Sleepily, she turned toward him and nuzzled her face into his hard thigh. “You’re assuming the trolls won’t get to the cheese first.”
“I have complete faith in your ability to defend your fromage.” His voice was dry, his fingers tender as they smoothed a stray strand of hair off her face. “With prejudice, as necessary.”
“For AOP Gruyère?” She stretched lazily, yawning. “Yeah. I can take them down.”
He huffed out an amused breath. “Call me if you need me, if you have a vision, or if anything happens that makes you uneasy.”
“I’ll be fine.” For someone who hadn’t wanted to disturb her, he was certainly talking a lot. “Don’t worry, Hugh.”
“Worrying is what I do best. Especially when it comes to you.” He dropped one last kiss on her hair. “Sweet dreams, honey. I’ll be back soon.”
Love you, she thought absently, already half asleep again. But she didn’t say it, and then he was gone and she was dreaming once more. Sweet dreams, as requested. Happy dreams of a small, loving family and an apartment with a separate refrigerator for cheese.
Dreams that came to an abrupt end when an odd whooshing sound made Gwen’s eyes open again. Then widen in shock as an unfamiliar female demon teleported directly into Max’s library.
“There you are,” the elegant, angular demon said, and pressed a small leather pouch into Gwen’s palm. “If I haven’t been led astray, this should prevent any unnecessary fuss.”
A heartbeat later, Gwen couldn’t move. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t even force her lungs to expand for air. Panicked and utterly motionless, she stared directly ahead as the clawing need for oxygen darkened the edges of her world.
An incapacitation spell, technically illegal. Malignant witchwork.
“It worked.” The dark-haired, pointy-horned demon sounded pleasantly surprised. “I’ll have to be quick about this, then, or you’ll suffocate. He wouldn’t be pleased by that.”
Efficiently, she stripped the covers off Gwen, yanked the amulet from around her neck, tossed it aside, and patted down Gwen’s bougie new pajamas to check for anything hidden underneath.
As Gwen’s awareness dimmed, she tried her best to think of Hugh in her final moments. To conjure the comforting heat of his embrace and the sweet solemnity in his dark eyes. But the memory was slipping away from her, trailing into blackness.
“Very well.” The demon’s painfully tight grip on Gwen’s arm punctured her asphyxiated haze. “Let’s be off.”
Then the world disappeared, fracturing into nothing as Gwen did the same.
26
The sensation…it was indescribable. Like being ripped apart on the atomic level, only to be smashed back together in an unceremonious instant by a careless toddler.
Gwen crumpled to her knees in a jarring jolt, but she could breathe again without the leather pouch in her palm. Sucking in desperate gasps of air, she frantically scanned her new surroundings.
Cold marble floors. Lofty, arched ceilings. No windows. Three armed, masked guards at the lone closed door. An open, expansive space entirely unoccupied, except for a cluster of…
Were those standard office cubicles in the far corner?
Where the fuckwasshe?
“Why, hello.” The fae from Gwen’s visions emerged in her peripheral vision, approaching in a smooth, leisurely glide. He stepped in front of the teleporter demon and smiled genially down at his petrified captive. “Welcome to the Realm Below, mydear. I feel I should introduce myself, even though we’ve met before.”
“In my visions,” Gwen whispered, cringing away.
There was no mistaking him, especially after their last prophetic encounter. Most fae might possess the same pointed ear tips, elongated fingers, prettily feathered wings, and unearthly glow to their skin, but the tarnished-silver shade of his hair and the malicious glee in his bright green eyes couldn’t belong to anyone but the fae of her nightmares.
Nausea born of terror churned in her stomach, rising up her tight throat.
“Yes, we met in your visions, which allowed me to track you.” A crafty smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Only the oldest fae gain that ability, and I’m the oldest of us all, since I’ve consumed—well, never mind about that.”
There was just one horrifying way he could have reached that advanced age. How many human lives had he snuffed out in pursuit of his own immortality?
He raised an impeccably groomed eyebrow, the gesture mocking and supercilious. “We also met in person, however. Don’t you recognize me?”
She would have remembered. Surely, she would have recalled seeing—
