“Thank you,” she said, lifting her chin to look him in the eye as he let her go. With a little distance between them, it was easier to think. “I can’t believe that asshole got a judge to negate the contract like that.”
“Not fucking right. Asshole should have paid up because he evicted us,” Garlick muttered, slinking by them and leaping up into the window. Immediately he plunked his ass down and started to wash his unmentionables, a sure sign he was either distressed or trying to piss her off. Since he wasn’t looking at her while he was doing it, chuntering under his breath instead, she was going with the former.
Her lips quirked and she looked back at the big, handsome fae. “Seriously,” she repeated. “Thank you.”
He nodded, his expression dropping serious as he studied her face. “You are my bride. What is mine is yours. My crown, my kingdom, my wealth… all yours.”
Surprise rolled through her. He meant it. He seriously meant it.
“Uh…” She didn’t know what to say as her brain short-circuited. “I really don’t know how to thank you. We’d have been out on the streets tonight…”
Which was true. After she’d paid her rent and bought her rail pass, she barely had enough in her account at the end of the week to get lunch at work each day. To say working as a curator at the museum didn’t pay well was an understatement. She shuddered. With her asshole landlord getting out of paying their expenses… without Oberon offering, she didn’t know what they’d have done tonight. Probably ended up under one of the bridges near the Thames.
“But we’re not,” he rumbled, his deep voice low and soothing as he reached for her again. This time he did it slowly, allowing her an out if she needed it. She didn’t, giving into temptation and leaning against him with a sigh. “And I have an idea for saying thank you.”
She tensed, glaring up at him with an accusing look. If he suggested the horizontal hunka-chunka, she was so blasting his ass back to Fae. He chuckled at her look, tucking a strong finger under her chin.
“Will you allow me a kiss?” he asked, bending his head. She was caught by his blue eyes, her hands aching with the need to wander all over his heavily muscled frame.
Hell, all she really wanted to do was drag him into the nearest bedroom and get down and dirty… but if she did that, he might get ideas. Well, more ideas. And she was so not ready to head off into the sunset and go live a happily ever after in fae. She had far too much to do here first.
“Just a kiss,” she told him firmly, her hands curling into the front of his shirt.
He smiled and her ovaries damn near whimpered. One man should not be allowed to be so sexy. But he was fae, so was he technically a man?
His lips covered hers, warm and firm, and she stopped thinking. Like dead stop. Her train of thought, which had previously been rattling along quite nicely following current events with occasional asides to cake and wondering what Oberon’s ass looked like without his jeans on, derailed completely and crashed down the embankment. Total multiple-car pileup.
She gasped and the kiss went from exploratory to inferno level within a heartbeat. By the time Oberon lifted his head, their breathing was more ragged than the clothing on the professional beggars that lined up outside some of the tube stations, forcing commuters to run the gauntlet. And that was literally when magical beings were involved.
“Just a kiss,” he murmured against her lips. “But I can’t wait for our wedding night. With passion like this, you will bear me a fine heir. My son will be a fine king.”
Annnd… he ruined it. She narrowed her eyes as she pulled away. “What if your heir is a girl?”
He shrugged, blue eyes still fixed on her face. “Then… girl king! The first to hold the throne!”
She frowned. “Wouldn’t that make her a queen?”
Oberon shook his head. “Female king.”
“And if she marries?” she couldn’t help asking, even though this was totally a hypothetical scenario since she had no intention of having kids, mortal or otherwise, in the foreseeable future.
“Male queen!”
Garlick sniggered somewhere behind them. “Yeah… you might be a little behind the times there, sparkles. We already got them this side of the barrier.”
Daffi shook her head and disentangled herself from Oberon’s arms. It was getting harder and harder to resist him, especially when he had that look in his eyes, but this nonsense about kids sure helped.
“So… what the fuck do we do?” she asked the room at large, stalking through and dropping onto the large couch. Her trunks, containing all her worldly possessions and the little bit of furniture she owned, had been piled behind it. It was a good job they were enchanted to be bigger on the inside.
Garlick had stopped washing his unmentionables and curled up on the windowsill. He watched her with unreadable eyes as Oberon dropped into the seat next to her, sliding his arm around her shoulders. She let him. She had bigger fish to fry at the moment.
“I have no job and no place to live—”
“You are my queen-to-be!” Oberon broke in. “You could always—”
“If the next words out of your mouth are not ‘solve this murder and get your job back,’ I would advise you to keep it shut,” she told him sharply and then gasped, her eyes wide.
“That’s it. I need to solve the murder!”
8
“Are you sure this thing is even legal?” Daffi asked as she looked at the card Garlick had handed her. “Where did you get it?”
Small and square, it had an official-looking seal and ribbon hanging off it with the words “Official Magical Private Investigator” on the front.
“Hey!” Oberon exclaimed, looking at his and then at Daffi’s. “Why does hers say investigator and mine just says assistant? I am king. I should be in charge.”
Garlick sniffed. “You’re an illegal fae. You’re lucky I could even get you an assistant’s badge rather than a stay in Bedlam and a one-way trip back to the land of the winged and happy.”
“Shhh, keep quiet and try to look like we know what the hell we’re doing!” She hissed out of the corner of her mouth as the three of them—witch, familiar, and fae—walked toward the murder scene.
Tucked in a back alley between the museum and the nearest tube station, it was the way she walked home every night. Apart from last night. Last night she’d turned right into Pendleton Place instead and walked back toward Hansom Row.
One of the hidden magical streets in the city, it would only show itself to those with non-mortal blood and was crammed with shops. You could get everything from spell books and ingredients all the way through to brooms and wands for witches who liked that kind of thing. They weren’t required for spellcasting but were fun to carry at Halloween.
“It had better be,” Garlick chuckled. “It was authorized by a Judge, and if he’s bent, we’re all fucked.”
But the murder scene was on her normal route home so they walked past Pendleton Place and kept going. Gore Alley. It was aptly named. Daffi couldn’t help a shudder of foreboding at the name as they were stopped by a Shifter in watch uniform.