Nick and I sat in his bathtub, suds up to our armpits, my back pressed to his chest. It was either the bathtub or the floor and he'd really needed a bath. He held his arms around my shoulders and chest, pinning me to him a little too hard. I didn't mind. I rested my head on his shoulder.
"Tell me again?" he muttered against the top of my head.
I grinned a stupid, loopy, love-drunk grin. "I love you."
He nuzzled his nose against my ear. "I love you, too."
"Really? I had no idea. You definitely haven't told me that any time in the last thirty seconds."
"I'll try harder. I'll do better."
"I love you," I said.
He squeezed me even tighter. "I love you, too." Apparently noticing I could barely breath, he eased up a bit. "What do we do now?"
"Your mom says I should learn about your past." I poked a fat soap bubble with my toe.
"That's a long story to tell. Please believe, I'm not trying to hide anything. It's just a lot of ground to cover."
"It's okay. We'll get to it."
Restful quiet settled over us. I fell into a contented half sleep.
"I'm scared, Nowicki. All the time."
"I know. I see you. I love you, just the way you are. We'll figure the details out as we go."
"I hate that you... that I..." The heat radiating from his chest intensified.
"Don't go electric, Nick. We're in water."
He relaxed.
"I love you," I said.
He rested his chin on top of my head. "I love you, too." Then, "When my birth mother died, my father didn't want anything to do with me, so he dumped me on Hawwa's doorstep. She's known for taking in strays. He didn't even name me. She did. Nicolai meaning victory because, according to her, she saw in me an end to the curse of death."
I drew circles on his kneecaps to distract myself from the goosebumps that had risen all over my body.
"Adamos, son of Adom. He is my father's father."
Well, I'd been right about Adom being far along in the lineage. I'd underestimated exactly how far.
"I was with Hawwa when Vesuvius happened. My father showed up, furious. He blamed her. Apparently, she should have known better and done something to prevent it, and it was in no way his fault. He took me back to Dál Riata and caged me in a warded cave, not terribly different from this one, though with far fewer comforts provided."
Blinding rage seared through my heart. I shifted, turned, slopped some water over the edge of the tub, and got on my knees to face him. "How long were you there?"
"Two hundred years, give or take. Every day he came and told me how evil I was, that my freedom would be the death of humanity, that he'd kill me if he knew how." He reported this the way he might have shared that he'd owned a red jacket as a child. Just a matter of fact. No big deal. "Mx. Landry heard from some superstitious villagers in Erainn that there was a monster in a cave. They knew my father lived in the area. No love was lost between them. As much to spite him as anything, they set me free and took me away from him."
He reached up with a soapy hand and caressed my breast, running his thumb over my nipple. "That's enough for now. I'll tell you more another day."
"I don't know those places," I admitted.
"Now it's all just Ireland. Things were different then. There were tribes and my family's power made us kings, gods, devils." His hand glowed softly against my skin. "No more talking."
The current moving through my breast convinced me to agree that we'd talked enough.
Once he'd reduced me to a blob of contentment sprawled on the stone floor, Nick informed me that we should get dressed.
"Can't," I mumbled. "Can't move. Can't think."
He kissed my stomach just below my belly button where a blue handprint glowed softly. I had one on my chest, too. One on the inside of my thigh. Presumably, one on my ass, though I couldn't see it. I was practically lighting the room with my weird magical sex scars.
"Mx. Landry won't be able to resist much longer. Guarantee the curiosity is killing them. They're going to want to see if I shredded you."
"You did. Look at me. I don't even have bones anymore."
He chuckled softly and stood up to search for his ruined pants. Once he had them on, he returned with my clothes in hand.
I groaned and grumbled but got up and got myself more or less put back together. Nick was sitting on the floor, brushing my hair with his fingers when Mx. Landry's wavy form appeared on the other side of the translucent window.
"I'm going to need new curtains on my side," Nick muttered.
Mx. Landry opened the door and scowled at us. "Don't you look cozy," they drawled in their bullfrog tones. "I take it you're feeling better?"
"I am, thank you."
Their chin quivered for just a moment—a quick moment—one so short I might have imagined it. Then they said, "It stinks in here. Go put on some decent clothes and I'll send the cleaners in to sort this mess."
Nick rose gracefully to his feet and crossed the room to Mx. Landry, rested a hand on their shoulder. "I mean it. Thank you. For everything."
By way of response, Mx. Landry focused their gaze on me. "You've got twenty-four hours left on your fire fairy. Maybe you should make yourself useful."
I grinned at them. "I love you, too."
Nick chortled. "That's my line."
Mx. Landry patted their pockets and came up with a cigarette. They lit it with their fingertip and then gestured toward the elevator impatiently. "That fairy's not going to turn herself in, Nowicki."
***
Not without concerns, but feeling lighter than I had since I'd strolled out of my apartment the morning after the snowstorm in search of the crocotta, I drove through the city streets and returned to the part of town where I'd found the fairy twice before. There weren't a lot of decent hotels in the city. It wasn't all that big of a city, after all. Somehow, though, there were a plethora of dive joints—roach infested, single-story motels that didn't ask too many questions. Most of them made the place I'd worked at look like the Ritz Carleton by comparison.
Front desk clerks at those kinds of places were never too quick to divulge information. Being deaf and blind to what went on behind closed doors was both job security and life insurance. On the other hand, none of them made much more than minimum wage, so the sight of a Benjamin Franklin tended to loosen their lips and I had a whole pocket full of cash that somehow felt like blood money. I'd spent part of it on a new cellphone. I didn't mind paying the rest out in bribes.
Even with a bribe, the first two places were a bust. At the third, a guy who was missing half his teeth and had been picking at the skin on his face told me, "Sure. She was here a while back. A week ago, maybe. Had a kid. Cried all the time."
"The kid was crying? Did he seem ill?"
When he shook his head, his hair brushed his shoulders. It seemed like a miracle that it didn't leave grease tracks behind. "Not the kid, the lady."
"Any idea where they went?"
"I don't know, man. She said something about missing the trees."
I thanked him and resumed my serpentine trail through the worst part of town. My gut said she wasn't at The Fifth Street Inn nor the Castle Motel. She was missing the trees. I tapped the steering wheel with my thumbs. A lightbulb popped on over my head. Two blocks away, I found the Sycamore Motel. A single scraggly tree—I think it was actually a black walnut tree, not a sycamore—stretched half-dead branches over one end of the parking lot. It was probably the only tree in a ten-block radius. Its shade reached only the very last room in the row.
I parked in front of that room, grabbed the half-dozen sugar packets I'd swiped from the conference room at The Agency, and strolled over to the door. I knocked and called out, "Bail bonds enforcement!"
The curtain twitched, but the door didn't open.
I knocked again.
A whiff of burning plastic tickled my nose.
Thank you, Benji, for teaching me how to kick a door. The flimsy lock gave way with barely a protest, and I found the fairy furiously trying to light the crappy polyester bedspreads on fire. Instead of catching, they just melted in an odiferous roil of black smoke.
The baby lay in its stroller, screwing its face up as if getting ready to let out a whopper of a cry.
Before anybody could go anywhere or blow anything up, I ripped the packets open and let the sugar pour out on the hideous olive-green carpet.
"No!" The fairy reached for the baby, but as if coming to the end of an invisible rope, she jerked back and fell to the floor where, weeping, she began counting the grains of sugar.
Well, that was easy. Why had no one mentioned the sugar?
A sudden certainty that it was Mx. Landry's idea of a joke settled on me raising equal parts respect and annoyance.
The baby let loose with a high-pitched scream that brought me back to the moment.
I squatted down in front of the fairy and studied her.
"They threw dirty water on my doorstep," she whimpered.
"I know. Can you look up at me?"
For just a split second, she met my gaze. That's all I needed to see her pure, clean, guiltless, shining soul. She'd never meant to hurt anyone. She loved so deeply she was practically love, personified.
"If you tell me the whole story, I think I might let you go."
The darting movements of her counting fingers slowed, and she looked up at me again. "It's a trick."
"That would accomplish what? I'm not The Organization. Confessing to me wouldn't serve any purpose. I've already got you caught."
She sniffed and counted out a few more grains of sugar before speaking again. "I was kicked out of Faerie for bearing a half-breed child."
"Your baby is half human?"
She nodded.
Does that make him more powerful than the Fae or less? No matter how much I learned about the supernatural world, it seemed there'd never be an end to the questions.
"I didn't care at first. Greg built me a cabin in the forest and we were happy." Her crying ratcheted up a notch. "We were so happy."
"What happened?"
"He got sick."
"He died?"
She nodded without looking up and my heart constricted. Her pain wretched my soul and made me want to fall down on the nasty carpet and gnash my teeth alongside her.
The pain of death is a curse upon the living.
I wiped my face and swallowed the sharp lump in my throat.
"I had just burned his body and scattered the ashes a few days before they came."
The fairy, her baby, and I all sat there crying for a while, stuck by grains of sugar and unmanageable grief.
When I found my voice again, I asked how she'd ended up in the city.
"The man at The Organization said Nicolai Adamos would help me be free until my trial, but after he paid my bond, I was here in this city. I don't know where I am. I don't know where to go." She counted on.
You don't think about how many teeny tiny individual grains are in one packet of sugar. Multiply that by six and try to count them and you'll realize it's quite a few.
"Go north." I pulled up a map on my phone and asked if she understood maps.
She sat back on her heels and nodded. "Paper maps. I learned as a girl."
"Okay, well this is the same thing, just not paper." I pointed. "This is where you are now. Find a bus and take it north, all the way up over the Mackinaw Bridge. This part of the state," I zoomed in on the area north of M-41, "is nothing but forest."
Her eyes grew wide.
"Don't get too excited. It's cold there. Like... April is still the middle of winter. It won't get warm for another month at least and winter will be back by September, but on the plus side, if you can go far enough into the woods, there are nine months out of the year when you'll be almost totally inaccessible."
She wiped the tears from her cheeks. "You'll let me do this?"
"Yeah. Apparently."
"What about Adamos?"
I shrugged. "It's not that big of a bond. You win some, you lose some. Nick's not going to fuss at me about this. Not much, anyway." Mx. Landry was a different story, but they were all bark and no bite. The dust would settle sooner rather than later. "Do you have money for a bus ticket?"
"How much do they cost? I have a little. Gary had some in his wallet."
I didn't know Gary, but I'd be willing to bet whatever he had in his wallet was just about tapped. Even cheap motels were expensive. It was amazing she'd lasted this long on the run.
I took the envelope from my pocket and laid it on the foot of the bed. I didn't want it anyway. "Run far and run fast," I said. "As long as you don't start any more fires, this will go away in time."
Leaving her to finish counting the sugar and get on her way, I drove back to my apartment where I found Benji leaning on the hood of her car, waiting for me.
"You look stable," she said by way of greeting. Burning hot anger raged in her soul, contained only by sheer determination to do the right thing. This wasn't anger directed at me. It was the burden she carried every day of her life.
"Stable as I'm capable of, I suppose."
She smiled. "I like you."
"Back at you. Come inside?"
She followed me up the stairs to the space above Fred Jorgenson's garage, and I caught myself wondering where she lived. Probably somewhere cool. I bet she had a penthouse apartment with lots of windows and those fancy remote-operated blinds.
"Make yourself comfortable," I said.
She half-perched on the arm of the sofa. "I lied to you."
I sat in the squashy armchair and crisscrossed my legs. "Okay." The handprint on my boob itched. I tried to scratch it without being too obvious.
"There's this other case I've been working. It's a long story, but I thought my phone might be tapped by The Organization."
What the heck kind of cases did she work on, anyway? Before I could ask, she went on.
"Amanda Jaques is dead." Pride slithered along this declaration. I saw it. I understood it.
My fingers and toes went numb. "You killed her?"
She nodded.
"How?"
"Does it matter?"
"It might."
Her hesitation only lasted a second or two. "Thoroughly."
"Did it hurt?"
"Yes."
I pondered that for a moment. "Okay, then. Does Nick know?"
"Not yet. I didn't know what kind of shape he was in. We cleaned up the mess downtown. It all went away and no one who wasn't there will ever know what he did. Even if someone asks questions, they'll never find any real answers."
Two days ago, I might not have caught the full context, but I got it now. Cleaning up involved a bit of killing, too. It hadn't bothered her in the least. Sometimes the right thing, as far as she was concerned, was taking matters into her own hands to protect the people she cared about.
What room did I have to judge? "Okay," I said again, for lack of any better response.
She cocked her head and pride turned to something sharper. "I envy your strength."
I couldn't even give her an okay for that. I just sat there, flabbergasted and on the verge of laughing at her.
She chuckled and shook her head. "You're something special, Nowicki. Can I ask you something? It's personal and it's none of my business, but the curiosity is killing me."
I managed a fresh, "Okay."
"You know how it is with Nick. I mean, he's not my type at all and I don't fool around with supes, but when I'm with him... well... you know how it is, right?"
My lady parts responded so fast and powerfully that it took a second for the blood flow in my brain to resume enough for me to speak. "Yeah. I know."
"I've got to know; does the bite live up to the bark?"
Most likely, my face was the color of a freshly boiled lobster. My attempt at an answer came out as a desperate, breathy little giggle.
Benji shook her head again. "Damn. I knew it. Maybe I envy more than your strength. If things between the two of you don't work out, I might have to rethink my no-supes rule."
After she left, I called Busia.
The first words out of her mouth were, "Are you okay, Tygrysku?"
"Yeah, Busia. I'm fine." I laid my head back against the chair and took a deep breath. Nothing hurt, not even my heart. If anything, I just felt a bit spent. "How's Jaja?"
"We're home. The doctor said to eat healthy, so I made pickle soup."
I wasn't sure that potatoes and sour cream would live up to the doctor's definition of healthy, but at the same time, changing Jaja's diet at that point in his life might do more harm that good. "I bet he's happy to eat it."
"He had three bowls," she said proudly.
"I really love you, Busia. Tell Jaja I love him, too."
"Are you going to bring the boy with the body to eat paczki?"
A fantasy of licking powdered sugar and lemon filling from Nick's chest flashed through my mind and left me feeling a little dizzy. "I'll ask him if he's free tomorrow."
She grew more serious. "Are you together now? For real?"
How could I help but grin as I said, "Yeah, Busia. For real."
"And Mandrake?"
"Mandrake has someone, too." Nick's mom. There'd be no explaining that.
Busia sighed. "Love finds a way."
"So it would seem," I agreed.
***
The next thing on my list was more difficult. I put it off by making myself a sandwich, checking my emails, and scrolling through social media for a while, but finally my conscience wouldn't let me procrastinate anymore.
I texted Chantelle. Are you on duty? Meet me at Morning Fresh?
She wrote back immediately. Yes and yes.
When I stepped inside, she was already in the booth, gnoshing on a long john. She watched me approach and kept her eye on me as I scooted onto the bench.
"I've been thinking," she said.
"Oh? Did it hurt?"
She glared even harder. "Are you and Nick the Men in Black?"
The pain came back then, sharp and vicious. I smothered it beneath the biggest fake grin I could muster. "Yup. Nick's an alien. Someday, if you're lucky, maybe he'll visit Uranus."
She rolled her eyes. "You're a real riot."
"You love me for it." And I knew that was true. I saw it. I understood.
"I suppose I do." She finished her donut and wiped her face with a paper napkin. "Frank wants to BBQ this weekend. You'll come?"
"Can I bring a date?"
"I don't know, can you? So far, I hear a lot of talk, but I don't see much action."
"I'm here to confirm the action," I said.
She grew still and serious. "With Nick?"
I nodded.
"Your boss?"
No doubt I looked sheepish. Nick and I were in strange ethical territory. There was no debating that, and Chantelle didn't know the half of it. She never would.
"You're sure about this?" Chantelle asked.
For that, I had a definite answer. "I'm sure." Probably. I hoped.