Yup, she was a window shopper too.

I laughed. “I live in the closet, not his bedroom.”

His eyes shot to the hair cream. “That’s not hair cream.”

I held the container up. “It’s Boy Butter. What else would it be?” I lifted my eyes to him, making a pitiful attempt to raise one eyebrow, which always ended with me lifting both of them. “You maybe need to go back to bed.”

His jaw flexed and he turned on his heel.

“I thought he had to pee?” the fairy girl asked.

“Me too.” I sat back down on the lid of the toilet, and she hopped off my hand and onto the sink edge, where I kept working the cream through her wings. “It smells nice.”

The fairy let out a giggle. “Oh my lady of the stars! I think I know why he was upset.”

I pulled the long string of bright pink gum off and put it on a piece of toilet paper. “Why?”

“That isn’t hair cream.”

I grabbed the container and flipped it over so I could read the label.

“Boy Butter, best cream around.”

She was giggling; I was staring at the picture of a large arm grabbing a stick as it churned butter on the yellow label.

Churning. Butter.

I put the container down, unable to stop the blurt of laughter that ripped out of me. “CORB! You should keep this in the bedroom, not the bathroom!”

Heavy footsteps and then the front door slammed. I couldn’t stop a fit of giggles, and the fairy laughed with me until tears streamed down both our faces.

“Do you think he has more?” she finally managed.

My hands were covered in exceptionally greasy lubricant, which made it hard to open the cupboard under the sink because my fingers kept sliding over the handle. But when I did . . . all I could do was stare. “Jaysus, it’s like he’s stockpiled enough to outlast the apocalypse. Oink and Boink? Tastes like Bacon?” I fell back laughing, unable to help myself. Was this real? Maybe I was dreaming.

The fairy flitted in front of me, flicking lube around with each flutter of her wings, and read off the rest of the names until I was laughing so hard I had to lie on my back so I could still breathe.

I held up my hands in surrender. “Stop, stop! Whatever makeup I had on is gone, and as you correctly determined, I need all the help I can get.” I swiped my eyes, forgetting that I had the heating lube on them. “Ahh, that’s not good!” I sat up, eyes pinched shut and tearing, and smacked my head on the bottom edge of the sink as I scrambled to get a wet cloth.

The water helped, but the lube wasn’t water-soluble, which only made me giggle more. I mean, I’ll admit part of me was totally intrigued. Corb was a hottie. I liked looking at him, and he’d kissed me.

But that was a helluva lot of lube he had going on. Like there had to be at least thirty bottles under the sink! Who needed that many? Was he planning on an orgy in the near future, or maybe an old-fashioned key party?

My eyes tingled, and I rubbed at them with the cloth, which only made them redder and intensified the feeling of heat. “Crap.” This was not going well.

“Here, I can help.” The fairy flitted up around my face, the fanning of her wings cooling the heat rushing across my skin. I could only imagine what it would feel like to have that lube somewhere else, with someone leaning in close to blow on it.

My face fanned hot again as images blasted through my mind like an out-of-control race car heading straight for a wall and a supernova explosion. I only needed to keep it from crashing into the wall.

Crash.

Damn it, if I wasn’t thinking about one guy, I was thinking about the other. Nope, no thinking about Crash. He was one of the bad guys. A bad guy. But a really, terribly hot and nice-to-look-at bad guy with muscles and a bit of silver in his hair that just added to the hotness factor.

I sighed. “You think you can help me with my face now?”

The mirror showed my eyes were slightly swollen and red around the edges, like I’d been playing in the stinging nettle patch. I was a bit red all over from the laughing and the sudden hot flash, which hadn’t helped the heat index at all. Sighing, I took out my makeup bag.

“Difficult, but not impossible,” she said as she fluttered around my head, tilting her chin as she did so. “You should use a little more cover-up.” Her voice wasn’t as high-pitched as I would have expected a fairy to sound. Musical and sweet, like the tinkling of the bells I’d heard at the window, but it wasn’t ridiculously perky.

“Cover-up looks crappy on me.”

Her smile flashed super sharp canine teeth. Fairies were omnivores—just like humans—but they had a tendency to like their meat a bit more than most. “Eric has been talking about you non-stop the last few days. So when my lady asked me to come see you, I knew you wouldn’t be like the Hollows. Will you talk to her? Will you consider working for her?”

I didn’t answer her, at least not right away. Eric was the bigfoot I’d saved from a ceremonial death at the hands of a crazy old woman. It had taken a lot of luck, plus the training of my youth, but we hadn’t walked away without any scrapes and bruises. Could it have really been that so little time had passed since that had all gone down? I thought through the last few days of training with the Hollows Group. Today was five days since I’d stopped the blood ceremony and saved Eric. Seemed like an eternity, though my body reminded me otherwise.

I took a breath and my back twinged, making me grimace.

“Eric is a good guy.” I took out some eyeliner and leaned toward the mirror again as I attempted to outline my left eye. I ended up with a line that looked like a five-year-old had drawn it. “I don’t know about meeting up with your lady. I’m still new to the Hollows Group, and it might not be a good idea for me to start crossing lines.” The pencil dipped into my eye well, and my eye flooded with tears. “Damn it.”

“Here, I said I would do it, let me do it.” The fairy flew in front of my face and held out her hands. I gave her the eyeliner pencil, wondering if she could even handle the weight. It was about as long as she was high, but she grabbed it as if it weighed nothing. “Close your eyes.”

I did as she said and the lightest brush of the pencil tip ran along the edge of my eyelid. “I’d ask your name, but I know that’s probably out of bounds. So what should I call you?” I asked, trying not to breathe out too hard. I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet, and I didn’t want to kill the little critter.

“You can call me Kinkly. Friends call me Kink.” She moved on to my other eyelid. “You have a lot of loose skin. Is that what happens to humans as they age? Or is something wrong with you?”

I gritted my teeth. “Are fairy critters always so subtle in their approach to insults?”

“I wasn’t insulting you,” she said as she ran the pencil along a lower lid. “If I’d wanted to insult you, I’d have mentioned the hovel you live in, the terribly made clothing you wear, or the obvious disdain you have for your appearance. Things you have the power to change. I wouldn’t insult things you can’t change, like your loose skin.”

My mouth dropped open and I fought not to splutter—bad morning breath, remember? I snapped my mouth shut with a click.

“Open your eyes.” She fluttered around my face as I blinked at her. “You have pretty green eyes, we need to highlight them. Are you in a mating ritual, is that why you are putting this stuff on? For the one with all the lube? He is very nice to look at. If he were smaller, I’d let him roll around on me in a bed of leaves.”

I had to fight back a laugh. “No, not for Corb.” Though that idea did have its merits. “I think I’ll be running into my ex-husband later today. Kind of a face-off, if you will. He stole my gran’s house from me, and now it’s going up for auction. He’ll be there, so I want to look good.” Also there was a chance Crash could be there. He’d expressed interest in my gran’s house. Maybe he’d want to buy it and give it to me because my makeup was on point? I snorted to myself, unable to take my own fantasy seriously.

“You mean you have a mate that is not a mate any longer?” She dropped onto the counter and scooped up a palette of colors. I held my hand out and she plunked it into my palm, then went for a softer brush. This was a perfect deal. One thing I’d never excelled at was the ability to highlight cheekbones, eyebrows, eyes, or lips. A swipe of mascara and maybe some lip gloss was pretty much the high end of my abilities.

“You are correct,” I mumbled. “A mate that is a mate no longer.”

“Hmm. Such a human thing. We kill our mates if they betray us. Close your eyes,” she said, and I dutifully obeyed even as I smiled. Killing Himself would certainly bring me satisfaction. The brush flowed over my eyelids, tickling me a little. “Why would you trust me? You know that most people hate fairy folk. We have a deal, but even so, you are very relaxed. Other than when your heart rate accelerated upon seeing that lovely specimen earlier.”

I sighed. She wasn’t wrong about the heart rate business, or the fact that people didn’t trust fairies. My gran had poured her wisdom into a book I’d been lucky enough to acquire, and in it, written in her own hand, was a warning not to trust any fairy. The fairy—or fae—were tricksters like no others. They cause trouble on a good day. On a bad day they’d hurt you just because they could and get away with it because they were so good at hiding their tracks. Which was probably why Eammon and the Hollows Group had turned down whatever job they’d been offered, regardless of the money.

So why had Kinkly asked me about trusting her? Her bringing up the trust issue was interesting. I dredged up a few more tidbits from my past schooling with my gran, my mind moving more quickly now that some of the cobwebs had been cleared. “We made a deal, and I understand you all take that seriously. Your wings were involved. Your own kind might have killed you for having been caught, correct?”

The brush strokes slowed. “You know more about us than I would have thought. The lady was right to ask for you. But the leprechaun said no. He judged us without knowing us or attempting to understand our problem. Would you do the same?”