Or would I?
I had a bit more control these days, and given that I was now connected to not just Morgana but Pan and Lilith as well, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I had enough magic to draw that spell out of her and hold it.
Lilah and Mumbles sneaked forward, and both of them grabbed Glimmer, holding on to her arms and pulling her back. She thrashed, trying to reach for me, her wings fluttering.
“Can you knock her out?” Mumbles asked.
“She’s not in her right mind,” I said. “If we attack her, then…”
Mumbles’s face darkened.
“Leo, I’m in more of my right mind that I’ve ever been,” Glimmer insisted. “I’ve loved you ever since you freed me from Grim. Now I finally have the courage to be with you. Won’t you let me be yours?”
Crap. I had no interest in letting this play out this way, but at the same time, I felt as if I needed to get to the bottom of what happened to her and see if I could figure out what else I could do to help.
“When did you start feeling this way?” Lilah asked.
Glimmer frowned at her. “You aren’t going to steal him from me.”
“She’s not trying to steal you from me,” I said. “Or me from you?” I frowned. I was getting confused, and that wasn’t a good thing.
“Good. The two of us would be so happy,” Glimmer said. Her wings continued to flutter, and I nodded to Mumbles and Lilah, wanting them to release her just a little bit so that she wouldn’t be harmed. It wouldn’t do for either of them to hold her so tightly that we had to restore her wings or anything else again.
“When did you start feeling this way?” I repeated.
“I told you, Leo,” she said, breaking free of Mumbles’s grip and running her hand along my chest. She grinned at me. “I felt this way for a long time. Haven’t you seen it?”
There had to be an easy way for me to deal with this, but I wasn’t all sure what that might be. Maybe the simple answer was to go along with it, at least for now. That way, then I could figure out a little bit more about what happened, and maybe track back to where the desire demon had been.
“I guess I didn’t think that you felt that way about me,” I said, feeling gross for leading her on, though to be honest, I knew that it wasn’t Glimmer saying these things. It was the desire demon making her say it, just as the demon had made Nick feel the way that he had for Katharine. “You and I have only really interacted twice.”
“Twice?” Glimmer said, her voice breathy. “Once was enough to know I loved you.”
“Love at first sight?” Lilah asked.
“Don’t lead her on,” I said.
Lilah giggled. “It seems like you were the one leading her on.”
“Would you stop?”
She giggled again. “I just want to make sure that you don’t hurt her, Leo. She has feelings, after all.”
I shook my head. “Can you tell me more about what happened?” I asked Glimmer.
“I remember when you came in Grim’s stall. You were so strong. So powerful. The way you freed the others and me…” She looked at Mumbles. “You were there. You had to have felt just how powerful Leo is.”
“He’s powerful, all right,” Mumbles muttered.
“You aren’t going to take him from me, are you?” Glimmer asked.
Mumbles almost released her arm, and I shot him a hard look. “He’s not going to take me from you, either,” I reassured her.
Glimmer grinned again. “Good. The two of us can be so happy. I just know that you would love to curl up beside me. I just can’t wait for your arms to wrap around me, to stroke my hair, my face, my wings.”
They fluttered again, an excited movement.
I groaned. “Is anything else that you can tell me?”
“I was drifting off to sleep in the house I’m sharing with some of my friends when I suddenly knew I had to come find you. I’ve been feeling this way for a while, but it was then that I had the most beautiful dream of the two of us and the life that we could lead together.”
“What life is that?” Lilah asked.
She suppressed a grin as I glared at her. “You aren’t helping,” I said.
“Then who am I hurting?”
“Me?”
Lilah laughed again. “I don’t know, I think it’s sweet.” She still held on to Glimmer’s arm, but not nearly as strongly as she had before. “I can see why you would be so interested in him,” Lilah said to Glimmer. “He really is strong, but you have a little competition.”
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
Mumbles chuckled. “Making it interesting, it seems.”
We had to get the desire demon out of her, and until I knew how to control it and contain it, I wasn’t sure what that was going to take. Thankfully, at least I knew where to start this time, unlike when I’d faced Nick.
“Why don’t you come with me?” I said, slipping my coat off and putting around Glimmer’s shoulders.
She looked up at me, batting her eyelashes. “Where are we going? To elope?”
Lilah started giggling, and even Mumbles chuckled, doing nothing to hide his amusement. Neither of them were helping at this point, which irritated me more than it should have. I pushed down that irritation and turned my attention to Glimmer. “Sure,” I said, clearing my throat. “That’s…that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
3
We stepped out of the main part of the apartment, and I nodded to the three others still sitting on the sofa. Only one was human, though she had thin, wispy hair and thick glasses. A witch, I suspected, though didn’t know why she was here. One of them was an elf, about the same diminutive size as Lilah, but much more solid, as if swollen. The third…I didn’t know what he was.
I had patients who needed help, but I wasn’t going to be able to do anything for them at this point. “Do you think you can convince them to leave?” I asked Lilah.
“Oh, I’m sure they would wait for you,” she said.
“I don’t want them waiting in my apartment without me here,” I whispered to her.
Glimmer kept reaching for me, trying to stroke my arm, running her hands along my chest, and generally being a little too aggressive for me. I mean, I enjoyed an adventurous woman, but this was well beyond that.
“I don’t think there’s anything here for them to take,” Lilah said.
I glanced back to my office. There might not be anything all that magically exciting there—other than my closet full of artifacts and relics that had been gifted to me in exchange for my healing services—but there was still something about having privacy. I preferred having my own space, not having random people just wandering through my apartment. It was bad enough that I still shared the place with Lilah and Mumbles. I was on the cusp of thirty, definitely old enough that I should have my own home.
“Hold on to her,” I said, glaring at Lilah and Mumbles, then hurried over the sofa and looked down at the three remaining patients. “Unfortunately, I have a patient who needs urgent services. If what you have is urgent, I’m more than happy to offer magical healing, but if it’s not, could I ask that you return tomorrow?”