Page 50 of By the Fae

“She thinks I’m an egotistical, scruffy . . . What was it, D?”

“Alley cat,” Dima clarified.

“Smart girl,” Mal said, finally relenting into a one-sided grin.

She’s outside the kitchen,Dima said into all three of our minds at once.

Chapter 17.

Holly

I shouldn’t have listened in. Shouldn’t have hung around.

Joey wanted to lead me upstairs to show off the dress she wore to some big fancy cake awards that also happened to have been worn by a very famous, and very dead, movie star. But she’d needed to pee first. She’d nipped into the downstairs loo, leaving me hovering about like a kid waiting for the headteacher. I couldn’t go up to her room by myself. That would've been all kinds of weird, so I’d waited by the kitchen door for her to escort me.

And then I heard their voices. I heardhisvoice, Goldie’s, and I found myself unable to leave. Any second, Joey would return and catch me eavesdropping. But my feet had rooted me to the spot. My ears pricked. They were talking about me.

The incubus had been so quiet during dinner. Joey had said I’d never meet a nicer man than Mal, but the guy I met was miserable and taciturn, and I knew with one-hundred-percent certainty the reason was me. A few seconds of hanging about afterwards proved that.

Someone died, I think. By the sounds of it, a long time ago. Goldie had said,We hadn’t f-ed. Yet.He’d said he wasromantically dead. That he was nearly seven-hundred-years-old. And that when this deal was over, he would hand me over to Seth. He’d called him an asshole but didn’t elaborate.

Instead of feeling relieved that the plan was plodding ahead as I’d, well, as I’d planned, a nauseating churning sensation blossomed in my stomach. What had Mal meant when he said lose his mind when she’s gone? Where would I go? Was he still talking about death?

And what did Goldie mean when he said Dima could confirm? And how did Dima know I thought Goldie looked like a scruffy alley-cat? Unless I’d told Joey, and he’d overheard with his super sensitive vampire hearing?

Suddenly it all went quiet in the kitchen. I froze. My brain told my feet to run before anyone came out and caught me. But since when did my body ever do what I’d asked it to?

“Human!” came Goldie’s voice. My heart jumped into my mouth. “I know you’re standing just outside the kitchen.”

I closed my eyes and tipped my head back against the wall.Sweaty sourpops!How? How did they know? I’d stay quiet, and maybe they’d leave me alone, or I could run for it. Only I still couldn’t seem to make my feet respond.

After a few seconds, Goldie said, “We’re Mythics. You can’t hide in the hallway. Go and wait for me in my room.”

Still, I didn’t move. I heard whispers, fast, raspy, almost like arguments, and then laughter.

“Go, human!” he shouted.

So I did. I ran up the stairs like a child who’d been caught with their hand in the biscuit tin. I threw myself onto his bed, breathing in the scent of his pillows before pushing myself into a more dignified seated position.

Twenty seconds later Goldie burst in through the door, slammed it shut behind himself, and immediately tore his jersey over his head, tossing it towards the wash basket.

He stormed over and stopped so that my head was level with the bulge in the front of his sweatpants. I covered my eyes with my palm as though I were shielding my face from the sun.

“Take your clothes off,” he demanded.

“What?”

“We’re going to resume your lessons.”

“But I’m cold,” I lied.

A fire burst into life at the foot of his bed. It looked like a campfire, the type you hover marshmallows on sticks over. Its heat wrapped around me.

“Wow,” I said, unable to stop myself feeling entirely awestruck. “It works just like that?”

Goldie’s face softened, as though he meant to smile, but stopped himself. “It won’t hurt you, or burn my bed. Unless I want it to,” he said, as I crept towards it on my knees, an arm outstretched. “Now take off your gods-damned clothes.”

“Shouldn’t we, like, talk and stuff first?” I said.

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