“I think I can fix that gun for him,” I offered. As I made my way over to Taylor, I fought the urge to kick him in his face. I took the gun and bent the barrel up, then removed the bullets and encased them in ice before I crushed them in my hand. The iron burned the surface of my skin, but a little ice would heal it right up. I'd be left with nothing but a raw area on my palm from the minor iron burns by the time I got home.
I didn’t know if Taylor would understand what transpired here tonight. No one would believe his story either. Not that I gave any flying fucks about him, since it would appear that he was going to try to shoot me. With iron bullets, no less. Did he know I was fae, or was it just a guess? That would be more information to think about later. I was going to need to get Novak and Stone to help me do some digging. I already dreaded that conversation.
“Maybe we should call an ambulance for him....” I trailed off as I heard the sirens growing closer. Guess Jack called them before he came from, uhm, wherever the hell he came from. I had so many questions about tonight.
“Time to go, Vaughn. I’ll take that ride around the block to my chariot now,” Jack replied with a wink.
Vaughn
Saturday Morning
By the time I made it home, it was after 6am. I was exhausted from all the shit that had happened in the last 24 hours. I really looked forward to falling face first in my bed so I could take a long nap. Maybe I’d dream of Sloane. Her arms wrapped around my neck as she leaned back, leaving her bare breasts on display. Her nipples brushing my chest with each movement we made, long legs locked behind my back as I... FUCK! Get. A. Fucking. Grip. Vaughn. On second thought, maybe I didn’t want to dream about her. That seemed like a sure way to wake up with a raging boner, or have a wet dream.
As I opened the front door of the flat I shared with my friends, a few smells assaulted me at once. New smells that weren’t here last night when I came home to change out of my work clothes.
One: It smelled like the gas from the stove mixed with bacon and eggs and orange juice. Breakfast was being cooked, which meant Palmer came home early from seeing his family. He must have decided Novak and I had enjoyed enough take out and protein bars in his two week absence. Thank the gods. Novak was a terrible cook, and I wasn’t much better. Palmer was a step up from Stone in the kitchen, but none of us compared to Briggs.
Two: The fresh, earthy smell of mud and grass invaded my nostrils as I silently shut the front door and tiptoed through the entryway. That meant Briggs was home, too. He’d be cleaning all this fucking mud up, because I wasn’t the one who tracked it all the way from the front door of our building to our door. It then led from our front door to the couch, and from there it trailed underneath his bedroom door. He was so sloppy sometimes. It wouldn’t have been hard to take his shoes off at the door. He did this shit to aggravate me.
Three: The smell of ash and burning wood like something was on fire. That could only mean-
Fuck! Something was on fire!!
I darted through the flat, following the scent, and found... Stone. He was squatting in front of the living room fireplace, poker in one hand and a small flame in the other, teasing the fire bigger like the Devil-damned demon he was.
“Fuck! You ballbag. I thought the flat was on fire.” I had to take a deep breath to calm my rapid heartbeat. He wasn’t supposed to be home from his convention until the end of the week. The fires never caught me off guard when I knew he was home.
“We told you, Fae, it’s an apartment, not a flat. I don’t know why that’s so hard for you to understand.” He rolled his bluish black eyes at me like I was the dumbest fae to walk the earth.
“You’re the second person whose acted like I’m stupid in the past three hours,” I muttered under my breath. I knew I wasn’t a genius like Palmer, but I wasn’t not smart, you know?
“Make that three in as many hours,” Palmer slid in, “Where’ve ya been?” He gave me a sly look that made me want to roll my eyes. Of course they were going to grill me. “It’s not like ye to come strollin’ in at this hour. Busy night was it?” I thought about ignoring his questions. I wasn’t ready to talk about her with them yet.
Palmer let his accent out when he was at home. When he was working, he acted as American as I did. He didn’t have a heavy accent, but you could hear it lightly when he spoke. He’d been in the States longer than I had. I thought that helped him lose the edge of his accent. It was funny when he bounced back and forth between accents while talking to us. He hated the questions people asked him about his time in Ireland. My favorite one that he got was, “Are you Irish or Scottish?” It was one of the few times I’d ever see Palmer lose his cool, because he wasn’t from either. He was from Norn Iron. That was what he called his homeland. It was Northern Ireland. Somewhere near Belfast. Please don’t get him fucking started. We’d never hear the end of it.
He wasn’t the only one that hid it, though. All of the paperwork and information that could be found on me stated that I grew up in Seattle, Washington, which was a complete lie. I grew up in the Fae realm. The portal was hidden in Oxford, England. If you don’t know where that is then grab a map, because I was shite with directions.
“I thought the flat was on fire,” I emphasized again.
“Apartment.” I ignored Stone’s interruption and kept talking.
“I didn’t know everyone came back last night. You could’ve called. I do have a cell phone.” I waved my phone around at them and saw that they were both looking at me with blank faces. I glanced down at my phone and touched the screen to wake it up. “Oh.” That was all I could say. I had sixteen missed calls and twelve text messages. All the calls were from Palmer, Stone, and Briggs. Ten messages were from Novak, because he was a serial texter. One was never good enough for him. Two were from a number I didn’t recognize.
“So,” Palmer slowly began his interrogation once more, “Are ya gonna tell us what you were doin’? Or should we start guessin’?”
“I went to that red carpet club downtown to see someone,” I stated dismissively with a wave of my hand, already halfway down the hall on my way to my bedroom. I really didn’t want to talk to them about Sloane right now. If I stayed in there, they’d keep badgering me. I couldn’t believe I was ready to call them a little over an hour ago to figure this shit out. Now that I was face to face with them, I just wasn’t ready. I liked Sloane so far and I knew as soon as they saw her they would too. It would be nice to have my friends like my girlfriend for once. Fuck. She wasn’t my girlfriend. I just met her yesterday. I would like to see her again, though.
Palmer was saying something to me, but I tuned him out. I didn’t care what he had to say. All my attention was on the text from an unknown number. The snippet of the first message had my undivided attention as I opened the tab.
“Taylor Caplin will be waiting for you by your car. Please be careful. He’s angry that you were with me and his thoughts are dark tonight.”
And
“You should’ve kissed me. (Shoulder shrug emoji.)”
“Who the...” I breathed out before it hit me. “Oh. Ohhhh. Shit. Maybe I am stupid.” Fuck. My. Life. I knew I should have kissed her. No. I should’ve done exactly what Jack said. Godsdamnit. I was a fool.