Prince of Air and Darkness (21 page)

Bane bared his fangs in a grin. “Do you really want me to put
that
in your progress report? We both know how receptive the Queen is to constructive criticism.”

And they both knew that Bane was going to relay every word, so there was no use in Hunter backpedaling. Not that he would have anyway—if he started being on his best behavior, the Queen would know something was very wrong.

Hunter shrugged. “You can tell her or not. I don’t care. I’ve given you my report. Now get out of my apartment.”

“Such hospitality.”

“Out!”

Hunter was more than prepared to throw Bane out bodily if necessary. The goblin outweighed him by a good deal, but Hunter’s quickness—and the silver knife—more than made up for the disparity.

For half a second, Hunter was tempted. He was already due for a dire punishment, even if his mother didn’t yet know it. How much worse would she make it for him if he killed her favorite goblin in a fit of temper?

But no. Hunter was not shy about killing goblins, but he only did so in self-defense or when he was under orders. Never in a fit of temper. There was a difference between being an assassin and being a murderer.

Hunter must have been wearing his dangerous thoughts on his face, because when Bane rose to his feet, there was an air of caution about him, and he kept a lot of distance between them.

“I guess I’ll see myself out,” Bane said, eyes locked on Hunter’s face as if he was watching for an early warning that Hunter’s control was about to snap.

Hunter made no attempt to school his expression. It wasn’t like Bane didn’t know how Hunter felt about him. And it felt good to see that hint of fear in the goblin’s eyes.

Bane hurried out the door, and Hunter let out a sigh of relief. He’d managed to dodge a bullet this time because Bane had taken his words at face value—and hadn’t thought to pry for more details.

The reprieve wouldn’t last forever. Bane would continue to pop in for these “progress reports,” and eventually he would start asking questions that were much harder to tap-dance around.

But at least
eventually
wasn’t
now
.

****

Jackson waited until Hunter’s footsteps had retreated before he turned to Kiera. “Oh. My. God,” he said, fanning his face with his hand. “I feel an attack of the vapors coming on.”

Kiera couldn’t help smiling a bit, despite the turmoil that roiled inside her. “I did mention he was hot, remember?”

“Well, there’s hot and then there’s
hawt
! No wonder you didn’t want me to meet him: you were afraid I’d embarrass you by drooling on him. And I’m glad your mother was apparently mistaken about the state of your relationship.”

The reminder wiped the smile from Kiera’s face. “She wasn’t mistaken,” she said, leading Jackson into the living room for the inevitable chat session. She knew better than to think she could get rid of Jackson after her mom had given him so much to question her about. Too bad she wasn’t in any position to give him straight answers. Why couldn’t her mom let her make her own decisions about when she needed a friend?

Of course, Jackson would no doubt have called to ask her about the date anyway, but it was somewhat easier to put him off on the phone than in person.

“Last night . . . didn’t go well.”

“I kinda guessed that when your mom called me,” Jackson said gently. “But you seem to have patched things up.”

Kiera shook her head. “This wasn’t the kind of thing that can be patched up.” She was being ridiculously vague, no doubt fanning the flames of Jackson’s curiosity. But the truth was too impossible to believe, and her brain was too sluggish to come up with a convenient lie.

Jackson watched her with an unusually sober expression, for once not trying to make her feel better by making her laugh. “That’s what your mom said, too.”

Oh, God, how much had her mom blabbed?
Surely
she hadn’t told Jackson about Hunter’s true identity. Jackson had heard the story about Kiera being Finvarra’s daughter before, but he treated the story with polite skepticism. Unlike Kiera, who’d labeled her mom a nut job and not been shy about letting her opinion be known. If her mom weren’t being such an interfering busybody right now, Kiera might even have felt obligated to apologize.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Jackson asked.

“No. I’m really sorry. You’re my best friend in the whole world, but this isn’t something I want to talk about, even with you.”

Internally, she winced, afraid she was hurting Jackson’s feelings. They’d shared some pretty intimate details of their lives in the past—Kiera was even the first person he came out to—but this was different.

But Jackson had apparently anticipated her answer, for he nodded in easy acceptance. “All right. But can I ask you one thing?’

Kiera gave him a wary nod.

“He didn’t try to force himself on you or anything, did he?” Jackson’s usually soft, warm eyes had hardened into something considerably colder, his question imbued with a touch of protective anger she’d never heard before. He might think Hunter was hot stuff, but Jackson was apparently ready to go medieval on his ass if he didn’t like her answer.

“Nothing like that,” Kiera hastened to assure him.
No, he just tried to seduce me and get me pregnant so my child could take over all of Faerie.
“Let’s just say he told some unforgivable lies, and leave it at that, okay?”

“So I guess your instinct was right and he isn’t really a massage therapist.”

“No. I was starting to get all impressed and think you really were going to respect my desire not to talk about this.” She tried to muster some annoyance, but it was hard to get annoyed with Jackson, even when he was being a pushy son of a bitch. He was just too good-natured for her to hold anything against him for long.

Jackson opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it and shook his head. She might have thought he was going to leave it alone, only she knew the look on his face too well—part stubbornness, part compassion, and part curiosity. She could practically hear him rehearsing what he was going to say in his head.

“You know I’ve always been a little less skeptical than you about the mysteries of the world,” he said. “When your mom gets started on one of her stories, I listen, and I don’t immediately dismiss it as crap.”

Yeah, that was part of the reason her mom liked Jackson so much. He made a great audience.

“There was a reason I wanted you to talk to her when you started getting such a hinky vibe from Hunter. What was happening to you, the way you felt like you were losing control of yourself, sounded suspiciously like how she describes her encounter with your father.”

“You can’t possibly be taking that story seriously,” she protested, but not with the ferocity she would have just yesterday.

“I also can’t help noticing that there’s a horseshoe on your door today. It wasn’t there yesterday, but today after you’ve found out Hunter told some big lies, you’ve put up a horseshoe. I can connect the dots with the best of them.”

At first, Kiera couldn’t believe what she was hearing, so she waited a long moment for the words to rearrange themselves into a different message. Jackson couldn’t possibly be suggesting—without any prompting from her—that there was something fey about Hunter, or that Kiera had put a horseshoe on the door to keep the fey out. Yeah, he was more open-minded than she was about such things—having not grown up with her kooky mom—but that was taking open-mindedness a little too far. Wasn’t it?

“What are you saying?” she asked.

“I’m saying that if you want to tell me about whatever happened between you and Hunter last night, and it happens to involve a big dose of woo-woo that you’re afraid I won’t believe, you can go ahead and tell me. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ etcetera, etcetera.”

Kiera was overcome with a sudden urge to give Jackson a rib-squeezing hug. He was
such
a good friend. But the truth was probably a whole lot more woo-wooey than he was expecting.

“You’re going to think I’ve gone completely insane.”

“I promise to get you the best treatment money can buy. And I’ll make sure your straitjacket is in a much more flattering color than white.”

She made a sound between a groan and a laugh, but she already knew Jackson was going to wear her down eventually. The truth was, she
wanted
to tell him, wanted him to have some clue what was going on. After all, if the minions of the Unseelie Court was going to be sniffing around her for the foreseeable future, it was possible Jackson could come into contact with them. She would never forgive herself if he got caught in the middle of this mess, but he’d probably be in infinitely more danger if he had no idea what was going on.

And so, fighting herself every step of the way, Kiera told Jackson exactly what had happened last night and who Hunter really was.

****

Kiera escaped the living room to make a pot of coffee while Jackson mulled over the plethora of bombshells she’d just dropped on him.

He couldn’t possibly believe any of it, could he? Hell,
she
didn’t fully believe it, and she’d been there. She’d seen a dog turn into a man then back into a dog right before her eyes, and her rational mind was still hoping she’d find an explanation for it that didn’t include magic. Not that she actually thought that would happen.

The coffee gurgled to a finish, and Kiera took her time with the cream and sugar, stalling because she wasn’t sure she could stand to walk back into the living room and face her best friend’s disbelief. But he had asked her for the story, and he’d claimed to be ready for the weirdness. It wasn’t her fault if the weirdness was more than he could stand.

Jackson was right on the living room couch where she’d left him, and he accepted the mug she handed him with a smile that looked perfectly unforced.

“Are you already mentally redecorating my room in the loony bin?” she asked as she plopped down on the sofa beside him. The coffee had sounded like a great idea when she’d run to the kitchen to make it, but the thought of adding caffeine to her system when she was already so edgy wasn’t terribly appealing.

Jackson’s expression was thoughtful as he blew on his coffee and then took a sip. “I’ll admit, it all sounds too ridiculous to be true. But if someone as pragmatic and skeptical as
you
believes it, then I guess I have to believe it, too.”

Or at least
try
to believe it. She was pretty sure trying was the best he could do at the moment, but she loved him for the effort.

“Tell me something,” Jackson said, putting down his mug. “If Hunter revealed himself to be the fey version of the Antichrist last night, then what was he doing in your apartment when I got here?”

Kiera leaned back on the couch and crossed her arms over her chest. It was a good question, one she wasn’t sure she had a satisfactory answer for. “Because I’m out of my mind?”

Jackson grinned. “That’s certainly one possible explanation.”

She scowled at him but couldn’t muster a whole lot of ferocity.

“The pheromones you two were giving off gave me a contact high,” Jackson continued, and Kiera’s eyes widened.

“What pheromones?” she cried indignantly. “We reached something approaching is truce is all. I’m certainly not stupid enough to go all doe-eyed over him after what he did.”

“No, of course not,” Jackson agreed too easily. “I’m sure what I sensed as raging attraction was just indifference. It’s so easy to confuse the two.”

He’d picked up the coffee mug again, or she would have smacked him. “Knock it off, Jackson. There’s nothing funny about this, and it’s no time for teasing.”

“Sorry,” he said, looking abashed. “Sometimes I just can’t help myself. But I meant what I said. The chemistry between the two of you was thick enough to eat with a spoon. You may be really pissed off at him, but you still want him, and
he
wants
you
something awful.”

“He’s really good at pretending to want me.” She sounded sullen, but she couldn’t help it.

Jackson shook his head. “He’s not pretending. You said it yourself: he had the chance to get you into bed last night, and he didn’t do it. That’s not the act of a man who is indifferent to you.”

Never in a million years would she have guessed Jackson would take this particular stance. “Why aren’t you completely indignant about what he planned to do to me, like everyone else is? I’d have expected you to grab your torch and pitchfork and join the mob.”

He thought about it a moment before answering. “I
am
completely indignant, and I’d love to kick his ass for it. He hurt you, and he deserves to be strung up by his toes for it. But the fact is, he
didn’t
do it. You’ve given lots of losers who’ve hurt you second, third, and fourth chances, and none of them deserved it. But my gut says maybe Hunter does.”

Jackson met her gaze, looking dead serious, which was a rare expression for him. “From the first moment you told me about him, I could tell there was something different about this one. Something special. You want him, and he wants you. Why shouldn’t you take advantage of that?”

Because it could so easily turn into something more,
Kiera thought with a sinking heart. Last night’s revelations hadn’t lessened the pull Kiera felt when Hunter was around. She’d been drawn to him since the first time she’d laid eyes on him sitting on that bench in Rittenhouse Square. In some ways, the fact that she now had an explanation for the uneasy feelings he’d caused in her since the beginning made him
more
attractive, rather than less so.

“Because I don’t want to risk getting pregnant with a child destined to rule over all of Faerie.”

The look Jackson gave her told her he saw right through her. He knew her reasons for keeping her distance from Hunter had to do more with emotions than practicality. Luckily, he didn’t challenge her assertion.

“There’s such a thing as birth control, you know,” Jackson said with exaggerated patience. “If you’re not sure you trust him not to tamper with condoms, then go on the pill. If you tell Hunter you’re on the pill and he still wants to get in your pants, then I’d say it’s a pretty good bet it’s you he wants, not the baby.”