Page 21 of Mountain Man's Muse
Vaile picked up on the first ring. “Hey there, Josh. Never thought I’d get a call from you.”
“I never would have thought an imaginary creature from old storybooks would need a phone.”
Silence. Then Vaile sighed. “You’d be safer without an imagination. What’s this about?”
“You have a broken water pipe that flooded your kitchen, and I have a musetta wearing my clothes.”
After another long moment of silence, Vaile said, “I assume you turned off the water. As for the musetta… They are harder to turn away. Put her on the line.”
Right. So they could talk over his simple human head. “She’s busy not being killed by imps. You’ll just have to talk to me.”
In the background, Josh heard Vaile’s low rumble, probably to Odette, who—now that he thought about it—was too damn beautiful to be a real woman. Movie star, his ass.
Vaile returned to the line. “Ollie says hi. She also says—and I quote—‘Don’t do it.’”
“Tell her it’s too late. If you catch my drift.”
Vaile grunted. “These fae females are beyond enchanting. And not always in a good way.”
“Thanks for telling me all of this when I offered to watch your place.”
“We didn’t know you’d actuallysee.”
Josh touched the scar under his eye. “I should warn you, the implications of my incompetence are starting to piss me off. As soon as I get off the phone, my musetta and I are spending a quiet evening at home, smelting iron bullets. You owe me a frying pan, fairy.”
“Call me fairy again and I’ll take that pan upside your head, cowboy.” Another pause and half-heard mumble. “Ollie says iron won’t have the range of your normal rounds. You’ll have to get close.”
“Good to know.”
“We’ll be back as soon as we can. I’ll bring you a nice German titanium skillet.”
“You’re in Germany? Shit.” Josh rubbed his chest where the imp’s scratches stung. “It’ll be days before you get here.”
“Midnight. No later. When we fly, we trip the mushroom express.”
Josh remembered the mushroom ring in the Hunters’ backyard. “Sounds like I have a lot to learn.”
“Or a lot to forget.”
Stubbornly, Josh didn’t respond.
This time, Vaile’s sigh ended in a curse. “We had hoped to stay hidden until I finished fortifying the valley. We’ll just have to take them whenever they come. And by we, I don’t mean you, Josh.”
“I’m already in it up to my eyeballs,” Josh argued. “Both eyes. So tell me what she’s running from.”
At first he thought he wouldn’t get an answer, but then Vaile said, “A dream.”
Josh waited a second, feeling like his understanding was as hazy as his vision. “I don’t get it.”
“And you never will. You live in the sunlit world, where you wake from your dreams. For us, the dream is never-ending. And it has become a nightmare. Odette and I, plus a few others, had to get away, but our queen does not allow such freedom.”
“I’ve heard about this queen of yours. She won’t let you go?”
“Not without a fight.”
“Hell, I can give her that.”
“You? A human?” Vaile gave a dismissive snort. “She’s not a Disney villainess, sure to be defeated in the last act.”
