"Happy birthday?" I felt dazed, and not just from the pain meds they'd pushed on me at the ER. "You're giving me a pool for my birthday, and somehow got somebody to install it in the past four—" she glanced at the clock on the wall. "Five hours?"
"A water nymph directed the work," Frazzle said. "I felt her energy, so the cat and I watched from the window. She was very bossy."
A water nymph …
"Phaedra? You gotPhaedrato help you?" I shook my head once, then again, to be sure I was seeing what I was seeing. "How? Why?"
Jack looked awfully sheepish for a tiger. He shoved his hands in his pockets and offered a tentative grin. "Remember that time you said you wished you had a pool?"
I blinked, and then it came to me. "That was six months ago, on Memorial Day weekend! It was an offhand remark, not a … a … requisition! Jack, this is too much. You can't give me a swimming pool. I've looked into it before, and this must have cost a fortune!"
The quotes I'd gotten had ranged from twenty to forty thousand dollars, in fact, which had been far too expensive for my pawnshop-owner salary. But if he'd gotten supernatural help …
"How did this happen?"
Jack shrugged, avoiding my gaze. "I called in some favors. Not a huge thing. I was going to distract you this morning while they worked."
He turned to me and put an arm around me. "Little did I know that you'd provide the distraction all by yourself."
"Ididn't blow up the bank," I muttered, still stuck on the fact that I had a pool.
"Who blew up the riverbank?" Frazzle demanded. "The nymph will not be happy."
"No, a bank is a human place where we store money," I tried to explain, but the little Fae looked blank, so I gave it up. "Anyway, there was an explosion."
"And it badly hurt Tess," Jack said ominously.
I tried to protest. "Not all that badly—"
"It could havekilledher," he continued. "You and your queen don't know anything about that, do you?"
Frazzle's lovely violet eyes narrowed, and she put her hands on her hips. "We do not. Queen Viviette would never break a Bargain, and all know that she gave you till dusk on the fifth day. This is only the third day."
"Okay," Tess said slowly, pointing out the window. "But then, why is someone who looks exactly like I imagine a Fae queen would look advancing on my house, surrounded by armed guards?"
35
Tess
Frazzle's wings buzzed with excitement, and she fluttered up to see, listing slightly to the right. When she reached my shoulder, she landed there, taking a handful of my hair in a surprisingly powerful grip.
"That's her! My queen! She came for me!"
"Let's hope she came foryou," Jack muttered. "I count six in her guard. Not a formal showing, but not the bare minimum either. This could go either way."
"Oh, good." Just what I wanted to face after the bank exploded all over me.
I wasn't about to go hide in my room, no matter how much I might want to, though. I took a deep breath and stepped toward my back door. "Okay, let's go meet a Fae queen."
Lou meowed loudly and raced off to hide in the guest room. Maybe cats reallyweresmarter than people.
The Autumn queen was beautiful, but of course, that almost went without saying with the High Court Fae. She wore a golden crown, had hip-length, chestnut brown hair, and her skin was the shade of rich copper. Her gown looked like it was made of row after row of leaves, which shaded from deep brown at the bodice to a fiery orange-red at the hem.
I wasn't much of a gown person—I'd never even had one since my ill-fated prom experience—but I truly lusted over this one. Molly, much more of a fashionista than I was, would have gone nuts for it.
The guards looked like menace walking, both the male and the female elves. Uniformly tall, leanly muscled, and bristling with weapons, the whole delegation in no way looked like it came in peace. At my side, Jack was already scowling, so I knew this one was up to me.
"Let me handle this," I insisted, slipping past him and out the door before he could stop me.
