Page 41 of Wicked Deeds

Humans were odd but interesting, was the only opinion she shared. I’d had to ask Callum what the words she used were and he’d laughed for at least a minute before seconding her sentiment.

Her head swiveled back toward the door and my stomach clenched. “Something you want to show me?”

Her response was to jump back down off the bed, looking over her shoulder as though to say, ‘come along’. I’d learned to see through the illusion—so I could see the tips of her tails twitching in different directions—but it worked wonders for anyone without magic. Certainly, Amy and the gardeners hadn’t reacted to her appearance, taking our story that we were cat sitting for a friend of mine at face value.

I shoved my feet into the closest pair of sneakers, thankful I’d gone to bed in pajamas. “All right, show me.”

I followed Lianith through the house to the gym. I had a fair idea of what I was about to see. Lianith hadn’t interrupted us sleeping since she’d arrived.

Sure enough, there was a nixling sitting on the deck staring back at us through the window.

Well, crap. After a lack of nocturnal visitors, I’d started to hope that whoever had sent the first two had decided to give up.

“Is this the same one as before?”

Lianith jumped up to balance on the handrail of the treadmill, her tails twitching. Fae I was learning. The intricacies of nixling tail gestures might take me longer. “Same?” I sent.

A smidge of Fae floated into my head, faint and hard to make out, but I thought it was a ‘no’.

I concentrated, waiting to see if she was going to add anything else. But nope, apparently Lianith understood ‘no’ was a complete sentence. Right. So. Not the same nixling. Which made it number three? Or was it four?

Regardless of the number, it was starting to piss me off.

Lianith made an impatient sound and I dragged my thoughts back to the present. The nixling on the deck hadn’t moved. Its tails twitched, long fur ruffling with the movement.

“Some of us want to sleep,” I said to it. “You should leave.” I made a shooing motion. It stared back at me, unmoved.

Irritation sparked through me. I was sleep-deprived and cranky. “Right,” I said to Lianith. “Let’s do this.”

Her answering chirp sounded pleased. She sat back on her hind legs, reaching a paw toward the door in the windows.

“We’ll go out the front. Otherwise it might just run.”

She dropped back to all fours, grumbling, but she followed me when I headed to Damon’s office to grab my gun. I didn’t want to shoot a nixling, but I would if this went badly.

But I hoped it wouldn’t. Much like with the afrit, I didn’t want the security team to come running, which they would if Ifired my weapon. Mitch had reluctantly agreed to let Lianith and I deal with another nixling, should one appear, so they wouldn’t intervene unless I asked. Madge had ears on the entire property. She’d hear if I yelled for help.

Lianith walked ahead of me on the path, picking her way silently, tails up. So far, reading her body language like a cat’s had worked well enough, so I figured she wasn’t particularly worried about confronting the other nixling. Maybe I shouldn’t be either.

Still, I kept a tight grip on my gun as we came around the back of the house. The nixling had descended from the deck, sitting at the base of the stairs waiting for us.

Lianith walked until she was about three feet away from it and then made one of her chirping noises at it, this one sounding like a demand, with an edge of something closer to a snarl. The other nixling—which, like the first two, was darker than her—didn’t reply, and I waited to see what would happen next.

“Stranger,” Lianith’s voice came a little louder in my head this time. “Should go.”

“Do you know where it’s from?”

“Nichtkin.”

Ugh. Not what I wanted to hear.“Can you ask it who sent it?”

She made another, more aggressive noise, tails twitching.

The nixling spat something back and Lianith hissed, taking a half step forward, fur bristling.

This was not going as smoothly as I’d hoped. Callum had said Lianith could handle other nixlings, but I didn’t want her to actually fight and get injured.

So I decided to join the discussion. I took a full step closer, so I was slightly in front of Lianith. I kept my eyes on the strange nixling. Its eyes flicked back and forth between us, as though it couldn’t decide who was the bigger threat.

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