Tithe A Modern Faerie Tale Page 0,59

against the damp skin of her neck. It surprised Kaye, and she flinched back from the sudden touch.

"Scared, silly-scared, scared, scared, scared," Lutie chanted against her neck.

"Me too," Kaye said, pressing her hand against the buzz of the tiny body.

"They'll be a score of songs about you by nightfall," Spike said, eyes gleaming with pride.

"There would have been twice as many if I had died like you planned, wouldn't there?"

Spike's eyes widened. "We never…"

Kaye bit her lip, forcing herself to swallow the hysteria that threatened to bubble up her throat. "If Nephamael was going to take the glamour off me, he was going to take it off my corpse."

"Dismiss me, pixie," Roiben said. His eyes had a hollow look to them that made her stomach clench. "I was careless. I will hold no grudge against you or yours, but this foolishness ends now."

"I didn't plan this—your name. I never meant to use it for anything." Kaye reached out her hand to stroke the edge of his sleeve.

The effect was instantaneous. He circled her wrist with his hand, twisting it hard. Lutie squealed, springing from Kaye's shoulder into the air.

There was no anger in his voice, no sar- casm, no heat. It was as strangely hollow as his eyes. "If you wish me to endure your touch, you must order me to do so."

Then he dropped her hand so quickly it might have been made of iron. She was shaking, too scared to cry, too miserable to speak.

Spike looked at her wide-eyed, as though he was reasoning with a lunatic. "Well then, Kaye, tell him he can go. He says he won't hold a grudge—that's a generous offer."

"No," she said, louder than she intended. They all looked at her in surprise, although Roiben's gaze darkened.

She had to explain. She turned to him, careful not to touch him. "Come inside. You can clean up your cuts there. I just want to explain. You can leave tonight."

His eyes were dull no longer; they blazed with rage. For a moment, she thought he was going to kill her before she could manage to stammer out his name. Then she thought he might just walk away, daring her to stop him. But he did neither of these things.

"As you say, my mistress." The words curled off his tongue, cutting deeper than she had thought words could. "I would prefer no one else learned the calling of me."

Spike blinked up at the Unseelie knight, apparently unable to control a shudder. Lutie watched them from the crook of the elm tree.

"The Thistlewitch will need to know what had happened tonight," Spike said slowly.

"Go ahead," she said. "We can talk about it later." Taking the spare key out from underneath a dusty bottle of bleach, she opened the door as quietly as she could. The house was silent.

Roiben followed Kaye into the kitchen, and the sight of him carefully closing the backdoor and filling what was probably a dirty glass with water from the tap was so incongruous, she had to stop and watch him. He drank, tipping back his head so that the column of his neck was thrown into profile. He must have seen her staring; as he finished the last of the water, he looked in her direction.

"Your pardon," he said.

"No, go ahead. I'm just going to make some coffee. Uh, the bathroom is there." She pointed.

"Do you have any salt?" he asked.

"Salt?"

"For my leg. I'm not sure what can be done about the arm."

"Oh." She rummaged around in her grandmother's spice drawer and came up with a canister of Morton's salt. "Wouldn't iodine or something be better?"

He just shook his head grimly and walked in the direction of the bathroom.

A few minutes later he returned in his more human glamour. As before, his hair was more white than silver, the bones of his face were slightly less jagged, and his ears were less prominent. He had discarded his shirt, and she was disconcerted to see the pattern of scars on his chest. He must have found some gauze; one thigh looked padded under the leg of his pants.

She poured the coffee into two mugs, alarmed to see that her hands were shaking. Spooning sugar into one of the cups, she looked a query at Roiben. He nodded and nodded again when she offered milk.

"When I first met you, I didn't know I was a faerie," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. "I presume that you knew you were not human when you blackmailed a kiss