Arabesque: A Wings Companion

Chapter Eleven

Tamani slammed his knuckles into the punk's face—it was always satisfying to start his night out with a good, old-fashioned fistfight. When the thief was lying on the ground moaning and Tam's hands were striped with blood, he wrenched the small black purse out of the jerk's loose grip and turned to the woman curled up against the wall. Tamani handed back her purse, then offered a hand to help her up.

"Do you live near?" he whispered, knowing she would be skittish. He didn't know how many times the man had struck her, but his hand was raised in the air when Tamani had darted around the corner, and it was her screams that had drawn him in the first place.

When the human woman didn't respond, he added, "Maybe I can get you a taxi? I'll pay—no matter how close or how far. The point is to get you there safely."

As he spoke, she finally relaxed a bit. Something about his vaguely British accent seemed to make people feel safer. He blamed the BBC—that Doctor fellow, or Poldark something-or-other. Of course, he could simply Entice her, but he tried to avoid stripping humans of their independence whenever he could. Unless the criminal element was truly overwhelming, it felt like cheating—and with their victims, it usually seemed like a pointless indignity.

"I was almost home," she whispered. "I was walking from the bus stop."

"If it's all right with you, I'll follow at a distance and see you through the door. Are you in an apartment?"

She nodded.

"Just the front door, then. I won't follow you to your place; I don't care about that."

"Th-thank you."

He let himself smile, judging from years of experience that she was ready for that. Small, without teeth. "I'm just glad I was here." And it was true. He knew that for every person he saved, there were a dozen—a hundred—he didn't.

But he was only one fae.

"Just a sec," he murmured as the woman started taking shaky steps. He pulled a zip tie from his back pocket and latched the groaning man to the bottom of a fire escape before he could wriggle away into his hole. As soon as the woman was safe, Tamani would call the cops. He was the master of the anonymous tip.

Twenty minutes later, citizen delivered and authorities notified, Tamani continued his walk toward the beach. He adjusted his hoodie to keep his face shadowed and stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his black cargoes. Though every article of his clothing, right down to his heavy black boots, was faerie-wrought with light, sun-permeable fabric, he looked exactly like the thugs he fought nightly—absent their occasional firearms. The weapons Tamani did carry were nothing that would make most cops blink, should he ever have a face-to-face conversation with local law enforcement. Not that such a thing had happened in the decade he'd been playing vigilante. If there was one thing a faerie sentry learned, it was stealth.

But of course, faerie sentries learned many things—things some of the younger sentries had surprisingly little opportunity to put into practice. Enticement. Combat—armed and unarmed. How to use globes filled with fae defense potions that Tamani carried on a utility belt, concealed by the rumpled bottom of his sweatshirt. Even here, playing vigilante in a densely-populated human city, Tamani didn't often get himself into a tight enough spot to need those. But he would, surely, the one time he didn't have them. Of all the things sentries learned, constant vigilance was perhaps the most important.

Tamani managed to get to the beach without further incident, and wound his way carefully around sightseers who had lingered past sundown and, more commonly, various romantic entanglements. There was something he and Laurel never did except when they were in Avalon. Salt water simply didn't have the same appeal when one was a plant.