The barghest winced, and as I pulled away I growled, “Trill!”
“Don’t huff at me, Nell wanted you,” the kelpie chortled, as she stepped from the shadows. She was again in her pony form, and was prancing with mischief. Her pearlescent flesh glimmered in the moonlight. “How was I supposed to know Anyan was planning on jumping your bones the minute you woke up?”
“Leave them alone, Trill,” came Nell’s kindly voice from behind the kelpie. The little woman stepped up from behind the sea-pony. She didn’t seem at all discomfited by walking up on us practically in flagrante.
“We’re sorry to interrupt,” Nell said. “But everyone’s waiting for you at the Sty.”
I gave Trill the traitor a sharp look. She should have warned Nell that Anyan and I were, um, having a reunion. One with no clothes, at least on my part. Trill just gave me her horrible pony grin in response.
I gave her the finger.
“So if you’re finished, we can get over there,” Nell said, levitating my clothes a bit closer to where I straddled the barghest. Then the gnome looked Anyan full in the face, giving him her sweetest, most heartfelt grandma smile.
“We won’t tell anyone we caught you jumping Jane’s bones.”
CHAPTER FIVE
As I walked through the door of the Sty, I was hit with the familiar smell of the bar: beer and burgers, mixed together with a faint undertone of Pine-Sol. And there, around the large, square bar that jutted out onto the edge of the Sow’s small dance floor, sat all of my Rockabill chums. They were clustered around Tracy—she and Grizzie were taller than any of my supernatural friends—and not paying any mind to the front door.
Nell and Trill, blanketed under the gnome’s heaviest glamour, walked toward our group. For some reason, Trill had a hard time glamouring herself, especially if she interacted with humans at all. I think it was a concentration issue. So for the very, very occasional times she was away from her own kind, she kept her pony shape and let Nell glamour her to look like a wolfhound. If I let my gaze unfocus, I could see the large dog’s shape padding over the clopping form of our little kelpie.
Before following Nell and Trill, I moved over to Anyan’s side, peering up at him speculatively. I wasn’t so slow that I didn’t realize there was something happening between us, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t opposed to reassurance. After all, the last thing I remembered was that Anyan and I had been just a possibility. And while Anyan had had a month to think past those stumbling first steps—and leap all the way to bone-jumping, the ambitious sod—I was still lurking in a corner of square one.
The barghest, as if sensing my insecurities, reached out to cradle my jaw in his warm, dry palm. His skin was rough against my soft cheek, but that just turned me on even more.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you upright,” Anyan’s low voice growled. Then he leaned in to kiss my forehead, before moving his lips to my ear. What he whispered next made my poor, overtaxed libido nearly faint: “But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to want you flat on your back again as soon as possible.”
His teeth nipped my ear and I whimpered, a million Anyan-related fantasies suddenly swarming through my brain like overstimulated honey bees. When I didn’t budge, my gaze turning inward to enjoy my own naughty thoughts, he chuckled before putting his hand on the nape of my neck to steer my dreamy ass away from the front door.
As we neared our friends, they turned away from Tracy to see us. When their eyes lit upon me, I felt my own prickle with tears at the joy on everyone’s face.
As usual, Grizzie broke the silence. “Jane!” came a shout, as over six feet of omnisexual goodness came darting toward me. For a second, I felt like a vole targeted by a peregrine, but then I realized that a mere falcon would never have the chutzpah to wear that tank top. It was white and sported, in effigy, a tanned body with huge boobs encased in a Confederate flag bikini.
Giggling, I allowed my friend to sweep me up in a dramatic hug. Anyan squeezed past us to get to the bar, and then the prickles turned to real tears as I felt a bunch of other arms around Griz and me. I felt like a rugby player in a scrum, but one made of love and acceptance. It was glorious.
“How was Belize?” Grizzie said, when everyone had moved a few steps back and I could breathe again.
“Um, Belize?” I frowned, looking around at the group.
Amy Nahual’s normally placid, slightly stoned expression frowned as she nodded sharply, warning me to go along with Grizzie.
“Yeah, um, Belize was great. You know Belize,” I said, my brain scrambling to recall exactly where Belize was. “Always hot?” I hazarded, smiling back at Grizzie when she grinned.
“That’s great! Although you don’t look tan at all.”
“Yes, well—” I started to say, but allowed myself to trail off with relief as Amy pulled me toward her for a hug.
“We told the humans, except for your dad, that you were in Belize. Just roll with it,” she whispered in my ear.
“Will do,” I replied, squeezing her tightly. “You doing well?”
Amy chuckled her loose-throated, laid-back laugh. “Always copacetic, sister. You know me! Glad to see you up and at ’em.”
Then she allowed me to be pulled away by first Marcus and then Sarah Vernon, the nahuals who owned the Sty. They each gave me a hug, Sarah promising to go right into the back and rustle me up the biggest burger with extra cheddar she could make. I didn’t protest as Sarah rushed off to fulfill her promise.
My big shock came when Tracy, Grizzie’s life partner, went to give me her own hug. Right before I left, Grizzie and Tracy had announced they were pregnant with twins. Tracy had already been pretty big for someone who was only three months gone, and now she was…
“Huuuuuuge,” I whispered, my wide eyes latched onto her belly, before clapping a hand over my mouth. Tracy’s being so much bigger than the last time I saw her meant I finally realized I truly had been out for a month.
“I see Belize didn’t improve your tact,” my friend replied, drily, before pulling me as close as she could get me in a hug.
“Um, no. But I got you some baby clothes!” I blurted out, panicked by that evening’s second mention of a country I couldn’t quite place geographically.
Shit, where am I going to get baby clothes from Belize? I thought frantically, as Tracy’s face lit up.
“How exciting!” she squealed, as I cursed at myself. Luckily, before I could dig myself any more holes, my attention was riveted to the figure standing awkwardly a few feet away, waiting to be noticed.
“Iris!” I shouted, nearly choking on my overflowing emotions. I was feeling things I didn’t even know how to name. The last time I’d seen my succubus friend had been after relinquishing her to the care of strange healers. She’d been kidnapped by Jarl’s minions both because she knew me and because, in her past, she’d given birth to a halfling son. I’d been made to believe she was dead, although she’d really been kept alive as insurance. That fact was a mixed blessing. I had been so happy she was still alive, but she’d endured horrific abuse before we’d rescued her from the evil Healer’s mansion-prison.
So I loved seeing her, and I was happy that she looked much better than the emaciated, dead-eyed shell of Iris I’d left behind so many weeks ago. That said, she still didn’t look anything like the sleek indoor cat she’d been before her kidnapping. My friend was still far too thin, and her eyes were still haunted. But most telling was the way she stood back, waiting to be noticed.
Iris used to shine so brightly that every eye in the room was riveted.
A hand from behind her touched her shoulder, as if to urge her forward, and I opened my arms. I almost dropped said arms, however, when I realized that the hand on her shoulder belonged to the satyr Caleb. He was huge, with the imposing chest of a muscle-bound human, but he was all goat from the waist down. Well, except for the very human genitalia on proud display. Goat haunches made finding pants difficult, but I would never understand what was so wrong about a loincloth. Anyway, Caleb was impressive as either a man or a goat, not least because of his craggily handsome face topped by his huge ram’s horns. He was, however, also one of my former lover Ryu’s deputies and I couldn’t imagine what the satyr was doing here.
I looked around for Ryu as Iris came close, but he wasn’t lurking anywhere. Then I was hugging my friend, and nothing else mattered.
“Iris,” I mumbled, almost incoherent. Sobs were her only response.
Everyone backed away, clearly giving us space. Grizzie and Tracy seemed confused by what must have appeared to them to be Iris’s overly emotional response to my return from Belize. Little did they know that Iris and I had returned, together, from somewhere much further away: the hell that had been the Healer’s grasp.
“How are you doing?” I asked, eventually, when she’d cried herself out. I pulled the sleeve of my T-shirt down over my palm to wipe away her tears. She wasn’t wearing any make-up, making her look even younger and more vulnerable.