She opened the door and stepped outside, sucking in the bitterly cold air.
“Touchy, touchy, Red. Your green’s showing,” Nina crooned in her ear.
Toni whipped around to face the vampire. “Oh just hush. I’m not jealous. What’s to be jealous of? Her gorgeous hair, her perky breasts? Her emerald-green eyes? You’d think being in the water all the time would shrivel her creamy skin to a prune. But no. She’s this close to perfection. But am I jealous? Don’t be silly. I’m just tired and annoyed. She needs help, Nina. Are we just going to leave her here? She can’t live in a bathtub forever.”
“You damn well are jealous, and I’m all in favor of throwing her back. But Flawless says this bitch Pricilla is badass.”
“And we’re not?” she asked as she stroked the bunnies’ heads.
“Look, kiddo, you’re way ahead of yourself. We’re weaker here than we are at home. You can breathe fucking fire. Sure, that’s pretty damn useful, but not so much in the water. Use your lady brains, would you?”
Point. “Okay, that’s fair. But I can’t just leave her. I won’t. What if you guys had left me?”
“We didn’t get a choice, remember?”
Toni’s face flushed. “While that’s true, would you have left me given the choice? If Brenda hadn’t threatened you, would you have just washed your hands of me? And don’t lie to me because I’ll know. Remember, I don’t just breathe fire.”
Nina scratched a fuzzy brown squirrel under the chin and smiled at him. “Fair enough.”
“Did you just agree with me?”
“Yep.”
Toni looked to the sky with a cringe. “And there was no thunder? No lightning?”
“Did you just push my last goddamn button?”
“Sorry.”
“Now let’s address the girly feelings because I know that shit’s comin’.” She looked at the bunny nestled in her arms. “Cover your ears, fluffy dude, here comes the whine.”
“I’m not jealous.”
“Yeah? Coulda swore I saw your eyeballs roll to the back of your head when the fish-chick was talking about moons and warm water. But maybe I read that shit wrong.”
“You absolutely did.”
“Liar.”
“Am not.”
“Are damn well so. You two have been avoiding each other like the plague since we left Fairy-ville.”
She clenched her teeth so hard, she was sure they’d break. “Everything is fine.”
Nina held up the bunny and rubbed him against her cheek, her voice raising an octave when she said, “Hear that, little guy—shit’s all good.”
“Shit’s peachy,” she said, dropping another bunny into Nina’s arms.
“Listen, I’m just gonna say this once and then I’ll let it go. The adrenaline in cases like these runs super high. So all those lady feelings get distorted and amped-up a notch or ten in your lady brain. You get all excited over shit that would normally roll off your back. Everything turns into a drama. Flawless is a good guy. He likes you. I can tell. You like him, too. That’s nice. So stinkin’ nice. But keep some shit in mind, here. You live in another realm, Toni. It’s not like you can catch the redeye here from Jersey to visit, yanno? So don’t fuck with the dude. I don’t know what the castle and all this happiness stuff means, but maybe it has to do with finding your brother, and that would mean going back to Jersey.”
Her chest became tight. “You heard about my brother?”
“Because—”
“Vampire,” Toni interrupted on a sigh.
“Right. Also, something else I want you to think about. This Stas is a lowdown fuck. If I ever run into him, his head staying on his shoulders is gonna to be the least of his GD worries, cuz I’ll eat his intestines for my midnight snack while I make that puke Andre watch. He’s a bag o’ dicks to be sure. But you didn’t do this to your brother, kiddo. You didn’t launder money. You didn’t hack off someone’s finger. You didn’t kill anybody. Stas did. You didn’t do anything but be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You tried to make shit right, and no one would help you. That’s not cowardly. Clear?”
Toni remained silent, but Nina nudged her shoulder, her eyes intense as she looked down at her. “Clear?”
Tugging one of Nina’s sopping-wet curls, she nodded. “You’re all right, vampire,” she said, her voice cracking.
“Yeah? Well, you suck as bad as this godforsaken dress,” she said with a grin.
Toni laughed, forcing her eyes to her feet to keep Nina from seeing her tears, and then she sucked it up. “Here.” She handed Nina the remaining bunnies. “I’m going to convince a stubborn pain in the ass to help me get Muriel to the sea.”
“Grrrr,” Nina said on a laugh as she set a bunny free to scamper off into the snow. “You get ’em, Red.”
Chapter 10
“Milady,” Jon said, keeping his eyes focused on tending Oliver when she tapped him on the shoulder.