“You’ll have to excuse her,” Lowen said with a sympathetic look. “It’s been difficult returning to a nomadic lifestyle.”
Now I felt a little bad.
With a sigh, I tilted my head toward my nightstand and the deed I’d left there. “Thomas gave me a house. I’m not keeping it, but you can stay there until I figure out what to do with it.”
There was a gasp from the walls.
Inara stuck her head out of the vent to glare at me. “I knew it. I knew you were holding back. You probably planned to move in without even telling us.”
“Did you not hear the part where this is temporary?” I glared back at her. “Someone’s become a drama queen since the last time I saw her.”
Inara bared her pointed teeth at me as she ducked back into the vent.
“Besides, I only found out about it last night,” I grumbled. “If someone hadn’t been so annoying the moment I woke up, I would have mentioned it sooner.”
“Address?” Lowen asked.
I tilted my head toward my night stand. He leaped into the air and glided over to the pile of papers waiting there.
“Do pixies use addresses?” I asked, shifting to find a more comfortable position under Alches’s weight.
He huffed, grumpily lifting his head and dropping it onto the bed.
Finally. Freedom.
The image of Inara and Lowen having to hover in front of street signs to determine which way to go was an amusing one. Or maybe there was a pixie equivalent to Google Maps.
“Of course, we use addresses,” Inara hissed from the vent. “How else would we find our way? We’re pixies. Not illiterate.”
A sharp, stinging pain in my shoulder blade punctuated her words.
I flinched, reaching back to pluck the tiny piece of wood out of my skin.
She’d shot me.
“Inara, what the fuck?”
Already, the pixie-dust the arrow was coated in had resulted in a painful itch spreading around the injury site. My nerve endings felt like they were on fire. The urge to scratch was both painful and maddening.
“That’s what you get!” Inara shouted, her voice fading as she flew away.
“I’m going to kill her,” I snarled, abandoning the idea of not scratching as I contorted, trying to drag my fingernails over the irritated site.
Only, I couldn’t quite reach. She’d shot me in a place that was difficult to get to.
“Try not to scratch,” Lowen urged, landing on my pillow to take a closer look at the wound. “It’ll make things worse and could spread the dust.”
“How am I supposed to not itch?”
It felt like I was going insane. Every second that passed, the urge to peel my skin from my bones grew.
I gave in, wiggling to drag my wound against the sheets in an attempt at relief. The itch deepened into a fire in my veins.
“What about an antidote?” I grunted.
Guilt flashed across Lowen’s face. “Sorry, Aileen. There isn’t one. Not for you.”
I paused in using my bed as a scratching post. “How is that possible?”
