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His brows pull together.

I glance back down at my boots and kick at a patch of grass. “It’s hard pretending to be normal after … you know.”After you off someone.I exhale. “I think I have to put myself back together before I make friends. Real friends.”

I can’t believe I just admitted that. I rarely admit these things even to myself.

Des tips my chin up, his face serious. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, though I’m sure a million different things are going on in his devious mind.

“How about I make you a queen for a night?” he finally says.

I give him a queer look. But before I can read into his intentions, a line of small, twinkling lights appear over his shoulder. As they get closer I hear the buzzing of their wings.

Fireflies. A whole group of them. They fly in one single, orderly line.

My eyes cut to Des, who’s smiling softly. This is clearly his work.

The twinkling fireflies circle me before—horror of horrors—they descend on top of my head.

“I have bugs in my hair,” I tell him, my shoulders tense.

“You have a crown,” he corrects, smirking and leaning against the stone wall.

This is his idea of a crown? I can feel them moving about my hair, and it takes everything in me not to swat them all away.

I’m not really a bug person.

One of the fireflies tumbles off, landing on my scarf. It then proceeds to crawl beneath my scarf and down my shirt.

“Oh my God!” I squeal.

“Naughty bugs,” Des chastises, coming over and helping me scoop the firefly up, “stay away from the pretty human boobs.”

Did he just call my boobs pretty?

The Bargainer captures the bug in his fist, his knuckles grazing my skin. He steps away from me and, opening his palm, releases the glowing critter. The two of us watch it drunkenly canter back to my hair.

I can just barely make out their luminescent bodies flickering above me. The whole thing is so ridiculous and strange that I begin to laugh. “Des, are you trying to cheer me up?”

But when I get a good look at him, he’s not laughing. The insects’ light dances in his eyes as he stares at me, lips parted.

Des blinks, and it’s like he’s returning from wherever his mind drifted.

He takes my hand. “Let’s get out of here. You hungry?” he asks. “Dinner’s on me.”

I squeeze his palm, feeling like something between us changed for the better. But I don’t address it; there’s nothing like a good confession to scare the Bargainer away.

“Dinner’sonyou?” I say instead. “Now that sounds interesting …”

He flashes me a wicked smile, his eyes twinkling. “Cherub, I may make a fairy out of you yet.”

Present

I’m already elbowdeep into my work by the time Temper saunters into West Coast Investigations, slamming open the door to her office. That woman is like a hurricane.

I hear her click on her message machine and then, a moment later, I hear the tinny sound of a message.

Sipping my coffee, I once again check the Most Wanted list.

The Bargainer is still listed as the third most wanted criminal in the supernatural world. Whatever strings Eli pulled, they’re still holding.