“And you can’t do them properly at the same time?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“These are not matters that we discuss with outsiders,” Ilee said, the dragon fire in her eyes brightening.
“All right, then,” Mal said, standing up. “I’ll see you all tonight.”
She cast a quick spell at Coorsel and Nayena, unsurprised to find that Law had already cast shields around them both. She sealed hers to his. Magically, they were protected, but if someone decided to slip them poison or shove a knife between their ribs, they’d be dead as dodos.
She wasn’t thrilled for Nayena to be traveling around the hotel solo and decided to wait in the corridor for her. She came out first, stopping in front of Mal, who leaned back against the far wall.
“I’ll walk back with you,” Mal said.
The pixie gave a little frown and dropped down so her feet touched the ground. She walked beside Mal, though it was more of a floating glide.
“You wish to speak to me?”
“Mostly I didn’t want you to get attacked going back to the grotto.”
“Ilem waits for me.”
“Who’s Ilem?”
“My cousin.”
Nayena could probably say that about her entire clan. In fact, everybody was probably an aunt, uncle, or cousin.
“We nested together as younglings,” Nayena explained. She tapped her fingers on a full pouch at her waist. “He likes chocolate and sweets. I have brought him some egg-lairs.”
Mal smiled but didn’t correct her. “Do you suspect anyone in particular of trying to stop the wedding and the alliance?”
“It will not be pixies who are responsible.”
Her certainty startled Mal. “Why not?”
Nayena’s smile was impish and also a little scary. “We would have already killed. We would have done this long ago and not wait. We would be devious, and we would work quickly and silently.”
Mal thought about that for a moment. “You’re suggesting that whatever is going on is a statement of some kind, not just an effort to stop the alliance. The killers want it to be splashy and they may even want to take credit.”
The pixie fluttered her wings and twisted magic between her fingers. “They wish an audience.”
She was right. Mal would be willing to bet on it. She’d also be willing to bet that the choice of when depended on just what the bad guys wanted to stop. If Coorsel and Nayena got married, but she wasn’t made virdana and thus they didn’t have their own clan, then the pixies might take in the small giants and they’d continue on together with a crippled alliance. If the wedding was attacked, not even that much could happen.
So it all boiled down to… what exactly were the bad guys after?
Chapter Eleven
Because she had done quitea number of jobs requiring elegant clothing for every occasion, Mal had a closet full of designer clothes and a dumpster-load of shoes. As she eyed her choices, she realized that this was the first time she’d been able to dress up for Law since she’d come to Effrayant.
That first day she’d arrived and discovered he was the resident exterminator, she’d been tracking down an incubus. She’d put on a slinky sheath dress with a slit up to her hipbone, no back, and very little front. To bait a sex demon, one needed to dress like bait.
She’d only managed to catch Law. She smiled at the memory. He’d dragged her off to someone’s office. Emotions had been running high, and in the middle of a fight, they’d given into an inferno of need and he’d banged her while standing up against the wall. It had been raw and real, and she hadn’t realized it then, but that’s when he’d really broken through her defensive walls.
After that, she couldn’t have left him. Her body had realized, even if her brain hadn’t gotten there yet, that his need for her was as great as hers for him and they were meant to be together. It was going to be worse to leave than to stay and let him in.
That didn’t mean the opening up and letting him in wasn’t damned awful sometimes.
