Page 2

Chapter Two

It wasn’t Callum who arrived at Damon’s house thirty minutes later.

The nixling hadn’t moved from the deck, watching me curiously. Callum had instructed me not to let it in and not to try to stop it if it left. I’d told the security detail someone was coming over. They didn’t mention the nixling, which made me wonder if it was using an illusion to hide from the cameras.

Which left me with not much choice but to sit and wait for him to turn up and deal with it.

But it was Gráinne, not Callum, waving at me through the security camera. She’d swapped the black leathers she usually wore in the realm for black jeans and a black leather hoodie. She wasn’t carrying a sword, but I was sure she had plenty of weapons hidden under her clothes. But it was unmistakably her. Black hair braided back from her face, black metal rings in her ears. She was shorter than her twin brother—shorter than me for that matter—but she was as startlingly beautiful as Callum was handsome and her green-gold eyes were the same unusual shade as his.

“Callum sent you?” I asked through the speaker. Since our trek through the realm a month or so ago and my altercation with Usuriel, Lord of the Nichtkin, Cerridwen had started sending Gráinne to assist her brother in his training duties outside the realm. Sometimes they traded off who was in the realm versus out here. And sometimes they were both in San Francisco or Berkeley at the same time. Like tonight.

She nodded. “He was busy.”

That sounded like him. “Come on in.”

The gates swung inward and Gráinne strolled through, looking perfectly at ease. She hadn’t been to Damon’s house before—we’d been meeting at the training gym Damon owned in Berkeley—but she seemed almost as at home in the human world as her brother. Their family worked for Cerridwen—or served, I didn’t know the exact term for the relationship. Their mission was to deal with demons and any other Fae creatures causing problems within the realm or outside of it. But the door to the realm in Berkeley had been closed after the Big One and only recently restored. So the city must have changed since Grainne had last spent much time here. Then again, the decade or so since the earthquake that had levelled parts of San Francisco was a blink of an eye for a Fae.

And Fae were masters at not showing their hand. Playing it cool was their superpower.

I met Gráinne at the door.

“Where is the nixling?” she asked.

Straight to the point. “Out back. There’s a deck attached to the house and it’s sitting there.” Unless it had decided to bolt when I’d left the gym.

“It hasn’t tried to get in?”

“Not so far. It’s watching.”

“They are nosy.” Gráinne glanced right and left, brows drawing down as her eyes narrowed. “And this house is well-warded.”

“It is. But it still got in somehow.”

“Well, they are sneaky as well as nosy. They’re slippery when it comes to wards. After all, it got through the door.”

“Or someone let it out,” I muttered. “If it escaped itself, what’s it doing here? We’re a long way from Berkeley. I doubt it rode the BART.”

“True. But this house also stands out to anyone following the magic in the city, because of the wards.”

“It does?” I blurted, startled. Then felt dumb. Of course it did. To anyone with magic, the warding would be obvious. I didn’t know how much power Cassandra and Lizzie had sunk into the wards, but between them and me and Callum, there was plenty of magic invested in protecting the property.

“I could feel it well before I saw it,” Gráinne said. “But I am Fae. Perhaps to witches, it is not such a distraction. Your magic is strange, after all.”

I bit back the retort that it was Fae magic that was weird, not human. Gráinne was here to help, not get insulted. Fae were prickly beings, quick to take offense at the slightest thing. I had fought beside Gráinne and trained with her, but I’d still only known her a short time. I didn’t know what might upset her.

“So it came to the city somehow and got curious?” On the scale of unlikely coincidences, that one seemed way up there.

Gráinne gave me one of those graceful Fae shrugs her brother was so good at. “Perhaps, rather than talking about it, you take me to the creature and we can find out?”

Best suggestion yet. I wanted the nixling out. Preferably without Damon waking up. He didn’t need yet another piece of Fae weirdness dropped in his lap.

Righteous—as the gamers called his company, Riley Arts—were getting ready to release their newest game at their second annual tournament. Last year’s had been a smash. At least as far as launching Serenity Falls was concerned. The game was now one of their biggest sellers. Less good was the part where Jack Miller had wormed himself into the tournament, hoping to carry out some plan we still hadn’t uncovered. We knew part of it was using a method of locking people into a VR environment, overriding the layers and layers of safeguards that had been built in to prevent that very thing. He’d fled after a fight with me and some of the Cestis, which had resulted in my house burning down.

Damon was obsessed with hunting Jack down. Not only for the damage he’d done to us personally, but because he viewed Jack’s corruption of the technology he loved so much as a personal offense. Trying to catch Jack was how we’d ended up in the Fae realm and met a nixling in the first place.

“Inside or outside?” I asked Gráinne.

She grinned. “Outside. A nixling does not pose much threat. They bite, yes, but so do I.”

Easy for her to say. She could turn into a big-ass wolf dog, like her brother. The s’ealg oiche were shapeshifters as well as warriors.

I, on the other hand, could not grow teeth and claws. I could set the nixling on fire, but burning non-demonic creatures was not something I wanted to do. I’d feel better with a weapon. But my practice swords were back in the gym and my gun was locked in the gun safe in our bedroom.

“If you wish for a weapon, I have plenty,” Gráinne added, reaching beneath her jacket. She pulled out a long dagger and passed it to me. “Not that you should need one.”

I tested the dagger’s weight, turning it in my hand. It was gorgeous, the hilt black metal inlaid with silver in a pattern of stars. The black blade glinted under the porch light. I didn’t need to test it to know it would be wickedly sharp. It was probably Gráinne’s own work.

“It’s lovely.” Admiration was safe enough. Better than thanking her. ‘Thank you’ could be taken to imply an obligation. I gestured to my right with the dagger. “It’s this way.”

Gráinne paced silently at my side as we walked around the house. Small lights hidden in the beds along the path brightened some as we passed, enough that there was no risk of stumbling over a stray branch or stone. Damon’s gardeners kept the grounds immaculate but even they weren’t on call twenty-four-seven to deal with the aftermath of weather or say, stray Fae creatures with no respect for boundaries. I always felt clumsy around the Fae, humans not being built to move with their ease. The last thing I wanted was to trip and scare the nixling away or, you know, stab myself by falling on a dagger.

My training with Cerridwen and Callum had improved my fighting skills immeasurably, not to mention my fitness. I could do things I’d never imagined even attempting, let alone pulling off, but I’d never be able to move as easily through the world as the Fae did.

Gráinne was wearing leather, but it didn’t make a sound. Damon had given me a leather jacket early in our relationship. It was expensive. Handmade, nano-coated, reinforced, and soft as butter, but it still made some noise when I moved. Gráinne might as well have been wearing air.

The nixling was still perched in the same place when we rounded the corner of the house. It turned its head, golden eyes blinking once as we approached the deck.

When we were about ten feet away, Gráinne put a hand out to stop me, studying the nixling, her brows drawing down again. “That’s not one of Cerridwen’s.”

The nixling yawned at this pronouncement, baring its teeth. I resisted the urge to show it the dagger. Show it I had pointy sharp things, too.

“Is that good or bad?” I whispered.

“There are nixling in several of the territories,” Gráinne said. “But the largest populations are in our Lady’s and, well, Lord Usuriel’s.”

Fuck . Just what we didn’t need. The Lord of the Nichtkin was kind of terrifying and he didn’t like me. I’d been clinging to the idea he wasn’t going to be a problem as long as I avoided his territory for, say, ten or twenty years. I’d combed through the Archives to try to learn more about him but I hadn’t found much.

Witches either didn’t cross paths with him often or didn’t survive to tell the tale if they did.

I’d asked Aubrey Carter—one of the UK Cestis—if they had anything about him or his Nichtkin and she’d found a little more from their Archives, but nothing truly helpful. Usuriel ruled one of the darker parts of Fae. He played politics, but all the Elders did. He shared Cerridwen’s determination to protect the realm from demonkind but, unlike her, seemed to view me as a threat to that goal, rather than a tool to use fighting them.

So. Scary. Powerful. Not a fan of me. All reasons he might send a creature to spy on me. Though, if stealth was his aim, the nixling was failing.

“Is it one of his?” I managed over a mouth gone dry with the thought of Usuriel deciding to interfere here in the human world. “Can you talk to it?”

“I can.” She turned a stern look at the cat and issued a rapid-fire stream of Fae. The only words I could make out were s’ealg oiche. The nixling’s ears flicked forward and it seemed a little less certain. Callum and Gráinne and their kind weren’t quite the same as the Cestis, but they had a lot of authority in the Fae. Hopefully the nixling was smart enough to recognize that and cooperate.

Gráinne waited a moment, then sighed. “It won’t tell me.”

“Aren’t you like Fae police?”

“Not as you think of them. The nixling hasn’t hurt anyone. I can take it back to the realm, but I can’t force it to talk to me.”

“Hasn’t it broken the rules, coming through the door?”

“Yes. Passage through the door still requires authorization, and I don’t think anyone is granting that to stray nixlings.”

The nixling’s ears flattened briefly, as though protesting being called a stray.

“Cerridwen controls the door, you work for her, doesn’t it have to do what you say?”

“Like I said, I can make it return with me,” Gráinne said, fixing a stern look on the creature. “It would be foolish to think it can evade me. But that doesn’t mean it will answer questions. It’s a lesser Fae. It might not have had a choice. And be bound not to tell. The Lady may be able to make it answer once I return it to the realm.”

The nixling flicked its ear again and made a rumbling noise somewhere between a purr and a growl.

“Anything?” I asked.

“It—she—says no one sent her.”

“Can the lesser Fae lie?” The Fae themselves could not, but I didn’t know if the same applied to the creatures who lived in the realm with them.

Gráinne nodded. “Sadly, yes.”

Not helpful. This whole conversation was useless if the nixling could lie. “How did she get through the door if no one sent her?”

The nixling’s tails coiled for a moment before settling back at its feet.

Gráinne was frowning. “She says she followed someone through. And no, she didn’t say who.”

“Could she do that?”

“They are skilled at hiding,” Gráinne admitted. “They are excellent hunters; their magic makes them hard to notice. And some of them can get around wards. So it’s possible. But ‘follow someone through’ doesn’t necessarily mean she was sneaking out. It could mean someone led her out deliberately.”

“And I’m guessing she’s not going to tell us which one she means.”

“No.”

“So, what happens now?”

“I will take her back with me and we will take it from there.”

“I’d like to know why she came here.”

“So would I.”

I jumped half out of my skin. Damon. Crap . So much for dealing with this before he woke up. The man was too damned stealthy. I blew out a breath, trying to ignore the pulse pounding in my ears, and turned to face him, pasting on a ‘everything’s fine’ smile. “Hey,” I said, somewhat lamely.

One brow lifted. He wore dark gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, his short dark hair somewhat rumpled from sleep. But there was no trace of sleepiness in his narrow-eyed glare.

Damn it .

“What’s going on?” He directed the question at Gráinne.

“Maggie called me,” Gráinne said, nodding at the nixling. “You have a visitor she wanted me to deal with.”

“So I see.” His gaze slanted back to me, the expression in his brilliant blue eyes annoyed. “You didn’t think to wake me up?”

“You needed to sleep.”

“You need to not take on Fae creatures by yourself,” he retorted.

“I didn’t,” I protested. “I called Callum. He sent Gráinne. And nothing bad has happened.”

“Other than that.” He nodded at the nixling. “It shouldn’t be here, should it?”

“No. And I will be removing it shortly,” Gráinne said cheerfully. Her lack of concern didn’t seem to improve Damon’s mood.

His gaze returned to me. “Good. Which brings me to the question of why it’s here.”

“We don’t know,” I admitted. “The nixling isn’t talking. Gráinne will take it back to the realm and Cerridwen will see what she can find out.” I tried to match Gráinne’s cheerful, nothing to worry about tone.

He lifted one dark eyebrow at me again and then turned to Gráinne. “Do you need a car to take you back to the Rose Garden?”

“Yes, that would be useful.” Gráinne pounced, grabbing the nixling before it could try to get away. It didn’t struggle, but instead just lay in her arms like an overgrown housecat, only the twitch of its tails suggesting it might be annoyed. Though even annoyed, apparently it knew better than to take on one of the s’ealg oiche.

Damon glanced up at the nearest security cam. “Madge? We need a car out front.”

It wouldn’t take long. Sure enough, by the time Gráinne had carried the nixling around to the front of the house, the gates were swinging open to admit Boyd driving Damon’s usual sleekly expensive but unremarkable town car. Damon opened the door as soon as the car came to a stop and Gráinne climbed inside with one last instruction to me to check the wards, just in case.

Boyd drove back out through the gates and they closed again, leaving Damon and me alone outside the house.

“There,” I said brightly. “All taken care of. Let’s go back in.”

Damon was staring at the gates as though expecting them to open again and more trouble to saunter through.

I nudged him with my shoulder. “Inside. Sleep.”

He shook his head. “Mitch will be here soon.”

Well, crap. I thought I’d avoided Damon’s security getting involved.

“Can’t he wait until morning?”

Damon shook his head. “That thing got in here without setting off any warnings, despite every way this house is protected. He’s going to want to do a full sweep.”

He would. And no doubt he’d be asking me some questions. Mitch Angelico, Damon’s head of security, was a man who left no stone unturned. Ever. He was annoyingly efficient at his job and annoyingly thorough. I could probably kiss any thought of getting to bed in the next few hours goodbye.

“In that case, inside and coffee.” I suppressed a sigh. “I’ll send Cassandra a message, let her know what happened, too.”

Which would no doubt result in a lecture from Cassandra as well, even though none of this was my fault. I hadn’t let the damned nixling in. I hadn’t even been near the realm recently, so it couldn’t have followed me out. Or, if it had, it had taken its damned time following me home.

Damon nodded and held out his hand. I took it gratefully, recognizing the gesture for what it was. Him letting me know he wasn’t mad with me. Falling for me had brought a lot of complications to his life. Just as falling for him had complicated mine. Dating a billionaire had shoved me into a world I knew nothing about, at the same time I was learning I had magic. It had been an adjustment for both of us, one that had torn us apart at one point.

But we’d made our way back to each other and mostly by agreeing to take the good with the bad. If we wanted each other, then that came with security teams and restrictions and paparazzi, as well as magic and Fae and other weirdness.

Still, it was hard sometimes, in my weaker moments—like when I was sleep-deprived and stressed—not to worry Damon might one day decide it was all too much.