“What? Hey, that’s not true.” Wow. Nice. Seconds ago, I might have been staring at Max’s soft smile and letting it hook me like a fish, but now my lips hardened into a grim frown.
Max cleared his throat. “But you don’t need to be a baker, Chi. You don’t need to be a cheap fortune teller. You don’t even need to be your mother’s daughter. All you’ve got to do is—” He stopped. Abruptly. A frown spread across his face as he ticked his head towards the front door.
I was way too distracted by what he’d been about to say to bother wondering if a magical fiend was on our doorstep.
“All I’ve got to be is what?” I pressed as Max rose warily and inclined his head towards the French doors. The rain still plastered them, rivulets gushing down the window panes and pooling against the uneven cobble of the courtyard. The little potted lavenders and verbenas that sat just outside the door drooped and swayed in the downpour, the buds of long lavender huddling against one another as the wind howled through the courtyard. And speaking of huddling together, as Max stood up he shifted past, locking a hand on the backrest of my chair as he inclined his head to get a better view through the window above the sink.
The bare, warm, slightly rough flesh of his knuckles and the back of his hand pressed a little into my neck. It might have only been a light sensation, but that was all it took to kick my imagination into overdrive. I could envision his hand slipping down my shoulder, the soft touch of his fingers lingering over my jaw until they dropped down my neck and cupped my chin. Only problem was, this vision wouldn’t come true. I wasn’t using my powers here – just my ridiculous desire.
Suddenly, without warning, Max leaned in. He jerked his hand off the backrest of the chair, sending a slight shudder through the wood as he shifted, flattening his torso against the chair as he leaned forward. The hard, carved line of his torso pressed against my neck and pinned my hair to my shoulder as he hooked an arm down.
Then Max, my fairy bodyguard, cupped a hand to my chin.
A thrill of pure anticipation spiked through my heart, shot hard into my pelvis, and sent fire racing through my veins.
But no, this was not the prelude to a kiss.
“Ah, there we go,” Max hissed out a breath of satisfaction as his rough fingers dug into my chin.
I yelped as he pulled something out. “Hey, what the—”
Max shifted around until I could see him in full. He was cupping something in his hand. And, disappointingly, it was no longer my chin. Instead, it looked like a bug.
I usually had a cast-iron stomach. Animals, bugs, rodents – none of that stuff bothered me. Unless it had been crawling on my skin, that was.
I jolted backward, my chair skidding across the linoleum. “What the heck is that?”
Whatever Max was holding, it was definitely a bug, and it was definitely magical – that, or it was a truly gruesome experiment that had escaped a renegade genetics lab. It was changing color and size, pulsing in and out like a beating heart.
“It’s a magical tick,” Max revealed as he brought it up and frowned at the small thing.
“… Wait, that thing was on my neck? What the hell was it doing? Was it feeding off my blood? Was it laying eggs?! Oh god, do I need to go to the hospital?”
He chuckled lightly. “See, I told you you don’t deal well with surprises.”
I looked at him, blinking madly as I kept a hand latched on the spot where Max had plucked the tick from my neck. “Wait… did you plant that there to prove your point?”
He shook his head, disappointment obvious. “Why would I do that, Chi? I’m here to protect you. I would have thought I’d made that point clear by now.” Max rather abruptly turned his back on me, walked over to the sink, turned on the tap, and appeared to wash the tick down the drain.
Without getting out of the chair, I leaned over to watch. “Ah, is that a good idea? I mean, won’t that thing just get into the pipes and… I don’t know, create a colony of evil magical ticks in the subway?”
He shook his head again, mirth obvious. “Directed, clean water will kill a magical tick. There’s nothing you have to worry about.”
I kept my hand clutched against my neck, and there wasn’t anything on God’s green earth that would remove it. “How the hell did I get it? And what the heck was it doing on my neck? Wait… wait,” I swallowed, the move so pronounced I could have popped the buttons on my shirt, “this isn’t punishment, is it?” As I asked that question, I didn’t look at Max. Rather, I swiveled my attention and locked it on his shadow. For the briefest fraction of a second, it grew larger, but then Max shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
“No, Chi, this time it’s not punishment. It would have come in with the
