Dart turned and sat on the table next to her, arms crossed over his chest. Oops, she’d said something wrong. Again. And yet he wasn’t fleeing. Yet.
“I like you, Sidney.”
Yes! “I like you, too, Dart.”
“I mean, I really like you. Not like, you know . . . those others.”
“Flower faeries?”
“Yeah. Not like those giggly twitter-flies.”
“So why do you date them?”
“Don’t make me explain, please?”
“Of course I won’t.” But it killed her not to know.
It was probably as she suspected. The flutter-twits were all so dull in the noggin they only saw Dart’s attractive outer side and didn’t care that he couldn’t finish the deal. Must be a status symbol of sorts, to have been with the sandman.
She could get beyond the premature dusting bit. Well, eventually she could get beyond it. If she could stay awake long enough to do so.
Sex for the heck of it was fine. But a man’s insides were important, too. And Dart had great insides. He cared about her. Look at the thoughtful gifts he’d brought. And he’d expressed concern over her job disaster.
“There’s something different about you, Sidney. Something calm and yet erratic. Wise and foolish. Gorgeous and goofy. You’re a mass of contradictions.”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Not at all! You fascinate me. A guy could spend forever with a gal like you and never grow bored.”
He’d said forever. Did he realize that women picked out the most benign words from a man’s conversation and could elevate them to high-alert, be-still-my-heart status?
“I miss my family,” he said. “But I like the MR.”
“Faery ain’t got nothing over the Mortal Realm. You said earlier that you live here? Sort of?”
“I don’t go back and forth to Faery daily, but I don’t have a permanent residence here.”
“So how do you—?”
“I rent. But it’s not working for me anymore, this gigolo lifestyle. I need family here. My own family.”
And he called her fast?
“I need to take things slow, though. With relationships, in general. I’ve an issue to work out. It’s just me; you gotta trust that.”
Strangely relieved, Sidney pulled the skirt of her dress over her knees and tugged her robe shut. Whew, she was disheveled. And it felt freeing and wild, yet a little inappropriate after the sandman’s confession.
She wanted family, but not right this second. She hadn’t even taken the man for a swing yet. One must never seal the deal until after the merchandise has been thoroughly tested.
“You want to go reconnaissance that mom’s house today?” he asked. “Most mothers are gone to the beauty salon during the day, and the kids are in school. This afternoon would be a perfect time.”
“I suppose.” She’d rather have sex with a handsome sandman. “Yes, that sounds good. Work.”
And no play. When had she tossed her uptight and follows-the-rules crown?
“If you promise to take it easy on the dust to night when you’re doing rounds in any house with a kid who may have a loose tooth.”
“Deal.” Dart headed to the door so quickly, Sidney had to turn to check if a band of marrow-sucking spriggans were on his heels. “Meet me in the park in a few hours. See ya, Sidney.”
She waved him off. The mouthwash glinted near her elbow. She picked it up and swished the red liquid back and forth. The motion stirred bubbles to the neck of the plastic bottle.
“That man really knows how to romance a gal.” Sigh number thirty-two landed in the atmosphere. “But how to save him from himself?”
Chapter
10
Mid-afternoon sifted cool needle-shaped shadows from pine trees across the green stucco façade of the Hanson residence. Dust motes crept through the air but didn’t dare to land on the polished mahogany dining table. Couches and chairs sat militant and white, a furniture-store display. No evidence of Jimmy’s toys or that a child even lived in this home.
Sidney thought surely there must be a robo-maid stashed in the closet to chase off the minutest speck of dust. Must have some fierce brownies working this house.
“This is what you call anal,” Dart said. “I think you’re right, Sidney. There’s been no extra-curricular sheet Olympics going on in this house.”
Sidney agreed.
Both were small, easier to reconnaissance that way. Dart hovered in the kitchen, inspecting the glass cabinet fronts that revealed goblets arranged from tall to short and by pattern. “I hate wine goblets.”
“Wait until you see the kid’s room,” Sidney said. “I’m surprised the twerp isn’t sent to military school for the infractions against dirt, grime, and general disorder in that room. Let’s head this way. What’s wrong with wine goblets?”
“I had a bad experience a few years ago,” Dart said as he followed. “Some psycho insomniac wouldn’t fall asleep even when I brought out the superpowered dust. She wore me out. As I was catching my breath on the bedside table—clank!—she trapped me inside a goblet. Wine dripped down my wings and got them all sticky. It was a nightmare.”
“You were Seen by a mortal adult?”
“Yeah. The SSF wasn’t too pleased about that. Did they care I cut my wing trying to escape? Oh, no, you’re getting written up, Sand. One more slip-up and it’s retrieval time.”
Sidney shuddered to even consider being retrieved back to Faery. “So what are we looking for?”
“Not sure.” Dart flew down the hallway. “Did you say they have a cat?”
“Yep. Big white fluff-monster. You’ve never seen it on your rounds?”
“I work so fast, I rarely take in the surroundings.” He paused in the doorway to the master bedroom, hovering in a macho pose, shoulders thrust back and chin lifted. Yeah, the guy was a super-fast stud faery.
Fast wasn’t always good. Or satisfying, Sidney thought. She preferred things slow and easy. But not too easy. Slow and gradually working up to faster. And harder. And—
“I got a whole town to do in one night, Sidney. I can’t be leisurely.”
“Sure, but you’re skipping some houses to night, and don’t forget it.”
She fluttered in a meandering path down the hallway. Keeping thoughts of sex from her mind wasn’t going to be easy with Dart flexing his muscles. And then there was that cute tight butt below his wings.
And what about those wings? Faery wings came in all shapes, sizes, and colors. But the bigger the male’s wings, the bigger the, er . . . well, she had heard.
Dart’s wings stretched above his head, past his shoulders, and well below his ankles. Huge wings.
Huge.
Something grabbed her by the arm. Sidney flittered around and crashed into Dart’s chest. Her wings fluttered double time, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“Cheer up, Sidney,” he said.
“I am cheerful. Mostly.” She was freakin’ horny, is what she was.
“I’m going to help you. This is not the end of the Reverie tooth faery, I won’t let it be.”
Wings deflated and Sidney sighed. “If you say so.”
He leaned in to kiss her. It was a soft morsel, a soul-touching, heart-slaying taste of bliss. Sidney’s wings lifted.
Dart peered over her shoulder. A grin tickled his face.
Oh, stones, were her wings shading violet?
“I think we should get to work before I find something much better to occupy myself with,” he said. A quick kiss to her forehead and he fluttered off. “I’ll check the master bedroom!”
“I can think of better things to occupy myself, too, Studman.”
Sidney preened a hand back over the tip of her upper left wing. It was pale violet—a transformation from her usual dull rainbow of pink, aquamarine, and gold—but if he’d kissed her any longer, her wings would have colored as deep as Oberon’s royal cape.
She fluttered without direction down the hallw
ay. It had been a while since she’d had someone who made her wings color and her toes tingle. Too bad any attempts at foreplay resulted in her snoring.
“There’s got to be a way to slow the dude down. Hold off that dust. Does he dust every time he gets excited? Whoa.”
Sidney caught her body against a billow of thick fabric. She’d fluttered right into the velvet drapery at the end of the hallway.
She cast a glance over her shoulder. No sandman in sight. “Most embarrassing.”
“Meow.” Below, a fat fluff-ball’s enunciation sounded very much like kitty laughter.
“Oh, yeah?”
Sidney swooped down for the target. Skimming the head of the beast, she left a trail of dust in her wake. She hadn’t the ability to put anything to sleep, but she did pack a powerful discombobulation dust.
The cat wobbled. As it stepped down the hallway, each paw hung and swayed. It almost toppled but then miraculously landed its footing. Sidney would have laughed, if she weren’t so glum.
“I got it!”
Dart shot out into the hallway and gestured for her to follow. Sidney joined him inside the master bedroom. “What’d you find, Studman—er, I mean Sandman?”
Watch it, Sidney.
He led her to an open drawer. They fluttered into the dark depths, half-filled with lacy underwear.
“Is this some kind of twisted hint to see my undies?” Sidney wondered as she landed a silky blue pair. “I’ll have you know I don’t do undies.”
Not lately, at least. Hee!
Dart had been about to speak, but he suddenly gave her a double take. “You don’t?”
If it hadn’t been dark as a king-size pillow crushed against a Temper-Pedic mattress, Sidney might swear she saw his wings shade purple. Stars, but she could see in the dark, and they were purple.
“Not a stitch.”
The sandman’s swallow was audible. Heh. It was good to do that to him. A girl had to keep a man guessing.
“So what do you have?” she asked.
“This.” Dart kicked back the top of a small Altoids tin. Inside, a clatter of teeth rocked across the bottom.
Digging her hands into the collection—an entire set of baby teeth, Sidney surmised—she drew up a smooth and nicely weighted tooth. Sniffing it, she then tapped the enamel. “An eight-year canine. Now it’s twenty to thirty years old, I’d say. Female.” Nano-divots pocked the surface. To the untrained eye, unnoticeable. “Excessive use of fluoride. Minimal flossing. Yep, this belongs to the mom.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s my job, Sand. I do it well.”
She may not be as fast as a sandman, but woe to the faery who tried to match her in tooth knowledge. She’d give a mortal forensic team a run for their DNA labs.
“I wonder what the deal is?” she said. “All these teeth. A complete set. It’s as if the tooth faery never visited her.”
“Maybe she didn’t.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is im—”
A grip of Sidney’s hand cut off Dart’s words. She clenched his shirt before his neck. If his wings had been shading purple before, now his face surpassed that color.
“Listen, Sandman. I’ve been Reverie’s tooth faery for thirty mortal years. Do you understand what that means? Upright. Rule-abiding. Respected. I’ve never missed a tooth.”
“Never?” he squeaked.
She released her clutch and the sandman gasped in a wheezing breath. Dramatic, but warranted.
“Never,” she spat.
“Huh.” He toed a pre-molar inside the tin. “Doesn’t explain all this.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Sidney flew out from the drawer and sat on the edge of it. Below, the cat hissed and whipped its tail menacingly. She delivered it a nasty mortal gesture and muttered, “Underskinker.” The mood to kick feline butt didn’t even tweak at her.
All those teeth. Unclaimed.
Had she—? “Impossible.” Maybe?
“This troubles me,” she said when Dart joined her. “But if the woman never received a visit from the tooth faery, that certainly explains her venom toward me now.”
“That would do it. Is it possible she was off your radar thirty years ago?”
“No, headquarters has an advanced tracking system. The ScryeTracker™ is infallible. I can’t believe this. Is it possible? I . . . missed a child?”
What she required right now was what she got. Dart’s silence. She didn’t want to hear any Well, maybe you were wrongs. What she needed was what Dart did next. He hugged her.
And Sidney released her worries and melted into the warmth of his presence. It was as though he were holding an umbrella over her head, sheltering her from cold rain. Sometimes just being in the company of another put things right. At least in her heart.
“We’ll solve this,” he said after a while. “For the kids.”
His concern for the children impressed her. Put a warm glow right there in her bosom.
“You plan to have kids someday, Dart?”
He answered easily, “Twenty or so.”
An average brood for a faery family. Though Sidney would certainly consider the advantages of nanny pixies should she ever push out a brood so large. Perhaps ten would be reasonable. No chance of any children getting forgotten or unfed then.
She sighed. “I hope you get your wish. You’d make a great father.”
“You think? Thanks. You’d be a great mother.”
“Right.” The man was in the market for a family. The idea wasn’t half so frightening to her now as it had been when he’d first revealed his insistent need for family.
He’d softened her, and she liked the feeling.
“So how’d you manage to stick around this town for so long?” he asked. “I thought all Night Workers were reassigned yearly.”
“I follow the rules. Keep a clean record and don’t rock any boats. You can put in for renewal at the end of a service year if you want to, and I do. I like this town. It’s a great place to live.”
“Huh. I usually use up my three strikes before the year is up. But I’ve seen a lot of the world that way.”
“You like to travel?”
“Getting tired of it lately. Like I said, family . . .”
“Yeah,” Sidney agreed on a sigh.
“You’re an amazing woman, Sidney. Far too upstanding for the likes of me.”
“Don’t say that. I’m just a woman who needs . . .” love.
A small part of her resisted that confession. It wasn’t right. It could never be right. He was the means to her decline, the utter destruction of all she had worked for.
So why didn’t her achievements mean as much now that she was sitting next to Dart?
“You need what?” he prompted.
“Nothing. I’m satisfied, like you. You seem perfectly at ease with the life you’ve made for yourself.”
“There are things about me that need to, well . . . slow down first. I’m all about instant gratification. Totally opposite you. I don’t think I’d have the patience to stay in the MR without, well, you know.”
“Having sex as often as you like?”
He smirked. “I’m not that much of a stud. But I do have needs.”
“I have those same needs. I’ve overlooked them lately. But I’m afraid, Dart. I don’t want to screw up this great situation I have here in the MR.”
“You need to learn to fly under the Realm’s radar.”
“Yeah? Like you do so well, Mr. One Strike and I’m Out?”
“True. But I can help with your other needs. The personal ones.”
Like sex. Neither spoke it, but Sidney sensed both thought of it. Talk about white elephants. This one glowed.
“Let’s rock”—Dart nodded toward the bed—“before puss pounces.”
Sidney hadn’t noticed the cat had jumped to the bed. It flicked its tail and prepared for a leap. They both took to flight as the feline sprang. A tormented m
eow accompanied the cat’s graceless fall from the edge of the drawer. Claws tore through wood as the beast clattered to the floor.
Sidney followed Dart down the hall, her hand in the sandman’s. They stopped to hover before a collection of photographs hanging on the wall.
“I think I know how you can keep your job. It’ll be a backup plan should my not dusting have little effect tonight.” Dart reached for Sidney and pushed back her hair over a shoulder. Such a gentle act. She bowed her head. “Are you willing to try?”
“I’ll try anything once.”
“Oh, yeah? Now you’re starting to sound like me.”
He leaned in and cupped the back of her head. Sidney knew what was coming, and she closed her eyes.
A mid-air kiss was delightful. Wings fluttering and heart thumping, the intensity increased with their motion and the adrenaline pumping through her wings. He traced her lips with his tongue.
The touch scurried all through her body. Her nipples perked. Had she been wearing underwear, it might have grown moist. She became even softer than when he’d just been holding her.
The low moan that hummed from Dart’s throat told her he enjoyed the kiss as much as she. Would he dust her?
Sidney couldn’t risk falling into a dead snore. Not with a cat prowling nearby.
When she opened her eyes, she focused on the picture over Dart’s shoulder. A mortal girl with blond pigtails, probably ten years old, leaned against the trunk of a blue Chevy truck.
“License plates in Florida!” Sidney shouted.
“Wha—?” Dart was still surfacing from the kiss.
“That’s it!” She shot down the hallway toward the open window. “She grew up in Florida. It wasn’t my territory. Some other idiot tooth faery forgot her. It wasn’t me!”
Chapter
11
“I’ll take this one.” Vanessa Henderson set the book Analyzing Your Dreams on the counter, her library card gleaming on top.
Sidney slashed the card, then tried a bit of conversation: “Dreaming about flying?”
“I wish.” Vanessa blushed.
Whoa. What had she said?
Vanessa looked left and right. There was no one in the library, but she practiced caution with a low whisper. “I’ve been dreaming about a sexy man.”
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