Cha frowned, wondering if Dy had been right to warn her about picking up strange candy.“Who are you, really?”
A chorus of high-pitched yowls echoed up from the intersecting ley about a league back and Prince Charming visibly blanched.“In case you don’t recognize that sound, those are fell wolves chasing me.If they catch us, it won’t be pretty.”
Cha snorted.Fell wolves in human lands, especially this far out in the country?Not likely.“Tell me another tale,” she invited.
“Go and I will.Or are you not capable of riding this ley?”he inquired with enough silky disdain that her hackles went up.Oh yeah, he was royalty of some kind all right.
She deliberately lifted her hands in the air.Not that she needed to touch Katu with her hands to direct him on the ley line, but Mr.High and Mighty didn’t need to know that.Royals seldom knew how to do the day-to-day stuff of living.“We go nowhere until you tell me who you are.”
“I’m roadkill, is who I am, if you don’t move this thing along,” he replied, all keen edge and zero befuddlement now.
She shrugged, kicking back in the sloped seat, putting her hands behind her neck and turning her face up to the gentle sunshine.“Not my problem,” she noted mildly.
The overdressed fop practically seethed beside her.Were those magic prickles emanating from him?Cha had spent enough years around Dy to recognize the buzz of it.Interesting.
“I can make it your problem,Bandit,” the man said quietly, raising a blue-tinted brow when she fastened him with a glare.
“I tell you I’m not him.”
He shrugged, mimicking her earlier insouciance.“I beg to differ.”With a flick of his finger, he popped the path-channel box back to the marcasite channel—not something a royal should know how to do, since they had staff for that kind of thing—and Dy’s voice came ringing through immediately.
“Bandit!Come back.I swear, if you picked up some roadside piece of hitchhiking fluff while we’re on a critical gig, I’ll—” Cha cut off her partner, by changing off marcasite again.
“Roadside piece of fluff?”the man queried with that lifted brow, clearly striving for cool, but he was sweating.
“You have to admit you’re quite floofy.”Cha poked the billowing cloak.“And your implied threats don’t work on me.”
“How about aggressively stated threats?I can make life quite difficult for you, Bandit.”The creatures howled louder, closing on them, and he barely restrained a wince.
“Not if you’re reduced to flesh strips drying in the sun,” Cha retorted cheerfully, although the howls did lift the hairs on the back of her neck.Surely they weren’t really fell wolves, though.
“If you’re a bandit, then you can be bought.”He rummaged under his floral-embroidered vest, producing a platinum coin and proffering it.
Cha felt her own eyes bulge—not a pleasant sensation, but whoa, she’d never seen a real platinum coin, worth ten golds—and she reached for it.Quick as a wink, Prince Charming folded it out of sight, revealing only an empty palm.She huffed.“I resent the implication that I’m cheap goods for sale.”
“Expensive goods,” he corrected with a wicked smile that went right through her.The coin winked into sight between his nimble fingers and disappeared again.“A platinum coin should be enough to take you away from selling your…wares.”
Cha nearly choked on the insulting implication, until she caught the calculating glint in his eyes.Maybe he wasn’t so dumb.“Fine.I’ll ride the line, do it fast enough to shake those slavering pups, and drop you where you like—as long as it’s on my way—and I get the coin.”
“For a platinum coin, I should think you’d take me wherever I want to go.”
“Things to do.Places to be.”The howls drew near enough to make even Cha a bit jumpy.If they really were fell wolves, they shouldn’t attack anyone but their target, but you never knew…Still, unlike Dy, Cha was a champion negotiator and Prince Charming was sweating like an ice fae in the Summerlands.She tipped her head in the direction of the pursuing howls.“Whoever you are, someone wants you back pretty badly.”
“Fine,” he bit out.“Now does this thing go fast or not?”
Cha grinned.“Hold my ale.”
~12~
Strip Tease
Katu leapt ontothe main flow of the rural ley line, the bright sunlight temporarily dimming as the dull black pixie dust spun up into a cloud.Prince Charming let out a thin scream as the sudden acceleration flung him back in the seat—and the wind of their passage sent his voluminous cloak billowing into his face.
Maybe a better woman wouldn’t have been amused, but as Cha’s mother had always said, she was bad through and through and popped out that way.Deflating the pompous prince a breath or two wouldn’t kill him.While he wrestled the cloak like it was a chartreuse slime demon sucking his life energy, Cha kept a keen mental eye on the ley line, wary of obstacles farming country tended to produce—livestock sometimes stupidly wandered into the black and got mired—and flipped the box back to the marcasite channel.
“Goldilocks, this is…” Cha flicked a sideways glance at the preoccupied prince.Ah well, no help for it.In for a silver, in for shiny platinum coin.“Bandit here.I need some juice on a rural ley.Dodging some fallen meat-eaters.”
“What?” Dy practically screeched, echoed by Warg’s disharmonious agreement.“Tell me you did not pick up a fugitive from…You did not say what I think you said.Especially not for a fancy piece of ass-candy.”
