Page 38 of Another Damned Storm

One eyebrow winged up. “How is it you haven’t gotten any better at lying in all these years?”

Because it hadn’t been years for me. It’d been months. A fact I thought I was handling exceptionally well. “Do you have a bathroom?” I asked innocently.

He rolled his eyes. “It’s a shared bathroom.” He hooked a thumb toward the front door. “Down the hall on the left.”

Even better.

“Thanks.” I pulled myself up off the couch and headed for the door.

“Are you coming back?” he called after me.

I turned to look over my shoulder with a snarky retort on my lips. Those words shriveled when I saw the look on his face. He’d lost almost everyone in his life, including his wife.

“As soon as I can,” I said. I wasn’t about to lie to him about that.

If he was bold enough to ask if I was going to the park, I would tell him. And if he tried to stop me, well, we would have ourselves a little come-to-Jesus about it. He might be in his forties with a whole different kind of life experience, but in my head and in my heart, he would always be my kid brother.

He watched me go without a word. Just in case he got a wild hair to follow me out the door, I did hit the bathroom. I washed my hands, then sniffed the water before ducking my head and drinking straight from the faucet.

Fuck, I was thirsty. And hungry. Also tired, irritated, confused, worried, and all tangled up inside about what I was getting ready to do.

I splashed cool water on my face, then took a minute to stare at myself in the mirror. The red ends in my hair had disappeared a couple of weeks after Hook’s magic worked its way through my body, leaving me with my natural, dark brown. I’d always hated it when I was younger, but now it didn’t bother me so much.

Hook said it set off my eyes, and that man was fascinated by them. He loved the blue, claiming it reminded him of the sea. As I watched, with memories of my broody pirate infiltrating my thoughts, a gentle amber glow began to shine around my irises.

Damn him.

We were in different realms, and he still had a powerful effect on me.

How was that fair?

“Let’s just hope he’s happy to see me,” I said to my tortured reflection.

14

HOOK

I had always known that pixie dust was strong magic, but I had to admit that I hadn’t bothered looking into potential applications for the substance. Before I’d made the mistake of liaising with Anya, I’d had no interest it. And after, I’d wanted nothing to do with the last pixie in the realm.

Aside from killing her.

But she’d stolen a piece of my magic, and I didn’t dare wipe her from existence without rectifying the situation.

Despite the sorrow that had attempted to swallow me whole in the wake of Never’s calculated escape—a feat that made my heart ache and swell with a perverse sense of pride each time I thought of her—ending the wicked pixie’s life had buoyed me in a way. It marked the end of a dark chapter.

And if she could help me in death, all the better.

I leveled Criton with a look that would have made a mortal wither. “Explain your meaning.”

The leather satchel dangled from his fingertips. “Your magic is what anchors you here.”

A fact I was well aware of. I moved my hand, letting it reston the pommel of my sword in a silent warning to hurry things along.

“Pixie dust can be used to travel,” he added quickly.

“Within realms, not between them.” The one caveat was that pixies themselves could travel through the in-between spaces with their magic. They could not, however, use their dust to send others through. Not even if the pixie herself were to make the trip alongside them.

If all a person had to do was sprinkle a little dust on their reckless heads and focus on a pleasant thought in order to fly from this world to that, history would have been filled with airborne fools flitting between worlds.