Page 45 of Devils Don’t Deal

I gave a half-laugh and held up my left hand. “Nope. I’ve got a long time before I need to worry about carpool groups.”

What would that be like? I’d never been a kid in a group who went to things. I was kept close, safe, until I’d learned how to cover up the goblin thoroughly.

“Well, it looks like he’s interested,” she whispered, leaning over the counter, but glancing back at the daffodil fairy boy.

“Oh, no. He’s just a friend of my relative. They’re all very kind to support my shop. I’m sorry to say that the prices have increased since the first day I opened. I was pouring too much magic into everything, and it made me sick, so…” I waited for her reaction.

She held still for a moment before nodding briskly. “Good. You need to take care of yourself, and your magic is precious.”

“Thank you. Would you like some tea? On the house. I have a very nice blend, strawberry and lemon that would go really well with my strawberry-lemon cupcakes.”

“All right.” She glanced over at her child, who was staring at the rabbit with big eyes. “He won’t bite, will he?”

“I don’t think so.” At least not him.

She smiled at me, warm and happy. “If he does, it’s fine. He needs lessons about not touching other people’s familiars. I was bitten by a monkey once. Nothing teaches you lessons like experience.”

“Isn’t that the truth.”

She smiled, paid for the cupcakes, and then I set her up with everything on pretty plates in front of the window, so anyone walking by would see how cute it was. The buzzer in the back went off, and I had to run and pull out the sweetbreads for the fairy.

I hummed as I plated it and drizzled the caramel and vanilla glaze over the top.

I took it up to the fairy boy and placed it in front of him with a flourish. “Here you are. You’ll have to tell me how you like it.”

He grabbed my arm before I could leave, his eyes intent on me. “I’ll be here at ten to pick you up. An hour won’t kill you.”

Still with the clubbing thing? I shook my head. “I’ll be asleep by then.”

“But you have to live a little before you die. Death comes relentlessly for all of us.”

I hesitated. “Aren’t you immortal?”

“Immortality didn’t save my sister.” His voice was hard, like his eyes.

I covered his hand with mine. “I’m sorry about her but living like you want to die isn’t the answer.”

He pulled his hand away and stood. “You’re just like all the rest of them. I thought you’d be different because under your skin you have something other than fairy, but you’re as pathetic and weak as the rest.” He left like a dart, pretty yellow wings carrying him out the door before I realized that he was gone.

I stared after him, frowned down at the untouched sweetbreads I’d baked particularly for the obnoxious fairy. Who hadn’t paid.

I glared after him. Fine. I’d be at the club tonight. And I’d wring his scrawny neck. He wanted to see the goblin under my pretty fairy skin? Then that was what he’d see.

“Oh dear,” the woman said, frowning as she studied me. “It looks like the two of you had a fight.”

I quickly swept everything on his table onto a tray and gave her a smile as I headed back to the counter. Just because his sister had died didn’t mean he got to steal from me. Did I go around blaming the world for my mother’s death? No. I didn’t have time for that. I was busy paying off her hospital bills and saving my dad from his own grief. And kissing devils. There were definitely some perks.

My dad swallowed the sweetbreads in one gulp, made a face, then grinned at me. “Funny that the prickly old fairy told him about the goblin without mentioning the fairy blood. Looks like he’s trying to save him from making a mistake with a real goblin.”

“Or he was talking about me for another reason. Odd that he’d mention me at all, don’t you think? The pretty fairy didn’t know Mom.”

“He’s young, and your mother hasn’t been to any of their events for many, many years. Not since we met.”

I nodded and went to the front in time to wave to the woman and the child as they left the shop. “Dad,” I called, so he came out, heading for the table to clear it. “How did you meet Mom when she was kept in a pretty bubble?”

“There was an attack on their house.” He glanced at me sideways. “I was part of the company hired to kill the remnants of her family. Fairies hire to kill each other off like that sometimes. Nasty business.”

My heart beat at the idea of my dad killing for money. “But…you saved her instead of killing her?”