He was wincing now, his fingers gripping the wheel.
“Are you all right?”she asked.
“Just…thinking.”
She was going to ask about what but decided against it.He probably wouldn’t tell her anyway.
He pulled up to the curb in front of Lirin’s Bake Shop.
“Lirin?”
“It’s a combination of my and my brother’s names.My parents thought it would be cute.”
“Ah.Cute.”He said the word “cute” as though he’d never used it before.
She glanced at her watch.Three in the morning.“I’m supposed to be at work in an hour, along with the early shift.”Then she would work right on through the afternoon shift, too, because her father’s absence left a big hole in the schedule.
Archer got out, and she swore he would have walked around to her side to open her door if she hadn’t already done so.
She pulled her keys out and jammed the right one into the lock.“Why are we coming here?”
“It helps to go to the place where the event happened, keeps you from wandering to other memories.”He stepped in behind her, and she flicked on the lights.“You’d be surprised what I’ve found in people’s minds.”
Oh, gawd, she hoped he couldn’t see anything but the memory.What if she had a naughty thought about him?Of course, the memory of his jeans, tight over his erection, and his bare chest, and his wings…
Oh, boy, she was in trouble.
“So we went to the Raphael because of the wraiths?”
“I didn’t want to engage them here.I’m sorry you had to fight them.I would have sent you away, but I suspected one would have followed you.”
“I can handle myself, as you saw.Dragons are trained to fight from the time they’re Awakened at thirteen.Living among the Hidden, you have to be ready for anything.”
“What I saw was you bleeding a lot on the garage floor.Don’t feel offended; you weren’t used to fighting wraiths.”
She wanted to argue, but he was right.Once she was down, they could have easily taken her life.“No offense taken.It was a bad situation, for sure.”
She led the way to the back, where the ovens and worktables were.Footsteps scurried across the floor.Something skittered around the corner.
Archer shifted into fight mode, body stiff, arms akimbo as he scanned the space.
“Sorry, forgot to warn you about the Earthies.Elementals,” she clarified at his questioning expression.
Pink fairy dust, made of colored sugar crystals, covered one of the tables with the telltale impression of squat bodies having been rolling in it.Peering around the corner of a cabinet was one of them.
“Gogo, what did I tell you about getting into the fairy dust sugar?That stuff’s expensive.”
Gogo stepped out, eyes too big for his face, with a bulbous nose and puffy lips.At least he had the decency to look remorseful.Perhaps his chortling sound was an apology.When he saw Archer, he ducked out of sight again.
Archer had been watching.“You employ Elementals?”
She laughed.“No, we sort of have a deal with them.When I started working here during high school, I discovered that Pop had instigated a war with them.The sugar draws them, and they’re hard to get rid of.”
“Have you tried a fumigator?”
She waved that away.“We don’t want to hurt them.Well, my pop did.They would dump out flour and spell obscenities in it.They’d appear when Mundanes were out front, and he couldn’t control himself.He’d yell and throw things, and the Mundanes thought he was a crazy grump.”She laughed, but it died down as she thought about that crazy grump being missing.
Archer took one step away.“We’ll find him.Go on.”
