Page 176 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Still, I swallowed my feelings and offered him my hand. “Friends?”
Pete’s tousled hair glinted like tinsel in the moonlight as he shook my hand. The feel of his calluses still made me shiver. “Friends.”
Twenty-Nine
Pete
Heavy-eyedandheavy-limbed,Petehunkered down by the fire beside Sedge, who poked radiant coals with a stick. He’d just gotten Shorty settled upon his pallet, where she’d precipitously passed into the Land of Nod, and had finished hanging their sopping clothes out to dry. Now the exhaustion from too little sleep and his daylong disquiet slugged him, a fist to the face.
“You look like death,” Sedge said. “You should sleep. I’ll keep watch in case another Incubus tries his hand at preying on you.”
Pete dropped his weary head into his palm, his arm propped upon his knee. “Or any prowling harbingers?”
Sedge snorted, too incensed to meet Pete’s eye. “You were smart to divert course, at least. The Leprechauns are after you, the blighters. They don’t have as sharp a nose as I do, but they’ll eventually stalk you down, you ken?”
Pete had already guessed as much, but his gut still sank.
“She’s a zephyrist?” Sedge nodded toward Shorty, alongside who now slept two bloodhounds. The second being Sedge’s blonde pawler (a behemoth compared to Sionna), whose name was Kit.
Pete scraped his face, relieved his friend wasn’t about to lecture him for taking his mark on an excursion to the Goblin Market, when all harbingers knew to deliver their quarry straight to the Shadow Palace.
“By God, Sedge—I don’t knowwhatshe is.” That was the goddamned truth. Most magical fae Pete had encountered developed just one principal power. Which was usually plenty. Shorty had two—that he knew about. Seeing as she’d nearly overcome him that tragic morning in Humwater Dell, he suspected she had more.
Silence reigned as the Vamp’s preternatural gaze affixed on the sleeping mass of hair and tumult drooling on Pete’s pallet. Sedge’s nostrils flared as he wieldedhisprincipal power—the ability to glean a person’s strengths and weaknesses within a heartbeat. It made him a spectacularly efficient killer.
“You haven’t told her of—?”
“No,” Pete interrupted, afraid Shorty still might hear them in slumber. Although, he sorely wished she knew he was more than an assassin with a drive for self-preservation.
Clicking his tongue, Sedge faced Pete again, his surveillance complete. However, if the twitch in Sedge’s pale cheek were any indication, he hadn’t gleaned much. “She carries secrets, Pete. Substantial secrets, though something obstructs her mind from my breed of magic.”
“Spellcasting’s not in Shorty’s repertoire, Sedge.” Yet. “The obstruction wouldn’t be her doing.”
“Well, whosever doing it is, they’re mighty powerful themselves. Because I can’t sniff out the nature of her gifts either, though I’ll tell you now—they’re formidable.”
Grim, Pete grunted. “Aye.”
Sedge exhaled. “Are you going to make me say it?”
Pete cast a droll glance his long-time chum’s way.
“The Leprechauns are on your scent and will kill you without blinking for the bounty I heard tell she’ll fetch. Unruly as she must be to unleash a twister in public, she’s a liability to you. To all the good you’ve done.”
“We’re working on that.” Pete watched the coals in the firepit smolder like Shorty’s eyes when she was near to combustion. “I’ve been teaching her control. She’s doing well with it, frankly.”
“Youmustcut her loose and let the Leprechauns have her.”
Resolved, Pete clenched his teeth. “I can’t do that.”
“You most certainly can.”
“Fine,” Pete snapped. “Then Iwon’tdo that.”
“Damn you, Pete. I ken she’s a sympathetic case, but you can’t save her. You know that!”
“Hush,” Pete hissed. “You’ll wake her.” Shorty had uncanny hearing, evidenced by all the times she’d smacked him in the dead of night for waking her with his “loud breathing.”
Sedge’s mouth clamped in a hard line.
