beer. Lots and lots of beer.”
Ben had brought clothes for the cubs in the duffel bag. Noelle went with Peigi behind a tree to slide into sweat pants and shirt, but Kyle and Matt argued.
“We don’t mind running around Faerie like this,” Matt declared in his ear-shattering voice. “We’ve done it before.”
“No!” Graham bellowed.
“Please?” Peigi asked them.
Matt and Kyle ceased chasing each other in circles as Peigi spoke, grabbed clothes from the duffel, and pulled them on.
“I don’t know how you do that,” Graham growled.
“It’s a magic she has.” Stuart sent Peigi a glance that had her wanting to say to hell with the hoch alfar and rush him home.
When they reached the camp, Stuart took Ben to Cian, and the three began speaking together in dokk alfar.
Peigi did not want Noelle to see Michael and wished Ben and Graham had left her at home, but she likely had rushed after Matt and Kyle before anyone could stop her. Peigi didn’t know how much Noelle remembered of Michael, and how much trauma encountering him again would cause.
Before she could decide what to do, Michael came out of the tent where he was tending to, and reaming out, the wounded Shifters. He halted when he saw Peigi with cubs, puzzled, no recognition in his eyes.
Peigi’s anger at him wound up all over again. He didn’t know Noelle, one of his tracker’s cubs, probably hadn’t ever noticed her when she’d lived in his compound.
Noelle, on the other hand, studied him a moment and nodded gravely. “I remember you. Looks like someone kicked your ass.”
“That was Peigi,” Stuart, who’d turned around to watch the encounter, said.
“Yeah?” Noelle gazed at Peigi in profound respect and swung her fist through the air. “’Cause she’s awesome.”
Peigi relaxed. Noelle would stare trauma in the face, and spit on it.
Michael, still not understanding what had just happened, returned to the Shifters.
Peigi moved to help him and Crispin, Noelle at her side. Graham joined them, his belligerence mitigated by compassion when he took in the injured Shifters.
The most wounded were inside the tent, groaning softly in pain or simply staring. Some were contrite, realizing they’d thrown away their lives joining the hoch alfar, but others were defiant. Shiftertowns sucked, they said, and Shifter leaders were selling them all straight to hell. Graham had a few loud words to say about that.
Peigi bandaged wounds and cleaned up blood and bile, comforting where she could. Noelle helped without a qualm. She tended wounds in all seriousness, having had plenty of experience ministering to her brothers and sisters when they got themselves hurt—Shifter cubs inevitably did. She knew how to clean cuts and wrap limbs and lend reassurance, telling her patients that all would be well and not to worry too much. Even the most recalcitrant Shifters were charmed by her.
Neal Ingram, the Guardian of the Las Vegas Shiftertown, arrived not long later. Peigi went to meet him as he walked into the camp.
“How did you find your way through?” she asked him curiously.
Neal a tall Lupine with gray eyes, was habitually a quiet man. Most Guardians kept to themselves, but Neal had made an art of it.
Neal touched the hilt of his sword resting above his shoulder. “This lets me pass through the gates. The Shifter souls crying out were a clue where they were too. I’ll go help them.”
He strode unerringly toward the end of the clearing where the dead Shifters had been laid out. Neal drew the Sword as he walked, and Peigi heard him begin a low chant to the Goddess.
“Goddess go with them,” she whispered, and then returned to the Shifters who were alive and needed her.
Ben decided to remain in Faerie, at least for a time, to attempt to forge a new karmsyern for the dokk alfar. Cian would take him home, he told Stuart, and Ben could work on a forge Cian planned to have built for him.
Stuart was not surprised Ben decided to stay, and was grateful. “Take care of yourself,” Stuart told him.
Ben held up his hands for a fist bump. “You mean don’t let a hoch alfar catch me and spear me. I’ll keep that in mind. Tell Jasmine I’ll be back to look after her house as soon as I can.” He hesitated. “Tell her to tell the house too. I wouldn’t want it getting upset at me.”
Stuart agreed. An angry sentient house was a thing he did not want to experience. He completed the fist bump, advised Ben to send