Page 47
“What did you see?” I nudge him.
“I… I can’t…” he trips over his words. I can practically hear his brain shut down as he struggles to compute and explain.
“Do you ever tip food crumbs out of your windows?” I prompt, mentally running through a list of common disturbances and the paranormal creatures that cause them. He looks at me like I’ve grown an extra head, but it’s enough to stop him going to war with his thumbnail.
“Uh…sometimes?”
“You probably have a sprite.”
“A sprite.” He tries the word on for size, then screws his nose up. “Sure, makes perfect sense.”
I jerk my foot out and kick him in the thigh. It’s a lot more solid than I expected, so I have to hold in a squeak when pain shoots through my ankle.
“Do you want my help or not?” I snap. I forgot how much of a stubborn goat he can be. He has my body temperature ratcheting up just from being abrasively annoying.
I strip out of the sherpa fleece, tossing it on the couch and sitting back down, leaning back on my hands. Of course, he finds that exact moment to get distracted by the space between my legs, his head tilting slightly to the side as he stares. I feel my blood heat under his gaze, my cock twitching in the thin fabric of my sleep shorts.
“Permission to throw something at him?” Delphine asks with syrupy sweetness, her slender fingers already digging into a small throw pillow. I nod once, and she launches it at him without a single bit of grace or decorum.
I don’t think he even notices that I wasn’t the one to throw it, but it does snap him back to his senses. I decide to bulldoze him with information, test the waters on just how much he believes me now.
“Do you ever see shadows? Like, out of the corner of your eye?”
His face blanches. “Uh, yeah. I guess so.”
“Well, sprites are small beings that like to cause havoc and hang out in your peripheral vision. Food is an offering, so if you tipped crumbs out of the boundary line of your property and didn’t declare that it wasn’t for them, one could have gotten into your house. Would explain why things keep moving.”
I watch Sunday’s face intently. Oh, the five stages of grief.
Denial, well, he’s been doing that for the past six years.
Anger.
Bargaining, happening right in front of my eyes. His pierced brow shoots up as he brushes his tongue over his front teeth. He shakes his head, dropping his chin to look down and to the side. Toward me, but not at me.
There it is—depression.
And at last…
“It didn’t say that on Reddit.”
Oh my god. “You do not go on forums for answers, Sunday. Spirit lead me.” He just had to be that guy, didn’t he.
He throws his hands up in the air before slapping them back down on his meaty thighs. “Okay, so where exactly do I go to find out if I’m batshit crazy or not?”
This is going to be fun. We might be going back to the bargaining phase.
“You go to a witch,” I say confidently, feeling my power lick up the surface of my skin, pleased, eager.
Sunday has the audacity to laugh. “And where exactly do I find one of those, pip-squeak?”
I let the silence stretch. Let him fester in it, let him feel something else he doesn’t have the words to explain. I can see the moment the flare of my magic hits him, because he flinches. My eyes linger on the barbed-wire chain settled around his neck, looping around his hawkmoth tattoo.
“What was that?” he breathes.
I lift my hand, palm to ceiling with a single finger extended, letting my magic become an extension of it. I don’t usually use my power so flippantly, magic being a precious well, after all. But this is too good an opportunity to pass up.
I let that phantom tendril slip beneath the chain, let it stroke against the curve of his Adam’s apple. The moment he sucks in a breath, I crook that finger and yank. Hard.
