Page 14

I thought perhaps we would sneak into the Enchanted Forest again, or walk along the harbor, or...well, I didn’t know. But keep in mind the last time he took me out for a romantic evening, there were dancing kobolds and luminous algae involved.

This time, he took me to a strip mall.

And not a cute strip mall, either. Not one of those strip malls with pretty signs and flowers growing in well-maintained planters and little boutiques open late.

“Oh,” I said, as we pulled into the nearly empty parking lot. “This is...”

“Prepare yourself for a night of enchantment,” he said, driving around behind the blocky warehouse building and parking in a pool of shadows untouched by the sparse streetlights.

“I mean, it sure looks enchanting.”

He slanted me an amused grin. “Looks can be deceiving, Glory O’Bryan.”

“I sure hope so,” I muttered. I started to open my car door, but Horst set one hand on my arm, his other moving to his shirt pocket.

“Wait. Not yet,” he said. Then he pulled out his pipes and brought them to his lips, coaxing a strange, enticing melody from the instrument. For a moment, I thought this was, like last time, a romantic gesture, a swirl of sound meant to take my breath away and distract me from all my worries.

But this wasn’t the same tune he’d played before on the beach at the Enchanted Forest, guiding his kobold friends to dance over the water. The song he played now was more discordant, a jangle of notes nowhere near as gorgeous as what he’d played previously.

Distract me ...

Acting on a hunch, I looked over his shoulder through the car’s back window. From that angle, I could just make out a back door into the warehouse, illuminated by a weak overhead security light. And around the edges of that door were shapes.

Dark, moving shapes.

Kobolds.

I looked back at Horst, who was still playing away. “Are you breaking into that building?”

His eyes danced, and he pulled the pipes away from his mouth for a moment. “Little bit, yeah.” Then he returned to playing the song that, as I understood it, walked the kobolds through what to do.

“Horst! If we get arrested—”

He grinned at me as movement by the building caught my eye again. A dark strip appeared as the door opened a few inches. “Believe me, Glory O’Bryan. This is worth getting arrested for.”

“Nothing is worth getting arrested for—again, I might add.”

But despite the fact that I’d already seen Horst arrested—technically twice, although since the second time was after he’d escaped from the back of a cop car during his first arrest, I’m not quite sure that counted—and certainly didn’t want this night to end with another awkward encounter with the police, there wasn’t much heat in my voice.

What can I say? It was nice to have someone to make bad decisions with.

Just before we walked into the building, Horst paused outside the door to play a brief little tune on his pipes, far louder than the one he played before. The pipes were practically screaming. When I winced, he gave me a quick wink.

“Sorry. Sometimes volume matters.” Then he played another short burst of melody, this one softer, before taking my hand and leading me inside the building.

I wasn’t really expecting anything per se—with Horst, I never knew what to expect—but I certainly wasn’t expecting it to actually be a warehouse, complete with shelving and boxes and grim industrial lighting that made the whole place look bleak and sad.

I mean, I knew Horst was capable of turning even the most mundane moment into an adventure, but not even he could transform—

A whooshing sound stopped me in my tracks. “Somebody’s here,” I whispered, squeezing Horst’s hand.

But he merely chuckled. “Don’t worry. It’s nobody human.

” His golden eyes darkened for a moment, and I realized he was talking about his kobolds, who he desperately wanted to transform back into humans.

But then the old sparkle was back, and he led me through the shelves to a large open area.

Aside from the puddles of color at regular interval on the concrete floor, this space looked as bare and cold as the warehouse area.

But then I realized one of those pools of color was...growing. It rose up from the ground, a muddle of gray and red and black and brown filling out until I realized it was some kind of immense inflatable, a bounce house shaped like a shark looming over a pirate ship.

“What...?”

Horst pinched the bridge of his nose. “Guys, we talked about this,” he muttered, pulling out his pipes once again and playing what sounded to me like an annoyed little tune.

Immediately, the whooshing stopped and the shark inflatable began to deflate with a drawn-out hiss.

Then, farther down, more whooshing started up again and a different inflatable began to puff up as it inflated.

This one was a princess castle. A giant princess castle with turrets and crenellation and a slide that brought you down to a drawbridge.

“Oh,” I whispered.

Horst watched me for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he squeezed my hand. “Come on. Let’s check it out.”

We walked over slowly, letting the castle fully inflate before we reached it.

Then we stopped to pull off our shoes—I was amused to see that Horst wore a pair of socks printed all over with images of gummy bear candies—and Horst helped me through the opening to the bouncy portion of the inflatable.

Around me the walls of the castle rose up, printed with climbing roses in so many shades of pink.

The surface under me undulated as Horst climbed in behind me, his eyes fixed on my face.

“It’s something, isn’t it?”

“It’s gorgeous.” I had to keep shifting my weight around to remain steady as I turned in a slow circle, imagining what it would be like to see all this as a child.

If it was this magical for me...

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Bounce Bounce Bounce,” Horst said. “They sell smaller inflatables—that’s what was on the shelves in the back—and they rent out these big ones.

” He bounced a few times, making the bottom of the castle ripple under my feet.

Then he tipped his head toward the back.

“Want to take a look at the view from up top?”

The back of the castle was whatever the bouncy house version of climbing wall was, with generous hand- and footholds to get us to the turret on top. That was where the slide was, but it also offered a view of the place.

Not that it was much of a view. Despite his charm and fairy dust, not even Horst could change our surroundings, which remained a bland gray box broken up only by the deflated bounce houses around us.

“It’s beautiful up here,” Horst said. I thought at first he was making a joke, but then I turned and realized he was watching me intently. Carefully, he reached out one hand and wrapped a finger with one of the pastel locks of my hair. “You fit right in here. You look like a unicorn princess.”

I blushed. “I’m still not always in control of my magic.”

He tugged gently on the strand of hair, then let it fall to my shoulder. Moving closer, he tipped my head up with two fingers beneath my chin. “You don’t have to believe in yourself all the time. Even I don’t always have faith in my magic.”

“You? Mr. Pied Piper himself? He of the big pipe and all the other sexy hashtags?”

He lowered his gaze so his eyes were hidden from me, but not before I saw the flash of something that looked suspiciously like doubt or even fear in those honeyed depths.

Then he swallowed, and when he looked back at me again, he was as poised and collected as ever.

“Don’t mistake stupidity for confidence. ”

“Whatever it is, it’s working for you.”

He raised his other hand, framing my face with his palms, and leaned closer. “If I have confidence in anyone, it’s you. You may not always believe in yourself, but I believe in you enough for both of us, Glory O’Bryan.”

And with that he kissed me, my heart fluttering in my chest as I lost myself in the moment—the whoosh of the fan keeping the princess castle inflated, the warmth of Horst’s fingers on my jawline, the familiar scent of sandalwood almost completely overwhelming the strange plasticky smell of the inflatable, the taste of Horst’s lips on mine, the fireworks bursting behind my closed eyelids.

This was exactly the kind of adventure I wanted. Breaking into warehouses after hours so I could make out in a princess bouncy castle with a man who made me believe fairy dust is real and that I was stronger than I thought.

I mean, I supposed it would have been better without the breaking and entering part, but sometimes you have to take a few risks to find magic.

Horst’s hands slid down my back and tightened on my hips. “Want to test out the slide?”

He managed to make it sound much dirtier than sliding down a bouncy castle slide should sound. “By ‘test out the slide,’ what exactly do you mean?”

His fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt. “You know what a slide is,” he said, trailing kisses from the spot under my ear down my throat.

“I know, but you seem awfully excited for a guy who’s about to zip down a pretty short slide.”

“Hmmm. Good point. It does seem a little boring, doesn’t it?” He drew back, his face scrunching up as he made a point of looking like he was deep in thought. “Hey, you know what might make it more interesting? If we weren’t wearing clothes.”

“We’re not having sex in a bouncy castle,” I said.

His eyes widened in faux shock. “Glory O’Bryan! You and that dirty mind of yours. Who said anything about sex?”

“Your hands are certainly doing a lot of talking at the moment.”

“Really?” He leaned back in to nibble my ear. “Do you find them persuasive?”

“Sir, this is a kids’ princess castle.”

“Didn’t sound like a no to me.” He started to sweep his hands upward, taking the fabric of my shirt with them.

“I’m not sure I meant it to.”

Not that it was a yes, either, mind you. No matter how magical that night seemed, I wasn’t about to actually have sex in a bounce house that got rented out for kids’ parties.

But I could still lose myself in the moment when Horst kissed me again, his hands still slowly working my shirt up my body, the sound of the fan keeping the castle inflated rising sharply, almost like...

Sirens.

Police sirens.