Well, that pricked his pride. He couldn’t remember a woman preferring a dog to him. Then he realized what a ridiculous thought that was. He crossed to the van to find something to wear. Weren’t there extra clothes in there? Even though he knew it wasn’t good to cover up his burns—hell, moving was sending bolts of fire across his skin—he wasn’t going to stand naked in front of a woman while covered in grime and seeping welts. Especially a woman who preferred a wolf to him.
Except the moment he’d managed to pull on a pair of sweatpants, she left Laddin to look straight at him. He flushed—again—because damn it, at that moment he wanted a shower and some painkillers, not to be the center of attention. And he certainly didn’t want to be asked questions he couldn’t answer. But that didn’t stop her from voicing them.
“What did you learn about the demon?”
What demon? He’d stumbled across evil cheeses and fairies with fruit. Meanwhile, Bing peered at him.
“That was from a demon?” he asked, gesturing to Bruce’s wounds.
Nero shook his head. “Pixie chicks.”
Yordan’s head snapped up. “That a joke?”
Nero shrugged, but Yordan peered at the burns.
“The chickens pecked at you?”
“No,” Bruce rasped as he shoved his feet into his sneakers. “Pixies pinned me down with burning ropes. Laddin pulled them off me.”
“What does that have to do with chickens?”
Lady Kinstead waved her hand at the men. Bruce had no idea what the gesture meant, but the men fell silent as she stared at him.
“What did you learn?”
That pixies weren’t even remotely cute. That if it hadn’t been for Laddin, he’d probably be dead or turned into a frog or whatever crazy shit fairies did to uncooperative victims. He didn’t learn a damn thing about a demon, but he did figure something else out.
“They want to go to Fairyland.”
She laughed in a mystically beautiful and wholly creepy way, because really, that kind of dreamlike sound shouldn’t be coming from a body as earthly looking as hers. But it did, and it took him a moment to focus on her words instead of her form. “All earth fairies want to go to Feyland.”
He thought it was Fairyland, but whatever. “Why?”
“Don’t you want to go to Heaven? To talk to God?”
Uh, yes, he supposed. He hadn’t ever really thought about it.
“Feyland is their Heaven. They are created from its magic.”
“They want to die?”
She rolled her eyes. “So pretty, but so stupid.”
Was she talking about him or the fairies? Probably him, because she continued to explain.
“Fairies don’t die like you do. They can only go to Heaven if you take them.”
“But I can’t take them.”
“You can if you eat the apple.”
Nero jerked his head around. “What apple? Where?”
“Make it a condition of eating the apple,” the woman said.
Bruce couldn’t believe she was asking this of him. “I’m not helping a bunch of arsonist fairies get into heaven.”
“Not the pixies,” she said. “The demon. Demand that Bitterroot tell you where the demon is before the entire world dies. He will agree. He knows Feyland will be hurt too, if the Earth dies.”
