Death's Mistress Read Online Free PDF Page A

were discordant notes, too. This Claire had bruise-dark circles under her eyes, which kept darting nervously around the kitchen, and a sickly pallor beneath her freckles. Her lips were white and pressed tightly together, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in a while, like she was running on nerves.
    But the real clincher was that Claire wouldn’t show up in the middle of the night, unescorted, barefoot and wild-eyed. When I met her, she’d been working a bad-paying job at a magical auction house and had needed a roommate for the extra cash. But that was before a real-life fey prince turned up at one of the sales and swept her off her feet—and all the way to Faerie. She’d been there ever since, presumably living the happily-ever-after that the rest of us just dream about.
    “It’s a damn good glamourie,” I said, wondering exactly how one evicted a dragon, even in human form, from one’s kitchen. “But for future reference, Claire didn’t make a habit of running around naked. Not even in her own house.”
    “I was wearing clothes!” the creature said, snatching an apron from a drawer. It was the old-fashioned type that was more like a dress, leaving her decent as long as she didn’t turn around. “I burst out of them whenever I change now. My dragon self has hit adolescence and it’s growing like a weed.”
    I stared from the drawer with the aprons—I hadn’t known we had any—to the woman shrugging one on. “Dragon self?”
    She pushed limp red strands off her forehead with the back of her hand. “I’m half Dark Fey, Dory. You know that!”
    “Yeah, but . . . you never mentioned what kind!”
    “I didn’t know until recently, and anyway, it’s not the kind of thing you just drop into conversation.” She located a box of aspirin in a drawer and peered at the label myopically. Those pretty green eyes had always been nearsighted, and I guess going scaly would make it a bitch to keep up with glasses.
    I got slowly to my feet, my head spinning. “Claire?”
    “Who were you expecting?” she demanded. “Attila the Hun?”
    Her eyes focused on the cleaver I still held in one hand, which was leaking blood—nonhuman black—all over the kitchen tiles. Dragon’s blood was corrosive, which probably explained why half the blade was gone and the tiles looked like mice had been gnawing at them. I took what remained of the knife to the sink and rinsed it off, then put it back in the rack.
    That seemed to reassure her, because she pulled something out from behind her legs and plopped it into a kitchen chair. It must have been behind her in the hall, because I hadn’t seen it before. I slowly approached the table, regarding this new problem cautiously.
    The small towheaded creature appeared to be human. He—at least, I assumed it was a he, judging by the natty blue tunic he had on—looked to be around a year old. But he nonetheless gazed calmly back, remarkably composed considering what he had just witnessed.
    “What is that?” I asked, as he drooled a little onto his tunic.
    Claire dry swallowed the aspirin. “The heir to the throne of Faerie.”
    “The heir to the throne of Faerie just spit up.”
    “He does that a lot. He’s teething.”
    I blinked. “Teething? Teething? He’s teething and you get spit ?”
    “Why? What did you expect?”
    I waved my arms. “That!”
    “That noise?”
    “Yes! That horrible, screeching noise that goes on and on and—”
    “That’s a baby?”
    “A baby Duergar. Well, half anyway,” I amended. “The other half is Brownie, or so they said. I’m beginning to think it’s more like banshee.”
    “You mean that little thing you picked up at the auction?” She located a box of Band-Aids and slapped one on her toe.
    And okay, the apron thing could have been a fluke, but there weren’t too many people who knew where I’d acquired my current affliction. The magical auction had been highly illegal and very hush- hush. That wasn’t surprising, considering