After spending the most pleasurable and acrobatic thirty-six hours of my life snowed in with Nick, we reluctantly agreed that it would probably be a good thing to come up for air and maybe catch a fugitive or two. I dressed in my usual work clothes, choosing short sleeves because despite the fact that I'd shut my furnace off, Nick's radiant heat was keeping the place at a cozy temperature. I carried my files and the info binders to the kitchen table and opened my laptop, determined to keep my mind focused on work and not on the fact that Nick was thumping around in my kitchen wearing nothing but a ratty old pair of Mandrake's sweatpants that I'd dug out of the bottom of a drawer for him. They were too big, so they hung distractingly low and loose on his hips.
Fugitives, Olivia.
"Adan Charring is a fire fairy. She set a bunch of hikers on fire when they poured dirty water on her doorstep."
Nick set the coffee to brew. "Didn't give a thought to posting bail for her. Fairies never go far from home. The humans were damned fools who deserved what they got. Fairies'll put up with a good many things, but dirty water isn't one of them."
"Sounds like you don't much care if I catch her."
"Nope. We follow the rules, but sometimes the perp gets away."
"She's got a baby. I've had her in arm's reach twice, but she slipped away both times. The second time, she just kind of blew up and disappeared."
He took a chunk of cheese from the fridge and carried it to the cutting board he'd already set on the counter. "Sounds like a fairy. If you really want to catch one, your best bet is sugar."
From the corner of my eye, I watched the flex and pull of the muscles in his forearms as he sliced the cheese with a little paring knife. "I tried to be nice. That's when she blew up."
"Not metaphorical sugar, love. Actual sugar. If you spill sugar in the sight of a fairy, they can't leave until they've counted each grain. While she's counting, you cuff her."
I slammed the folder shut and tossed it on the table. "It seems like this should be pretty much the first bit of information that is ever presented to a bounty hunter trying to catch a fairy."
He shrugged. "I guess everyone writing stuff down assumed bounty hunters would already know."
"You know what happens when you assume, right?"
He carried the cutting board to the table and set it down. A spread of cheese and crackers, pickles, olives, and chocolate-covered peanuts covered it.
"Cereal would have been fine," I told him.
"Cereal is mundane. It couldn't possibly suffice for our first breakfast together."
We'd eaten two or three times the day before and had a midnight snack as well, but none of that had been during the morning hours. Well, I'd eaten. Mostly, Nick watched me as if eating was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. He did indulge in a slice of turkey and a single microwaved pizza roll.
"When we faced off with the fire fairies in that burned out building, you called for iron, not sugar."
"If you remember, I wasn't exactly in my right mind. Also, I don't carry sugar in the car. We don't deal with fairies all that often."
Twice in less than a year seemed often enough for my taste, but I let it go and changed the subject. "You're not as glowy as you were." Not only had the illumination on his skin mellowed, but the lines of his djinn tattoos had vanished completely.
He walked over to the coffeepot and carried the whole pot plus two giant mugs to the table. "I've burned a great deal of energy off in the past two days."
"Is that normal? I mean, does... you know... exertion make everything calm down faster?"
His grin had me rethinking how urgent the whole fugitive-catching thing really was. "None of this is normal. I have no basis for comparison. I've never healed people on the scale that I did that night, and I've never indebted myself to a devastatingly gorgeous human who makes adorable chipmunk noises when she's excited." He deftly dodged the kick that I aimed at him. "It stands to reason, then, that I've never been ordered by said bond holder to pleasure her for days on end, whilst simultaneously bringing down a record-breaking snowfall to excuse her absence from work."
"I did not order you to pleasure me."
He handed me one of the full mugs. "You can if you want, though. I'd be a slave to your whim."
In a great wave, everything he felt, his amusement, his fear, his devotion, his concern, his desire all riding on a sea of love, threatened to drown me. I reached for my coffee, trembling, and he laid his hand over mine. "I almost had everything calmed down for a bit. I lost it for a moment. I'll be more careful."
I chewed on my lip. "I don't want you to have to be careful all the time."
The muscle in his jaw flexed. "It's how it's always been. You can't change that. It's okay. I promise." He tapped the file. "Now you know about the sugar. What else have you got?"
Okay. We're working. If we're going to make this work, we have to be able to work, so I need to do my work. I blinked, trying to sort that out. It all sounded like a lot of work.
"Nowicki?"
I looked up at him.
His eyebrow arched upward.
"Crocotta."
Nick groaned. "James Smith. I knew I shouldn't have written his bond."
"I mean, his charges are for unauthorized feeding. It's just about the most common crime there is." Not to mention one that Nick himself was guilty of. I was smart enough not to bring that up.
"He uses the internet to find his victims. He selects his victims based on their politics."
"Their politics?" The cheese had a fabulous bite to it that spread over my tongue.
"Yup. He trolls around on news sites and message boards looking for the people who are most outspoken in favor of the other candidate. Then he consumes their soul and leaves them a lifeless, uncaring shell, unlikely to vote at all."
I reached for another slice of cheese. "You should try this. It's delicious. Which side is he on?"
"Does it really matter?" Nick nibbled a piece of cheese. "He's eating human souls."
"I'm just curious."
"I don't know. If you catch him, you can ask him. Governments rise. Governments fall. I stopped paying close attention quite a long time ago."
The urge to argue about the importance of politics welled up in me, inspired by two and a half decades of being told by family, teachers, and PSAs that my vote mattered. Then I remembered he believed he started World War One and thought maybe politics wasn't the best thing for us to chat about. Besides, he was right. For the purposes of catching the crocotta, it didn't matter. "I read that he can mimic a person's voice."
"Yup. He'll find out where his victims are, go there, lure them to a private place through mimicry, and then enjoy his little snack."
Words came from some dark corner of my brain and popped right out of my mouth. "Sloughs eat souls."
His gaze snapped to me. "There are rules for every creature, Nowicki. It's how we keep the balance."
"Right. Sor—" Nope. "Got it. So, if I'm understanding correctly, he's got no big powers beyond the obvious. He's not super fast or strong. He can't transform into a hippo. He's just a mimic."
"The best mimic you can imagine," he said. "Don't let your guard down for a second. That's how bounty hunters die."
Could I wish for some kind of super bounty hunting skill? Was that something he could grant? Would I want it if he could? Would it change who I am? Similar questions had been skittering across my brain like creepy little spiders for the past twenty-four hours or so. People who think they'd enjoy having their own personal genie haven't given real thought to the complexity of wishing and magical consequences.
"You're frowning."
I snapped back to reality and found Nick studying me like a science experiment. "I was just thinking."
"About crocotta?"
Dodging a question with a question was becoming something of a habit. "Do you think I might benefit from being more like Benji?"
His eyes narrowed.
"She's a pretty fantastic bounty hunter," I said, lest I betray my jealousy over her perfect breasts and flawless complexion. My phone chimed, and I jumped at the distraction.
I've been typing and deleting texts for three days, Chantelle wrote. In the end, I really only have one question.
I showed Nick. "I sent her to Drake for answers. They didn't feel like my answers to give."
"Knowing puts her in danger."
"She's a cop, Nick. Not knowing puts her in danger."
He rubbed the backs of his fingers over the whiskers on his chin and said nothing.
I turned the phone back toward myself. Go on, I texted.
Nick rose and busied himself in the kitchen again.
Are you safe with him?
I watched Nick watching me and basked in the radiating warmth of his feelings. Memories of all we'd done in the past two days brought a flood of heat to my cheeks and sent a tingle of desire through my core. If she'd asked me if the world was safe from Nick, I wouldn't have known how to answer, but me? Personally? Yes. I'm safe with him.
I lied. Two questions.
Of course there was more than one. Go on, I said again.
Do you love him?
Nicolai Adamos, the man who could crush the world at will, wiped my kitchen counter with a soapy rag.
When a butterfly flaps its wings in a midwestern girl's stomach, did it cause a hurricane on the other side of the world?
Yes.