He sighs so loud I still hear it, even with my ears covered.

“Sorry, lass. Did he?”

I’m not taking my hands from my ears. I think about telling him yes so he’ll go after Jayne for me, but I don’t like to lie unless the payoff is huge. Lies are horny little buggers, they breed like rabbits and bound around just as insanely and then you have to try to keep track of them. “I got cut up myself but it’s his fault. He startled me and I freeze-framed too soon.” Speaking of cuts, I don’t feel as bad as I did and I don’t seem to be bleeding anymore.

“You want help killing him?”

He sounds a little too eager. Like homicidal maniac eager. “Don’t need no stinking help,” I say crossly. My eardrums hurt. “I mean not that your help is stinking or anything. Your help is totally cool. I just want to do it myself.”

“Would you come out from under there, lass?”

“Would you, like, never yell again? You’re slaying me. I got superhearing.” I poke my head out. “Where am I?” I’m in a cloud of down pillows and comforters, in a high bed, in the corner of a huge room.

“My place.”

I look around. Cool digs. He’s holed up in a rehabbed industrial warehouse, one of those kinds with a giant living area that has no walls except for the ones you make with furniture and stuff. There’s lots of brick and wood floors and exposed heating ducts, tons of light spilling in tall windows and a massive flat-screen 3D TV in front of a ginormous comfy-looking couch. There’s a pool table and some old video game machines and an awesome bar, a kitchen with stainless steel appliances, and no racks or torture instruments visible anywhere. It’s just the kind of place a college guy would die for—too bad he’s not one anymore, but hey, we all have the things we need to pretend. No scary-looking knife collections. No red, no black, their favorite colors. The place is totally not Unseelie prince.

A shaft of rosy light is shining on me and I look up. The bed is under a skylight, the sun’s setting and it’s got one of those new, strange Fae hues to it, brilliant orangey pink. I could sprawl in bed and watch the stars at night. I like it being pushed in the corner, giving me wall at my right and back, leaving only two sides to defend. Feels snug. Makes me think about rearranging some of my own rooms. I’m fascinated by the way other folks live, and love to look in other people’s houses. “Aw, man, you ever move out, I’m moving in!”

“Like it, do you, lass?” he says, and his voice sounds funny. Thick and weird.

I look down at him and jerk. “Something on my face?” He’s staring at me hard, eyes intense, and what’s looking out of them doesn’t look like it belongs in this place of brick and wood and sunshine at all. It belongs in the dark somewhere, with razor blades, about to do something real nasty.

“No. Your face is lovely, lass. The sunset looks good on you.” He reaches a hand out toward my face and I go real still.

“Dude, you’re scaring me.”

He looks at me but it’s like he’s not seeing me at all, so I sit there with his hand about an inch from my face and look back and think about wild animals. About how they’ll attack if they smell fear, not that I feel it, but when you’re staring at an Unseelie prince, even though you know he started out human, it’s kind of hard to predict what might happen next. This isn’t a scenario I can lock down on my mental grid and freeze-frame through. This obstacle course has too many unknown variables.

He drops his hand without touching me, pushes up from the bed and goes to the kitchen. He braces his fists on the island and leans there with his back to me. He’s bigger than he was when I first saw him up on my water tower. The back of his shirt is stained with blood and his spine presses knobby and weird against it. It’s creepy.

I scoot to the exit side of the bed, thinking I’ll just be moseying along now, when I realize I’m not wearing enough to get up. I only got on a bra and underwear. I sink back down and tuck my knees up. Not that I want to draw attention to the fact, but looking around yields no results. “Where are my clothes?”

“Destroyed.”

He undressed me! He must have washed me, too, because I’m not covered with blood. Holy high wire! An Unseelie death-by-sex Fae that’s having all kinds of temper problems undressed and cleaned me up. “Do you, like, have any other clothes I could wear?”

“Don’t use that tone with me.”

“What tone?”

“The one that thinks I’m some kind of freak predator that molests children. I’m not a freak and you’re not a child. I undressed you, lass. I cleaned you up. I healed you. I will never hurt you.”