Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
The first indication something wasn’t quite right with Moira came when a puff of smoke appeared from the tips of her fingers.
It was almost faster than the eye could catch, but I happened to be standing over her shoulder, watching as she attempted to match a moody dahlia color palette to the woman’s wallpaper.
We had the occasional wealthy client who had to have everything just so, and we did our best to accommodate them, but the wallpaper was a new one. Moira attempted to hide her fingers but gave up when she caught my raised brow.
“Is that a new thing?”
She sighed. “Over the last few months.”
I counted back in my head. “How many are a few?”
She’d been resistant and avoiding a conversation about her burgeoning powers and refused to acknowledge anything had changed. I didn’t press too much, knowing if I did, she’d clam up for even longer.
The smoke was an interesting development, though.
“Can you control it?”
She shrugged a slim shoulder. “It only happens in moments of high stress or emotion.”
“You’re stressed about something?”
Moira slumped. “It’s nothing.”
I gestured at her fingers. “The smoke says otherwise.”
“It has nothing to do with you or anyone else. This is my burden to bear.”
My eyes narrowed. “All three of you have been with me on this crazy ride for months now, and none of you had to be. You, most of all, have shared all this bullshit.”
Moira’s eyes softened. “So now it’s your turn to share my bullshit?”
“Exactly.” I flicked my fingers at her. “Now spill it before we get busy.”
Moira let out a little laugh, rose, and locked the shop door.
My eyebrows went up.
“Things start out manageable,” she said. “I’ve summoned plants—”
“Cool.”
She gave me a withering look. “Not cool. They weren’t from earth.”
I blinked.
“Sometimes I get rocks, sometimes weapons.” She sighed. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I can’t seem to stop whatever is happening.”
She held her fingers out and twisted her wrist. “Whatever this is feels…large.” Her brow furrowed.
“Can you stop?”
She shook her head. “I’ve been fighting it all morning. Whatever this is wants to come through.”
A frisson of nerves zipped through me. “Should we go outside?”
“It’s never too big,” she tried to assure me. “Mostly inanimate except for the plants.”
Thunder cracked through the shop. Darkness crawled along the ceiling, shadowy veins creeping down the walls.
“Um,” I said eloquently.
A swirling portal opened above our heads. Before I could swear and dive out of the way, something fell through and landed on the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
Thunder cracked one more time before the darkness zipped back up the walls and disappeared with a disturbing pop of sound.
Moira stared at the ground, horror written all over her face.
A naked man lay unconscious on the store floor.
Ash pushed through the doors from the back and stopped abruptly, blinking in surprise at what Moira had summoned.
“Errr,” he said. “Do we need to call the police?”
Moira’s mouth worked, but no sound came out.
“No police,” I said. “Moira brought him here.”
Ash’s brows flew together. “Naked?”
“Summoned somehow,” I shook my head. “He looks human.”
Ash let out a breath, put down the flower arrangement he’d been holding, and crouched beside the prone man. He placed two fingers over the stranger’s pulse. “Alive. Thready heartbeat.”
“Interdimensional travel will do that to you,” I said dryly.
Moira let out a panicked squeal. “What did I do? Ohmygods, ohmygods.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Breathe. As soon as he wakes up, we’ll figure this out.”
She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.
“Good.” Internally, I was freaking out, but someone had to be calm because there was a freaking naked dude on our floor, and we had customers starting to mill outside the door. They couldn’t see in very well, but the Joy Springs rumor mill was alive and well if someone spotted the guy.
“Help me,” I said to Ash. “I’ll take his feet, you take his shoulders. Let’s get him inside the office. Moira, stand in front of the door and wait until you hear us call out the ‘all okay’ before you open it up to customers, okay?”
She stared at me.
“Okay?” I asked again.
Moira blinked. “Um. Yes. Sure. Got it.”
I sighed and picked up the man’s tanned legs, averting my eyes at the rest of him. Ash smirked. “You don’t want to turn him over first?”
“Absolutely not.”
Ash reached down and scooped him up under the shoulders. The position made carrying the stranger more difficult, but I did not want a penis flopping around in my shop. It was bad enough that a penis was exposed in my flower shop.
I grunted as we lifted him from the floor. He was heavier than I thought. “Straight back to the office,” I said. “And hurry.”
Shadows fell into the store as some curious customers tried to peer in only to see Moira frantically waving her arms around to distract them. “Open in just a couple of minutes. Sorry! We had a bad spill and needed some cleanup.”
We rounded the corner and slipped out of sight.
Once we had him situated and covered with a blanket, Ash called out to Moira. I stared down at the unexpected company.
“Moira summoned him, you said?” Ash ran a hand through his chestnut hair when he shut the door. “She’s never done something like that before, has she?”
“Never.”
“He’s not human.”
“I think he might be fae or some type of nature being. His magic has a fae feel to it.”
Ash nodded. “Not a dryad. I’d know.”
The man was leanly built and chiseled. His face was almost unearthly beautiful, tanned, and perfectly sculpted. Perfect patrician nose, long amber lashes, and messy hair that held several different shades of blond and light brown. His skin shone with a golden glow.
Everywhere.
Oy vey.
“Someone should stay in here with him so he won’t freak out when he wakes up.”
“I’ll do it,” I offered. In a strength test, I’d beat Ash every time. He had his own share of gifts, but mine had changed over the years.
Plus, shapeshifter. I could subdue him if I needed to.
“Call if you need assistance.” He grimaced. “Should we close early?”
I sank into my seat and closed my eyes. “Let’s try not to. People are starting to whisper about financial trouble.”
Ash rolled his eyes. “Dating a Lord is good for business until it’s not.”
“Truer words have never been spoken.”
A grim smile touched his lips before he slipped out the door, leaving me with a handsome stranger I had no idea what to do with.
My life had a way of keeping me on my toes these days, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.
I must have dozed off for a while, curled in my chair. Silence had fallen, the kind of quiet that raises the hair on the back of your neck. The kind of quiet the darkness preferred.
I pulled magic to me.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a deep, masculine voice said.
My eyes opened. Golden naked guy had my blanket wrapped around him and knotted low on his hips.
If he wasn’t holding magic at the end of his fingertips and staring at me with my death in his eyes, my attention might have lingered a little longer on his six-pack because he was pretty.
His hair was mussed, and his eyes glowed with a strange violet light, their depths swirling with flashes of pink.
Definitely fae.
I held up my hands. “You’re in my flower shop. My friend accidentally summoned you.”
He blinked. “Summoned? I am no demon.”
“Yes, well, a hole opened in the ceiling, and you fell through, so…”
His eyes narrowed. “You are lying.”
“Swear to the gods, I’m not. We’re just as freaked out as you are.” I touched my hand to my chest. “I’m Evie. Ash and Moira are outside in the shop area. There’s a banshee who works with us, but she isn’t here today. If you tell us where you’re from, we can help you get back.”
The magic in his hands sparked and died. He sank onto the couch and let out a long breath. “You truly didn’t intend to bring me here?”
“Nope. And neither did Moira. We have no idea who you are.”
His lips twitched. Silence stretched between us. “You may call me Lou.”
My brows lifted. “Lou?” When I thought of the name Lou, I thought of 1950s Vegas and mob dealings, not someone who looked like a supermodel Olympic swimmer.
“That’s my name, Lady Evie.”
I snorted and reached for my cell. “I’m no Lady, sir.”
Ash knocked on the door less than thirty seconds after I shot him a text. He held a small bag in his hands. “Brought this for our guest.”
Lou stared at the bag with suspicion.
“Clothes,” Ash clarified. “Clean and mine. I thought you might want to wear something other than Evie’s blanket.”
Lou reached out for the bag. “Thanks.”
Ash nodded. “The shop closes in ten minutes. We should all chat afterward.” His gaze rested on Lou. “Would you like some tea or coffee?”
He shook his head. “No, thank you. I should get home before people notice I’m gone.” Lou grimaced. “Though I have no idea where I am.”
“Joy Springs,” Ash supplied. “A small town in Texas run by our local Shifter Lord.”
Lou’s brow furrowed. “Your what?”
His accent had the crisp sound of the United Kingdom, but most regions had their own Shifter Lords. “Where are you from?” I asked.
Those strange eyes rested on my face. “I can see from your face you know that I am fae. And I can tell by the magic humming from your body you are one of us, though your magic has a strange flavor reminiscent of our missing gate and something else I can’t put my finger on.”
I stiffened. While it wasn’t exactly a secret that I was the one who’d destroyed the World tree, very few realized I could function as a gate between the fae and human worlds.
The power wasn’t one I knew how to use exactly, but I could send people where they needed to go if I concentrated hard enough.
Since he’d confessed to being fae, I could send him back right now if I wanted to, but this was Moira’s screw up, and I wanted her to see if she could learn to control the magic flowing through her.
If she couldn’t figure out how to send him back, I’d have to step in, and trust Lou wouldn’t blab about my ability to anyone who asked.
Funny how trust was the one thing that usually got me into a whole lot of trouble, but it also happened to get me out of quite a few scrapes, too. “I am the product of mixed genetics,” I said with a thin smile.
Lou chuckled. “Aren’t we all, my dear?”
Ash gave me a warning look. “Ten minutes. Then we’ll talk.”
When he left the room, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Are you going to cause any trouble?”
Lou laughed, a bright, merry sound. “We are strangers! Why would I want to cause trouble for you?”
He sounded innocent. Too innocent.
“Because you’re fae,” I grumbled.
Lou laid a hand over his heart. “I am wounded.”
“Go put some clothes on.”
Lou grinned, a touch of heat in his smile. “Does my nakedness disturb you, Evie?”
I pressed a thumb to the middle of my brow. Men. They were all the same.
“Eight minutes,” I snarled as I pointed to the small restroom tucked into the back of the office.
The fae laughed out loud but carried the bag into the bathroom.