We’d unmake the world.
Graham made himself ease the kiss to its end. Misty gazed up at him, eyes warm, her lips parted. Her anger had been erased for now, and what he read in her was desire. Moisture lingered behind her lower lip, and Graham licked it away.
It took all his strength to relax his arms around her, to let go. Misty had been on tiptoe, and now she thumped back on her heels. She stared up at him, unblinking, her lips slightly swollen.
Graham pointed his finger at her face and ended up touching her lightly on the nose. “You and me,” he said. “We’re not done.”
He turned and walked away. Killed him to do it, but you didn’t say an exit line and then not leave the stage. You didn’t even look back to see if she stared after you, longing in her eyes, no matter how much you wanted to.
• • •
Graham wouldn’t go home. After his searing kiss and the parting shot, Misty expected him to be long gone when she came back inside the house, but no. He was talking to Reid in the living room, his loud, harsh syllables drowning out Reid’s quieter ones.
Xav had cleaned up the broken bowl and given the cubs more ice cream. The two little ones could sure put it away. They’d discovered that licking the ice cream from the spoon was even more fun than licking it from the bowl. They could lick the spoon all over before they scooped up more. After all, Aunt Misty had been licking it from the spoon. So it was all right, wasn’t it?
When they finished, Kyle or Matt said, “Can we play outside, Aunt Misty? We didn’t go out before, because you and Uncle Graham were kissing.”
Xav laughed from where he sat at the table, and Misty’s face went hot. “That’s fine, but don’t mess up my plants. They get hurt easily.”
Matt and Kyle agreed they’d never do anything like that. They half wrestled each other trying to be first to the door, then they started yanking off their clothes.
Before they finished stripping down to their skin, they were shifting, fur rippling, tails popping out. Two fuzzy cubs barreled out the door they’d already opened, yipping all the way.
“They don’t have Collars,” Misty said out loud. She hadn’t noticed that before, but when they’d shucked their T-shirts, she’d seen that their necks had no slash of black and silver Collar to mar them.
“They don’t take Collars until they’re older,” Graham said, coming into the kitchen. “’Cause they’re damn painful. Even humans couldn’t bring themselves to be that cruel.”
Misty let out a breath. “All humans are not that bad, Graham.”
He gave her that look that said he’d lived a hundred years in the harsh wilderness, and she didn’t know what she was talking about. “Yes, they are,” he said.
“Then why are you still here?”
Another look. “Because a Fae is after you, and an ex-cop with bullets isn’t going to stop him.”
“And a Shifter is?” Reid leaned in the doorway. He still had the book, but he held it closed in his hand.
“Shifters won the Shifter-Fae war,” Graham said. “Remember? We kicked your asses. You lost all your Shifter pets.”
“That was more than seven hundred years ago,” Reid said mildly. “I wasn’t born then. And dokk alfar had nothing to do with Shifters.”
“I know; I just say it to piss you off. Point is, this Fae targeted her—and me—and I’m not going to sit at home waiting for him to come get her.”
Why did that make Misty feel better? She should want Graham gone. Out of here.
Instead she went to the sink and filled up a glass of water. Las Vegas tap water tasted terrible, but who cared? She needed the water, needed the cool wetness inside her parched mouth.
“This book.” Reid held it up. “Where did you get it?”
Misty explained about the flea market. “I had it valued, but even though it’s a first edition, it’s in too bad a shape to be worth much. I kept it for the interest.”
“Whoever wrote it knows much about the Fae.” He flipped to the title page. A nice frontispiece with an etching of an heirloom rose faced it, the plate guarded by a thin piece of vellum. The title page itself didn’t have much information.
“The author didn’t put her name on it,” Misty said. “Or his. They didn’t always back then. This book has a date but no publisher or author.”
“Maybe a Shifter wrote it,” Xav suggested.
“Doubt it,” Reid answered. “The spells in here against Fae are subtle but show a good understanding of Fae magic. Shifters are cruder when dealing with Fae.”
“He means we just rip their heads off and spill out their insides.” Graham strode to the back door and yanked it open. “Kyle! Get out of that damned tree! You’re not a cat.”
Kyle stopped squirming in the branches of the fruitless mulberry that overhung Misty’s yard from her neighbor’s, and dropped to the ground. He yipped once when he landed, then he trotted off, none the worse for wear.
Misty tried to memorize what he looked like, so she could try to tell them apart, but once he joined Matt, she gave up. The two, as wolves, were identical.
“Are you babysitting them?” Misty asked when Graham came back inside.
“Their foster mother dumped them on my doorstep,” Graham said. “I was on my way to hand them to Nell and her bears when the dream hit.” He regarded Reid speculatively. “You and Peigi have a bunch of foster cubs at your house. Kyle and Matt like them.”
“No,” Reid said quickly. For the first time since Misty had met him, Reid looked less like a mysterious being and more like an ordinary human. A worried human. “Peigi’s got too much to deal with—the cubs, the other Shifter women from Mexico . . . You weren’t here when we rescued them. They went through hell, and Peigi as their alpha feels the worst of it. Leave her alone.”
Graham scowled at him a moment longer before he relaxed into a grin. “Why don’t you just make the mate-claim on Peigi and get it over with?”
Reid looked embarrassed. “Dokk alfar don’t do mate-claims.”
“You’d better start. Shifters need females, and she’s fair game. Even my wolves are eyeing her. They’re going to start to Challenge for her, and they won’t care if you’re dokk alfar or tree bark. They’ll use the Challenge as an excuse to kill a Fae, and won’t care you’re one of the good ones.”