“Like I’m cutting out my own beating heart.”
“Yeah,” Josh whispered. “Me too.”
They slept hard and deep for too little time. And when the alarm went off, neither of them spoke. They got their stuff together and headed out to the nearest park. Fairies liked greenery, and Bitterroot was no different. Once there, Josh laid out the harness, and Nero spoke in an undertone that nonetheless carried the throb of his alpha voice.
“Drake Bitterroot, I call thee. Drake Bitterroot, I call thee. Drake Bitterroot, I call—”
“Cutting it close there, aren’t you?”
Josh jerked backward as a slender youth, about three feet tall, appeared in front of them. He wore dark green everywhere plus a couple of butterflies on his shirt, and his skin was the color of an oak tree beneath the bark. His eyes were sharp black points, and his expression was friendly despite his sour tone. And he missed absolutely nothing as he took in Nero, Josh, and the shield and hoodie that lay on the ground between them. He also wore no less than seven different types of watches.
“That it?” Bitterroot walked around the shield. He touched it, pushed his fingers into the sticky paste that Josh had created, and then prodded the hoodie with his toe. “Hmmm. Clever design. Your work, I assume?” he asked as he looked at Josh.
“Yes. I’m—”
“Don’t tell him your name,” Nero interrupted. He looked at Bitterroot. “He’s with me. That’s all you have to know.”
Bitterroot pouted a moment, but then he shrugged. “All right, With Me, let’s talk specifics here. Tell me what I need to know to duplicate these.”
Josh frowned. “Um, I’ve got the specifications in my laptop.”
The fairy rolled his eyes as if Josh were especially stupid. “Not specifications. Spare me from mortalspecifications.” He said the word as if even the sound of it nauseated him. “Tell me what you were thinking when you made it.”
“My father made the hoodie—”
“When you got the idea. When you created—”
“He wants your feelings, Josh. Fairies deal in feelings.”
Josh blinked. “What?”
Nero shrugged. “Hell if I understand it, but they do. Tell him how you felt when you got the idea. What emotions carried you through when you designed it for the first time? What were you feeling as you adjusted the specs?”
“I was….” Josh thought back. “I was excited. I was making something good.” His gaze caught on Nero. “I was going to make you so happy.” That had been the overriding feeling in every moment of the creation process: that he was going to make Nero so happy when it was done.
His gaze caught and held on Nero’s for a long moment, and it was as though they were connected at a gut level. Josh was trying to say that every part of this harness had been a gift to Nero. And Nero was answering,Thank you,I love you, andI’m so sorry it ended like this.
“Done!” Bitterroot exclaimed. And when Josh looked down, sure enough, there were five full shields on the ground and a stack of matching hoodies. Even more confusing, Bitterroot carefully draped a large egg-shaped item onto each shield as they watched, binding it there in some magical fairy way with one of his watches.
“What is that?” Josh demanded.
“Something of faery that will absorb the heat. It wasn’t the answer by itself, but it may help keep your people alive.” Then, when the last egg was set, Bitterroot looked up with a grin. “Anything else? No? Okay, then, have fun catching the demon!”
And then Nero was gone. There was no clap, no snap, not even a blink. One second Nero was standing there with the shields at his feet, and the next the space was empty.
Gone.
Josh scrambled to keep up. His mind was reeling from how abrupt it had been, but he’d already planned for this. So before he lost his chance, he turned to Bitterroot.
“Before you go,” he said, “I’d like to make a deal.”
Chapter 26
NERO STUMBLEDas he appeared in Wisconsin. He’d been thinking of his last goodbye to Josh, and suddenly he was here again, holding aCrazy Cat LadyT-shirt. Just like before, Cream and Coffee were already wolves, playing happily with each other while they kept an eye on whether Nero would wear the tee. Pauly stood defiantly in front of him, daring him to say no, and Mother….
Mother had leaped backward with her T-shirt half off. She’d been stripping before her shift but was now was reaching for her gun to shoot the shields that had abruptly appeared at her feet.
“What the hell?” she said.
