“Literally,” I interjected on Goodfellow’s behalf.
It was a good thing Leo’s powers were temporarily on hiatus or I might have been nothing but a scorch mark on the floor. There was some history between Robin and me, but even I had my limits. That puck could talk the paint off the walls, the skirt off the waitress, and the pants off the doorman . . . and that had all been in less than thirty minutes. Shortest date of my life, but one that had put me off the mere thought of sex for months. The man had a mirrored ceiling in his pantry. His pantry. I didn’t want to guess what he had in his bedroom. It was bad enough running for my millennia-gone virtue because I was nosing around the puck’s pantry. It was a toss-up between chocolate and curiosity by the way—as to why I was nosing it to begin with.
It went without saying that Ishiah had reserves in him I’d never dreamed existed.
I put my hand across Leo’s mouth so we could get this conversation over with and his butt cheeks unclenched. “Robin did talk the rest of us into leaving the peris be. You’d always left us alone once you retired. It seemed fair. I couldn’t figure out why he did at the time, what with that hate-hate relationship you had going on.” Now I knew.
Ishiah’s eyes shifted sideways . . . a bare fraction, but I saw enough of it for confirmation. Not hate-hate after all, but love-hate. Oh, those two had their plates full now. “Anyway, for Leo’s benefit, let’s wrap this up.We won. Ish let some of us party at his bar to celebrate. I was drunk for three days, hungover for a week, and that’s the last time I saw Ishiah. It was also the last time my brain tried to crawl out of my ears to escape alcohol poisoning. The last time I tried to pick up a werewolf only to find out it was actually a German shepherd. The last time I grew wings and flew naked over the heads of drunken pa?en saying that I was Tinkerbell and they needed to follow me to never-never land. The last time . . .” I uncovered Leo’s mouth. “Never mind. It was more last times than I can or care to remember and we won’t discuss it again. Right?” I pointed a finger at Leo’s chest. “Right?”
He studied me impassively, then smirked. I hadn’t ever, in our long, long years of knowing each other, seen Leo smirk. He didn’t do it. It wasn’t his new, improved, laid-back yet solemn and kick-ass self, and it definitely wasn’t his big bad “a frown is just your body methodically broken to bits and turned upside down” former self. This could, in no way, be a good thing. “I’m going to the office. I have some calls to make. You two catch up.”
“Don’t you dare call my mama! Don’t you even think about it, Leo!” I called to his back right before the door shut behind him. Although she had to already know. There was hardly a trickster alive who didn’t, but she’d love the opportunity to verbally smack my ass over it. “Oh, goddamnit, I’m dead as they come.”
Ishiah coughed behind a balled fist and said mildly, “Blasphemy. Some old habits die hard.”
“You’ve been a peri forever now, so get over it,” I grumped. “Do you want to go down to the diner and get some breakfast? I’m starving.”
“More like lunch, but, yes, that would be acceptable if . . .”
I raised a hand as I answered my ringing cell. I recognized Zeke’s number immediately when I pulled the phone from my jeans pocket and held it up. “Kit?” I answered. “Is everything all right? How’s Griffin?”
“Fine, fine, everything’s fucking fine,” came the dismissal. “How do you say asshole in German?”
“Arschloch, and you’d better tell me you didn’t call me just to ask that,” I demanded, but it was too late. As I’d cut off Ishiah, so had the click of a disconnected cell phone done to me.
“Problems?” Ishiah raised his eyebrows. Ishiah was the peri who probably did know about Zeke, who’d become a peri by virtue of not retiring but by telling Heaven to kiss his ass, but he certainly didn’t need to know about Griffin, the only peri with demon wings. He might be all right with it; he might not. It didn’t matter. Tempting fate was something I did with my own life, not my friends’.
“Actually more of a daily routine.” I grabbed my small leather backpack and jacket. I already had my gun on me. It was time for about three pounds of biscuits and gravy. Carbs were good for the brain. Bad for the ass, thighs, and heart, but good for thinking, and with Ishiah here, there was bound to be serious thinking ahead. “Let’s go eat and you can tell me why you’re in Vegas, how you got here. . . . I know it wasn’t with those wings of yours. Was it by bus or plane? And how did you get that sword through security?”