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Allie was like that right now, a light show in motion. Clad in designer boots and a pair of elegant trousers, she might look like her usual self, but that was topped with a bright red bandana tied around her throat like she was going to tug it up and rob a bank. She finished her uniform with an armory vest, and under it, a sequined t-shirt that announced “I warned you. Now you get the horns.” The bull’s eyes—on either side of the word “you”—were big red stones. On anyone else, I’d think they were fake. With Allie, you never really knew.
I didn’t even try to smother my grin. “I missed you.”
I stepped out and accepted the weapon she handed me.
“Sorry you were kidnapped and imprisoned,” she said lightly. “Oh! Do you need a snack?”
Two of the hillbilly mafia with her—wearing forest camouflage despite our setting—jerked open doors of cells once Allie had blown the locks.
I mutely accepted what looked like a homemade popsicle out of a freezer bag. Blood ice cubes weren’t as silly looking, but I wasn’t going to turn it down. “I wonder if you can make a jello shot sort of thing,” I asked.
She handed me a couple airplane bottles. Vodka. I awkwardly stuffed the popsicle in my mouth long enough to twist them open.
“I had a hard lemonade, but Ike was nervous, so . . .” Allie shrugged. “I gave it to him.”
The refrigerator-sized man in flannel who looked sheepish was obviously Ike. “Must be cool to live on booze, right?”
“Tiny already does,” another man said. “Ain’t that right, Tiny?”
I slid the hunting knife into a holster. It was a terrible fit, but it was just for a moment while I drained the vodka bottles.
“I like popsicles too,” the tallest of the men, Tiny, said, eying up my blood-pop. “What kind of juice is that? Looks like you used food coloring. Strawberries?”
Apparently, breaking and entering or jailbreaks weren’t enough to rattle them. I wasn’t sure that the contents of my meal would be, but I didn’t feel like checking. Knife back in one hand, popsicle in the other, I looked at Iggy and Nora who were having a heated conversation in whispers.
“I’m okay with Iggy and Nora staying here and—”
“Nope.” Allie popped the word. “Lady B says they need to go home.” She started to direct the troops, checking the other cells and marching toward a wall.
It looked like we were headed deeper into the dungeon, though, which was exactly the wrong direction.
“Revolveress?” Iggy called.
“What kind of pissant weasel makes cells ofironin a fae world?” Allie gestured at the jail cells. Then she motioned to the fae guards at her side. “Look at them. It would make them all sorts of sick to be trapped here.”
“Allie!”
She looked at me.
“That’s a dead end.” I pointed with the knife.
And she gave me another of those ridiculous, beautiful, mad grins. “It’s a door.” Then she stepped around me and opened a passageway to my house. “Take the boys, please.”
One of the guards bowed to me. “We go where you go.”
“I need to see a man about his lies,” Allie said, as at least three of her cousins flinched. One covered his balls with a hand. Allie ignored that and glared at each of them before saying, “She’s family to me, you hear? Don’t be a bother.”
The chorus of “yes, Cousin Al” and “on it, cuz” and “you sound like Glory” must’ve been appeasing because she shooed them forward—Iggy went first to avoid any stabbings on the other side--and then I was back home with guests.
24
GENEVIÈVE
“Where is Alice?” Beatrice asked as we stepped into my house.
“She’s fine,” I offered—because that was what Beatrice really wanted to know.
Her gaze scoured me like she was an anxious mother and I’d blown curfew, so I knew she was already certain of my safety. Still, she paused, “I am pleased no one is dead.”
