied that her treasure was unthreatened, Sassy went back to eating and polished off the cake in three large bites.
Grim watched Sassy grab another sweet from the case. She scooped a handful of goody from the dish and dribbled it into her mouth.
“I do not understand,” he said. “She was fine but a moment ago.”
Evan shrugged. “I’m guessing Sassy really wanted dessert.”
Grim started forward and Evan grabbed his arm.
“Easy, Big ’Un,” he said. “Piss her off, and she’s liable to fly out the window. Then who knows where the hell she’ll end up.”
“I am Dalvahni. She cannot hide from me.”
“Yeah, but what if the witch finds her first? Or let’s say she doesn’t. Every redneck in Behr County has a gun. You want some idiot to take a potshot at her?”
Grim hesitated, his driving need to help Sassy at war with caution. Damn Evan. He was right.
Fret not, Grimford. Dell’s calm voice sounded inside Grim’s head. Help is on the way.
A Dalvahni warrior does not fret.
As you say.
There was more than a hint of smugness in Dell’s tone. If the Provider were corporeal, there would be a reckoning.
The nibilanth appeared on a mossy gust of wind.
“What the eff?” Evan said. “Who ordered the garden gnome?”
“Har-de-har-har, you’re a stitch. How’d you like to be a grub?” The lessling spotted Sassy sitting on her nest of dessert, and threw his skullcap on the floor and stomped on it. “Sildhjort’s balls. How’d this happen?”
“I do not know,” Grim said. “I suspect some witchery.”
“Witchery, my twig. That girl’s way overdue for a meltdown, or didn’t you think of that?” He smacked his forehead. “What am I saying? Demon hunters don’t think.”
Grim flushed. “I have been much occupied.”
“I heard.” The nibilanth leered. “Dell told me what happened in the river this morning.”
“Dell?” Evan said. “Who the hell is Dell and what happened in the river?”
Heat spread up the back of Grim’s neck. “Dell is an associate. The rest is not your concern.”
“Dell says you went on a bender last night and ended up in a tree.” The lessling picked his cap up off the floor and slammed it back on his head. “Dell says you felt like three kinds of shite this morning and were grouchy as an ogre with a bad case of piles.”
“Dell talks too much,” Grim said through his teeth.
“And you don’t talk enough. He’s lonely.” The nibilanth peered at Sassy. “Where’s the necklace I gave her?”
“Necklace?”
“Stay with me—I’ll try to go slow. A necklace is a piece of jewelry worn around the neck.”
Grim held on to his raveling patience. “I know what a necklace is.”
“Congratulations. You’ve graduated from village idiot to clod. Find the necklace and make sure Sassy wears it. And don’t let her eat so many sweets. It’s not good for her. Fairy 101—they love sugar but too much makes them crazy.”
“No kidding, Rumpelstiltskin,” Evan said. “We can see that.”
“Tell me, funny guy, you ever hear of the maenads?”
“May what?”
The lessling rolled his eyes. “They’re party nymphs, groupies of Dionysus. They get drunk, hunt down animals, and tear them to shreds. Humans, too, if they get in the way.”
Evan shrugged. “So?”
“So, Fairy Puss is on overload. She could go on a toot that would make the maenads look like toddlers. Make sure she wears that necklace. At. All. Times.”
The nibilanth vanished.
Grim looked at Evan. “Do you know anything about this necklace?”
“Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. What happened in the river?”
Grim swore under his breath and turned to the Kir. “Taryn?”
“She was wearing something around her neck this morning when she came out of the river. The outline was visible through her wet tunic. I am surprised you did not notice.”
Grim ignored the hint of amusement in the Kir’s cool gray eyes.
He growled in frustration. “How are we to find this necklace when we do not know what we are looking for?”
“Maybe I can help.”
The older man Pauline had described as mentally unstable slid out of a booth and picked his way through the wreckage.
Sassy hissed and rustled her wings in alarm.
“Easy.” The older gentleman lifted his hand in a soothing gesture. “I’ve had dessert.”
This seemed to satisfy Sassy. She folded her wings and returned her attention to the pie she was eating.
“How do?” the man said. “Name’s Amasa Collier.”
Evan looked him up and down. “You aren’t a demonoid.”
“Lord, no. Don’t have a drop of demon blood in me.”
“Then why didn’t Taryn’s freeze-dry work on you?”
“Not sure. Maybe ’cause I see demons.”
“Ah, you are not normal,” Taryn said with a nod. “That explains it.”
“Wouldn’t know. Never met normal.” Collier unclipped a long piece of wire from his belt. “My all-purpose demon tracker. Made it myself. See how it’s glowing orange? That means there’s a demon or a demonoid close by.”
“Big whoopee shit,” Evan said. “I’m demonoid. So is Sassy.”
“Well, there you go. It’s working.”
Sassy threw back her head with a warbling trill, and a quarrel of sparrows flew through the broken window and attacked the cak
e and pastry crumbs on the floor. Sassy chortled and snagged another cake and two more pies from the case. She dropped a chunk of cake on the floor for the birds and began to devour the rest.
Grim had to do something and fast, or Sassy would explode and the birds would eat what was left of her.
“This apparatus of yours,” Grim said. “Can it find objects as well as demons?”
“’Course. It’s a divining rod.”
“Find this necklace and I shall be in your debt.”
Collier saluted him with the device. “Be glad to. Can you describe what we’re looking for?”
“No. I knew nothing of it until the nibilanth arrived.”
“Is that what the little feller’s called?” The man’s eyes brightened with interest. “Never seen anything like him.”
He waved the wire at Sassy.
Evan tried to grab it from him. “What are you doing? You’ll freak her out.”
“Don’t get your bowels in an uproar.” Collier flapped the wire in Sassy’s direction again. “I’m introducing her to the contrabulator.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Evan gave Grim a look of exasperation. “Pauline’s right. This guy’s a loon.”
“Silence,” Grim said. “Let him try.”
“I don’t mind. I’m used to it.” The wire hummed and thrashed in Collier’s hand. “Got a hit. Wish me luck.”
He flew out the front door, the divining rod pulling him down the sidewalk.
Taryn groaned and collapsed into a chair, her face drained of color. Sweat beaded her brow.
“Red?” Evan sprang to her side. “What the hell?”
“Tired.” Her words were strained. “Cannot. Hold. Much longer.”
Three Kirvahni appeared, two raven-haired and one blond.
“Great. More estrogen,” Evan said. “Just what we needed.”
Slim, fair of face and form, the Kir were dressed in hunting garb and wore identical superior expressions. They surrounded Taryn’s chair.
“We sensed your distress.” The blonde spoke in a colorless voice. “We are here to lend succor.”
They clasped hands and concentrated. By the time Collier burst through the entrance a few moments later, Taryn’s complexion had regained its healthy glow.
