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“That’s not comforting.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you wanted me to lie.” He cleared his throat. “Ace would never! How dare you even think slander about my honorable partner who’s in fascination with you and is basically a murder spree waiting to happen and would view any male daemon as competition until he makes sweet love to you. The gall. The nerve. The balls on you must be bigger than my head.”
“Clay…”
“Asa wouldn’t murder him.” His eyes crinkled at the corners, then he muttered, “Not where you would catch him.”
Annoyed with my former partner, I stalked off in the direction the footprints indicated, listening for heartbeats to guide me. I picked them out soon enough and homed in on their location.
“Do you hear that?” Clay caught up to me. “It sounds like baby chicks.”
As I absorbed that, I noted a skyrocketing pulse in one of the daemons ahead and broke into a run.
“Oh, crap.” I splashed through the trickle of water, mud sucking at my boots. “They found the nest.”
“Go help.” Clay slowed to a walk. “I’ll be right back.”
“Are you serious?” I yelled over my shoulder. “This is not the time to BRB, Clay.”
The golem spun in the direction of the truck, and I let him go without a fight. I could no longer hear the daemons over the thudding of my heart in my ears, and a metallic taste flooded my mouth. I pushed myself harder, faster, leaping a rotting fence to reach the daemons battling in an old cotton field.
Hard to miss the turquoise guy running circles around a huge crimson and black dude who laughed uproariously while blowing a tune on the stone Aedan had fashioned as a dobhar-chú call.
“Rue.” The daemon waved to me. “We found babies.”
“Little,” Aedan panted and kept sprinting, “brats.”
A short distance away, I hesitated to join them. “Why are you running?”
“He taste like fish.” The daemon threw his head back, bellowing with mirth. “They want to eat him.”
“This isn’t funny.” Six dog-sized otters bounded after him. “Zap them, Rue.”
As much as I begged to disagree—it was hilarious—I pitied him. He and Asa had been gone a while, and Aedan was still recovering from his wounds. He must be getting tired, and the daemon was no help. Between bursts of laughter, he kept blowing on the stone, which agitated the pups even worse.
“Okay, okay.” I debated my options. “I’ve got something that will knock them out.”
“I don’t care if you kill them.” Aedan craned his neck to yell at them. “You’re all hats. All of you. Hats.”
Not sure monster otter fur hats were a thing, but maybe it was daemon high fashion.
Smothering a laugh, I entered the fray, which sobered the daemon in a blink.
“Rue,” he warned. “Fluffies bite hard.” He pointed to Aedan’s bleeding calves. “Big teeth.”
“I have to touch them with my wand.” I patted his cheek. “Guess you’ll have to protect me.”
“Always,” he promised, fist over his heart. “Rue mine.”
“Keep telling yourself that, big guy.”
“Okay.” He brightened at the permission. “I will.”
Good thing there were no trees around, or I might have been tempted to bang my head against one.
“Remember me?” Aedan zigzagged toward us. “The guy being eaten alive by mini dobhar-chú?”
“Let’s start from the end and work our way up to that chubby guy.” I waited until Aedan ran past, jogged to catch up, then tapped the straggler. It stiffened and fell sideways with a gasp. “One down, five to go.”
