indicated the subject was closed.
Bendith muttered something under his breath that I couldn’t hear, but Nathaniel could. He’d gotten super hearing when he had come into his legacy from Puck.
His disapproving frown changed to thunderous anger in an instant. “Apologize to Madeline.”
Bendith gave his brother a truculent look. “She didn’t hear me.”
“But I did,” Nathaniel said.
“Sorry,” Bendith said to me. He didn’t sound like he was sorry at all.
“Accepted,” I said quickly, before Nathaniel could make a bigger deal out of the situation.
Bendith was acting like a brat, but it wasn’t surprising. He was the only son of a Faerie queen who had likely cherished him beyond belief, and therefore spoiled him. And the fae, despite their endless age, seem more immature than most supernatural folk. Except for J.B., but then, he was half-human.
J.B. emerged from the hallway and beckoned me toward him. Nathaniel helped me to my feet.
“I’m okay,” I said gently.
He kissed my forehead and sent me on my way. I’d half expected he would follow me, or at least help me to the room. But he apparently wanted a further word with Bendith out of my hearing.
J.B. raised a brow questioningly as I joined him. I shook my head.
I followed him down the gray-carpeted hallway. There were two closed doors on either side.
“That one’s mine,” he said, pointing to the right.
He opened the other door and showed me into another drab room. The comforter was black; the sheets were gray. More gray window shades covered the windows.
“Jeez, J.B. Who decorated this place? A prison warden?”
“I like black and gray,” he said.
“Can’t you at least open the window shades? It would be nice to have some ambient light,” I said, sitting on the bed.
“Not unless you want to see Amarantha looming over you all night long,” J.B. said. “She has a horrible habit of hanging outside the window and screaming like a banshee if she can see you asleep inside.”
“She’s still hanging around doing that?” I asked. “I’d have thought she’d have run off with her tail between her legs after I blasted her out of your bloodstream.”
It was the wrong thing to say. It reminded both of us that things weren’t exactly right. Amarantha had possessed J.B., had nearly stopped his heart from the inside. I’d saved him, but in the aftermath we’d argued. And he’d left.
“Uh, yeah,” J.B. said, trying to cover the awkward silence. “She disappeared for a while, but now she’s back again.”
“Has she seen Bendith?” I asked.
If she had, then no amount of magic could hide Titania’s son from his enemies. Amarantha would report straight to whoever would listen. They wouldn’t need a spell to track Bendith down. They could just lie in wait outside J.B.’s front door.
J.B. shook his head. “We’ve been careful. Bendith’s been veiled whenever he leaves the building, and the shades are drawn whenever we’re inside.”
“Are you sure?” I persisted.
“Nobody suspects he’s here,” J.B. said reassuringly.
“But she might have seen me arrive,” I said. I stood up and swayed a little as blood rushed to my head. “I can’t stay here. I’m putting you in danger.”
“Maddy, you’re practically dead on your feet. You have nowhere else to go. Just calm down,” J.B. said. “I’m sure you’ll be safe here for one night.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. “Fine,” I said. “One night.”
J.B. looked like he wanted to argue further, to ask where I was going to go tomorrow. But he didn’t say anything.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said instead, and left the room.
I undressed down to my T-shirt and underpants and crawled under the sheets. It felt unbelievably luxurious to be in a real bed, with real pillows and a real mattress, especially after sleeping in a tree branch, on a platform exposed to the elements, on a beach, and in a sling while flying through the air carried by a dragon.
I passed out immediately. At some point in the night another warm body slid in beside me. I woke briefly as Nathaniel put his arm around my waist and spooned up against me, his breath in my hair. Then I slept again.
I was dreaming. In my dream, something exploded. It seemed muffled and far away. A woman was screaming. I could smell smoke. Nathaniel was shaking me, his voice urgent.
“Wake up!” he said.
I was in his arms, the air cold on my bare legs, and he was carrying me to the window.
“What’s happening?” I asked, still groggy.
“Somebody bombed the building. It could come crashing down anytime,” Nathaniel shouted. As if to illustrate his point, several chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling.
“Beezle,” I said. “I won’t go without him.”
“He’s with J.B.,” Nathaniel said. “They had to get Bendith. He can’t fly.”
Nathaniel gave the window a good hard glare. The shade flew up, the glass exploded outward and the warm spring air came in. Nathaniel flew outside just in time. I could hear the building shaking on its foundation. I was reminded of the mountain crashing down on the Cimice, burying the evidence of the massacre I’d created.
It was still dark out. I was surprised. It seemed like I’d slept for a long time. But the clock on the bank down the street told me I’d been out for only a couple of hours.
Nathaniel stopped in the air and turned around. J.B. was right behind us, carrying Bendith under the shoulders. Beezle was perched on J.B.’s shoulder.
Nathaniel muttered something. I felt a veil drop over all of us. In that small spell I could feel the strength of Nathaniel’s power now, how much he’d changed in the time that had passed. J.B. was right. Nathaniel could level the city with a look if he wanted.
And that meant that if he decided to do something like that, I was the only person around with power enough to try to stop him. Emphasis here on “try,” because while I had a pretty big repository of power, I had only the smallest fraction of Nathaniel’s skill. I had a lot of magic, but I couldn’t access it with ease the way he could.
We floated down to the street. It was a good thing we were under a veil. Nathaniel was wearing nothing but pajama pants, and I was the next-best thing to naked. Bendith looked like his pride was smarting from being carried. He pulled away from J.B. as soon as his feet touched the ground.
The window Nathaniel had broken for our escape was on the back of the building, so we were standing in the alley and had no way of knowing what was happening in front. Smoke poured from the lower windows, and I could hear things crashing inside. Sirens blared, approaching fast.
“Do you think everyone got out of the building?” I asked. Nathaniel was still holding me. Normally I would feel resentful of this, but at the moment I was happy that I wasn’t walking in the alley muck in my bare feet, as he was.
“We have to check,” I said.
“No,” Nathaniel said. “We have to get you away from here as quickly as possible.”
“So you think this is because of me?” I asked.
“No one tried to blow up the building until you were in it,” J.B. said.
“I told you that it wasn’t safe for me to be there,” I said.
“I thought we could get through one night,” J.B. said. “But someone must have seen you go into the building with me.”
“Who, though?” I asked. “And where are they?”
Nathaniel frowned. “You’re right. If this was a plot to drive you out into the open, where you would be vulnerable, then the enemy should be lying in wait. But they are not.”
“Anyone coming after you would have to know that just setting off some charges in a building wouldn’t take
