wore his dark hair clipped short. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. A shiny sheriff’s badge was pinned to the pocket of his crisp khaki shirt.
He strode up to the car. Sassy watched him approach in the mirror on the driver’s side. He moved with the power and loose-limbed grace of an animal in its prime.
A meat-eating animal; this was no herbivore.
Sassy heard a stifled gasp from the backseat and glanced in the rearview mirror. Taryn sat ramrod straight, her gaze fixed on the windshield. She sensed the predator in their midst, too.
“License and proof of insurance,” the officer said.
There was a still, alert quality about him, like he’d taken their measure in a single glance.
No dummy, this man.
“Certainly, Officer.” Sassy held up her wallet in one hand and reached for the glove box. She showed him the insurance slip. It was soaked.
“Take the license out of the wallet, ma’am.”
Goodness, he was intimidating. He acted like she was a felon. Or worse, badly dressed.
She fished the laminated rectangle out of the wallet and handed it to him. He glanced from the I.D. to Sassy and back again. The aura of danger around him thickened.
“You don’t look like the female in this photograph.”
“I know, right? The woman at the probate office was a major crab. I told her she didn’t get my best side, but she refused to retake it.”
Sassy’s smile bounced off the officer’s shield of hard ass. Marshmallows, her charm projector must be malfunctioning.
“This is a photocopy of a license, ma’am. And your insurance information is unreadable.”
“Yes, I know. I can expla—”
“You can explain it at the county jail. There’s a BOLO on this automobile. It was reported missing yesterday along with the driver, some rich debutante out of Mobile.”
“A BOLO, really?” Strictly speaking, Sassy hadn’t been a deb in ages, but she was much too excited to argue about it. “Am I being arrested? Awesome.”
“Awesome?” Evan thumped his head against the back of the seat. “Sassy, you have got to quit smoking that shit.”
Chapter Eighteen
Poof! Grim vanished from the front seat and rematerialized at the officer’s side.
“Nice trick,” the lawman said without twitching a muscle.
Which said a lot about him and his job. He was one cool customer.
“You are the shire reeve?” Grim asked.
Grim’s whiskey smooth voice sent a tingle of ahh through Sassy. Since that scorching kiss in the river, she’d been painfully aware of him. Her senses buzzed at his scent and nearness, and her body hummed with sexual tension.
She wanted sex. With Grim.
It didn’t matter how many times she reminded herself she was promised to Wes, her libido howled like a toddler sent home from a birthday party without a treat bag. The quart of fairy Kool-Aid she’d ingested probably hadn’t helped.
Who knew fairies were such horny little gadflies?
“I’m Sheriff Whitsun.” The officer’s voice yanked Sassy from her lascivious thoughts. “And you’re Dalvahni. I’ve seen that vapor act before.”
Oh ho, so this wasn’t the sheriff’s first ticket to the demon hunter circus. Life in Hannah must be one big paranormal party.
Whitsun sized Grim up. “You by any chance related to a guy named Ansgar?”
“He is my brother. I am Grim. The female with the inexplicable desire to be jailed is Sassy Peterson.”
“Peterson?” The sheriff’s sunglasses lasered in on Sassy. “That so?”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “As in the Petersons. Get Daddy Joel on the horn. He’ll straighten this out.”
The sheriff cocked a brow. “Daddy Joel?”
“My stepfather, Joel Champion,” Sassy said. “I borrowed his car yesterday and came to Hannah on business. I got . . . sidetracked.”
“Sidetracked how?”
Holy BOGO, how to explain without sounding like a lunatic? Well, there was this saber-tooth deer, and a horrible old witch, and a glowing silver stag the size of a Rolls-Royce, and fairies and—
Better keep it simple.
“My GPS quit working. I got lost and ran off the road.”
Into a creek and nearly drowned, where I was saved by the Hot Ginger Dude with the built-in teleportation device. Oh, yeah, and if the Incredible Hulk and the Thing were a gay couple and had a baby, the guy in the backseat would be their love child.
And the ruby red supermodel sitting beside him is some kind of ninja vagina Amazon warrior chick.
“Law enforcement officers in three counties are looking for you, Ms. Peterson.”
“I’m sorry. I lost my cell phone and my purse,” Sassy said. “It was a crazy day.”
That was the understatement of the century.
Whitsun gave her another hard look from behind his sunglasses. His nostrils flared as