would take her report.
Teresa had felt the people suffocate, felt them die, and she'd seen the ghosts -- white shapes, she said, sucking the life from them. The police had informed her that everyone knew ghosts didn't do shit like this. Peterson had come in about then and thrown the report in the trash can in front of Teresa. Usually the police wait until someone's left the room before doing that.
Teresa had managed to drag her husband out before he got himself arrested for assaulting a police officer. Teresa's husband used to play for the Rams back when they were the football team in L.A. Ray's like a nicely maintained mountain, with a winning smile and a very firm handshake.
We ended up with a lot of time on our hands. No, we did not just have sex all day. We pestered Sage. I had paid the price that Queen Niceven asked, but we had no cure. Why hadn't Sage given us the cure last night? Why did Kitto becoming sidhe change everything for Sage? Did he really mean to imply that he needed to have sex with me to effect the cure? Sage didn't want to answer any questions.
He had flown around the apartment trying to escape our questions, but it was a small apartment, even if you were the size of a Barbie doll. Late in the day he launched himself from the windowsill and got a little too near Galen, who batted at him like you'd swat a mosquito. I don't think he meant to strike him.
Sage fell heavily on the floor. He lay very still, a tiny butter-colored thing with his bright wings like a fragile shield. He raised slowly onto one arm before I could finish kneeling by him. "Are you all right?" I asked.
He looked at me with such hatred in those tiny doll eyes that I flinched. He stumbled a little in rising to his feet, but he fanned his wings and caught his balance. He refused the hand I offered him. He stood there, hands on hips, and stared up at us as we towered over him.
"If I die, green knight, the cure dies with me. Best remember that, when you're being careless."
"I didn't intend to hurt you," Galen said, but there was something in his eyes that was not kind, not gentle, not Galen. Perhaps, more than just his manhood had been damaged by the demi-fey.
"Too close to a lie, that," Sage said, rising into the air, his butterfly wings a blur. Butterfly wings just didn't work like that. It was more the way a dragonfly moved. When he'd gained height enough to meet Galen's gaze, the wing beats slowed and he hovered, the large wings fanning more slowly but still with enough force to stir the curls around Galen's face.
"I didn't intend to strike you that hard." Galen's voice was low and warm with anger. There was a hardness there that I'd never heard before. Part of me mourned that tone; part of me felt a flare of hope. Perhaps even Galen could learn those harsh lessons that would be needed if he ever became King. Or perhaps he was just learning how to hate. That lesson I would have spared him if I could.
I watched the two men glare at each other, both hating. Sage was still the size of a Barbie doll, but his anger wasn't amusing anymore. That he could elicit such negativity from my smiling Galen was a little frightening.
"All right, boys, play nice now." They both turned and glared at me. So much for breaking the tension. "Fine, be that way, but what did you mean that if you die, the cure dies with you?"
Sage rotated in midair, arms half crossed on his tiny chest as if he couldn't quite cross them and fly at the same time. "I mean, Princess, that Queen Niceven left a present in my body. The healing for your man here is trapped in this tiny package." He spread his arms wide as he said it, almost bowing as he hung, fluttering.
"What does that mean, Sage?" Doyle said. "Exactly what it means, no prevaricating, just the truth, all of it."
He gave another turn in midair so he could look directly at Doyle. Sage could have simply glanced over his shoulder, but I think he wanted Doyle to know he was being looked at. "You want truth, Darkness, all of it?"
"Yes," Doyle said, his thick voice, lower, deeper, not angry, but a