Hex Appeal (P.N. Elrod) (Kitty Norville 4.60)

* * *

I awoke alone, which at first didn’t bother me. I couldn’t remember the last time I hadn’t. But I stretched, and the bed was warm everywhere, as if someone other than I had warmed it.

Then I remembered. Jimmy. Me. Us.

I hugged myself and went over every minute we’d shared, beginning with the expression in his eyes that had looked like love.

Then I heard his voice, and I leaped from the cocoon we’d made. When you lived a life like ours, a conversation in the middle of the night was rarely a good thing.

I paused, listening. He wasn’t in the cottage, so I glanced out the window. Jimmy stood beneath the stars, having a talk with his cell phone.

“Mission accomplished,” he said.

It wasn’t until I heard Ruthie’s answer—through the glass, across the distance, on a phone that wasn’t anywhere near my ear—sure I was a fairy, but even I had limits—that I realized I was dreaming.

“Any problems?”

“What problem would there be? You’ve seen her.”

Seen who? What problem?

“Did she suspect?”

“That this was a setup?” Jimmy blew a derisive breath through his lips. “I know what I’m doing, Ruthie. It would have been nice if you’d mentioned that the sorcerer was one of ours.”

“Telling you would have defeated the purpose of the test.”

“That was a test?” Jimmy asked. “And here I thought it was just one giant clusterfuck.”

“Watch your mouth, boy.”

“I could have died.”

“Summer wouldn’t let you. Why you think I made you take her along?”

“I know exactly why you made me take her along.”

Silence reigned for a few seconds before Ruthie murmured, “It had to be done.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Considering what I usually send you out to do, I wouldn’t think seducing a pretty woman would be such a hardship.”

Suddenly the warmth of the room wasn’t quite warm enough.

“She isn’t a woman.” I stopped breathing even before he continued. “She’s a damn fairy.”

“Not damned,” Ruthie murmured. “Not yet. Besides, she could have been Satan’s little sister, and the mission would have been the same. Count your blessings.”

“This wasn’t a blessing, it was a—” He turned, and saw me standing in the window. “Nightmare,” he finished.

I woke up with a gasp, arms flailing, tangling in the covers as I tried to breathe but was unable to through the pain in my chest. I felt like I was dying even though I was well aware that I wouldn’t.

I was at the cottage, alone in the bed, in the room. Outside, the low murmur of Jimmy’s voice.

“Mission accomplished.”

Ignoring the shimmy of déjà vu, I dressed, taking clothes from the owner’s closet. Considering she was no longer here, and neither was whoever belonged to the man’s clothes in a second closet, I figured the chupacabras had eaten them.