Becky wrinkled her nose. "Is that what I smell?"

Tony giggled.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "One word, Tony. Just one word, and it's lights out for you. I'm serious."

He held up his hands in surrender and didn't say anything. He just kept laughing, occasionally biting his bottom lip to keep from doing it out loud.

I shook my head in defeat. There is no way I'm getting out of this clean. Everyone's going to know I farted my way to freedom. Life was so unfair sometimes.

I left Tony to take care of demon-Spike and went with Becky into the compound towards my room.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

BECKY FOLLOWED ME ALL THE way to my room, chattering away, not even caring if I was answering or not. If it took longer than two seconds for me to say anything, she just changed the subject and started talking again about something else.

"Beck?" I asked, as we reached my door.

"Yeah?"

"You realize I heard absolutely nothing you said the entire way here, right?"

"Yeah, I was getting that feeling. But that's okay. Sometimes I just need to hear myself talking to relax."

"Most people relax with silence," I said, smiling at her nuttiness.

"Some people are not as interesting as water sprites. We love sounds. Quiet is boring."

"Well, no one could ever accuse you of being boring, then," I said, pulling Blackie and its sheath off my leg and waist as I walked through the foyer and into the sitting room.

"Jayne?" came a voice from the garden area.

I stopped walking, frozen with guilt. Abby. "Uh, yeah?"

"Could you come over here for a minute?"

I cringed. "Can it wait? I have to shower and get to a council meeting."

"It will only take a second," she said. She was hovering over the top of her bedroom, above the plants that sat on a round table where I'd put their furniture.

I sighed heavily, turning to walk in her direction. It was time to face the music. I felt like I was walking to the hangman's gallery.

"Are you in trouble?" whispered Becky, walking along next to me.

"Probably," I whispered back.

I reached the table and peered down at whatever had Abby's attention. "What's up?"

She pointed to her bed. There was a big lump under the covers.

"What's that?" I asked, confused. "w.i.l.l.y?"

"No. That's my husband."

"Is that Tim? What's he doing?" asked Becky, sounding just as lost as I felt.

"I'm not certain," said Abby, "but I think he might be having a nervous breakdown."

I rolled my eyes. "Oh, for s.h.i.t's sake, Tim, get out of there." I reached down and grabbed the edge of the covers, ignoring Abby's protests. I pulled the blanket back and screamed at what I saw.

"I tried to warn you," said Abby, not sounding at all apologetic.

"My eyes!" I yelled, dropping the blanket and backing up a step. "Oh, my eyes! They're burning!"

"Jayne, that is just so, so wrong," said Becky standing next to me. She was staring at the far wall now. "The poor guy's naked."

"I'm not a man! I'm a pixie!" yelled Tim, about two octaves higher than normal.

I peeked between the fingers that I'd pressed to my face. "Oh, good. You're decent now." He'd wrapped the blanket around himself. "Get your clothes on, pixieman, we have a council meeting to go to."

"I'm not invited," he said, scowling as he threw himself back down on the bed in a face-plant. "There's no point," he said into the covers. "I'm just going to stay here for the rest of the week. Maybe for the month, I haven't decided yet."

Abby sighed. "He scared w.i.l.l.y. I have to go find him out in the garden."

"What'd he do?" I asked.

"He flew around yelling about his hair and something he called gigantor b.o.o.bs and all manner of things. I take it your attempts at sending the demons back to the Underworld didn't go as well as you'd planned."

"Um, no. Not exactly. We took a little detour into the Underworld and the Gray."

Abby just shook her head, giving me a disapproving look before flying away.

"She looks super upset," said Becky.

"Yeah, she does."

"Like, at you."

"Yeah, I got that, Becky. Thanks," I said, frowning at her.

"Do you think she's going to move out?"

"I hope not," I said quietly. And it was true. If Tim weren't there to hara.s.s me every day and remind me about what I should be doing and caring about, I didn't know what I'd do.

"Come on, Tim. I'm serious. No more cutting pixies out of the equation. We're a team. You're going to the meeting; I don't care what they say."

He peeked his head out of the blanket, his hair poking out all over the place. "Do you mean it?"

"Of course I mean it. But if you think I'm going to beg, you can forget it. Either cover up your pixie parts and get your a.s.s out here, or I'm leaving without you."

"Why is my conscience telling me to stay under these covers and never come out again?"

"Because it's protecting you from my terrible luck. You should probably listen to it." I knew later, if I screwed something up and he got in the middle again, I'd feel guilty if I weren't totally being honest with him right now. "Truth is, if you stick with me, you're going to end up in places you shouldn't, getting in trouble with dragons and demons, and suffering some seriously bad hair days."

"So what you're saying is, I could stay here with Abby and w.i.l.l.y and have gorgeous hair all the time."

"Yeah. Pretty much." When he said it like that, I could see why he'd tell me to kiss off. I prepared myself for the inevitable.

"And what you're also saying is, that I'm never going to stare death in the face again. Never fly by the seat of my pants, pixying bad guys to save the world. Never fart in the face of a dragon and escape into the Gray with the Mother of the fae, a geeky wrathe, and a demon-possessed incubus?"

"Uh, yeah. For sure none of that will ever happen."

He threw the covers back and strode over to his dresser. "Well, screw that. I'm not ready for retirement yet."

Becky nudged me with her elbow. "I take it he's coming with you." She kept her eyes on me or the ceiling, seeing as how Tim was once again flashing us his pixie b.u.t.t.

I was grinning so much I could hardly stand it. "Yeah, I think he is."

"But what about his wife and son? Isn't he worried about them?" Becky looked out towards the garden. "Aren't they going to be worried about him?"

She had a point. I tried not to let it bother me, but the guilt was coming for me again. "Tim, maybe you should stay behind. You know, be a husband and father kind of guy." I risked look down at him, and luckily, he had his pants on now and had slicked down half of his hair. The other half remained sticking straight out to the side.

He turned to look at me, his hands on his hips. "Jayne, I don't stop being those things when I'm with you, fighting evil. I become a better dad, a better husband. What kind of pixie would I be if I ran from danger and ignored my duty to the fae? What kind of example would I be setting for my son? What kind of provider would I be, hiding in the garden with my wife? She'd kick me out in a week. No she-pixie wants a wimp for a husband. That's a fact. You can ask her."

"Plus, you could get out of all that babysitting stuff," I added.

"You ain't kidding," said Tim, peering into his mirror as he slicked down the other side of his hair, getting it exactly right. "Don't get me wrong; I love my boy more than life itself. But a man can only play so many games of spider nakie and hide the polly b.a.l.l.s in Lellamental's nose before he has to have a break."

My nose twitched. "Oh. My. G.o.d."

"What?" asked Becky, nudging me again. "What'd he say?"

"You don't want to know. I don't even want to know. I'm going to forget you even said that, you t.u.r.d monkey." The idea that Tim had partic.i.p.ated in the hide-the-polly-b.a.l.l.s game made me want to shove him back into my cleavage.

He giggled, winking at himself in the mirror and shooting a play-gun at his reflection. "That's right, pay back is my b.i.t.c.h. Try and pull one over on the old Timster and see what happens! Ha!"

"He looks happy," said Becky. "I hope that's a good thing."

"It is and it isn't." I left him there to go get myself ready. "Come talk to me while I get showered and changed, Becks. It's been too long since we've shared."

"You're not kidding. You have missed so much gossip it's not even funny."

I went into my room and grabbed some clean clothes out of my dresser and a towel. "Tell me. Start from the beginning."

She followed me into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet lid. "Okay, so, first of all, you know Tony and Felicia are like, an item, right? Well, Theresa was acting like she was all okay with it. But then they had this big fight and now they're not talking to each other at all. Like, not a word. So things are super tense in succubus land. Tony tried to help, but all he did was make it worse."

"But I thought he was, you know, with both of them or whatever."

"Nah. They offered, but he's a one-girl kind of guy. He chose Felicia and essentially kicked Theresa to the curb."

"Ouch, that had to hurt."

"For serious. And then there's Scrum and Aidan. I don't know, something Aidan said got Scrum all worked up, so they had a total wrestling match, right there in the dining hall. Tables and chairs were flyyyyying! I was, like, whaaaat?? No one knows what he said, but whatever. Scrum was fit to be tied as Finn says. They're avoiding each other now, but Aidan growls whenever he smells Scrum around."

"What's up with Finn anyway?" I asked. "Are you guys still, you know, together or whatever?"

"Of course. He's hooked. I'm hooked. It's love, Jayne. Can you believe it? I mean, he's like a total country boy, but I think he's adorable. And you know he's the best shot in the Green Forest. He can shoot the leaf off a tree from a hundred yards out."

"I know. He's bada.s.s with the arrows."

"You don't even want to see him throw knives. I'm thinking we could do a traveling circus thing if this fae stuff doesn't work out." She smiled at me like a loon.

"You're happy," I said, shutting the water off. "That's awesome." I'd just soaped up and rinsed off. There was no time for me to do my hair.

"Yeah. Happy as we can be with the realms falling down around our ears right now."

"Any more stuff going on since I was last around? With Ben or anything?"

"Yeah, well, I saw him, but we didn't talk. He seems very preoccupied. He's kept to himself since you disappeared."

"What do you mean, disappeared? I've only been gone a few hours."

"Uh, no, Jayne. You've been gone for, like, two days. And Tony for about half that time. Everyone's been in a bit of a panic, you might say."

I thought about that for a minute, but then decided I wasn't surprised that time moved differently in the Underworld than it did here. Extra torture for the bad guys. A thousand years in the Here and Now was like five or ten thousand there. b.u.mmer.

"Has Ben been hanging out with Samantha at all?" I asked, my heart beating uncomfortably as I waited for her answer.

"I don't think so. I've seen her trying to talk to him, but he just kind of blows her off." Becky stopped for a minute and looked at me. "I know you were never happy about the binding ceremony and stuff ... but have you found a way to at least live with it? You don't seem as mad about it right now, at least."

"I don't know what I am, really. Except confused. I'm not even sure if Ben and I are on the same side."

"Well, there's only one side now."

"No, there isn't. Leck was in the Gray. I a.s.sume Malena's in there too. And Leck was with a demon or troll or something. So there are at least two sides to this deal and maybe more. I saw an angel in Ben's room named Beau who looked kind of ... suspicious."

Becky started laughing. Hard. She bent over, holding her stomach after a few seconds.

"Did I say something funny?"

"Beau ...," she gasped.

"What? The name?"