Other homes were decorated with expertly plotted miniature gardens and bare young trees that would flower in the spring. But Baz’s decorations were all inorganic. A stone fountain with a mermaid spitting water, metal sculptures of owls and tigers and fish, and a whole bunch of other ridiculous nonsense.

  At this thought, a small part of my brain inched closer to the theory that there was someone immortal like Baz controlling the weird inorganic animals that kept coming after me—were the rabbits built that way simply to last longer? And would the shifter’s life have been prolonged by the ice it had been encased in? Yep, another tick in the box to tell me there were probably gods involved. And witches.

  I sucked in my breath. Normally, dealing with Baz was a small annoyance at worst or great entertainment at best. But tonight, I had the patience for neither. I had a lot of questions to answer, and . . . well, I didn’t feel like I had a lot of time.

  Somewhere, deep down in the irrational part of my heart, I was still clinging to the vision of Becca I’d seen still alive. Burning. Silently begging me to save her.

  I knew that couldn’t have been real. Truly, I did. But it was affecting me the same way a bad nightmare would. When things felt real, they were tough to shake.

  So I couldn’t help but be in a hurry now. Even though my brain knew I should probably get some rest and approach this with more thought, more care—my heart couldn’t forget that image of Becca, and every minute that went by felt like another minute she would have to burn.

  If I’d thought there was any chance I could sneak in and talk to Noah without Baz knowing, I would have done it in a heartbeat. But slipping past Baz would be an impossible feat, so I clenched my fist and lightly tapped my knuckles against the frosted glass on his door.

  And waited . . . for more than three seconds. That was strange.

  Baz had superhuman hearing and could teleport himself anywhere instantaneously. As a marid, the type of djinn that supposedly grants wishes when rubbed the right way, he was really only kind of corporeal in the first place—and then, only when and where he wanted to be. I usually didn’t need to knock at all, even though I did it lightly as a gesture of normalcy. And I certainly never had to wait.

  Could he be somewhere else? I wondered as I stepped over the rails around his tiny porch and lifted myself up to try to peer in his window. I almost fell off when the door finally opened, and Baz actually clucked at me. Was he imitating a chicken or a disapproving mother? I honestly couldn’t tell.

  “I have a doorbell, you know.”

  I twisted my face at him and dropped to the ground, brushing myself off where my black jacket had rubbed against the bricks.

  “No, I didn’t know,” I said. “Why would someone like you need a doorbell?”

  “I didn’t say I needed it, just that I have one.” Then he broke into a huge smile, showing me perfectly white teeth. Anyone could tell which parts of Baz’s appearance he cared about most just by looking at him, since he could change anything about himself with nothing more than a thought. And his teeth were at the top of the list.

  I’m sure part of it was that he was proud of how solid they were; from what I’d heard, only very old or very skilled djinn could maintain fully solidified forms in the first place. But mostly, it was because he almost never stopped smiling. When you know you’ll never die naturally, every day you live becomes a choice. And you don’t get to be as old as Baz with a negative outlook on life. I wasn’t sure how much he had to try every day to keep up his attitude, but regardless, I’d never seen him less jolly than Santa is supposed to be.

  “Now, come on in,” he said through his smile. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I don’t want the neighbors to think I have too many lady friends.” Then he winked, indicating that of course, he didn’t really think there was such a thing as too many lady friends. He turned his back to me and walked inside, continuing to say, “When I bought the club, I promised myself I would keep business at work, but you know I could never turn you away, little birdie.”

  Still with that nickname, really? I thought. He had started calling me that when we’d first met, and I still had no idea why.

  “Is that your way of telling me I look like a snack?” I asked as I walked in behind him, taking in the emptiness that somehow still seemed decorated. Without furniture, the gaudy chandeliers and gilded mirrors and hanging beads stood out even more than usual. “Do marid eat little birds alive?”

  “Of course we don’t.” He stopped walking down the hallway and turned to me, and his smile seemed even wider now. He loved it when I teased him. “But you are human, little bird,” he explained. “You’ll always be a snack to someone.” Then he turned back around and marched deeper into the depths of his home, beckoning me to follow.

  And follow I did, wishing that one day I would meet a magical being who didn’t equate humans with food.

  He led me into the kitchen—twisting the knife?—and poured me a glass of tea from his kettle. It wasn’t on the stove, but it started steaming and screaming almost as soon as he picked it up, and when he handed me the glass it was hot to the touch. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who regularly magicked my drinks.

  “Thanks, Baz,” I said, gripping the handle carefully to avoid burning myself. “I’m kind of in a hurry, though—”

  “Nah-ah-ah, birdie . . .” he cut me off, lifting his eyebrows expectantly.

  “Ah, sorry—Bawdy Baz . . .”

  “Good girl,” he said, then turned into another room without furniture, though it did have a plush golden rug spread on the floor. Baz sat cross-legged and patted the rug next to him.

  “I—” I started, before he narrowed his eyes at me and patted the rug again, a bit harder this time.

  Fine, then. I sat next to him as quickly as I could, all the while complaining, “I really don’t have time to sit and drink tea right now.”

  “Oh, come on. I know your kind doesn’t live long, but it’s not as if you’ll fall over and die if you stop moving for a moment.” He took a sip of his tea.

  “That’s a bit insensitive, given the circumstances, BB.”

  “BB?” He looked up at me, decidedly less jolly than he’d been a minute ago.

  “Bawdy Baz is a mouthful. And like I said, I’m in a hurry. I need to talk to Noah. Is he asleep?”

  “The fairy girl’s boy? Is he supposed to be asleep? Ah . . .”

  “Ah, what?” I snapped. This should not be as complicated as he was making it seem.

  “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone he was here. How did you know?” The jolliness in his eyes continued to fade, and it was a little unsettling.

  “Etty told me—”

  “And—yes, that’s right—I’m not supposed to let anyone talk to him,” he cut me off again. “Sorry, birdie, looks like you came all the way here for nothing. Isn’t the boy a little young for you, anyway? There are plenty more appropriately grown fish in the sea.”

  “Oh, bats.” I stood, fighting the competing urges to be sick and punch Baz in the face. I was starting to really question Becca’s decision to leave Noah with this man. He wasn’t himself today, and I was smart enough to be scared by that. “I’m going to go find him. I promise you, Becca would have wanted me to talk to him right now.”

  He stood up with me, his eyes getting a little brighter as he did. “What do you mean ‘would have’?”

  I stopped and gaped at him. “No one told you?”

  He didn’t answer. Just stared at me without blinking, his eyes becoming brighter and redder by the second.

  “No one called? Came by to ask you questions?” After my pit-stop at home and having to defend myself against the psychotic ice wolf, I hadn’t expected to be the first one here. Especially since the cops had made it very clear they’d intended to talk to Baz.

  What, had they gone home for a good night’s sleep before starting their investigation? Sure, they hadn’t seen what I’d seen in the cave, and they didn’t have the same irrational fire under their butts to save a girl who was already dead . . . but they had to assume whoever had done this to her could be intending to do it to someone else . . . right?

  I felt movement at the back of my neck just then, and reached around my head to find the blob of jelly . . . undulating? I shivered. Never in my life had I thought I would need to describe something attached to me as “undulating.” I supposed that now, the cops would know very soon what I had seen in that cave.

  At this point, the fire in Baz’s eyes had dimmed slightly and he was looking at me with a grimace of gleeful disgust. “Please tell me you didn’t go to work with that thing on you.” Then he stepped forward, reaching out to lift my hair for a better look. “I pay you enough to go see a doctor, right?”

  “No I didn’t, and yes you do.” I smacked his hand away. “Anyway, it’s fine. It’s just . . . a temporary pet. Baz . . .”

  He opened his mouth to admonish me, but I continued before he could say anything.

  “Just Baz. Now is not the time to be bawdy. Sit down again, please. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Let me guess. You’re pregnant?”

  “What? No—”

  “In trouble with the law again, then? Or maybe you’ve finally found religion?”

  “Becca’s dead,” I blurted out before he could take any more wild guesses.

  Baz’s face went blank. Completely slack, like he’d shut it off and retreated into himself, leaving the facade unmanned. Even though I knew what he was and had always been aware his physical, tangible appearance was indeed a facade, this was unnerving. I’d never seen him drop any part of his act before.

  It only lasted an instant before the life returned to his eyes. Not the fire, though—that seemed to have been fully extinguished by the news.

  “Are you talking about the fairy girl who left her boy with me this morning?”

  “Yes. Noah. Why did she leave him with you? Did she say?”

  “No,” he said, then closed his eyes for a moment. “I mean, yes. She said, but she lied.”

  “You can tell when people are lying?” I asked, even though I probably didn’t want to know the answer. But then I realized he had to be wrong. Becca couldn’t have been lying, because she was incapable of it as a fae. Wouldn’t Baz know that? “Never mind,” I said. “Can you tell me what she said anyway?”

  “Hmm . . . I think she said she needed to hide him from his father for just a few days, and would I please watch him because she couldn’t think of anywhere safer where his father wouldn’t be likely to come looking for him.”

  “And you thought that was a lie?” It didn’t sound like a lie at all. In fact, it sounded like exactly the most likely reason Becca could have for leaving her son with someone like Baz. But if she was trying to hide him from her ex, it meant there would have been a development in his case against her—a bad one. And if she had told Baz some sort of half-truth . . . what could she be hiding that was even worse than that?

  “She was hiding the boy from someone, but not his father.” With a glance at the skeptical expression on my face, he added, “That girl was never hard to read. I almost didn’t hire her because she was so bad at lying. But a man with tits in his face is the easiest creature on the planet to lie to, so I figured she’d still do just fine.”

  I shook my head, trying to imagine how the world must look through Baz’s eyes. It was like we were all the same to him, simple creatures, and he couldn’t be bothered to distinguish fae from human from bird from the tiny ants under our feet. Of course Becca couldn’t lie, but if she was the one fae in the world who was also bad at glamour and deception, I sure as hell hadn’t noticed.

  “She did do fine. More than fine,” I assured him. Then, feeling spiteful that he seemed to not even know who she was, I added, “Until she spontaneously combusted in the middle of her dance routine a few hours ago.”

  “She died at my club? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that would be the most important detail to you. My friend, your employee, and Noah’s mother has been gruesomely murdered—but I’m so sorry I didn’t take a picture of the pole she died on so you could assess the damage.” I stood up, nearly spilling my tea as I set the glass down a little too forcefully. “I’m going to find Noah.”

  “She was on a pole?” Baz screeched. Then he coughed as he scrambled up to follow me out of the room. “Never mind, I get it. You know it’s not easy for me to keep track of your mortal priorities; I meant no offense.”

  I didn’t acknowledge him, just stopped when I reached the first door in my path and opened it. Linen closet. I closed it and kept going. One of these doors would lead to Noah. I didn’t need Baz’s help.

  “Okay, okay, I get it. You want to talk to the boy. I’ll take you to him,” Baz’s voice rang out from behind me, the pitch a bit higher than usual.

  Yep, it definitely put him on edge to have a human on a rampage in his home. Good to know. But this only solidified the decision that had been floating through my mind during our conversation—I wasn’t going to leave this house without Noah. I didn’t think Becca would want him here now, not with Baz acting this way.

  When I spun around to face him, Baz jumped back. Then he put his big smile back on as he beckoned me off down the hall.

  We turned two corners before he opened a door that led to a stairway, going down. Hmm. I hadn’t known Baz had a basement. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. The town homes in this area were so narrow and packed close together that they probably all had basements, just in the interest of maximizing space.

  The thing that made it odd was that most people I knew who lived in these types of homes had sectioned them off and built new entrances to each of the levels. Most people could only afford to live in a town home’s basement, or first story, or second story, but certainly not all of the above. Baz wasn’t most people, though.

  “The boy is remarkable, you know,” Baz said softly as he hobbled his way down the steps. “His father is not human.”

  “Isn’t the father fae?” I had never asked Becca, just sort of assumed. Fae tended to mate exclusively with other fae. They were one of the few races who had been intermingling less and less as the years went by, instead of more. Back when magic and all its creatures had been secret to the world, the fae had thrived. They had perfected the art of manipulating humans, watching and analyzing and mimicking and poking and prodding, making a game of every exchange and always finding ways to come out on top. But these sorts of shenanigans only really worked when the humans were unsuspecting.

  Once the world had become aware of the existence of other magical creatures, it became more and more difficult for anything to hide. The fae had nothing to gain by coming out into the open, but they were forced to do it anyway.

  Human disbelief had been a powerful thing twenty years ago, but now that it was gone, the world would never be the same. The fae had been having a difficult time adjusting. While they used to fraternize and breed with all manner of other species before the Opening, now they tended to seek comfort in their own kind.

  So I wasn’t surprised to hear Noah’s father was not human, but I was surprised that Baz would bring it up.

  “No,” Baz said. “Not fae.”

  Huh. “What, then?”

  “Ah, that I can’t say.”

  Can’t, or won’t? I wondered.

  When I reached the foot of the stairs, I felt like I had wandered into someone else’s home. More specifically, someone else’s grandmother’s home.

  Noah was sitting on the floor, his chin propped up by pudgy arms that were braced on his knees as unruly wisps of white-blond hair fell over his eyes. In front of him was some kind of board game covered in marbles, which he didn’t look away from even as I called his name.

  Behind him, next to a cozy fire flickering in the brick fireplace, sat an old woman in a rocking chair who looked like she was sewing something.

  What the batty hell was this? I really hoped it wasn’t someone Baz had brought here just for the occasion of taking care of his employee’s child.

  “Oh, hello, dear,” the old woman croaked cheerfully when she saw Baz, and I was instantly transported to one of my many idyllic childhood fantasies in which I’d grown up surrounded by a real family instead of a coven of mages who only cared about me as long as I was willing to train or heal.

  I’d never had a grandmother to knit me sweaters or bake me cookies, and it was one of the few things I’d wanted so much, once upon a time, that the idea of it made my chest tighten and my cheeks heat up even now.

  The old woman’s eyes turned to me, full of protective suspicion that simultaneously made me like her and reminded me I was the one who needed to be protective right now. “Who’s your friend?” she asked.

  “That’s what I was wondering,” I snapped at Baz, trying to get a handle on my emotions. “Did Becca know you had someone else watching her son?”

  Baz looked very much the part of an unsuspecting man caught between the competing wills of two women. Bewildered.

  “Calm down, ladies. There’s room in my heart for you both,” he said when he caught his wits. “Darcy, this is my aunt, Salma. She’s been helping me redecorate. And Auntie, this is Darcy, the woman who keeps my club from burning down when I’m not there.”

  “Poor choice of words for tonight, Baz,” I reminded him, then nodded at Salma. “Did you say aunt? Meaning she’s the sister of the woman who popped you out of her womb however many thousands of years ago?”

  “I’m his father’s sister, not his mother’s,” Salma answered, a small smile on her face. “But yes, that’s the long and short of it. I’m not in this part of the world often, but I love to see my Bassam when I can. He never has enough socks, and never the right curtains.” She tutted a little and then dipped her head back down to her sewing.

 

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