Page 27 of Wicked Deeds

He was right. That was the one argument that almost always worked with Damon. Though I wouldn’t blame him if he decided a live-in nixling was not something he was on board with.

I turned my attention back to Lianith. She stretched her front legs, bowing like a dog, and yawned, baring very long, very white, pointed teeth, before sitting back, casually raising her front paw and unsheathing equally long claws before starting to clean them with her tongue.

Apparently I was boring her with my questions. And I was running out of time. “Okay,” I said. “I guess we’ll try it. What does she eat?”

No doubt there were mice and other small critters in Damon’s garden, but the nixling was large. Too big to live on mice. And I didn’t want her hunting birds or deciding to go farther afield in search of prey.

“Raw meat,” Callum said. “Beef or lamb, chicken. Fish. Not pet food,” he added, wrinkling his nose. “I have smelled what they feed Ted. It would be unacceptable.”

Ted seemed happy enough to scarf down what I knew was expensive gourmet pet food. But he was a Labrador and I don’t think he’d ever met a food he didn’t like. But raw meat was easy enough. I’d add it to the shopping list on the house comp and Amy would work her housekeeper magic to make it appear in the fridge.

I looked at Lianith. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Chapter Seven

“Not so fast,”Callum said, standing up abruptly. “Collar first.”

“Oh, right.” I’d forgotten.

He pulled a delicate-looking leather collar out of his pocket. It was a rich charcoal gray like Lianith’s fur, with a pattern of embossed leaves and fish, and an elaborately engraved silver buckle.

“Gráinne’s work?”

Callum nodded. “Yes. The Lady and I did the charms, though.”

I held out my hand.

His eyebrows lifted. “You want to put it on her?”

“Well, I’m going to be the one who has to take it off or put it on once we’re at the house. Better to find out now if she’s going to let me.”

“You should keep it on, if you can. It’s designed to be difficult to remove.”

“Is that safe?” Cats weren’t allowed outside these days, but Lianith would need access to the garden and I knew collars were dangerous. I had visions of her stuck in a tree, the leather hooked on a branch.

“It will come undone if she needs it to.” He passed me the collar.

“Good.” I hesitated. Should I ask her permission before putting the collar on? If so, how? “Okay, this takes care of what she looks like,” I said, letting my sight slide into the magic as I examined the collar, trying to see if I could understand the illusion. Parts were familiar but there was a complexity to the way the magic twined around and through both the leather and the silver, that I didn’t know how to unravel. I couldn’t quite figure out how it had been built. “Which brings us to another issue.”

“Which is?” Callum asked.

“How is she going to talk to me? Can she do what you do?” I gestured vaguely near my temple to indicate the mind-to-mind speech he and I used.

“Mostly,” Callum said. “Not as strongly and she does not have a great facility with English. She will most likely respond in Fae. Cerridwen put something in her charms on the collar to facilitate the process, but if Lianith speaks to you in English, it will be basic. Even her Fae may be…unusual. They don’t think about things the same way we do.”

I wasn’t sure there was a ‘we’ in there. Fae thought differently from humans about a lot of things. So if Callum thought that nixlings thought strangely, well, that was going to make things complicated. “That’s not super helpful. I’m still learning Fae.”

He smirked, amusement flaring in his green-gold eyes. “Cerridwen thought this would be excellent practice. You should be able to communicate well enough. She’ll get the point across, I promise. And if she needs to tell you something complicated and you don’t understand, you can always call me or Gráinne.”

I looked dubiously at Lianith. “So how does this work? Talking to her, I mean.” Callum and I just talked to each other. I didn’t have to put any special effort into it. Which had beena shock the first time he’d done it. But so far the nixling hadn’t said anything to me.

“If you think something at her, she should hear it, or if you ask her a question out loud, she’ll answer you in your mind.”

“It may be fainter than me,” he added mentally.

“Lianith, say something to Maggie.”

I stayed quiet, trying to listen. At first, I got nothing but then, faintly, I heard “Hael,” in my head.

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