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The phone was still ringing, but nobody was picking up. “Why not those?”
She glanced at Ray. “’Cause if that’s your man, I’d say you can leave these off,” and she pushed the three biggest sizes to the side.
“Oh, no, you didn’t,” Ray said.
“It’s your own fault,” I told him. She might have thought it, but she probably wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t been snacking earlier. But that sort of thing puts some people in a bad mood—usually those with enough magical blood to recognize the theft but not to name it. And the anger tends to resolve itself into a generalized dislike of the vamp in question.
And then someone picked up. “Oui?”
Damn. I thought about hanging up, pretending to be a wrong number, as cowardly as that would have been. But I guess he recognized my breathing or something—which was disturbing enough right there—because he said, “Dory?”
“What are you doing there?” I asked, harsher than I’d intended.
“I was about to ask you the same. Where are you?”
“Buying condoms,” I said, watching the salesclerk ring up a box of mediums and hand them to Ray.
“Why?”
“Is there more than one reason?” I asked, because “we have a garden full of randy fey” wasn’t on the approved-conversation list.
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“What’s this shit?” Ray demanded, looking at the salesclerk.
“Honey, truth hurts, but ain’t no way you’re a Magnum.”
“Well, I ain’t no medium!”
The clerk smiled. “Yeah, but I was being generous.”
“Dorina,” Louis-Cesare finally said. “You do realize…I thought you had been with our kind before.”
“I have.”
“Then why…” He stopped. And when he spoke again, his voice had changed. “Who are they for?”
“What are you doing?” the cashier demanded, as Ray grabbed another box. “I ain’t rung those up yet.”
Ray pulled out a foil package and tossed the box back on the counter. “So ring it up.”
She arched an eyebrow, but didn’t bother, maybe because she was watching him unbutton his fly. I caught his wrist. “What are you doing?”
“Proving a point.”
“Not in the middle of the store, you’re not.”
“Ain’t nobody here,” the cashier reminded me, grinning. “And ain’t no way he’s filling that thing out.”
“Dorina?” Louis-Cesare’s voice was loud in my ear. The one I had squeezed against the phone, which was squeezed against my sore shoulder, because I was using both hands to keep Ray’s point in his pants.
“The fey, damn it!” I told him. “They’re for the fey!”
“Which one?” Louis-Cesare asked, his voice going velvety soft.
“All of them— No, Ray! Ray, cut it out!”
“All of them?”
