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After a final mid-air pirouette, Rose aced her landing, her boots stomping to the floor. Her coat flared and subsided, and she stood tall. Beneath Rose and Samuel were drops of blood and smears. A red trickle crept down her neck and her chest heaved. She looked as calm as a gymnast after a hard workout.
Those were small wounds, I prayed.
The room breathed silence, relief, and possibly terror.
I shouldn’t be cringing here with my Ruger and knife pointed upward at the ceiling. My finger was bright pink and white where it tensed against the trigger guard.
The ceiling...
Where two faeries, identical to the recently deceased, cowered. Their wings fluttered fast enough to shower the air with twinkling dust.
Oh my.The purposeful tread of boots had me checking the whereabouts of the deadly duo.
“Wait.” I sprang forward, hands warding them. “Stop. No killing these.”
“We must,” Rose said. The knife twirled in her hand. She’d holstered her gun, no doubt having decided a faery wasn’t worth a bullet.
“Yes. We must. You know this, Mistress. All nightmare and dream creatures have to be destroyed.”
They did? But these were cute.
“Fuck off.”Oops.The raised eyebrows had me scrambling for diplomacy and reasons. Wait, I was their overlord or something. “Not these. Because I say so. And...because I need to use them to stitch, you know.” I gestured at Rose’s arm.
The C had stitched faery into Val.
From a spool.
She’d had imp and faery to use, and both were still alive, if alive was the right term, in her handbag...twined around a spool that was an object.
Objects were more rare and valuable than gold or plutonium.
“I have to find her handbag,” I murmured and found I was staring unfocused at the stained rug on the floor.
“What was that?” Val had me by the elbow, shaking me—the grip tight and painful. When I pulled away he didn’t let go and his gaze was fierce. “Zara? Are you okay?”
How long had he been shaking me? “Sure. I am. Hey. Elbow.”
Finally he released me. I massaged my elbow. Jesus. Bruises for sure.
Beyond him, Samuel and Rose waited.
“You said no. They won’t kill the faeries.”
“Oh.” I glanced up at them and saw teeth—little, white triangular teeth, framed by little, white mouths. The eyes were creepy, like children’s eyes in perfect pixie faces. “You know, I think they bite.”
“Yeah?” he looked up too. “Tinkerbell didn’t.”
These weren’t Tinkerbell, and from the hissing I might have trouble catching them.
CHAPTER20
Zara
Inside the housesmelled of burnt earth from all the gunfire. The water and electricity had been turned off long ago. The place was a smoky tomb for things that should never have existed. We’d made our way to the front porch to do what Val called an autopsy of the action.
He sat with his back to the timber of the house and I sat beside him—a different spark still burning between us. For a moment, in the middle of the fighting, the crazy, we’d stood back-to-back, together, a team. Now the ghost of him still pressed up against my skin. Masculine. Dangerous. Sexy.
I exhaled slowly and looked everywhere but at him.
