And nailed Finn right in the chest.

Chapter 6

#DoNotTryThisAtHome

At the collective shocked gasp of the room, Pru ripped off her blindfold and blinked rapidly to focus her vision. And what she focused in on with horror was the dart stuck in Finn’s pec, the quill still quivering from impact.

Archer and Spence had their phones out and were taking pics with big grins but Pru saw nothing funny about this. “Oh my God,” she whispered as she ran to him. “Oh my God.” Panic blocked her throat as she gripped his arms and stared at the dart. “I hit you!”

“Bull’s-eye,” he said, looking down at it sticking out of his chest. “Not bad for a beginner.”

He was joking. She’d hit him with a dart and he stood there joking. Good God. She wished for a big hole to swallow her up, but as already proven, she’d never had much luck with wishes. “I’m so sorry! Do we pull it out? Please, you’ve got to sit down.” She was having trouble drawing air into her lungs. “You need to stay still. You could have a cracked rib or a pierced lung.” Just the thought of which had her vision going cobweb-y. “Someone call 911!” she yelled.

Finn calmly pulled out the dart. “I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t, not even close. The tip of the dart was red. His blood, she thought as she felt her own drain from her face.

That’s when the red stain began to spread through his shirt, blooming wide. She was living the worst scary movie she’d ever seen. “Oh, God, Finn—” She was freaking out, she could feel herself going cold with fear as she again tried to push him into a chair and put both hands over the blood spot to apply pressure at the same time.

He stood firm, not budging an inch as he captured her hands in his and bent a little to look into her eyes. “Breathe, Pru.”

“But I—You—I’m so sorry,” she heard herself say from what seemed like a long way off. “I wished for true love, not death, I swear!”

“Pru—”

She couldn’t answer. There was a buzzing in her ears now, getting louder and louder, and then her vision faded to black.

Pru came to with voices floating around her head.

“Nice going, Finn. You finally got a good one on the line and you kill her.” Archer, she thought.

“She’s got a tat,” someone else said—Spence?—making Pru realize her shirt had ridden up a little, exposing the compass on her hipbone, the tattoo she’d gotten after her parents’ death, when she’d been missing them so much she hadn’t known how to go on without them. The world had become a terrifying place, and all alone in the world she’d needed the symbol of knowing which direction to go.

“Finn’s more of a piercing kind of guy,” Spence said.

“I bet today he’s more of a tat guy,” Archer said.

“Hell, I’m sold,” Spence said.

Pru shoved down her shirt and opened her eyes. She was prone on a couch with a bunch of disembodied faces hovering over her.

“She’s pretty green,” Spence’s face said. “Think she’s going to hurl?”

Willa’s face was creased into a worried frown. “No, but I don’t think she’s moisturizing enough.”

“Does she need mouth-to-mouth?” Sean.

“Out. All of you.” The low but steely demand came from Finn and had all the faces vanishing.

Pru realized she was in an office. Finn’s, by the look of things. There was a desk, a very comfortable couch beneath her, and on the other side of it, a large picture window that revealed a great view of the courtyard and the fountain.

She narrowed her eyes at the fountain, sending it you’re dead to me vibes. Because really? She’d wished for love for Finn and instead she’d stabbed him with a damn dart.

Gah.

Finn was shoving people out the door. When they were gone, he leaned back against his desk to look at her, feet casually crossed, hands gripping the wood on either side of his hips. He was hot, even in a pose of subdued restraint as he watched her carefully while she sat up. “Easy, Tiger.”

“What happened?” she asked. When she struggled to stand, he pushed off from the desk, coming to her.

Crouching at her side, he stopped her, setting his hands on her thighs to hold her still. “Not yet.”

“How did I get here?”

“You fainted,” he said.

“I most definitely did not!”

His lips twitched. “Okay, then you decided to take a nap. You weren’t feeling the whole walking thing so I carried you.”