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No wonder he wanted them dead.
I suddenly noticed that my eyes were wet. I wasn’t the weeping type, but the depth of his pain was palpable. And not just the emotional kind, I realized, catching sight of the blood leaking out from under the pad the woman had put on his chest. She might have done her best, but it wasn’t good enough. He needed stitches, or whatever the troll equivalent was.
Because, no matter how strong you are, you can still bleed out.
Screw it.
I took out my phone and called Claire.
She showed up faster than I’d expected, an old trench coat over her nightgown and her hair in the kind of big foam curlers that make for nice, loose curls the next day. She’d brought her kit, but been smart enough to leave the Light Fey at home.
“Thanks,” I told her, as she paid the cabbie, because I’d managed to drown the lambo. “By the way, did I ever say sorry about your car?”
“Fuck the car.” She pushed a strand of red hair out of her eyes. “Where are they?”
I led her down to the water’s edge, not knowing what kind of reception we were going to get. But to my surprise, the selkies took one look at her and crowded up on land, as much as they could with the rocks in the way. Blue didn’t react, except to watch her as she examined his fellow fey and dispensed one of her patented horrible-smelling concoctions.
“They’re so thin,” she murmured.
“Yeah, I don’t think they’ve eaten much lately. And they didn’t like jerky and Cheetos.”
Her lip curled. “Who does?”
I bit back a reply about Claire’s ten thousand recipes for chickpeas, because this wasn’t the time.
“We need to get them home,” I said instead.
“And put them where?”
“They could stay . . . in the dining room?”
“I thought the vampires were in the dining room. Or did you move them upstairs?”
Shit.
“You, uh, you know about that?”
She shot me a look. “Dory. I have a houseful of fey guards. They don’t miss much.”
Yeah.
Probably should have thought of that.
“And you’re not upset?”
She sat back on her heels, and looked sort of sad. “I’m upset that you feel like you have to sneak people around. It’s your house, too.”
I sat there blinking, but she was already moving on to Blue. I tensed a little; I don’t know why. I knew what she was, what she could do. But she looked so tiny next to his massive bulk that I worried anyway.
Until I saw the most amazing thing I’d seen all night. The huge, battle-scarred, fearsome troll; the guy who had dangerous slavers quaking in their boots; the guy who had torn apart a warehouse full of who knew what kind of traps, snares, and hexes, not one, not two, but three nights in a row, and that after kicking ass at a no-holds-barred epic fight—that guy—relaxed back against the tree and closed his eyes.
And fell asleep.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Half an hour later, I was pouring a two-liter of water over Claire’s green-to-the-elbow arms, and Big Blue had a bunch of concrete in his chest. At least, that’s what it looked like. I assumed it was something more medicinal, since Claire had troweled it straight into the big wounds, where it finally stopped the seepage.
It had also left Blue looking like an about-to-be-vacated apartment, with spackle everywhere, but apparently it would be absorbed by the body as it healed and wouldn’t do any harm. And it didn’t look like it had hurt him, since he’d snored through most of it. In other news, my car was back without noticeable damage, and so was a truck, which Fin had had a couple of his boys bring over, since he hadn’t been able to find anyone to install a hitch in the middle of the night.
