Firefox

Sparrow didn’t worry about following their conversation. He wasn’t interested. He followed the woman into the bank manager’s office, and once she sat, Sparrow extended his power and touched her on both shoulders.

She bolted up from her chair with a shout. The manager rushed around his desk.

“What’s going on here?” she shouted while the manager tried to find some explanation. When she explained the shock she’d gotten, and he tried to say that maybe it was static electricity, she looked around and pointed out the marble floor and the leather chair.

“Where exactly would static build up?” she said, her voice harsh. She plopped into the chair in a most unladylike way, as if frustration had stripped away her social graces. “Can we just handle these CDs as quickly as possible?”

“Of course, Mrs. Greyson. I have the paperwork ready as you asked.”

Sparrow was patient, though his fox was doing somersaults, eager for the finale. When she started signing page after page of documents, Sparrow gently uncoiled heat and flame and brushed the pale-yellow flower on her hat so gently, that she didn’t flinch. She tilted her head for a moment, but went back to signing.

And then he waited for the spark to catch hold.

“Mrs. Greyson!” The manager rounded the desk and tried to bat the burning hat off her head, but she apparently had it hair-pinned in place. Every tug pulled at her and made her yelp. The top of the hat caught fire from the flowers, but she was more worried about the man trying to pull her hair out by the roots, batting at his hands and screaming while he shouted “fire, fire!” in an attempt to get someone to help him.

Sparrow hoped someone pulled out a fire extinguisher and sprayed her right in the face.

She finally felt the heat or otherwise realized what was happening and started screaming, smacking at her own head to put out the flames.

Sparrow set her tiny black purse on fire. It was too good to resist.

By the time the manager had wrenched the hat free of her hair and put it out, another bank employee was stomping her purse in an effort to put out the flames, and she stood there with her arms outstretched, black mascara streaking her cheeks.

Before Sparrow left, he hovered near the ceiling and let his heat coil around the fire safety sensor.

The woman screamed again as the alarm blared and the sprinkler system in the bank came on, drenching everyone.

His fox rolled on its back, yapping happily. Sparrow returned to his body, just in time to catch the shower turning off.

He went into the kitchen to see about making his goddess some lunch. Food often helped the moods of the people on earth, and until they’d consummated their union and restored her power, perhaps it would help her feel better, too.

Chapter 11

The shower helped.

The bone-deep cry she had in the shower helped.

And despite what Chloe might have believed just a handful of hours ago, the stranger with fox ears and a bird’s name in her living room helped, too.

Something about him really was comforting, there was no point in denying that. And as upset and lost as Chloe felt at the moment, she wasn’t going to refuse that gift. She needed someone to give a damn about her for a change, no matter what kind of powers he came with or what he claimed about her.

Deep down, you might even believe him.

He had fox ears he could pop in and out at will, and some kind of fiery power deep inside him. More things she couldn’t deny. So why was anything else wild and crazy he said so much more unlikely to be true?

She put on her bathrobe, combed through her long, wet hair and stepp

ed out into the hall, the smell of coffee making her mouth water. When she walked through the doorway to the kitchen, she noticed movement. Sparrow was busy pulling things out of her refrigerator—he was making sandwiches.

“Do you feel better?” he asked as she watched him.

“I do, thank you.”

“You need to eat, too. I was going to try to cook something, but—”

“I only really had lunchmeat and cheese. Haven’t been to the grocery store in a few days.”

“Well,” he said, sticking a toothpick through half a pickle and pinning it to the top of a sandwich, “I made do with what you had.”