“What?” she demanded. Then the other shoe dropped.
She stood up, one booted foot crunching pitilessly on what had been priceless crystal. “I get it,” she said. “After all this, you still don’t trust me enough to have me watch one of the children. In fact, you don’t trust me at all, do you?”
The drowsy coals flashed into sudden wakefulness, flames shooting upward as if to meet the stars halfway. Baba’s heart roared with matching fury and pain, its intensity catching her by surprise. One rare tear fell onto the fire and evaporated, like a stillborn dream of happiness.
“Barbara—” Liam stood up too, his face a conflicted arena of guilt and some emotion too intangible to name. “Baba. It’s not that I don’t trust you, exactly. It’s just—”
“I know,” she said, bitterness seeping out of her like poison gas into the clean night air. “I’m odd, mysterious, and infuriating. And you can’t put the lives of those you are sworn to protect into the hands of someone like that.”
TWENTY
LIAM FELT LIKE the world’s biggest heel as he watched Baba wipe her face of all emotion, returning it to its usual cool, unreadable mask. They’d been having such a pleasant time, despite the grim subject, and he had to go and stick his foot in it and hurt her feelings. Until that very moment, he hadn’t even been certain she had any to hurt. He should have known better.
The problem was—he really didn’t trust her. Yes, he believed that she was trying to help the children. But her methods were . . . unpredictable at best. And they clearly had some very different ideas on what constituted acceptable ways of arriving at a solution to the problem.
Still, none of that was the real issue.
“It’s not that I don’t trust your intentions,” he said, standing there helplessly, trying to figure out how to explain himself without making the situation worse. “It’s that I don’t understand you. I don’t know who you are—what you are—how you can do the things you do.”
He pointed at the shattered crystal goblet, its brilliant shards currently reflecting prisms of red light while poking out from under Baba’s black leather boots. “For instance, you can actually fix that, can’t you? With your, um, magic, I mean.” Hell, he could hardly bring himself to say the word; how was he supposed to work with someone who actually used it?
Baba shrugged, shooting him a cool glance from underneath inky lashes. “Sure. If I wanted to expend the energy it would take to collect all those little pieces and meld them back together again. But I’m a practical kind of witch. I’m much more likely to just go inside and get another damned glass.” She turned her back on him and stalked inside, heels clomping on the metal steps with teeth-rattling force.
Chudo-Yudo sighed. “Now you’ve done it. Benighted Human idiot. I have to live with the woman, you know.” He picked up the half-empty wine bottle gingerly between large, sharp teeth and followed her into the trailer.
Liam debated his options for about a half second: turn tail and go home, or try to explain what he meant and fix the damage he’d done. Then he picked up the rest of his beer and walked into the Airstream, hoping he wasn’t going to get struck by lightning or turned into something slimy and unpleasant. Either way, he felt a lot more comfortable having this conversation with Baba in the bright lights of the Airstream’s interior than having it outside in the darkness.
“You still here?” Baba asked without looking around as he closed the door behind him. She pulled a plain, slightly tarnished copper tankard out of a cupboard, clearly not in the mood to risk a more delicate piece. “I thought we were done.”
Liam’s heart, which he’d been sure no longer functioned, skipped a beat at the thought of ever being done with Baba. No, not bloody likely. Not yet anyway.
He sat down on the couch and spoke in a reasonable tone. “I didn’t say that. What I said, in my usual clumsy fashion, was that I’m a simple country sheriff. I’ve seen some unusual things in my career, but nothing that prepared me for the kinds of stuff I’ve come up against since I met you. I’ve never known anyone who could masquerade as a little old lady without using a disguise, or who lived with a talking dog that was really a dragon. How am I supposed to adjust to that?” That last sentence may have come out with more anger and frustration than he’d intended it to.
But at least Baba took pity on him and sat down by his side, the greenish-orange mug cupped between her fingers. Chudo-Yudo relinquished the wine bottle, rolled his eyes, and plopped down on the floor, his huge head pillowed on his massive paws; a big, furry referee. Or maybe just waiting to be entertained.