Page 121 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
I was already not looking forward to it.
I gagged a little.
“Accept his service?” Hex asked, staring at Monster as if he were, well, a monster. I love puns. “Why on earth would I do that?”
Monster snapped his fingers.
“Ask him for coffee. For snacks. Ask him to shovel and salt the sidewalk. Take him to Faerie with you; he’s bound not to harm anyone in this realm. Across the Iron Veil, he can. He’s useful.”
“If he’s so useful, why don’t you have a boogey-servant?” Hex snapped back, obviously supremely uncomfortable with Monster’s presence. They were half-brothers, supposedly, but I had yet to see them truly interact with one another. They made each other nervous. Monster, too, even if he was better at hiding it. Something about Hex dug under his skin; he avoided him whenever possible.
“A boogeyman isn’t something you choose, Hex Sorciere. It chooses you.” Monster pointed at Schatten. “This one is yours—for life.”
“I can’t even deal with this,” Hex murmured, glancing over at me, still pale-faced and shaken. “He used to bite my ankles when I got out of bed to pee.”
“I pretended to bite your ankles; I cannot actually cause harm to any living thing on this planet.” Schatten swirled down off the sconce and around the curtain rod, his body twisted like ribbon, mimicking the swags of red and white garland hung there. “But that was before. This is now. You are the crown prince, and my new master.”
“If I’m your master, then I can tell you to fuck off, can’t I?” Hex queried, sucking in a deep breath and putting his hands on his hips. His pajama pants were way low, and his Adonis belt muscles were drawing my attention. I turned away from him and found myself looking at Monster and his Adonis belt muscles, and the white lines of glimmering aphrodisiac running across them.
Shit.
I caught Spectre’s lavender gaze and held it.
“Much as I hate to admit it: Monster’s right. A boogeyman could be useful to us. Not only could he help with chores around the house, but he’d be an extra sword in the Seelie Court.” Spectre glanced up at the boogeyman in question. “I say we keep him.”
Schatten smiled.
It wasn’t what I would call a nice smile. It was a wide, rictus, sharp-toothed grin that nightmares were made of—literally. A boogeyman’s smile could infect a person with nightmares for weeks. Schatten was a gentleman, however, and held back.
“You actually want to keep this thing?” Hex asked, turning to the vampire like he’d just betrayed him at a bone-deep level. “You want a weird, shadow demon around your kids?”
“He cannot touch the children; you needn’t be concerned.” Monster pushed up off the doorjamb and stared up at the creature that was wrapped around the curtain rod before dropping his piercing copper gaze to me.
My breath caught and I took a step back from him.
“He could be a spy,” Hex offered as Caine growled low in his throat, clearly more in agreement with Hex than Monster. “What if he’s here to report back to Violet or something?”
“Command me to bite off and swallow my own tongue before I spill a single secret,” Schatten said, swiping a clawed finger over his wide mouth. His nose was hard to see in his shadowy face, but his eyes were as red as rubies. “You know as well as any other that I couldn’t disobey if I wanted to.”
“I cannot even believe I’m standing here having this discussion right now.” Hex ruffled up his hair and closed one eye, peering at Schatten with the other, as if that would somehow clear up this mess. “While I’m not exactly agreeing to this—I swear on the goddess’ cunt that I’m banishing your ass when we get home—for now, I command you to keep everything you see, hear, or experience while in our presence to yourself.”
“You forgot the tongue part,” Schatten suggested, pointing at Hex with a claw. “It’s dramatic and bloody, and I think it has flair.”
“I’m not saying the tongue part.” Hex gritted his teeth and glanced up at the creature. “Don’t speak another word else unless I ask you a direct question.”
Schatten’s sharp-toothed mouth slammed shut. I couldn’t even make out the definition of his lips in his shadowed face. He was just a pair of eyes and nothing else.
“Maybe this is as good a time as any to mention my plans for the Seelie Court,” I began, clearing my throat and very purposefully not looking back at Argent. “We’re so close to the faerie ring—”
“Why?” he asked, his voice like ice behind me. “Why do you these things to me?”
I stared at Spectre instead because he had to have known this was coming. He always knew what I was up to before anyone else did, and he was usually on my side. Tonight was no exception.
