Page 4 of Wicked Deeds

Easy for her to say. She could turn into a big-ass wolf dog, like her brother. The s’ealg oiche were shapeshifters as well as warriors.

I, on the other hand, could not grow teeth and claws. I could set the nixling on fire, but burning non-demonic creatures was not something I wanted to do. I’d feel better with a weapon. But my practice swords were back in the gym and my gun was locked in the gun safe in our bedroom.

“If you wish for a weapon, I have plenty,” Gráinne added, reaching beneath her jacket. She pulled out a long dagger and passed it to me. “Not that you should need one.”

I tested the dagger’s weight, turning it in my hand. It was gorgeous, the hilt black metal inlaid with silver in a pattern ofstars. The black blade glinted under the porch light. I didn’t need to test it to know it would be wickedly sharp. It was probably Gráinne’s own work.

“It’s lovely.” Admiration was safe enough. Better than thanking her. ‘Thank you’ could be taken to imply an obligation. I gestured to my right with the dagger. “It’s this way.”

Gráinne paced silently at my side as we walked around the house. Small lights hidden in the beds along the path brightened some as we passed, enough that there was no risk of stumbling over a stray branch or stone. Damon’s gardeners kept the grounds immaculate but even they weren’t on call twenty-four-seven to deal with the aftermath of weather or say, stray Fae creatures with no respect for boundaries. I always felt clumsy around the Fae, humans not being built to move with their ease. The last thing I wanted was to trip and scare the nixling away or, you know, stab myself by falling on a dagger.

My training with Cerridwen and Callum had improved my fighting skills immeasurably, not to mention my fitness. I could do things I’d never imagined even attempting, let alone pulling off, but I’d never be able to move as easily through the world as the Fae did.

Gráinne was wearing leather, but it didn’t make a sound. Damon had given me a leather jacket early in our relationship. It was expensive. Handmade, nano-coated, reinforced, and soft as butter, but it still made some noise when I moved. Gráinne might as well have been wearing air.

The nixling was still perched in the same place when we rounded the corner of the house. It turned its head, golden eyes blinking once as we approached the deck.

When we were about ten feet away, Gráinne put a hand out to stop me, studying the nixling, her brows drawing down again. “That’s not one of Cerridwen’s.”

The nixling yawned at this pronouncement, baring its teeth. I resisted the urge to show it the dagger. Show it I had pointy sharp things, too.

“Is that good or bad?” I whispered.

“There are nixling in several of the territories,” Gráinne said. “But the largest populations are in our Lady’s and, well, Lord Usuriel’s.”

Fuck. Just what we didn’t need. The Lord of the Nichtkin was kind of terrifying and he didn’t like me. I’d been clinging to the idea he wasn’t going to be a problem as long as I avoided his territory for, say, ten or twenty years. I’d combed through the Archives to try to learn more about him but I hadn’t found much.

Witches either didn’t cross paths with him often or didn’t survive to tell the tale if they did.

I’d asked Aubrey Carter—one of the UK Cestis—if they had anything about him or his Nichtkin and she’d found a little more from their Archives, but nothing truly helpful. Usuriel ruled one of the darker parts of Fae. He played politics, but all the Elders did. He shared Cerridwen’s determination to protect the realm from demonkind but, unlike her, seemed to view me as a threat to that goal, rather than a tool to use fighting them.

So. Scary. Powerful. Not a fan of me. All reasons he might send a creature to spy on me. Though, if stealth was his aim, the nixling was failing.

“Is it one of his?” I managed over a mouth gone dry with the thought of Usuriel deciding to interfere here in the human world. “Can you talk to it?”

“I can.” She turned a stern look at the cat and issued a rapid-fire stream of Fae. The only words I could make out were s’ealg oiche. The nixling’s ears flicked forward and it seemed a little less certain. Callum and Gráinne and their kind weren’t quite the same as the Cestis, but they had a lot of authority in the Fae.Hopefully the nixling was smart enough to recognize that and cooperate.

Gráinne waited a moment, then sighed. “It won’t tell me.”

“Aren’t you like Fae police?”

“Not as you think of them. The nixling hasn’t hurt anyone. I can take it back to the realm, but I can’t force it to talk to me.”

“Hasn’t it broken the rules, coming through the door?”

“Yes. Passage through the door still requires authorization, and I don’t think anyone is granting that to stray nixlings.”

The nixling’s ears flattened briefly, as though protesting being called a stray.

“Cerridwen controls the door, you work for her, doesn’t it have to do what you say?”

“Like I said, I can make it return with me,” Gráinne said, fixing a stern look on the creature. “It would be foolish to think it can evade me. But that doesn’t mean it will answer questions. It’s a lesser Fae. It might not have had a choice. And be bound not to tell. The Lady may be able to make it answer once I return it to the realm.”

The nixling flicked its ear again and made a rumbling noise somewhere between a purr and a growl.

“Anything?” I asked.

“It—she—says no one sent her.”

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