I had no idea who his "them" were that had or hadn't visited, but I couldn't argue with the rest of it. I was pretty sure Ashford was registered with the State of Georgia under P for provincial, and I seriously doubted our annual fried chicken cook-off or Christmas walk featuring the same half-dozen stately antebellums each year distinguished my town from any other scattered throughout the Deep South. "Yeah, well," I said defensively. I loved my hometown. "Point?"
"You, Ms. Lane
, are a sidhe-seer."
"Huh?" What was a she-seer?
"A sidhe-seer. You see the Fae."
I burst out laughing.
"This is no laughing matter," he said roughly. "This is about life and death, you imbecile."
I laughed harder. "What, some pesky little fairy's going to get me?"
His eyes narrowed. "Just what do you think those shadows were, Ms. Lane
?"
"Shadows," I retorted, my amusement fading. I was getting angry myself. I would not be made a fool of. There was no way those dark shapes had been anything more substantive. Fairies didn't exist, people didn't see them, and there were no books about magic that had been written a million years ago.
"The Shades would have sucked you dry and left a husk of skin scuttling down the sidewalk on the night breeze," he said coldly. "No body for your parents to claim. They would never know what happened to you. One more tourist gone missing abroad."
"Yeah, right," I snapped. "And how many other lines of bull are you going to try to feed me? That the shi-sadu really is a book of dark magic? That it really was written a million years ago by some Dark King? How stupid do you think I am? I just wanted to know what the word meant so I could maybe help the police find who killed my sister—"
"How did she die, Ms. Lane
?" Barrons asked the question soft as silk, but it slammed into me like a sledgehammer.
I clenched my jaw and turned away. After a moment I said, "I don't want to talk about it. It's none of your business."
"Was it abnormal? Horrific, Ms. Lane
? Tell me, did her body look as if animals had gone at her? Hard?"
I whirled back around. "ShutupIhateyou," I hissed.
Impatience blazed in his eyes. "Do you want to die like that too?"
I glared at him. I would not cry in front of him. I would not think about what I'd seen the day I'd had to identify Alina's body. Not in my worst nightmares did I want to die like that.
He peeled my answer from my face and half his mouth drew back in a smirk. "I didn't think so, Ms. Lane
. Listen to me and learn, and I will help you."
"Why would you do that?" I scoffed. "You're hardly the Good Samaritan type. In fact, I think the word 'mercenary' has a little picture of you beside it in the dictionary. I don't have any money."
Both sides of his mouth drew back this time—in a snarl—before he quickly recomposed his face into a mask of smooth European urbanity. Wow, I'd sure struck a nerve. Something I'd said had pierced his thick hide and it seemed to have been the word "mercenary."
"I can hardly leave you to die. It wouldn't sit well with my conscience."
"You don't have a conscience, Barrons."
"You know nothing about me, Ms. Lane
."
"And I'm not going to. I'm going to talk to the police and they're going to reopen my sister's case. I'm not going to see you again or any stupid shadows. I'm not even going to ask you what the shi-sadu really is, because you are beyond delusional. Stay away from me, or I'll tell the police all about you and your crazy ideas and threats." I snatched up my purse and drugstore bag and walked to the door.
"You're making a huge mistake, Ms. Lane
."
I yanked it open. "The only mistake I made was yesterday, believing anything you said. It's a mistake I won't repeat."
"Don't cross that threshold. If you walk out that door you'll die. I give you three-day odds, at best."
I didn't dignify it with a response. I let the slam of the door behind me do that.
I think he might have yelled something through the door, something weird like, Stay to the lights, but I wasn't sure and I didn't care.
Jericho Barrons and I were done with each other.
Or so I thought. It would turn out to be just one more of those things I was wrong about. Soon, we would be living inside each other's hip pockets, whether we liked it or not.
And believe you me, we didn't.