Cash turned to watch as El threw herself at her uncle—her tall, well-dressed uncle in front of his very nice Porsche. He waited until Arkady turned back around to pull a face, which he personally thought was admirably restrained. The fox-kin counselor didn’t agree; she gave him a look of mingled confusion and disapproval over her clipboard. The Abascals were underworld royalty, one of the few non-Prodigium breeds that could boast no human blood ran in their veins.
At least until some trailer park half-blood by-blow came along and spoiled that for at least one branch of the bloodline.
Cash saw the penny drop in the fox-kin’s eyes as she glanced from him to El and then back again. The “really? Foryou?” assessment that he never seemed to come out ahead on.
“What can I say,” Cash said dryly as he bent down to grab the backpack and toss it over his shoulder. He grinned at the fox-kin. “I used to be prettier.”
“You’re pretty,” the fox-kin blurted out. “Justweak.”
She immediately went red from her chin to her temples and spluttered a knot of tongue-tied excuses. Cash shrugged it off. She wasn’t wrong, not about the weakness, anyhow.
“I guess some people like that. I’ll just go toss this in the bus for El, yeah?”
The fox-kin nodded, lips pressed together as if she might blurt out something else rude, and Cash carried the backpack over to shove it in the hold of the bus with the rest. He gave it a kick to make it fit. No one paid him any attention. Even the posturing little bantam monsters craned their necks to see what the celebrity was doing.
“Poor thing,” a huldra in Dior, her aura black as tree rot along her spine, said to the redcap next to her—his traditional stocking cap replaced with a Cardinal’s ball cap. “I don’t know how Donna Abascal can hold her head up. The child might as well be human.”
Cash licked the back of his teeth and tasted spite. He wasn’t much of a monster. Even if his mom hadn’t been a truck-stop waitress with a soft spot for pretty liars, he’d have never made the grade with the monsters-who-lunch crowd. He was a wisp. Even his monstrousness was insubstantial and passing. It was just secrets and a knack for seeing things you weren’t meant to.
“At least she’s pretty,” he said. “Humanity is only skin deep, but ugly’s to the bone.”
The redcap laughed, a harsh blart of unrepentant mockery, and the huldra went stiff and hard-looking. Like bark. Her humiliation was sour as lemons and fizzed like sorbet as Cash choked it down. He didn’t know what it meant—hopefully he hadn’t just called a child ugly—he just knew it would hurt.
The huldra grabbed his shoulder and dug her fingers in until his bones creaked.
“Speak to me like that again,” she said through thick, cracked lips as she pulled him onto his toes. “I’ll take your face and wear it at Halloween.”
Cash grinned at her. He didn’t have fangs, but he couldfeelthem in the words on his tongue.
“I’m sure Belladonna will be glad to know you did what she couldn’t,” he said. “Probably grateful. Don’t you think?”
They both knew the answer was no. Donna would rather her worst enemy—and Cash might not be her favorite person, but there was a long stretch of assholes between him and the person she hated most—walk the earth forever than have some nouveau-evil fey do her a “feyvor.” She once described gratitude as “when you have to smile as someone fucks you over.”
The redcap, over his fit of the giggles, cleared his throat. “Gret,” he said mildly. “Your tail’s showing.”
The huldra pinked in embarrassment and let Cash go. She brushed her hands together and patted her face to set the humanity back in place. The ghostly flick of her tail under her dress faded away.
“Next timeIsee Belladonna,” she sniffed at Cash as she tossed her blond mane of hair, “I’ll give her your regards.”
She turned and stalked off to push her daughters onto the bus. “Before the good seats are taken,” she snapped, her voice thin with distance as she pulled them away from their friends. Cash straightened his T-shirt and snorted.
“Do that,” he said dryly. “She’ll know you’re a fucking liar. I’ve never even wished that old bat ‘many more’ on her birthday.”
This time the redcap nearly choked as he tried to stop the snort that escaped him. He tugged his cap down farther on his forehead and left quickly.
“Dad,” El huffed as she popped out of a clot of suddenly friendly little monsters like a cork out of a bottle. “Were you mean?”
“It’s my art,” Cash said mildly.
El rolled her eyes at him and then surprised him with another hug. “Uncle Arkady wants to talk to you,” she said as she looked up at him. Her eyes were still blue. They’d start to fade now as her monster grew into her. “He said it was important.”
Cash kissed her forehead. “But it probably isn’t,” he said. “So….”
“Pleeeeeeaase?” El begged. “He said you wouldn’t listen, but I said you would if I asked.”
“Wow,” Cash said. “You’re not a seer. Not even on the bus yet and you’re learning things about yourself.”
“Just be nice to him, Dad,” El protested. “He’s always nice to you. Or he would be if you gave him a chance.”
