She had to explain. She turned to him, careful not to touch him. "Come inside. You can clean up your cuts there. I just want to explain. You can leave tonight."
His eyes were dull no longer; they blazed with rage. For a moment, she thought he was going to kill her before she could manage to stammer out his name. Then she thought he might just walk away, daring her to stop him. But he did neither of these things.
"As you say, my mistress." The words curled off his tongue, cutting deeper than she had thought words could. "I would prefer no one else learned the calling of me."
Spike blinked up at the Unseelie knight, apparently unable to control a shudder. Lutie watched them from the crook of the elm tree.
"The Thistlewitch will need to know what had happened tonight," Spike said slowly.
"Go ahead," she said. "We can talk about it later." Taking the spare key out from underneath a dusty bottle of bleach, she opened the door as quietly as she could. The house was silent.
Roiben followed Kaye into the kitchen, and the sight of him carefully closing the backdoor and filling what was probably a dirty glass with water from the tap was so incongruous, she had to stop and watch him. He drank, tipping back his head so that the column of his neck was thrown into profile. He must have seen her staring; as he finished the last of the water, he looked in her direction.
"Your pardon," he said.
"No, go ahead. I'm just going to make some coffee. Uh, the bathroom is there." She pointed.
"Do you have any salt?" he asked.
"Salt?"
"For my leg. I'm not sure what can be done about the arm."
"Oh." She rummaged around in her grandmother's spice drawer and came up with a canister of Morton's salt. "Wouldn't iodine or something be better?"
He just shook his head grimly and walked in the direction of the bathroom.
A few minutes later he returned in his more human glamour. As before, his hair was more white than silver, the bones of his face were slightly less jagged, and his ears were less prominent. He had discarded his shirt, and she was disconcerted to see the pattern of scars on his chest. He must have found some gauze; one thigh looked padded under the leg of his pants.
She poured the coffee into two mugs, alarmed to see that her hands were shaking. Spooning sugar into one of the cups, she looked a query at Roiben. He nodded and nodded again when she offered milk.
"When I first met you, I didn't know I was a faerie," she said.
He raised an eyebrow. "I presume that you knew you were not human when you blackmailed a kiss from me."
Kaye felt her face flood with heat. She just nodded.
"The question, of course, is whether you aided me in the forest for the reward of my name."
She stammered, the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach intensifying. If that was what he thought, no wonder he was furious.
"There was no way I could have known what you were going to offer me. I just wanted to piss you off in the diner… and… I knew faeries don't like to give out their real names."
"One day, someone is going to cut that clever tongue of yours right out of your head," he said.
She bit her lower lip, worrying it against her teeth as he spoke. What had she expected—a declaration of love because of one halfhearted kiss?
Kaye looked at the steaming cup in front of her. She was sure that if she took a sip of that coffee, she would throw it up.
She needed a cigarette. Ellen's jacket was draped over the back of the chair, and she fumbled through it for a cigarette and a lighter. Lighting it despite Roiben's look of surprise, she took a deep drag.
The smoke burned her lungs like fire. She found herself on her knees on the linoleum floor, choking, the cigarette burning the plastic tile where it had fallen.
Roiben put the cigarette out with a twist of his boot and leaned forward. "What were you doing?">Three knights were on him before he was even inside the circle. The green knight's heavy sword crashed against Roiben's at the same moment that a red-clad knight slashed at Roiben's back. He twisted, faster than she would have believed, and his blade sliced the red knight across the face. The faerie clutched at his eyes, staggering, his sword clattering into the circle.
Roiben tried to parry a blow from the third knight, a female wielding an axe, but he was too late. The blade bit into his right shoulder so hard that it probably hit bone.
Roiben staggered back, gasping with pain, sword drooping in his right hand, the tip dragging along the metal circle. It came up just in time to stab through the green knight's chest as he rushed forward. The knight fell on his side, completely still. There was only a small hole in his armor, but it was already welling with blood.