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Dranian passed the cards around and everyone picked theirs up.

“Aren’t you going to apologize for avoiding us, Mor?” Shayne asked and Cress thought about punching him through the window.

“No,” Mor stated. “I told you to stay away, and you didn’t.” He splayed his cards in his hands and began sorting them. “I should rip you apart, limb by limb, Shayne. And stop trying to flirt with my secretary.”

“Limb by limb?” Kate asked in disgust. “Do you guys always have to be so gross when you make threats?”

“Oh, they’re not threats,” Cress promised. “I assure you, almost every act you’ve heard us speak of is one we had to perform at one time or another.”

Kate and Lily looked up from their cards.

“Seriously?” they both asked at once.

“Even when you threatened to spoon feed Dranian flesh-eating ants that would ‘devour him from the inside out?’ You actuallydid thatto someone before?” Kate no longer seemed interested in the card game.

Cress blinked. “Did you think we wereniceassassins?” he asked with mild sarcasm. “Did you think we danced around to flute music and strummed songs of the Jade Ocean on golden harps for a living?”

A look was exchanged between the human females.

“You just said you wanted to kill a faeborn Shadow Fairy,” Mor added toward Lily. He poked himself between the eyes, mimicking her. “Remember? How absurd for you to be queasy now.”

“Well, Iwouldhave taken him out if you’d let me,” Lily said, and to Cress’s surprise, she didn’t drop her gaze like she was uttering a falsehood. Still…

“Killing is easy,” Cress said. “Killing Shadow Fairies is not. But I’m well practiced,” he bragged. “I watched dozens take their last breath because of the poison I put in their drink, or the fairsaber I plunged through their faeborn heart, or the water I held them beneath until their faeborn lungs—”

“Stop it, Cress!” Kate smacked the tabletop. “You’re going to give us nightmares. Un-real.”

Cress shrugged. “Mor once chucked a fairy into a pit of childling crossbeasts so he’d die slowly,” he said.

Everyone at the table looked at Mor. Mor seemed like he was about to protest the claim, then he looked like he was about to explain himself like there was a perfectly good reason for what he did, then he seemed to realize it was better to not say anything at all.

Dranian, who’d remained quiet during the whole conversation, piped up and said, “Shayne once dragged a faeborn fool through a village by his nose. Broke it right off in the end.”

Shayne grinned. “I did. It was hilarious.”

Kate became a strange shade of flushed. Lily put one hand over her eyes and the other over her human belly. Mor, Cress, and Shayne took turns pinching their mouths shut to hide smirks.

Suddenly Lily stood. “Excuse me while I go barf,” she said, rushing for the stairs to Kate’s apartment.

“Humans have such weak stomachs,” Dranian murmured.

Shayne nodded. “You’d think the ugly one would have a higher tolerance for punishments. She is the human version of a guard here in this realm.”

Kate put the backs of her hands against her cheeks. “Lily isnotugly. She was the prettiest girl in our high school. All the guys liked her.”

Shayne chuckled and laid a card to start the game. “That’s why I call her ugly. She thinks she’s tougher than me, prettier than me, and better at café-ing than me. And besides, she told you to send us away in the beginning, remember? One of us has to put her in her place for that,” he said.

Kate poorly stifled an eye roll.

“I think when she comes back, I’ll tell her about the time I caught an elf spy and flicked out his eyeballs—”

Kate smacked her cards down on the table again, cutting Shayne off and revealing her cards to everyone else playing. Cress leaned forward a little to see before she could pull them back to hide them again.

“I can’t hear any more!” she said. “If any of you say one more word about death, or killing, or torture,I’llbe the one to send you away this time. Got it?”

All four fairy assassins scowled and snuggled deeper into their seats, eyes dropping to their cards. Dranian laid a card, taking Shayne out of the first round.

Cress waited a few seconds for the game to go on. Then he leaned over to Mor and whispered loudly in his ear, “Remember that time you fired a flaming arrow right into that fool’s open mouth while he was shouting—”