Whiplash (Through Time 2)

He seemed pleased with himself. “I brought it with a thought from the shop down the avenue.”

“Huh? Oh no—did you leave money in exchange for it?”

“I left a gold piece. I think that will do,” he answered blithely.

“Then, I will allow that was really well done.”

“Of course,” he said impatiently.

“Oh, you are such a … a …” She gave it up.

“Red enjoys humans, but I have yet to understand why.”

“Again with this princess of yours. Are you in love with her?”

He choked on a cough. “May I be struck down before ever that could happen. No. We don’t agree on politics—in fact, there are a great number of things we don’t agree on—but even so she is amongst my dearest friends. She is also now wife to Chancemont LeBlanc, the Milesian.”

“Ah, you mentioned him, Lana’s brother,” Jazz said, putting everything together. She sighed. “Why don’t you blink us some clothing of the time, and then we wouldn’t have to be invisible and could ask the locals a few questions—”

He cut her off. “We must not do anything to upset the balance of this time. We shall stay invisible and hope that Hordly’s intrusion will do no harm.” He glanced around.

“That’s too bad, because if we could question some of the locals, they would know if they saw some gorgeous hunk of a Dark Prince,” she teased to lighten the mood. He was always so serious, and whether she was in a coma or actually in the past, she needed some levity to ease her tension.

He frowned at her.

She said, “You said I do it, but you do it more.”

“I do what more?” he asked.

“Frown,” she answered. “So what do you think?”

“I do not do more frowning, and why do you call him gorgeous? He is evil. You witnessed what he did to that poor human.”

She immediately felt contrite. “Right, yes, you are right, but I was trying to …” What was she going to say, make light of it? Put a spin on things so she wouldn’t have to dwell on the mess she was in? She said, “Why not just answer the question?”

“I already told you, we don’t want to upset the balance, and besides I don’t mingle with humans well,” he said.

“Yes, but I do get along with them. Maybe I should go and see what I can find out,” she said, smiling.

He reached over as though to take her hand but stopped himself. “You are resilient, Jazmine Decker. I suspect most of your kind would have suffered great distress had this situation been shoved at them all at once as it has been on you. In fact, I fully expected you to do some human crying.”

She rolled her eyes. “What good would that do? It is what it is.”

He didn’t answer her. Instead, his attention was centered on the tavern doors, where a huge male dressed in the clothes of the day and holding a woman on each arm walked in. Hordly.

“Hush,” Trevor said on a low note as she touched his arm, and then, “Stay here.”

She stood, unable to do much more as he shifted away. She had no idea what he meant to do, but what she didn’t expect was what happened next.

A seductive male voice whispered in her ear, “You and I, pretty one, you and I.”

And the next thing she knew she was traveling through space wrapped in the arms of a Dark Fae Prince.

~ Four ~

TREVOR WATCHED THE Dark Prince Hordly enter.

He saw the Dark Prince was occupied and sneered as the Unseelie locked lips with one woman before turning and running his hands over the other.