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Tentatively, I make my way into the living room, a worn leather couch rests on a shaggy fur rug. His coffee table is a giant wooden chest, the brass buckles dull with age.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Callie.”

I love your place.

I want to bury my bare feet into that shaggy rug and feel the fur tickle my toes. I want to sprawl out on his couch and hang out with the Bargainer like we used to.

“I never realized how close you lived,” I say instead.

His eyes narrow, like he knows I didn’t speak my mind.

I crane my neck and try to peer down a darkened hallway.

“Want a tour of the place?” he asks, leaning against one of his walls. With his low-slung jeans and windswept hair, he looks like he invented the wordsexiness, which is really annoying when you’re determined to harden your heart against someone.

I’m nodding before I think better of it.

So much for hardening my heart.

And so the Bargainer shows me his house, from the fancy kitchen to the guestroom I so recently furnished. The only two rooms he doesn’t show me are one, the room that contains a portal to the Otherworld—the land of the fae—and two, his bedroom, a.k.a., the two most interesting rooms in his house.

We end up back in his kitchen, an area of his house that, while much more polished than mine, is nonetheless a place you want to linger.

“Why did you bring me here?” I ask, idly opening a copper canister he has sitting against the wall. At first I think I’m staring at flour, but when it catches the light, it shimmers.

Fairy dust?

Instead of answering, Des sets the canister I hold aside and grabs my wrist. He runs a hand over my bracelet. “Tonight I want a truth from you,” he says, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Tell me, cherub, what have you been up to in the last seven years?”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, I can feel the magic compelling me to talk. It’s not pushy like it was last night, because there is no time limit to this, but it does coat my tongue, beckoning me to speak.

“I went to Peel Academy for one more year,” I begin, “ and that’s when I met my best friend Temper.”

I swear I see him react to even that one little detail. He once held the prize position of my best friend, odd match though we were.

“She got me through that last year.” I don’t need to elaborate for him to understand that the thing I wasgetting throughwas him.

The hand that still hold my wrist now tightens.

“On graduation night Temper and I left the UK. We moved to L.A. and started our own business.”

“Ah, yes, West Coast Investigations is it?” he says.

My eyes widen before I can help it. “You know about it?”

He releases my hand. “I’m the Bargainer, I know all about your little business.” He says that like he keeps tabs on everyone. “Seems I’m not the only one extracting secrets these days.”

I can’t tell whether he’s pleased, or annoyed.

“Does that bother you?” I ask.

“It pleases me. And itangersme that it pleases me.” He frowns, folding his arms over his chest. “I never wanted you to end up like me.” All the trickery is gone from his voice when he says that.

“I didn’t realize that you cared one way or another.” Is that bitterness my voice? I think it is.

He gives me a rueful smile. “Tell me about your business.” He says this innocently enough, but I still feel his magic on my tongue, forcing me to answer.

“Temper and I are in private investigation. She uses her spells to catch criminals, find missing persons, and”—scare the living crap out of people—“other things. I use my glamour to compel people to confess, or to act against their base nature.” I think of Mickey, my last client, as I say this.