Page 79 of The Wicked

“We’ll deal with it in the morning. I’ll buy you new linen, another mattress, whatever.”

I was too tired to argue. Instead, I let him wrap me up in his arms and snuggle me on a bed of slightly slippery wax pieces. There wasn’t a thing I’d change about this moment. About our life together. I was living the twisted fairy tale, and I didn’t want to wake up.

* * *

But I did wake up.

An hour later, my phone pinged on the nightstand, and I was conditioned to react to that sound like Pavlov’s dog. It was an alert from the motion sensors outside, and that meant Charming was on his way. Except…except Charming was right here. His arms were wrapped around me. His breath was hot on my neck.

It had to be a false alarm, right?

“What is it?” he murmured as I reached for the phone.

“The motion sensors.”

“What about them?”

“There must be a deer or something.”

He got to the phone before I did, and anotherpingsounded. Whatever was out there, it was still moving around, and suddenly Garrett wasn’t sleepy anymore. Gone was my filthy prince. He was all business as he lifted me out of bed.

“In the bathroom.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

“Hopefully nothing, but I need to check it out.”

Garrett was already pulling on a pair of pants and a sweater, sneakers too.

“Bathroom, Saralisa.”

“You’re leaving me here?”

“It’s the safest place.”

“Then you should stay with me.”

Anotherping.

“You’re probably right and it’s just a deer.”

Now he was rooting through his overnight bag, and holy fuck, was that agun? It was, a black pistol, and he checked the magazine before he tucked it into his waistband.

“W-w-why do you have that?”

“Just a precaution.” He pressed an urgent kiss to my lips. “Bathroom.”

“But—”

He checked my phone one last time before he curled my fingers around it.

“Relax. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I backed into the bathroom while Garrett slipped out of the rear door, the one that led to the pump room and then the little grove of trees that Great-Grandma Agnes had planted. Should I call Luca? He’d said that if the motion sensors activated, I should let him know right away, but that was before Garrett came onto the scene. No, I’d wait. The sensors were set too high to pick up a rabbit or a hedgehog, and they had some fancy technology that meant they discounted birds. But a large deer would set them off, or a mountain lion. Not that we got many mountain lions around here, but Annie from the hair salon’s brother swore he saw one in the parking lot outside Applejack’s one night. Of course, Annie’s brother also liked beer, which meant that nobody really believed him. Skip, who’d run the bar before Taya Swann, had sworn that extraterrestrials visited regularly, but nobody had believed him either. And Skip was gone now, in jail for robbing an armoured car, which had come as a surprise to everyone because Skip was a kind old guy who—

The first gunshot sent the phone tumbling out of my hand, and the second nearly gave me a coronary. Glass shattered. Every muscle froze. Three more shots came in quick succession,bang-bang-bang, and I couldn’t even breathe.

The silence was worse.

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