The orc, big and brawny, stepped up behind me, his huge body looming as he gripped the doorway with both hands. Smoothly, he snaked a hand around my middle and shoved me behind him. “What’s going on here?” he asked, his voice tight but neutral.
I said nothing. My mouth refused to release any words.
“I am here for my wife,” the stranger said matter-of-factly.
Tandor nodded once, seeming nonplussed at the use of that word,wife. “Okay. Sure. And who is your wife? Nobody else is here—just our small group of friends—but maybe I can help you find her.”
The dark stranger returned his goldeneyes to mine. He lifted his brows in question. I realized with a start that he was waiting for my name.
I refused to reveal it.
“He’s confused,” I said, my voice strained. “He’s looking for someone else. He’ll be going now.”
“No, I don’t think I will go. I would like to enter.” His jaw clenched. “Please invite me in.”
Something about the phrasing rubbed me the wrong way. I nudged Tandor with my elbow, tilting my head backward when he glanced in my direction.
“Right,” Tandor said. “It’s late. You can come back another time.”
“No, I shall enter?—”
“Goodnight, sir,” Tandor said.
And he promptly slammed the door in the stranger’s face.
“Really, I don’t want to talk about it,” I insisted for what felt like the hundredth time.
I sat at a table in my pub, uncomfortable, my legs tucked up beneath me. My fingers refused to stop trembling.
The day had started full of friends, celebration, and joy, and it ended in pure confusion.
My lovely Merry Day came to a screeching halt. Not even the joy of my new, mind-boggling gift—thebaby dragon—could break through the turmoil roiling in my brain.
“Come on. I know you have something to say,” Tandor urged, swirling cider around in his glass. He watched it idly, the liquid sloshing up the edges and dripping back down again.
“A confused stranger showed up at the door. And that’s it. There’s nothing else to say,” I said, more sharply than I intended. I took a deep breath. “Sorry. That was rude.”
Kizzi, my favorite short, green-haired apothecary witch, chose that moment to chime in. “You’re not rude. You’re never rude, Ginny. This is fucking crazy. He called you his wife! Nobody says that!”
“She’s right. I’d be throwing a fit if I were you, Ginger,” added Fiella, vampire from the trinket shop that I was steadily becoming fonder of.
The two women had always been friends of mine, as were many folk in Moonvale, but more recently, I would consider them dear to my heart.
“I didn’t get a good look at him. Was he cute?” Kizzi asked. “How convenient would it be if your mateactuallyjust walked right into your life like that?”
“I didn’t get a good look at him either,” I lied.
Kizzi shifted her attention to Tandor and quirked her eyebrow expectantly.
He shrugged. “He was rather handsome, I’d say. I don’t know aboutcute.”
“Handsome is good! We can work with that!”
I sighed. They were always trying to make me feel better. “I just want to forget that it happened. I don’t want to ruin Merry Day.”
“You could never!” Fiella insisted. “This has been the best Merry Day ever!”
Redd, Fiella’s mate and another vampire, nodded in agreement, but didn’t add anything else. He was content to side with his lady no matter what she said.
