“Hey.” Summer scrambled out, ran around the front of the car, and caught me before I could escape into the terminal. A patrol car slowed, the officer rolled down his window, no doubt to tell her she couldn’t park there, and she flicked her hand in his direction. Sparkles flew from the tips of her ringers, cascading over the man’s face like confetti.
I gaped. I could see them, sticking in his eyelashes, coating his lips and cheeks. He drove on without saying anything.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
Her eyebrows lifted. “You saw?”
“Oh, yeah. Isn’t sparkly dust that makes people obey your every unvoiced command a little obvious on the keep-it-quiet scale?”
She rolled her annoyingly pretty blue eyes. “No one else can see. That you can, is… interesting. The only other person I’ve ever known who can see fairy dust is—” Now her eyes widened. “Oh,” she breathed.
From her surprise, I guessed she hadn’t been in on the plan to sacrifice me on Sawyer’s sex altar.
“Was he—” She broke off, biting her lip again. I could see where the gesture would be enticing. To a man. I wanted to reach out and yank her poor lip free of her tiny, perfect, white teeth.
“Good?” I finished.
She blinked. “I—uh… Well, I was going to say—”
“Rough? Gentle? Amazing? Mind-blowing? Totally fuckable?” She winced at each word. I was tempted to continue, but I finished with a simple, “Yes.”
Summer opened her mouth, thought better of whatever she’d been about to say, and shut it again. She was racking up smart points by the second.
“Sawyer told me to make certain you got on the plane to Minneapolis.”
“Knock yourself out,” I said, and went through the door.
She followed, of course. No one was going to be able to stop her. Not when she could shoot magic make-me dust from her fingertips. It might be worth sleeping with her to get some of that action.
Nah. I’d never been attracted to women, even though men were so obviously bad for me.
“You’re not supposed to go to New York.” Summer’s shorter legs worked double time to keep up.
“Are you sure? Because I think I am supposed to.”
“Sawyer’s called some of the DKs he knows. They’re going to meet you in Milwaukee so you can come up with a plan.”
“I’m not going into Manhattan with guns blasting.” I lowered my voice. I was in an airport after all. “I just want to find Jimmy, see what’s going on. I hear that’s my job.”
“Jimmy can take care of himself.”
Under normal circumstances, I was sure he could. However, I was equally certain the circumstances in Manhattan were not normal. But since I was in charge, I didn’t have to explain myself to Summer or anyone else, so I kept walking.
I wasn’t sure why Sawyer hadn’t tried to convince me to stay away from Manhattan himself. Probably because I wouldn’t have listened. But I wasn’t going to listen to Summer either.
I guess she felt that she had to try. Just like I had to try and save Jimmy.
“I can make you,” Summer said, still hustling along at my side.
“No you can’t.”
We’d reached the ticket line. I hoped that the difference between a fare to Milwaukee and one to New York wouldn’t be over my credit card limit. If I had to, I’d call Megan for a loan, but I hoped I wouldn’t have to.
I glanced at Summer, planning to tell her to fly along, and got a face full of fairy dust. Sparkles flew, clouding my vision; when they hit my face they felt like cool rain after a day in the sun.
Her mouth curved into a satisfied smile. I should have kept my mouth shut, let her believe I was going to use the ticket to Milwaukee, let her leave. But I’d never been very good at shutting up.
Instead, I leaned down, got into her face. “Don’t ever throw that pixie shit at me again. Errand of mercy, remember?”
Summer cursed. I was impressed with the depth and range of her vocabulary, which sounded much more foul coming from those plump pink lips than they ever would have sounded coming from mine.
“Nice.” I straightened. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“I don’t have a mother.”
“That makes two of us.” I stepped up to the counter, gave the clerk my name, and changed my ticket. Luckily there was a flight to New York leaving only half an hour after the flight to Milwaukee.
Though I hated to do it, I checked my duffel bag. I’d left the gun at Sawyer’s, but the silver knife was another story. There was no way I was getting that through in a carry-on, so into the luggage compartment it went.
I headed for the gate, the fairy still at my side. “You have a mother.”
I cast her a quick, suspicious glance.
“You’ll meet her one day.”
A chill went over me. “She’s alive?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You know who she is?”
“No. But you will.” She tilted her head, and I could have sworn I heard the far-off tinkling of tiny silver bells. “You might not like it.”
I was sick of useless advice from a fairy. I stopped walking and faced her. “If you’re flashing on the future, care to let me know how things are gonna turn out with the doomsday portion of our program?”
“Can’t.”