by D. D. Miers
He groaned and swallowed hard. “But I didn’t know.”
“Exactly, Dirk-the-jerk. You keep fucking with things you don’t know, and next time there might not be a friendly nature Fae to save your dumb ass.” I sighed and rubbed my temples with two fingers as a headache began to encroach on my brain. “I don’t want to be around you any more than you want to be around me. But, I have leads to follow up on, and I need to teach you a thing or two. Your life belongs to me, now.”
His mouth opened and shut like a fish in the bottom of a boat. I crooked a finger, and when he didn’t follow, the head of the dandelion bent down and pushed him in my direction. The flower scared a high-pitched squeak out of him before forcing him to jog and catch up with me.
I released the flower from my energy and felt it diminish until it was just a small spot of green and yellow against the backdrop of the grey concrete buildings, sidewalk, and street. “Lesson one, Dirk,” I stopped at the parking lot and paid the toll, so I could get my car out. “Never thank a Fae for doing you a favor. It’s best never to say thank you at all. But please, always be polite, find another way to show gratitude, because otherwise you could get eaten.”
“So, be polite, but don’t say polite things?” He rolled his eyes at me.
“When I told you, you belong to me, how did your tattoo react?”
“It burned, just like when it was made,” he admitted, rubbing the spot where I’d seen the glowing through his shirt.
“Because the mark recognized what I said as binding truth.” He swallowed hard and the stone in the pit of my stomach began to let up. At least he understood what I was saying. It gave me a lot more hope for his survival. “Do you see how this could be a problem?”
“But it only did so because I said thank you.” I nodded and flagged down a sweet-faced old Brownie who was headed our way.
“Hi, I don’t mean to be a bother, but I’m teaching this young boxer his manners, do you have a moment to help me?” I began, and she grinned and patted his arm.
“Of course, what do you need?”
“Can you tell him he belongs to you?”
“You are mine, boy.” The air didn’t respond to her the way it had to my words, and Dirk seemed to notice the difference.
“Please order him to do something.”
“Touch your toes, boy.” Dirk glanced at me and I shook my head. He stayed in place, glancing between us.
“Okay, I know she can’t make me, but it feels weird not to do what she said. My mom would kill me if I ignored my elders.”
The Brownie giggled. “Oh, how nice. Is that all, children?” I nodded.
“That was exactly what he needed to hear.” I did not thank her, but she beamed at us just the same, her cheeks wrinkling up like an overripe apple. We said our goodbyes, and she carried on, her cane going thunk, thunk after each step she took. “You see, Dirk, people tell horror stories about the Fae capturing them, enslaving them, but it’s almost always because humans try to interact with them without understanding how to do it safely."
“Yeah, I know the Fae aren’t all evil. They teach it in school.” I hadn’t been to public school, but it was good to know they’d at least covered ‘the Fae are not evil’.
“And yet, I own you, because your school stopped short of ‘and here’s how to talk to the ancient, immortal beings and be safe’ part of the course.”
He walked me to my car and leaned against the hood. “So, now what?” I handed him my cell phone.
“Put your number in there, I’ll be calling you, and you’d better answer when I do.”
He punched in the number and shoved the phone back at me. “What happens if I don’t, you come finish what you stopped from happening today?”
I jammed the phone in my pocket and scowled at him. “No, but once the stomach cramps and insane headache set in, you’ll be begging me to.” He blanched, making me chuckle. “You’re bound to me as surely as to whoever gave you the tattoos you now sport, Dirk. Don’t forget it.”
I waved him off and he scampered away, looking his twenty-years and change without a hint of the badass he’d thought he was, and a little green around the gills. I waited until he was gone before I got in the car and sat in the quiet, setting a reminder on my phone to release him after twenty-four hours.
No way do I need a human slave to add to the list of charges Mills wants to bring down on my head like a guillotine. He just needed a taste of the consequences of his actions. No one deserves to be
Will had said the witches weren’t talking, and the weres had issues of their own. Instead of giving me a clear direction to go, I had less than I’d had to begin with. “Fuck you, you sick bastard. Whoever you are,” I slammed my hands on the steering wheel. “Fuck you right to hell for dragging me into whatever this is.”
God. I don’t even have enough information to curse you properly.
I started the car but had no idea where to turn. Orson always told his tracers if they couldn’t scare up a lead when hunting, to go back to the start. In his cases, he meant their homes or work or friends. For me, it meant retracing my steps and praying I didn’t find someone who knew more than I did and was pissed at me about it.
I threw the car in gear and headed back to the office. Orson would be gone for the night, but Puck and Cole would be manning the phones, setting up bail for the night owls who got into trouble.
“Hey guys, how’s it hanging?”
“Heard you got yourself arrested, and still survived the cut. How’d you swing it?” Puck got his nickname from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He'd picked It up because he had studied theatre before becoming a bounty hunter, and even at almost thirty-five, he still looked fourteen, just like the satyr in the play. He lifted his skinny frame out of Penelope’s chair and rushed to me for a hug. “And, what can we do to help?”
“Aw shucks, Puckster, I appreciate it, but I just needed to take a peek at my computer and remind myself which bar I went to first.”
“The Shoreline, the Publican …” he paused and tilted his head at me. “The Power Exchange?”
His quip teased a laugh out of me. “No, I definitely didn’t make it to a sex club.” I thought for a moment. “Shame though, last night would’ve been ladies’ night, free entry for me.”
“Why am I surprised you even know about it?” The dig came from Cole.
“Because I am a good little Fae girl and I don’t go home with strange men.” I waited a beat for one of them to smack the easy pitch, and Puck didn’t let me down.
“No, you just wake up with them in your bed.”
“Ba dum tsch,” Cole added, waving his index fingers like drum sticks.
It didn’t make what had happened to me better, but it cleared the air for us to joke about it. I didn’t understand the why of it, but it helped, so we made raunchy jokes about the dead guy in my bed, so when I finally slept, and the nightmares came, I’d pretend they never happened in the morning.
I opened my browser and glanced over the pages I’d left up from consulting with Digger the night before. Puck was right about where we’d started our pub crawl, but Dig had been looking for something a little more honky than the usual fare in the Tenderloin.
The Brown Lantern was down by the water, just off some old piers no longer used by commercial boats anymore. Still, it had a loyal patronage of mostly middle-aged men. And if my traumatized memory served me, a hell of a lot of them were shifters.
I considered taking Puck or Cole with me but decided against it. They were good at a trace, but neither of them had nearly the training with shifters Penelope did. I texted her and told her where I was going. I couldn’t ask her to join me, I wouldn’t put her on the spot. But, if she was bored and wanted to watch me crash and burn for the second time in two nights, she’d know where I was.
Sure enough, the parking lot for the bar was as full as it had been the night before, a strange blend of old pickups and new Mercedes. The shifters inside matched their vehicles, s
ome in tailored suits, others in cowboy boots and jeans. All of them moved with a wildness, a feral loose-jointed lope setting them apart from humans, but only if they let their guard down, and only if you were paying attention.
The music was subdued, though, and the shifters talked quietly amongst themselves moving from table to table. Holy fucksticks, Batman, you just walked in on their wake. If they found out I was the last person to see him before the police had taken him away, I was a dead kitsune.
I looked around, but the pretty-boy was nowhere to be found, and it was hard to keep cool knowing any second one of them could start yelling about the way he’d been found. I huddled in my corner and watched them until my phone buzzed.
I slipped out the door without raising a single shapeshifting nose to the air and jogged out toward my car before answering. “Hey Pen, you got my message?” I never got to hear her answer because standing at my car was the hottest, most dangerous looking guy I’d ever seen.
My brain melted into a puddle in my skull, until all I heard on the other end was Penelope mumbling and my heart pounding. He watched me approach without moving, his arms folded across his chest, straining the fabric at the shoulders, the clean, soapy scent of him filling my nose while I was still ten feet off. His tanned skin was covered in tattoos peeking out of the neck of his shirt and covered his arms, but I felt no magic on him, just feral, animal power. Shifter.
“Can I help you?” I asked, my phone still to my ear as Pen babbled on. Finally, I started to register her chewing me out for heading to the Brown Lantern by myself and I cleared my throat to interrupt her. “Pen, I gotta go. I’ll be back at the office in no more than ten minutes, or you can happily send the police to come find me at the Brown Lantern.” I hung up and slipped the phone in my back pocket.
The guy leaned against my car, looking me over from head to toe. But there was nothing in his face, suggesting he liked what he saw. He licked his full lips and rolled his shoulders as I got closer, and I reached out with my magic, looking for the plant life lying unseen all around us.
“Is there something I can do for you?” I asked again, my heart racing rabbit fast.
He unfolded his arms and pushed off from the side of my car. “I got to identify the body of my best friend today,” he growled, his voice thick with hate and disgust. “When I did, he was covered in the scent of a woman.”
Shit. I took a couple of steps to the side, looking for an opening to get around him, but with one stride he closed the distance between us. “Look. You don’t understand.”
“I followed your scent all over the damn city, it seemed, before I ended up back here.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Aren’t you interested in what I found?”
“Not if your friend was the body some asshole left in my bed,” I retorted. My voice was shaky, but I’d called ivy and morning glory and it crept silently up behind him as he snarled at me.
“My friend was my alpha, our leader. Did you enjoy watching them mourn?” Before I could entangle him, his hand was around my throat and he body slammed me into my Rav4. “What In the hell kind of creature are you, that you could take him down? Did you poison him like a coward?”
“I did not, and I don’t…think…I could take…” I coughed out the words and slammed my fists into his arm, driving my heel down on top of his kneecap, which slid out of place with a satisfying pop.
He swore and dropped me but pinned me again by my shoulder lightning fast. “You were with him.”
“Correction, asshole. I woke up with him. I went to sleep all by my lonesome, exactly as I wanted. There was a guy, he was here last night. Not a shifter, super charming… He looks almost delicate, but he feels insanely powerful. I'm not sure on his name."
“The power broker comes around, sometimes, goes by Tryst. The description sounds like him.”
“Okay, well he's who I was with before I went home, alone. I woke up next to a naked man I didn’t know.”
“But you knew who Gideon was.”
“I work in bail bonds. I’ve seen him with my boss, but we’d never had a conversation.” I felt the tension in his hand relax, so I continued. “I don’t know who put him there, but if I’m powerful enough to kill him, don’t you think I could’ve disposed of his body somewhere other than my own house.”
“I have no idea what kind of fucked up sicko you could be.”
I clenched my fist and the ivy zipped around his body, and I ran, racing in the direction of the office. Hard, slapping footsteps chased me as I turned the corner and nearly crashed into a parked car. The footsteps stopped, and a flash of fear shot through me like lightning.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, why am I running from a shifter? He fucking smelled his way to me through the city.
A sleek black shape crashed into me and sent me tumbling. I bounced to my feet and braced against the concrete wall of the parking garage behind me. “I’m not a monster.”
“Says the woman whose stink was all over the dead alpha.”
I shuddered and swallowed the bile rising in my throat at the memory
“Well, I’m not stupid enough to call the cops on myself and have no plausible reason for a body in my bed.” I sighed and sniffed back the tears I’d managed to hold onto all day. “They broke in my door just as I started to dial my phone. I’d only been awake for a minute, only known my home and bed had been defiled for…”
He stepped back and I hugged myself. “You want me to believe the only hybrid Fae-witch is so weak she can’t protect her own home from invaders?”
Great. Nothing like meeting a guy who’s already heard the rumors to really get the night going. “No protection is perfect, or you’d never have gotten your hand around my throat, would you?”
“Looking harmless is your thing, right?”
I gave his knee a pointed glance. “I’ve spent my life learning everything I could to protect myself. There’s nothing about being weak, will keep me safe.” I inched the vines as close as I dared, meeting his angry gaze with my own.
“Just because you are little and cute, doesn’t mean I think you’re honest. I smelled you on him.” His voice got ragged.
The thought of my scent on a dead man made me ill. It was easier to be compassionate, seeing how awful identifying his friend must have been for him. “I’m sorry. I wish I could make you see how terrifying it was to wake up to a cold body in my bed, and learn the situation could get worse even worse.” He paused. “Look. I’m sure if it was the shifters, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
“If it was shifters, he’d have disappeared, leaving behind only blood to prove he was gone. He would not get tucked into your bed.” Another shudder of revulsion swept over me.
“But someone wanted to make this about me, right?” I looked up at him and he rubbed his palm over his short beard. I caught myself staring again and dropped my gaze to the ground. I didn’t know what was coming over me, but I had to pull myself together before I tried to force myself on him.
“Come with me, we’ll speak with the coalition heads and figure this thing out.”
I shook my head hard. “Sorry, no dice. If this wasn’t a shifter kill, it’s likely this was witches. I don’t want to take you in there and start a war unless I know it was them.” He started to argue, but I stopped him with a gesture. “Whoever did this wanted you to kill me, but they’re my people, I can’t just start a war between the witches and the shifters. There’s no way to stop the bloodshed from spilling over to humans, and where would we be?”
I poured all the power I could muster into the air around me until it crackled and hummed with trapped energy. Roots and vines shot out of the ground, the building, every spore in the air sprang to life and attacked him, flattening him against the building.
“If I had wanted your alpha dead, I would have simply torn him limb from limb and turned him back to the earth to feed nature,” I reminded him. “And the witches already have had time to prepare.” I sighed and re
leased him. “I need to speak to my cousin, Annabelle. She hates me, but she has a big mouth and is useless with a secret, even if I’m the one she’s keeping it from.”
“Fine,” he growled, kicking off the last of the baby vines holding his ankles. “But I’m not leaving your side.” He swung a set of keys on one finger. “I’ll drive.”
“Sure, on one condition,” I folded my arms and stared at him. “What’s your name?”
He scoffed and cautiously extended his hand to me. “I’m Grayson, Grayson Xenos.”
Six
I raised my hand to knock on the door but froze as static electricity lifted the hair on my arm. Instead of knocking, I opened my palm and held it an inch from the surface of the bright red paint, sensing for harmful spells aimed at me.
Sure enough, magic crackled just over the door and the frame. “Shit. She’s expecting me.” I glanced at Grayson and sighed. “She’s not exactly subtle.”
He mimicked me, flattening his palm just above the shimmer of magic I revealed on the door. “She has power, though."
“Yeah,” I nodded. “She’s the only child of one of the most powerful witches in the three covens, and she knows it.” The corners of my mouth turn up in a grim smile. “But she’d prefer me dead any day of the week, so this isn’t proof.”
“It’s not good magic either, is it?” he scoffed. “I mean, many creatures have raw power. None of them rule their kind.”
I whistled under my breath and walked down the steps from the sweeping front porch to the patch of flowers below. I picked a couple of leaves off the over-manicured asters and a twig from one of the rose bushes, complete with thorns.
The leaves became the hilt for the twig dagger I made, binding themselves to the twig at a muttered spell from me. The twig itself straightened and the tip became a small wooden blade, with thorny teeth down one side.
“Here goes nothing.” I banged on the door with the hilt and the magic popped and sizzled and the shimmer vanished. “One ass-frying spell, shorted out, Mr. Xenos.” I grinned up at him. “Care to knock?”